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Author Topic: The sky has not fallen (yet)  (Read 243304 times)
Nevermore
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on: May 07, 2012, 02:01:44 PM

Q4 numbers out.

As usual, the truth was somewhere in the middle of the predictions of the hopeless optimists and the doomsayers.  Subs at the end of March totaled 1.3 million, down 24% from 1.7 million.  So subs have not fallen off a cliff, but they are down.  I'm sure both the glass half empty people and the glass half full people will have plenty of ammunition for their arguments.

Devs also clarified that the 'expansions' listed in the article refer to major content patches (ie: 1.2 and the upcoming 1.3), not a paid box expansion.

Over and out.
Rokal
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Reply #1 on: May 07, 2012, 02:07:24 PM

The 1.3 million also includes players currently under free time per the promotion with patch 1.2, so these numbers are padded to some extent.
Nevermore
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Reply #2 on: May 07, 2012, 02:46:27 PM

Are you talking about the free month given near the end of April when the quarter being reported ended on March 31st?  That free time?

Over and out.
Rokal
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Reply #3 on: May 07, 2012, 03:01:25 PM

Facepalm

Edit: Reading the report it isn't clear whether SWTOR has 1.3 million subs now, or 1.3 million as of March 31st. Judging from the last time they gave subscriber numbers, which was 1.7 million from a press release on March 9th, I'm guessing the 1.3 million number they gave us is current, not as of March 31st.
« Last Edit: May 07, 2012, 03:10:34 PM by Rokal »
Maledict
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Reply #4 on: May 07, 2012, 03:32:44 PM

It's almost half a million subs in less than 3 months. It's almost a *quarter*'of their subs and we are only 6 months into the game. Diablo iii is out next week, and then GW2 later on in the year plus Mists of Pandara.

The sky is absolutely falling in - and it will only get worse because more and more servers are dead due to the fall in population. Unless they start to hand out free copies of Diablo 3 with their game as well ToR will be under 1 million subs in 3 months time easily.
Minvaren
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Reply #5 on: May 07, 2012, 03:35:10 PM

Given that the report refers to the 1.2 expansion as shipping in Q1 2013, I'd wager on subscriber numbers being from Q4 2012.  Otherwise, there'd be talk as to the "jump" in subscriber numbers due to the Legacy release (and associated free time).

...though this doesn't really bode well for the numbers 3-6 months from now, agreed.

"There are many things of which a wise man might wish to remain ignorant." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nevermore
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Reply #6 on: May 07, 2012, 03:45:29 PM

On the other hand, all the people who bought the game, tried it and didn't like it have now likely already churned out.  It seems to me the biggest problem is they did open too many servers to handle the demand when they released, but it was something of a catch 22.  If you open up too many, servers feel underpopulated later on.  If you open too few, people get pissed off and cancel because of the wait times just to log onto their server.

Now they have another dilemma: if you start to actually merge servers, it gives the perception that the game is shrinking and who wants to play a 'dying' game?  If they don't, they'll have some servers that are stuck being underpopulated.  We'll see how cross server queues in 1.3 affects things.

Over and out.
Ingmar
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Reply #7 on: May 07, 2012, 03:47:59 PM

Rift did it by telling people who were getting merged that their servers were getting turned into "trial servers". Why this fooled anyone, I'm not sure, and I am sure if SWTOR tried it people would see right through it.

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Rokal
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Reply #8 on: May 07, 2012, 03:59:20 PM

Rift players probably didn't care much given that many of them were already used to transferring servers for free. The announcement about trial servers was also smartly combined with an announcement about Rift Lite (free 1-20), so the announcement seemed suspicious but held some merit.
caladein
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Reply #9 on: May 07, 2012, 04:11:05 PM

Rift players probably didn't care much given that many of them were already used to transferring servers for free. The announcement about trial servers was also smartly combined with an announcement about Rift Lite (free 1-20), so the announcement seemed suspicious but held some merit.

