SWTOR is having issues.

[Verzin]

EDIT:changed title because it was a stupid exaggeration. I don't think things through clearly enough.

Was just surfing TOR's forums for the first time since I canceled my sub 5ish months ago.

Depressing. Lots of posts about server populations and dead servers. There was one that had screenshots showing that this guys ENTIRE server had only 62ish people online during the day.

There seem to be some servers that are doing relatively well, but that game is having issues.

If I had known it was going to get this bad when I left SWTOR, I probably would have felt spiteful glee. Now I just feel depressed. I'll never forgive Bioware for promising KOTOR III and giving me SWTOR, but I think that their shiny newish MMO isn't going to be able to compete with GW2 or Diablo III.

From the looks of it, they're hemorrhaging subscribers. They'll have a decent pool for a while yet. There are enough die-hards in their game to keep it going strong for another year maybe, but I doubt they'll be able to re-ignite the spark of interest and get the momentum going to compete against the big names again.

I dunno if they can salvage it at this point. What a shame. If it had been able to keep a few million subscribers for a few years it might have become somewhat good. maybe. It'll never be KOTOR III, and that was all I really cared about.

I'm not fond of MMOs in general, and MMOs that turn one of my favorite game series into a mangled wreck of what is should have been are not my favorite things.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Oh it's not dying, for heavens sake. It's settling back to whatever its natural sub base is going to end up being. It needs 500K to be profitable. It's still north of a million. Everquest peaked at 800K, which was the biggest pre-WoW total, and made it a hugely profitable enterprise.

And it should be noted here I'm irritated at and disappointed in TOR, so I'm not flocking to the defense of my precious, but if I had a nickel for every single time someone screamed "ITS DYING" about a MMO on the internet, and that MMO went on to be just fine, I'd have a billion dollars.

 

[Verzin]

Oh it's not dying, for heavens sake. It's settling back to whatever its natural sub base is going to end up being. It needs 500K to be profitable. It's still north of a million. Everquest peaked at 800K, which was the biggest pre-WoW total, and made it a hugely profitable enterprise.

And it should be noted here I'm irritated at and disappointed in TOR, so I'm not flocking to the defense of my precious, but if I had a nickel for every single time someone screamed "ITS DYING" about a MMO on the internet, and that MMO went on to be just fine, I'd have a billion dollars.

You're right. I exaggerated. It is in trouble though. 1.4 million subscribers after 5 months is not optimal, though it isn't bad exactly. The 24% drop in subscribers in the last quarter didn't help matters.

It will probably never die, but it may become more a financial drag than a money tree.

 

[9thRequiem]

Oh it's not dying, for heavens sake. It's settling back to whatever its natural sub base is going to end up being. It needs 500K to be profitable. It's still north of a million. Everquest peaked at 800K, which was the biggest pre-WoW total, and made it a hugely profitable enterprise.

Agreed.
the problem is the number of servers. They added a huge amount when the game opened; now the population is too spread out. Couple that with just how much content requires groups, and you end up not being able to play a bunch of content.
I've been playing for months, and have only done the first three flashpoints. Trying to get a group for any further is futile - over an hour of spamming group invites to no avail.

It's not dying, but there are population issues that need to be addressed.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

You're right. I exaggerated. It is in trouble though. 1.4 million subscribers after 5 months is not optimal, though it isn't bad exactly. The 24% drop in subscribers in the last quarter didn't help matters.

It will probably never die, but it may become more a financial drag than a money tree.

At 1.4 it would still be enormously profitable. I doubt it'll hold at 1.4 though. It'll likely settle somewhere around 1 million, although they need to start pushing content out for it. There currently isn't much of an "end game" in play.

Releasing to the Asian markets could help, although I think Star Wars isn't much of a draw over there (I may be mistaken). About 2/3rds of WoW's much ballyhooed 12 million subscribers are from Asia. WoW's NA audience peaked at about 4 million and is currently somewhere around 2-2.5 million...again...if I'm not mistaken. Puts things in a little sharper perspective.

Aion and Lineage both have huge Asian sub bases as well, but were modest successes at best in the West. Even at 1 million subs, TOR would basically be the 2nd biggest western MMO of all time.

It's not dying, but there are population issues that need to be addressed.

Cross realm queues for PvE content is likely an inevitability. I'm not a fan of the concept myself, but it does make finding groups easier, and the optics are better than closing/merging servers.

 

[Verzin]

Aion and Lineage both have huge Asian sub bases as well, but were modest successes at best in the West. Even at 1 million subs, TOR would basically be the 2nd biggest western MMO of all time.

