The Old Republic Population Shrinking

[DancePuppets]

That's a real pity, I never got around to trying ToR as I still love WoW (despite currently taking a break waiting on the new content that will come with "pandaland"), but it'd be nice for there to be an actual competitor to WoW on the market. Best of luck to EA and Bioware, you never know they might be able to salvage it.

 

[Zack Alklazaris]

1.3million subscribers at 15 dollars a pop is around 19.5 million.

Now what the game cost ranges from 80 million to 550 million. So I'm just going to say it was expensive. Still in a single year they will make around 200 million.

They will be fine, I will continue to play at least for now. I really dislike the whole elves, dwarves, n such that mmos seem to have I like this sci-fi theme. Plus the games not even a year old, give it some time to build upon itself.

My server "Krayt Dragon" seems to be doing ok. It seems sort of in the middle (around 250 on fleet, 60 per planet) -shrug- Once they release the 1.3 patch that supposedly improves grouping I really will run out of main things to complain about.

 

[Amnestic]

Even without the WoW comparison it's still not good. EA seem to have spent a lot of money on TOR. It doesn't matter how many subscribers you have: losing over 20% in three months is a bad thing.

Yes losing 20% in three months would be bad, unless of course the game had only been out for three months or so.

Five months.

TOR was released in December 2012. The report deals with February->April.

Australia's an exception. It's been out just over two months there, but since the 1.7mil number was quoted as February, it means that even with a possible Australian surge, they still ended up with a net 400k loss. Anyone at EA/Bioware who isn't concerned about this is an idiot.

Obviously we'll need to wait for the next May->July report to see whether this trend continues or reverses, but for now it's of extreme interest. It doesn't matter how big/small a game you are, 23.5% is always a significant number.

Yea then the content is dried up pretty fast.

At this point in the history of the MMO genre, there's no excuse for not knowing this. No matter how long you think it'll take people to hit max level, your playerbase will always do it faster and if you don't have sufficient content they'll get bored and leave. You can see this pattern during the end of WoW expansions where the top tier instance and current pvp season has been going for months and months, people are sick to death of it and they're waiting for the next expansion. They'll end up dropping their subscription for a few months until the pre-expansion event rolls around. Or not at all. They may have moved on to something else by then.

And as your game goes on, more and more people will hit max level, get bored, and leave. You need something to keep them around. I can't exactly point at EA/Bioware for making this mistake. WoW still makes it (we've been on 4.3 for how long?). Apparently DCUO made it.

 

[Andronicus]

I have yet to find an MMO that captures my interest, even a F2P one. Far as I'm concerned, the one that does will be crowned victor in the world of MMO's, statistics be damned. TOR did not do this, and thus has failed. Back to single player.

 

[4173]

Maybe, I have a feeling that's more LucasArts than Bioware, as they often control what constitutes canon. They did dictate that one specific playthrough of KOTOR1 was the official canon, when Bioware wanted to leave it so every version might be possible.

I don't see a Rakghoul retcon at all, AFAIK. From what I know of the mandolorians they haven't been either, I could be wrong, care to elaborate?

It may well have been Lucasarts doing it, I don't really know. I just know the end result.

Originally, the rakghoul plague was just a virus that somehow transformed sentients into rakghouls. It evolved on Taris and was just a natural part of its environment. In TOR, they seized on it and decided a Sith came up with it and released it on Taris as its initial test before never using it again for no apparent reason. Edit: Also, with the 1.1 and subsequent patches, they said that the rakghoul plague is apparently everywhere, when before it was specifically mentioned as being a Tarisian problem.

Also, Mandalorians were an actual species. A subset/evolution of human, most clearly demonstrated by the Fetts, but there's a few other places it's implied, if not explicitly stated in KOTOR 1/2. In TOR, they're a collection of every species deemed arbitrarily fit by some unspecified set of standards.

It's entirely possible that these weren't actually committed by TOR, but by some other piece of EU that I haven't seen, but they're certainly differences between KOTOR and TOR.

I can't remember the exact nature, but the Sith/Rakghoul connection was elaborated on in the Knights of the Old Republic comic series. No idea (obviously) if TOR is consistent with the comic, or if the comic explicitly retconned KotOR games.



Count me among the lapsed subs; can't say I'm surprised the game is having issues.

 

[LongMuckDong]

Ya know what's really upsetting sometimes.

When you really love playing an MMO, and you know it's not perfect, but you love it for what it is, and you have fun.

Yet all of the General boards, of that very game, are people cheering for it's doom.

It's unsettling, and disquieting, to say the least.

Captcha 'foul smelling'...indeed

You, sir, have summed up my feelings 100%.

I am a pretty big Star Wars fan (read some books, love most of the films, Kotor'd it up multiple times - even own X-wing) and a newb to the MMO scene (did 1 week of Guild Wars prior to SWTOR... true newbie status).