Free character transfers and trial servers came out at the same time, June 2011.  Rift Lite was three months ago.

Edit: There was a mass server cannibalization with Lite though, but the practice was already in place.
« Last Edit: May 07, 2012, 04:18:02 PM by caladein »

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Ingmar
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Reply #10 on: May 07, 2012, 04:16:20 PM

As I was saying, not sure why this fooled anyone...

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Rokal
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Reply #11 on: May 07, 2012, 04:40:36 PM

The huge number of 'trial server' converts was paired with the Rift Lite announcement. If it hadn't been, I think you would have seen much more doomcasting. A small number of server merges or voluntary transfers (something WoW has done plenty of times in the past) isn't news of the same scope as something like the WAR merges, or what SWTOR is going to have to do soon.

Edit: Man, the description from that announcement post is rich:

Quote
"Some shards will be flagged as “Trial” shards. These shards are selected for use in future trial program events, such that we don't end up with large blasts of trial users taking up subscribers' slots, forcing subscribers to queue, as has happened in the past."
« Last Edit: May 07, 2012, 04:43:19 PM by Rokal »
caladein
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Reply #12 on: May 07, 2012, 05:13:31 PM

Having a hard time finding definitive lists of server conversions and the like.  But, there were already ~30 North American trial servers by the time the batch for Lite was switched over (source).  The majority of those came off the bat back in mid-2011 (source).  The ones inbetween were pretty piecemeal from what I remember at the time, but the rest came in pretty big chunks.

Any way you want to slice it, Rift has 16 proper servers in North America roughly a year after it had over 50.

"Point being, they can't make everyone happy, so I hope they pick me." -Ingmar
"OH MY GOD WE'RE SURROUNDED SEND FOR BACKUP DIG IN DEFENSIVE POSITIONS MAN YOUR NECKBEARDS" -tgr
Kageru
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Reply #13 on: May 07, 2012, 05:15:04 PM

I'm sure they give the numbers taking advantage of the free-month boost, that was clearly the point of it. The "game-changing" 1.3 patch having come out and not really impressed anyone means I see no reason the decline is temporary.

The next test will be the frequency of content updates as an indication of whether EA/Bioware are still strongly committed to growing the game. But with negative growth and a pretty poor reputation I think it will be very difficult to halt the slide. WoW-like growth is effectively impossible, so the game probably counts as a failure in EA's eyes.

Rift had pretty different expectations and investment. Being the first game with a unknown IP from a unknown development house. I suspect it's done alright by them.

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Reply #14 on: May 07, 2012, 05:33:04 PM

It's almost half a million subs in less than 3 months. It's almost a *quarter*'of their subs and we are only 6 months into the game. Diablo iii is out next week, and then GW2 later on in the year plus Mists of Pandara.

Out of these 3 I think the only one that will have a major effect on TOR will be Diablo 3. I just don't see anyone outside of these boards who is excited for GW2 and Mists of Pandora is being greeted with scorn even by people I know who still play WOW obsessively.

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Kageru
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Reply #15 on: May 07, 2012, 05:41:53 PM

I don't think some other MMO will "kill" it because none of them are following the same path or have the same IP. The decline will be driven by short-comings in the game itself. Which I would expect to be either the concept there is nothing left to do (as people build up their stable of level 50 classes) or no one to do it with.
« Last Edit: May 07, 2012, 06:21:56 PM by Kageru »

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Rokal
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Reply #16 on: May 07, 2012, 05:42:19 PM

Reposted from elsewhere: http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ERTS/1675578999x0x566984/c10f605c-3487-488e-ad86-b5bb74fe2408/Q4_FY12_Script.pdf

Quote
Through the end of the quarter, approximately 2.4 million units have sold through. In our last call we indicated that we had 1.7 million active subscribers, and as of the end of April we now have 1.3 million, with a substantial portion of the decrease due to casual and trial players cycling out of the subscriber base, driving up the overall percentage of paying subscribers.