Silly me, lol. I have this thing where I get really bored, surf forums, then make silly posts with inaccurate assumptions and hyped up information.

It's really too early to be making wild threads like SWTOR is dying.We'll see where their subscription numbers end up holding steady in a year or two. (you're almost certainly right that it will be extremely profitable.).

Still. My nerdrage knows no bounds when directed at TOR. I looked forward to that game for so long. Let myself fall into the hype, convinced myself it would be KOTOR III, and then felt disappointed that it was instead a mediocre to reasonably good plot based MMO. I just felt let down that everything was so...so...MMOish. Companions were essentially vanity pets for all they interacted with you and the world, the plot was pretty good on the two classes I played to 50 with, but for some reason my immersion was broken by the MMO style groups of enemies and boss design.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Still. My nerdrage knows no bounds when directed at TOR. I looked forward to that game for so long. Let myself fall into the hype, convinced myself it would be KOTOR III, and then felt disappointed that it was instead a mediocre to reasonably good plot based MMO. I just felt let down that everything was so...so...MMOish. Companions were essentially vanity pets for all they interacted with you and the world, the plot was pretty good on the two classes I played to 50 with, but for some reason my immersion was broken by the MMO style groups of enemies and boss design.

It's a fun game, and it does some good things, but it's stubbornly anachronistic. The only way it really broke from what is becoming increasingly stale tradition is with the heavy voice acting and storytelling, which managed to be not enough story to satisfy story enthusiasts and just enough story to make creating new content prohibitively slow and expensive. I would've liked to see something a little more daring and boundary pushing out of TOR, but with a company as risk adverse as EA holding the reins I'm not terribly surprised that's not what happened.

I'll probably re-up at some point to do another story, but it's not the kind of game that will ever hold people for years the way WoW and Everquest did.

 

[Zenn3k]

The trick is to play on a server that isn't dead.

I re-rolled recently to the 2nd most populated server in the game. Its been a lot more fun.

 

[Kahunaburger]

What a shame.

Funny, that was exactly my reaction.

 

[LongMuckDong]

The trick is to play on a server that isn't dead.

I re-rolled recently to the 2nd most populated server in the game. Its been a lot more fun.

Most definitely this.

I think with the free server transfers and such, they will end up closing down some servers and brand it as 'community consolidation'.

Either way, it will have to be done at some stage - a stadium of 40,000 seems AWESOME when sold out, a mega stadium of 90,000 seems FAIL when it only houses 40,000 seats sold..

SWTOR will be fine, Bioware will suss this eventually.

 

[Dags90]

It's not dying, but there are population issues that need to be addressed.

I think EA is probably fudging their numbers a fair amount. I unsubbed in March, but I still have an 'active' account because they gave everyone a free month right after the fairly unpopular 1.2 patch.

That's probably why what's a 24% drop in subs so far seems much worse than it should be. I'd like to see their numbers in another two weeks, after the free time has worn off.

 

[Verzin]

It's not dying, but there are population issues that need to be addressed.

I think EA is probably fudging their numbers a fair amount. I unsubbed in March, but I still have an 'active' account because they gave everyone a free month right after the fairly unpopular 1.2 patch.

That's probably why what's a 24% drop in subs so far seems much worse than it should be. I'd like to see their numbers in another two weeks, after the free time has worn off.

As I understand it, the free month was giving directly after (perhaps in response to) the 24% drop. I could be wrong, but what I've read seems to indicate that.

 

[Dags90]

As I understand it, the free month was giving directly after (perhaps in response to) the 24% drop. I could be wrong, but what I've read seems to indicate that.

All I know is that under my SWTOR account it says my last payment was in March (pre-1.2) and I still have a little over a week left. So all the people who unsubbed in response to 1.2 (like myself) are still technically active.

 

[ckriley]

This is why I don't like MMOers. At least the OP admitted to exaggerating and nerdraging, but this is what the MMO community does in general. Anything that doesn't have more than 10 million subscribers and becomes both a commercial and cultural phenomenon has failed and is dying.

According to these folks, Aion, Rift, etc, have failed even though those games are still alive and well and pumping out content. Hell, Everquest is still around. I feel like people tend to forget that before WoW, MMOs were largely niche games that were never huge mainstream successes. I understand WoW changed all that, but to say an MMO with over 1 million subscribers is dying truly borders on absurdity. And I don't even play TOR.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

How long do they need to hold 500k to turn a profit? Legitimate question, I remember the figure but not the source and details.