In terms of fun, I've had bucket loads - brilliant story, great guild, awesome gear.. loving it. So when I read doomsayer994 saying 'the end is nigh' over and over again, it kind of makes me think bad thoughts.

I'm not sure what type of bad thoughts, just a bit of a downer to be honest. Even with 1,000,000 ongoing subs - if they merge some servers ASAP (for the 'ghost server' peeps - that must suck!) and keep releasing content and new PvP stuff, we'll be just fine.

I'm off to keep on playing, good times people - with a whisky in my offhand (booze focus) and a razer naga in my right .

 

[Meight08]

The subscription model should keep existing but just dont have set prices.

 

[VonKlaw]

Off course there are only so many flashpoints/operations/pvp warzones/etc... If you play 10 hours a day (like a boss -alternatively?- no life) you will race through all that content pretty fast. I still don't have a lvl 50 character after two months. Some guys do it in a week. Yea then the content is dried up pretty fast.

Can't help but feel like this is why so many subscription MMOs fail now. WoW has numerous years of content to the point where even playing 10 hours a day, it would take you awhile to catch up. Anything else though (I did it with Rift during holidays) gets burnt through so stupidly quick that you struggle to find the £9 a month a worthwhile investment. MMO developers simply cannot make the content fast enough to cater for just how much some people play MMOs.

 

[The Lugz]

sorry, but this game was a rushed out steaming pile of bug laden manure
and i would know, i bought the Ce! /golfclap

and:
'Two new content packs - Legacy and Allies, available in Q1," read the report. We know about Legacy, but I hadn't heard anything about Allies. An expanded guild system perhaps? More companions? I suppose we'll find out soon enough'

even if they fixed all the problems with content, bugs, performance ( 30 fps on a high end sli system in the fleet is pathetic compared with tera for example that actually uses a decent game engine and achieves superior details and performance 100+ fps in a city flight area )

there's still the issue that the endgame content is woefully tiny, and legacy / alliance system dosent even have bones to lay meat on, so as far as fleshing out the game goes they've scraped the barrel down sofar all they have left is
'go re-roll.. it's extra content!'

basically a story driven mmo cannot work,the concept of a rich story is diametrically opposed to the systems in mmorpergerrz that stretch out gameplay and force skinnerbox reactions
and until someone writes a few novels and makes you fight 10,000 monsters to turn a page and an instance to change chapters a story based mmo-rpg will not happen

we all know bioware was rushed to poop this turd out, it's obvious from every perspective and they did it for peanuts using a custom hack of hero engine instead of a more rugged game engine
the last time i saw such a deficient game was when Atari didn't really want to make test drive unlimited 2, so they handed it off to their smaller 'eden games' branch who blatantly mangled it through lack of skill and resources

 

[Valis88]

Ya know what's really upsetting sometimes.

When you really love playing an MMO, and you know it's not perfect, but you love it for what it is, and you have fun.

Yet all of the General boards, of that very game, are people cheering for it's doom.

It's unsettling, and disquieting, to say the least.

Captcha 'foul smelling'...indeed

You, sir, have summed up my feelings 100%.

I am a pretty big Star Wars fan (read some books, love most of the films, Kotor'd it up multiple times - even own X-wing) and a newb to the MMO scene (did 1 week of Guild Wars prior to SWTOR... true newbie status).

In terms of fun, I've had bucket loads - brilliant story, great guild, awesome gear.. loving it. So when I read doomsayer994 saying 'the end is nigh' over and over again, it kind of makes me think bad thoughts.

I'm not sure what type of bad thoughts, just a bit of a downer to be honest. Even with 1,000,000 ongoing subs - if they merge some servers ASAP (for the 'ghost server' peeps - that must suck!) and keep releasing content and new PvP stuff, we'll be just fine.

I'm off to keep on playing, good times people - with a whisky in my offhand (booze focus) and a razer naga in my right .

Thanks. It's nice to hear from someone else, who enjoys the game.

I guess that makes two of us.

...do you have any extra whiskey on hand? I just finished reading the official boards. >_<

 

[Atmos Duality]

A loss of half-million players this early in the game?
TOR is dead in the water. It needs long-term attach rates to succeed, and that is NOT particularly good news.

I don't even have to bring WoW into this; the numbers speak for themselves.

 

[Chaos Marine]

Good, good.....

Now if only EA would shut down Bioware, then it would really be a happy day.

Agreed

why is that a good thing?

is NO bioware better than a Bioware that some people dissaprove of?

My problem with Bioware is how they seem to be squeezing out worse and worse games. ME1 was fantastic. A little bit of a slow start but when you get a bit past that, it was entirely excellent. The second, a little bit more shooty-shooty and a little less RPG but it was still pretty damned good. ME3... The ending ruined the game. Nothing else needs to be said since everyone else has already said it.