So yes, the numbers are padded by the free time promotion.
« Last Edit: May 07, 2012, 05:44:37 PM by Rokal »
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Reply #17 on: May 07, 2012, 06:15:57 PM

On the other hand, all the people who bought the game, tried it and didn't like it have now likely already churned out.  

Some would have, but then there are those players who buy a 3 or 6 month sub at launch because it ends up being cheaper.

And I've heard some grumbling that the above figures are being brought up by SWOR's launch in different countries within that time frame.

From memory WAR and AOC saw their player base dive by about 50% the first quarter out from launch, so comparatively SWOR is doing great!  awesome, for real But from EA's point of view, would they have been expecting such a big drop, or would they have been expecting a flatter decline (or even post-launch growth)?

It also doesn't help that BioWare's Daniel Eriksson came out saying, "No way our player base has declined; it's just concurrent server numbers that are down," only for this drop to be announced. I get he's a writer, but 400k players down is a big drop.

FieryBalrog
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Reply #18 on: May 07, 2012, 06:29:54 PM

On the other hand, all the people who bought the game, tried it and didn't like it have now likely already churned out.  

Some would have, but then there are those players who buy a 3 or 6 month sub at launch because it ends up being cheaper.

And I've heard some grumbling that the above figures are being brought up by SWOR's launch in different countries within that time frame.

From memory WAR and AOC saw their player base dive by about 50% the first quarter out from launch, so comparatively SWOR is doing great!  awesome, for real But from EA's point of view, would they have been expecting such a big drop, or would they have been expecting a flatter decline (or even post-launch growth)?

It also doesn't help that BioWare's Daniel Eriksson came out saying, "No way our player base has declined; it's just concurrent server numbers that are down," only for this drop to be announced. I get he's a writer, but 400k players down is a big drop.
Investors expected a 10% drop, which is why the market reacted so negatively to the news. Riccitiello is trying to calm the investors by downplaying the importance of TOR, saying it's not in their top 5 properties and is less of a priority than upcoming SimCity title, etc.
Nevermore
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Reply #19 on: May 07, 2012, 06:55:50 PM

And I've heard some grumbling that the above figures are being brought up by SWOR's launch in different countries within that time frame.

Which countries?  There was the 38 additional countries, again at the end of April which wouldn't be in these Q4 numbers.  Were there some other ones earlier that I forgot about?

Over and out.
Rokal
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Reply #20 on: May 07, 2012, 06:59:22 PM

Which countries?  There was the 38 additional countries, again at the end of April which wouldn't be in these Q4 numbers.  Were there some other ones earlier that I forgot about?

The numbers are from the end of April, re-read post 16.
Ingmar
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Reply #21 on: May 07, 2012, 07:08:10 PM

There's no way even if the sub numbers are counted from the end of April that they'll include data from a 4/26 launch.

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Nevermore
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Reply #22 on: May 07, 2012, 07:09:44 PM

Which countries?  There was the 38 additional countries, again at the end of April which wouldn't be in these Q4 numbers.  Were there some other ones earlier that I forgot about?

The numbers are from the end of April, re-read post 16.

That must be a typo, since the quarter definitely ended on March 31, as shown in the first line here.

Over and out.
FieryBalrog
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Reply #23 on: May 07, 2012, 07:55:01 PM

If you look at the 38 countries, there are like 3 that might make a small blip on the radar in terms of sub numbers (Turkey, Ukraine, Israel), while the others are basically names on a list (like, uh, Moldova, or Afghanistan). From what I read, most people who want to play SWTOR in these countries just imported it and played because SWTOR isn't region locked, and it's not like EA is going to be opening servers in Afghanistan now, so it makes fuck all difference to their play experience.

You can expect a massive boost of a few tens of thousands of subs from this "launch", at most.

