EA Blames Casuals For Falling Old Republic Subscriber Numbers

[The Wooster]

EA Blames Casuals For Falling Old Republic Subscriber Numbers

Star Wars: The Old Republic boasts "very good retention" of "core MMO users."

The Old Republic lost around 400,000 subscribers between February and May [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/117133-The-Old-Republic-Population-Shrinking], but that's okay. They were all casuals anyway.

"When we launched the product back in December, it was an event launch," EA game label boss, Frank Gibeau told investors. "We brought in a lot of users, and with a brand like Star Wars, it reaches out much past the hardcore MMO fan base into the broader market.

"And as the service evolves from here, what we're seeing is that some of the initial casual customers have gone through a billing cycle and decided not to subscribe to the game."

Of course, that cross-market, casual-appeal is exactly what's kept World of Warcraft chugging along for the past decade like some kind of terrifying, money-vomiting Energizer bunny. The fact The Old Republic is having trouble retaining subscribers despite its license - which can pretty much sell anything - is cause for concern.

World of Warcraft and its upcoming Panda-themed update isn't the only competition the game will face. Both the recently released Tera and the upcoming subscription-less Guild Wars 2 will all be clamoring for a bigger slice of the MMO pie. Gibeau, however, seems unconcerned.

"We are cognizant of competitors coming, but none of them quite fit in the same competitive category as Star Wars," he said. "They're just different fantasies. They're not the Star Wars fantasy. It's not the big expansive universe that appeals to so many people worldwide. And as you know with MMOs, every day you're in operation to get better and better and better. You continually perfect the experience. You continually improve the acquisition component.

"And so building from a base that we're at right now, we feel very confident that this business is going to continue to stay competitive throughout the remainder of the year."

EA shogun, John Riccitiello popped up to add that while The Old Republic is counted amongst EA's top ten earning franchises, it's not in the top five.

"So it's a business contributor, while important, is not as important as Medal of Honor or Battlefield or FIFA or Madden or The Sims or SimCity," he said, "but it's more important than Tiger Woods PGA Golf."

What an excellent quote. They should put that on the back of the box.

Source: Eurogamer [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-05-08-ea-blames-star-wars-the-old-republic-subscribers-fall-on-casuals-leaving-game]

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[Evil Smurf]

if it were free to play, this this filthy casual gamer would play it

 

[Zhukov]

Medal of Honor made money?

[sub][sub]Must... not... add... "u"... to... "honor"[/sub][/sub]

 

[kajinking]

Think I'll just stick with EVE online, casuals don't honestly exist in that game.

 

[Valis88]

Actually, well....

I'm a fan of the game but man, I don't know who runs the official boards but they need help.

They let the trolls, the QQers, and the doom wishers run rampant. While they systematically close every single positive post, or post of encouragement to the developers. I'm not kidding.

I love this game but, I just can't say that on the General Forums.

Thy have no idea how damaging that's going to be, in the long run.

It's complete madness.

 

[Feriluce]

Played 200 hours of TOR in my free month, so I hardly played it casually, but didnt keep subbing. It was just wow in space.

 

[viranimus]

No EA, its not that the ones who left were casuals, its that you made a game that could be "completed" in a month to 2 months time casually and people should not continue to pay subscription fees if they have already completed the content.

Its literally just that simple. Its what you get for trying to make the game "accessible"

 

[Freechoice]

Medal of Honor made money?

[sub][sub]Must... not... add... "u"... to... "honor"[/sub][/sub]

Why the fuck do you wanna misspell it?

 

[Andronicus]

Medal of Honor made money?

[sub][sub]Must... not... add... "u"... to... "honor"[/sub][/sub]

Why the fuck do you wanna misspell it?

We could ask the same about Americans

 

[Zhukov]

Medal of Honor made money?

[sub][sub]Must... not... add... "u"... to... "honor"[/sub][/sub]

Why the fuck do you wanna misspell it?

Not sure if joking or oblivious.

 

[Beautiful End]

Medal of Honor made money?

[sub][sub]Must... not... add... "u"... to... "honor"[/sub][/sub]

Why the fuck do you wanna misspell it?

Not sure if joking or oblivious.

Hold your horses, people. I have a question.

How does the box art for Medal of Honor look in the UK? Does it read "Medal of Honour"? In this instance, adding a U WOULD be misspelling it unless it looks different.

OT: Well...I am a casual, I guess. I'm willing to give it a shot but I'm not so willing to throw away $15 per month and many hours of my life in this game that frowns upon us "casuals".

Oh, EA. When will you ever learn?

 

[UnderGlass]

Wow, shamelessly inflammatory headline there Jonathan.

To be honest, he's probably right. Many of those who left were probably speculating or riding the wave of their first month and the free month. They made a game that aimed to provide a somewhat single-player experience and people were more than pleased to treat it as such.

They'll bleed even more subscribers before it evens out. It's absurd to think the drop, if indeed attributed to casual players, will stop there (those subscribed for several months, those who were still on the fence, those who just haven't got around to cancelling yet...)

EA will never accept a ftp model. They'd consider it sounding the death knell on their investment and inviting investor rage. Still, I think TOR can limp along profitably for a couple of years at least. Give it a few server consolidations and a steady diet of improvements and it will remain an attractive option for those wishing to try something new. Even if it fails to keep them long-term.

 

[Charli]

Damn, friendliness on new blockbuster MMO staff is getting to be a problem. One of the contributing factors to WoW's success is that the PR department and GM's at the time were all so laid back and less corporate-tied than they are in some of these new ones. Constantly connecting with the players on a gamer to gamer level.