Dragon Age 1. Sweet Jebus this is good. The setting was... slightly above average because it's got some believable racism. It felt natural, the discrimination and the characteristics it created. And no, I am not condoning racism nor do I think it's anything other than deplorable. Dragon Age 2 was then... It was terrible. So very, very terrible. It was more akin to God of War than Dragon Age 1. Bioware, till this point, have been a well regarded developer company and a lot of people considered them one of the better developers who really show how great the medium can be. Then EA bought them and they let EA walk all over their practises. Had EA not bought out Bioware, Dragon Age 2 and ME3 would have probably been infinitely better. They could have stood up to EA but they didn't. They have a massive fanbase and support who would have garnered EA so much bad press and they knew it. But no, they just rolled over and let EA skull fuck away any integrity they ever had.

Then ToR. It's a bog standard MMO that are a penny a dozen that's selling on the fact that it's got Star Wars and voice acting. Woohoo. The stories are uninspired and boring. The gameplay is pretty much WoW. They spent so much money on the voice acting and they didn't implement proper space combat. You got and on-rails shooter. Faboo. Really, on-rail shooting sections? Look at Star Trek Online. It's sooooooo much better gameplay wise. It has ground combat exactly like ToR (Which is balls) but at least it can switch to a shooter mode which makes it slightly more tolerable. The space combat is fun, exciting and soooo much fun. Had ToR borrowed the gameplay, control schematics from Star Trek Online and retained it's pretty bland storylines etc, I'd not get such a raging hate-boner for ToR. But it doesn't, it's a dime a dozen MMO with Star Wars and a voice cast. Whoopty do.

 

[mxfox408]

Well there was also a sum of customers who gave the finger to bioware and EA over the mass effect 3 debacle.

 

[Coffinshaker]

I wonder if that 1.3 million includes all the recipients of the free month they gave away in April. My guess would be yes, it does.*

[sub]*Edit: perhaps not, as the report is up to the end of March. That said, losing 400K players in the first 3 months isn't exactly good.[/sub]

To be fair Blizzard have been gaming WoW's sub figures for years - the oft-quoted 10 million is inflated by their players in the far east, where the payment model is different.

But there's no way EA/BW can spin losing a quarter of their subscribers this quickly as a good thing. It's a pity really - any other MMO (that wasn't WoW) would be ecstatic to have these numbers. I suspect they won't be seeing it like that.

Question is: will they knuckle down and work on the game with a view to keeping the subscribers they have (and maybe winning some back) or will they start looking at microtransactions sooner rather than later to squeeze some extra bucks out of the loyalists. Well, it's EA...

Right, the article is a bit misleading since the 1.3mil figures are only through March. That new content patch, Legacy, already happened in 1.2 and many people came back after 1.2. I guess we'll have to see what is in store with this next patch to get a better set of figures. The free month is not included. But keep in mind though... EA has sales and subscription targets. At launch, they said that they were well above targets on both so who knows, we might be seeing it normalize within their specifications.

That said, I do think one major issue was releasing with too many servers, but that issue they are working on.

I doubt they will play the microtransaction game, but you never know. I think the best methodology is to flood the game with content. Not so much big content like new raids and lands, although that is always good, but with the little stuff. WoW has tons of little things to do on the side, places to see, things to experience. It's that stuff that gets people at max level to stay and participate in. The datacrons is a start and the pets too, but it needs like 10 times more side questy stuff. Just look at the Bethesda model... I think I've spent all of 5min of my 100+hrs in skyrim playing the main quest.

 

[mxfox408]

I'll play the day it goes F2P, fuck paying for an MMO to support assholes like bioware and EA.
Captcha: hobby-horse

 

[Azmael Silverlance]

Well losing 400,000 people so early in its lifespan sure doesnt bide well. It will be harder to return that investement not to mention they cant even stand up as a potential challenger to WoW if they are already losing subscribers. I reckon many many many WoW players tried it and thought it was not good enough or not worth the time.

I know i never tried it because all my friends from WoW who did said it sucked and wouldnt last long. Most already quit ToR.

So HELL yeah lets keep making Blizzard richer so they can keep developing bad-ass games like SC2 and D3 and the dreadfull TITAN project that will replace WoW as the N:1 MMO. And then people will have to try and make games to build the N:2 game which will be WoW again . . . hah so at the end of the day its all about beating wow either way xD

 

[Mike Fang]

Honestly, I'm not all that surprised. Let's face it, subscription games are going to have hard competition against pre-established games like WoW, Rift, and so on. Microtransactions seem to really be the best system to use these days for developers who are just starting out in the MMO market.

Okay, so BioWare did to D&D Online, but that was a F2P game. Kinda need to use different tactics on a game you expect to make a direct profit on from the players.

 

[Smeagol150]

Meh, I like the game and I will continue to play it. To hell with the haters.

As will I...

Amen, brothers.