Real talk is when they launch in areas like China and Korea, but localizing this particular game is going to be especially painful.
FieryBalrog
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Reply #24 on: May 07, 2012, 07:56:12 PM

Which countries?  There was the 38 additional countries, again at the end of April which wouldn't be in these Q4 numbers.  Were there some other ones earlier that I forgot about?

The numbers are from the end of April, re-read post 16.

That must be a typo, since the quarter definitely ended on March 31, as shown in the first line here.
That doesn't matter. Previous sub reports have been of the sub number as of the call, not the sub number as of the end of the reported quarter. And according to their own words, this is the same.
Rokal
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Reply #25 on: May 07, 2012, 08:20:04 PM

That must be a typo, since the quarter definitely ended on March 31, as shown in the first line here.

Are you suggesting they lost 400k subscribers in less than a month? That would be the case if the subscription numbers are from March 31st, as their previous 1.7 'current subscribers' announcement is from March 9th.

It's not a typo, the numbers are from the end of April. It's the only way the free time promotion makes any sense for EA.
Sky
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Reply #26 on: May 07, 2012, 08:37:41 PM

This just in, people who don't like TOR think it's doomed; story at 11. 

I agree with Nevermore's assessment about most of the haters and chasers (that one magic mmo...someday!) have churned out and BWA is left holding too many servers. Free transfers and a consolidation would be nice, as would a few more character slots to accommodate folks like Nebu who rerolled on other servers...though honestly you're not winning folks like that back.
Fordel
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Reply #27 on: May 07, 2012, 08:59:13 PM

The number of servers wouldn't really be too much of an issue if they had cross-server LFG.

They don't though, so it is.


/captain obvious AWAAAAY  why so serious?


Shien is actually pretty decent still, compared to the numbers I'm hearing from people. Pretty healthy fleet numbers and we still get PvP matches going fairly quick at honest hours.

and the gate is like I TOO AM CAPABLE OF SPEECH
Nevermore
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Reply #28 on: May 07, 2012, 09:05:47 PM

That must be a typo, since the quarter definitely ended on March 31, as shown in the first line here.

Are you suggesting they lost 400k subscribers in less than a month? That would be the case if the subscription numbers are from March 31st, as their previous 1.7 'current subscribers' announcement is from March 9th.

It's not a typo, the numbers are from the end of April. It's the only way the free time promotion makes any sense for EA.

The 1.7 million subs is from the February 1st earnings call, for the Q3 ending December 31st.  From my quick reading of it, it's also rather vague on if the sub numbers presented are from the end of the quarter or the date of the call, as they used terms like 'to date'.  Is there something out there from the first earnings call that I missed that specifies that the sub numbers are specifically through the end of January?  Seems odd to me that a call that details a specific quarter would talk about absolute numbers like subscriptions (as opposed to projections, which they do a lot) outside of the actual dates of the financial reports.  Not to say it isn't possible since I'm not terribly familiar with that can and can't be said in an earnings call, but I'd just like to see something explicit given how strict GAAP is about what can be reported withing the specified dates in the actual financials.

In any event, it actually wouldn't really matter much either way unless you think a significant number of people who got free time would have quit during the month of April.

Over and out.
Rokal
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Reply #29 on: May 07, 2012, 09:16:54 PM

It's hard to say how many subs would have expired in April but didn't because of free time, but a 'buy one month, get one month' sale for previous subscribers must have also attracted some people back too.

Between all the upcoming competition, the spread population & LFG problems, and more people finishing class storylines, I would be surprised if they weren't under a million by the next investors call.
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Reply #30 on: May 07, 2012, 09:35:01 PM

It's almost half a million subs in less than 3 months. It's almost a *quarter*'of their subs and we are only 6 months into the game. Diablo iii is out next week, and then GW2 later on in the year plus Mists of Pandara.