I can tell you now they need to get their act together on forums and just communicating with the player base on a level that doesn't scream 'we're paid to do this'.

WoW's is now cheesy and forced, but they still put on a show.
Even if it's just Ghostcrawler popping his ugly mug into the forums to make another 'To the ground!' joke.

TOR just has this no-nonsense sterile feel to the whole affair of 'being a part of the community'.

But yeah I can honestly not colour myself surprised. 1 month of that game was enough for anyone. Too bad really. As MMO's go it kinda fell more into a mass-interactive-one-man experience. I'm no casual MMO player but I feel the same as those so-called casuals.
Pitching a fit about it doesn't fix anything EA. When u learn this.


I could post an entire rant about what made certain aspects of one MMO work over others but I already feel like most are going to TLR my ass on this so I'll save it for a bad day.

 

[Halvhir]

Of course, that cross-market, casual-appeal is exactly what's kept World of Warcraft chugging along for the past decade like some kind of terrifying, money-vomiting energizer bunny.

I disagree with this. The only thing that's kept World of Warcraft "chugging along" for this long at this point is inertia, plain and simple. For a long while, they were the best product on the market. During that time they built up 7+ years of content and a truly massive player base who have invested hundreds of dollars and countless man-hours into their characters.

Games like SW:TOR are not fighting WoW's inherent casual appeal; TOR has a bunch of the same things that WoW has that are newbie and casual friendly. I'd say even more so, having played it for a couple months, with every jedi, bounty hunter, etc having a customizable NPC buddy to make solo content even easier. WoW just has so much more stuff and more people that people who actually want to play MMOs would rather play WoW. The years of practice delivering content updates doesn't hurt either.

EDIT: Suppose I should add that my teeth grind the minute I hear people start whining about "casuals" in MMOs. It's so overused that it's lost all meaning, and is just a general derogatory term for anyone who doesn't take the game super-seriously. The use in the source article is perfectly legitimate; I didn't see any negative connotation there at all, keeping in mind that this was a statement that was given to investors.

 

[UnderGlass]

Medal of Honor made money?

[sub][sub]Must... not... add... "u"... to... "honor"[/sub][/sub]

Why the fuck do you wanna misspell it?

Not sure if joking or oblivious.

Hold your horses, people. I have a question.

How does the box art for Medal of Honor look in the UK? Does it read "Medal of Honour"? In this instance, adding a U WOULD be misspelling it unless it looks different.

OT: Well...I am a casual, I guess. I'm willing to give it a shot but I'm not so willing to throw away $15 per month and many hours of my life in this game that frowns upon us "casuals".

Oh, EA. When will you ever learn?

Remember he's addressing investors, trying to reassure them. Just ignore Jonathan's headline for a bit. I don't think Gibeau is actually disparaging any kind of gamer this time around. Essentially he's only trying to justify the game's falling subs.

 

[Andronicus]

Medal of Honor made money?

[sub][sub]Must... not... add... "u"... to... "honor"[/sub][/sub]

Why the fuck do you wanna misspell it?

We could ask the same about Americans

the whole damn english language is adaptations and misspellings from other languages... way to turn this into a nationality issue.

although, to be quaint, this is an american based website, if you really wanna nitpick, it's gonna be honor.

(although the prick you quoted probably didn't realize most words are spelled different across seas, rather than all english being the same.)

I shouldn't talk.

After being briefly intrigued by the history of these spelling differences, I was looking up variations in spelling across nationalities until I came across SR1 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SR1]; apparently in the mid 70's, some nincompoops in Australia decided spelling needed to be simplified such that it was written like it was spoken, so words like "bury" became "bery", "said" became "sed" and "through" became "thru". Apparently it was widely accepted at the time.

I've never been more ashamed of my country in my life.

 

[Beautiful End]

Remember he's addressing investors, trying to reassure them. Just ignore Jonathan's headline for a bit. I don't think Gibeau is actually disparaging any kind of gamer this time around. Essentially he's only trying to justify the game's falling subs.

This is true, sir/ma'am. My apologies. My dislike for EA has blindeth me. (Dislike, not hate. I will still buy their games if they're any good).

At any rate, I'm not a big fan of MMOs but if I had to take a guess, the low sales seem to come from the fact that we have more choices now, essentially WoW. Yeah, they've both always been around but Blizzard seems to be on top of things whereas EA is...EA! I mean, in this instance, I guess they're trying. But Blizzard knows what customers want and how to please them.

*Shrugs* Just some thoughts.

 

[The Wooster]

Of course, that cross-market, casual-appeal is exactly what's kept World of Warcraft chugging along for the past decade like some kind of terrifying, money-vomiting energizer bunny.

I disagree with this. The only thing that's kept World of Warcraft "chugging along" for this long at this point is inertia, plain and simple. For a long while, they were the best product on the market. During that time they built up 7+ years of content and a truly massive player base who have invested hundreds of dollars and countless man-hours into their characters.

Games like SW:TOR are not fighting WoW's inherent casual appeal; TOR has a bunch of the same things that WoW has that are newbie and casual friendly. I'd say even more so, having played it for a couple months, with every jedi, bounty hunter, etc having a customizable NPC buddy to make solo content even easier. WoW just has so much more stuff and more people that people who actually want to play MMOs would rather play WoW. The years of practice delivering content updates doesn't hurt either.

You're making the assumption that appealing to casual players is as simple as making the game accessible and easy. That's part of the equation, sure, but some games just have a certain mass appeal that crosses traditional demographic boundaries. A huge part of WoW's success lies in its ability to pull in non-gamers.