Good question. Absolutely no idea.

Note that 500K is where they drew their cut-off line for the game to be profitable, which underscores what an absurdly expensive MMO it was. Most MMOs are thrilled to have 500K. If TOR settles down at 500K subs for the long term I invite you to think of EA's mouth as a thin hard line when they are looking in Bioware's direction.

 

[Saviordd1]

Jesus can it just go F2P already?

 

[Sixcess]

If TOR settles down at 500K subs for the long term I invite you to think of EA's mouth as a thin hard line when they are looking in Bioware's direction.

Exactly.

"What we told folks was that this is a product that it starts to make profitability about 500,000 subs. At about 1m subs, it's a business that makes good money on an ongoing basis but it doesn't feel great about the historical investment that sort of got us here," he admitted.

"And anything north of 1m, as we approach 1.5m or 2m, starts to look like a great investment and justifies the entire purchase price of VGH stock filed in a very positive way."

source

I'd guess that they'll be under a million when the next set of figures come out in 3 months time, and there's no precedent for MMOs to reverse downward trends in sub numbers once the slide starts. Not unless they go F2P and I will be very surprised if EA are willing to do that.

Personally I think they'll stabilise by the end of this year at around 500K, at which point the greatest threat to SWtOR is EA reducing the amount of money they pour back into the game to develop new content and forcing microtransactions in to up their profits. According to another recent Ricciltiello quote TOR is less important to EA's business plans than Medal of Honor and The Sims, among others. That's a bit alarming.

SWTOR could have been a comfortable success if it had launched with realistic aims, but they tried to take on WoW head on and got chewed up and spat out, same as every other MMO in the last half decade that's done the same. The level of ignorance of the MMO market that EA and BW have shown is mind boggling.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

SWTOR could have been a comfortable success if it had launched with realistic aims, but they tried to take on WoW head on and got chewed up and spat out, same as every other MMO in the last half decade that's done the same. The level of ignorance of the MMO market that EA and BW have shown is mind boggling.

The weird thing is, if you read some very early interviews with Bioware regarding TOR, they seemed acutely aware of the futility of picking a fight with WoW on its own turf. I can't remember the exact verbage of the quote, but it was something along the lines of "We don't want to make another World of Warcraft. There's already a World of Warcraft, and they're doing really well. We need to do something different." Then, as time went by, the game started shaping up more and more like World of Warcraft.

My guess is some bean counters got concerned about how expensive the game was becoming, and there was more and more push to be conservative with the design. Because they went from "We're gonna do our own thing" to "We're not gonna reinvent the wheel" in fairly short order.

And I don't even necessarily disapprove of taking some queues from WoW, because I think Blizzard does many things right with that game, but for heavens sake...Blizzard is not an innovator. They polish and refine genres, and put the final word in. WoW was basically distilled Everquest. We're EIGHT YEARS ON now. The last thing anyone needs is more distilled Everquest, only with lightsabers. If they'd been a little bit forward looking and tried to get in on the new "action MMO" movement...taken some queues from Guild Wars 2 and Planetside and that burned out 40K disaster...then TOR might really have been the game to usher in the true second generation of MMOs, instead of being the game that turned the lights out on the first.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

I don't think SWToR is dead. Not yet, at least. It just feels dead, because of how spread out the playbase currently is. They've been saying that they plan on doing some server merges in the near future to take care of that, which should make the game feel a lot more populated than it does now.

That said, I'm admittedly part of the "problem" with regard to subscriptions dropping. I, along with the majority of my guild, cancelled a few days after 1.2 went live (we're all technically still active because of that free month they gave away to people with max-level characters). We felt rather betrayed that the big 1.2 update that they'd been building up for months, containing features that were supposed to be available at launch, ended up not meeting expectations - which admittedly weren't even all that high.

I wish the game and its community the best... I just can't keep sending them money if I'm not feeling like the experience is worth it.

 

[Razoack]

It's not dead. But it is dying. The whole deal with TOR was to provide a different MMO experience with a more story based view and to not provide end game content as that was the character's end of the story.

However ( i don't play TOR, but this is from someone who does), all TOR seems to be doing now is reverting to the WoW model, in focusing on providing end of game raids (flashpoints i think they're called?) and PvP rather than developing new stories and characters which has started to cheat the players out of the main selling point of the MMO. (Viewpoint of Richard Bartle, Co-Developer of MUD and basis of all MMOs)

Personally? It'll have a devouted enough player base to stay active, but WoW doesn't really have much to fear from TOR anymore.