Out of these 3 I think the only one that will have a major effect on TOR will be Diablo 3. I just don't see anyone outside of these boards who is excited for GW2 and Mists of Pandora is being greeted with scorn even by people I know who still play WOW obsessively.
I wouldn't be so sure about MOP. A lot of my guildies are very excited for it, and they are part of the 'disaffected WOWers', having subbed for 2 months total in Cataclysm. (they have subbed for most of WOTLK though)

My guild 'churned out' from swtor after the free month + first month of sub was up. The game is not omfg terrible, we just sort of ran out of things to do and couldn't really do any group content - I don't see why we wouldn't go back to swtor for a month here or there if they added some longevity stuff (sidekicking, x-server lfd/lfr and dual specs being the three big things).
« Last Edit: May 07, 2012, 09:40:01 PM by Zetor »

apocrypha
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Reply #31 on: May 07, 2012, 10:53:53 PM

Pretty much every WoW player I know who isn't currently playing is saying they'll re-sub for MoP "just for a month or two to check it out". Whether a sizable proportion of those people will stay subbed for any length of time is hard to predict, but some might.

In comparison, not a single one of them who also played SWTOR says they'd go back to it, for any reason. It's something that gets discussed a lot because a lot of us were very disappointed with TOR and had higher hopes for it.

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Margalis
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Reply #32 on: May 08, 2012, 01:47:41 AM

This just in, people who don't like TOR think it's doomed; story at 11. 

I agree with Nevermore's assessment about most of the haters and chasers (that one magic mmo...someday!) have churned out and BWA is left holding too many servers.

If 25% of people have unsubbed that probably means 30-40% aren't logging in much any more. All those people are haters? I find it just weird that you can spin widespread dissatisfaction with the game as "hate", as if no reasonable person could genuinely find it lacking. Even though in these very forums probably more than half the people looking forward to SWTOR came away disappointed.

It's not "hate" to try a mediocre game and find it mediocre. What you are doing is like some weird twist on sour grapes - we didn't want those players, they weren't sufficiently devoted enough anyway!

I'm very curious why a "hater" would buy the game. What does that even mean? Like, they hate Bioware and Star Wars and thought SWTOR was going to be garbage but then they bought and played it anyway? And that's 25% of their subscribers?

Calling people who stopped playing because the game is middling a "hater" is just absurd. You've latched onto it because you can't stomach that a lot of reasonable people just don't like the game - instead they are all biased or something. They have Bush Derangement Syndrome Star Wars Edition I guess.

The reality is "haters" didn't buy the game or pay for subs. The people who did that thought they would enjoy the game.

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Margalis
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Reply #33 on: May 08, 2012, 01:54:33 AM

By the way, for people like Nevermore and Sky who think the haters have churned out and the numbers will level off - throw out some numbers. Where do you think subs will be at 3 and 6 months from now?

I'm going to say that a large number of people have stopped playing regularly and will unsub soon, and a large number will make it to end-game or finish their first alt and unsub.

I'm going to say that in 3 months they will lose another 25% of what is left - so from 1.3 million to 950k or so. At 6 months around 700k.

You guys think higher?

By the way, EA has said that to feel "really good" about their investment in SWTOR they would need 1.5 million subs a year over a 5-10 year span, and 1 million a year over than span to feel like it was a worthwhile investment at all. Seems hard to believe they are going to reach either of those.

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Shatter
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Reply #34 on: May 08, 2012, 04:52:45 AM

Fuck the numbers, just go with facts.  Servers today are down in pops, just login at prime time and you can see how few of them are now heavy.  Mine is down from heavy to standard and the number of people in fleet is down every day.  We know subs are down, server transfers are coming and they can likely drop a good 20 servers off the list from launch.  My starting guild of over 150 people now has 10 people online on average, rarely above 15.  Personally I could care less, going to play D3 Tuesday and GW2 whenever it comes out so Im done with TOR, but I hope sometime down the road they make it worth playing.
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