Noctournys Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 Of course the population is dropping (contrary to what the 2008/2009 fanbois will tell you), and when gw2/tera/secret world/d3/etc are out and it will plummet even further. you'd have to be brain dead to not notice the population decreasing: - server queues are gone Because they stated, twice, that they increased the number of people allowed on a server before the queue triggers. - most servers are light/std now instead of full/very heavy This is directly tied to the above. - fleets are <150 players now instead of 230+ Why.. YOU'RE RIGHT! .... oh, crap. im on Imperial Fleet (3) - wz queues taking longer to pop Really depends on your faction. I haven't waited more than 5 minutes today. - fp groups harder to find - less items on markets Like.. 20 FP groups trying to form in Fleet right now, three ops, two hard mode ops... and a group looking for a PuG for their NM EV. - most friends in the friends list are "offline" - where have all out guildies gone? - etc If they actually had 2 million subscribers just after launch when all the servers had queues and we had 230+ on the fleet in prime times i'd say it's pretty obvious we've already lost at least 1/3 of those 2 million subscribers, probably closer to half. the ea quarterly shareholder statement in may will reveal the truth, they can't lie in that. Their earnings call a week after the re-sub period in January revealed that they still had 1.7 million active subs. Only losing 300,000 subs after the initial free month honeymoon is.. damn near unheard of in an MMO. Game's doing fine. What you're seeing is that people have realized that this game isn't meant to be the only game you play 24/7. It's kind of refreshing, really. I can still progress and do stuff with my friends.. AND i've had time to play Kingdoms of Amalur and consider doing my second, full-DLC playthrough of ME2 before ME3 comes out, without feeling like im "getting behind" on my MMO. Sounds good to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kromzor Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 the population of any given mmo have always plummeted at the start to find a 'stable' ground in which to reside. Except for World of Warcraft, and EVE. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EternalFinality Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 (edited) And? So? Therefore? People who enjoy it will continue to play. 500k =/= Dead. Is there any reason to think the trend will not continue? In another couple months 200k, then 80k...dead. For god's sake we still don't have a combat log. Edited February 27, 2012 by EternalFinality Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noctournys Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 Except for World of Warcraft, and EVE. Ah, untrue. WoW took a pretty big nosedive after launch (like, an almost 50% population bleed) for about four months. It kicked back up (significantly) when the game caught on. The server queues were arguably worse about 5 months in (at least on Bleeding Hollow) than they were at launch. And, despite that, WoW is the exception to every rule. It reached levels of success that no MMO had even thought possible, it broke every rule doing it. You cant use it as an example, because the perfect storm required to replicate WoW's success might never, ever happen again. The industry is JUST starting to wake up to that fact. And EVE? Please, dont tout EVE to me. Having sat through all of CCPs panels at Dragon*Con and socalized with those guys for a few hours afterwards, EVE... EVE wasn't remotely a success for more than 2 years. They lost bags of investor money until the game finally ticked up. Yeah, the game didnt suffer a big "population die off" after the first month or two - because it would have been hard to notice if it did. The pop numbers were so low they couldnt go anywhere BUT up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Evuke Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 (edited) And? So? Therefore? People who enjoy it will continue to play. 500k =/= Dead. no 500k is not dead BUT 500k spread across however many hundred servers it is that they have with so many instances it is that each server has can make it FEEL dead to players which will result in more players quitting due to low pop issues! to fix this they need to merge servers, before it's too late. Edited February 27, 2012 by Evuke Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noctournys Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 For god's sake we still don't have a combat log. Yeah, we've waited a damn eternity for that! EIGHT WHOLE WEEKS. /sarcasm Perspective, you needs it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EternalFinality Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 Ah, untrue. WoW took a pretty big nosedive after launch (like, an almost 50% population bleed) for about four months. It kicked back up (significantly) when the game caught on. The server queues were arguably worse about 5 months in (at least on Bleeding Hollow) than they were at launch. It's mostly because WoW was nearly unplayable on many servers for the first two months. I consider the real "launch" of WoW to be in January when they finally got things moderately stable. Plus they were giving people comp months and days and weeks all the time when things were down. Bioware didn't have the stability problems at launch.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth_Ricky Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 (edited) 1st they come w/ big pathch to solve all problms (that dont) 2nd they come w/ srvr merge's 3rd they go f2p in btwn they add dungeon & seasonel here & there most mmos xcept wow do this Edited February 27, 2012 by Darth_Ricky Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EternalFinality Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 Yeah, we've waited a damn eternity for that! EIGHT WHOLE WEEKS. /sarcasm Perspective, you needs it. You mean 8 weeks plus 5 years right? It was in beta. It's in the game! THEY REMOVED IT. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noctournys Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 It's mostly because WoW was nearly unplayable on many servers for the first two months. I consider the real "launch" of WoW to be in January when they finally got things moderately stable. Plus they were giving people comp months and days and weeks all the time when things were down. Bioware didn't have the stability problems at launch.... Yeah, i got 33 days of comp time from Blizzard =P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CptKloss Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 You mean 8 weeks plus 5 years right? It was in beta. It's in the game! THEY REMOVED IT. they didnt remove it because there was something wrong with it, they removed it so people have no easy way of seeing everything that's currently broken Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noctournys Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 You mean 8 weeks plus 5 years right? It was in beta. It's in the game! THEY REMOVED IT. I dont really care; that's not the point of the comment. The comment was purely to highlight your willful ignorance of how development works on any game. Even if they say "we are adding this feature into the game" - even if that feature was something that some fan coded in XML in about an hours work... it WILL take weeks or months to get into the live client of a game. Period. The company has proceedures for how stuff gets added. The feature WILL follow those procedures to make it live. It's almost as inflexible and inexorable as death and the taxman. Expecting otherwise is just foolish. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rlpirate Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 TOR will continue to limp along for another year or so I think, but the lack of community feeling in the game will be its death. At the core, TOR is not a terrible game by any means. Max-level is shambolic, but the 1-49 experience of questing and fairly entertaining (if a little thin) Warzone PvP keeps things interesting. Sure they dropped the ball on a ton of stuff, but other stuff eg: the questing system is the best I've encountered in any MMO. What keeps MMOs alive is Community and IMHO this is where TOR fails the hardest. Still not having a proper server forum system is inexcusable. The game world is so wide-open and/or instanced off into little pockets of storyline that you barely even see anyone else. The "fleet" experience is also very underwhelming, most people hanging around either the GTN or the PvP quest giver. Community keeps even the worst MMOs alive, but TOR's complete lack might spell its doom. Time will tell I guess... this For me it almost feels like a xbox game at this point since i really dont have to talk to anyone. I load in, que and get the daily and log out. once u have epics whats the point of continueing? In swg the main reason i stayed as long as i did was the community, all the drama and crazyness kept it interesting but here we dont have that. Que up fight win/lose and do it again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elysion Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 A lot of things were better in beta. I think they lost the polished build a few builds before release. 3 builds before release was high point of the game i think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
douglaslives Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 if you dont add competitve pvp it is completely dead but hey they made their money back already i am sure Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jebi Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 (edited) Huttball. Crate clicking + kill trading. RNG gear. This game has such lasting appeal, who in their right mind would leave?! Game can't be dying!!!!!!!!!! LIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Edited February 27, 2012 by Jebi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maticlandarr Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 It does not take months for a new feature to be added. Yes there is an inflexible pipeline for all assets and features. But to say it takes months is just silly. As for the combat log i always assumed they left it out so as not to confuse the casuals with all those numbers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dschlan Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 Why would they not launch with a Combat Log? Same reason they screwed up everything else: They have no place in the MMO world. Bioware should have just stuck to RPGs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CptKloss Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 if you dont add competitve pvp it is completely dead but hey they made their money back already i am sure nah... they made 70m on box sales + 30m for the 2 months of subs... still 100m just to break even. (they still have to pay for the full team currently working on the new content) - if subs drop below 0.5m they will probably never make their money back. (expecially if you count all the money making opportuities lost, by parking 200m in this game for 5 years) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rlpirate Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 if you dont add competitve pvp it is completely dead but hey they made their money back already i am sure adding ranks to pvp changes nothing. Its still the same 3 wz's with the same people. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maticlandarr Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 Why would they not launch with a Combat Log? Same reason they screwed up everything else: They have no place in the MMO world. Bioware should have just stuck to RPGs. This. And i didnt even like most of their single player rpgs aside from kotor. Too much story not enough interesting gameplay. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CptKloss Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 This. And i didnt even like most of their single player rpgs aside from kotor. Too much story not enough interesting gameplay. i obly liked their Baldur's Gate series... everything else was "blah" to me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucinn Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 It is dropping fast. I've never seen anything like it. This is a game people were waiting to play for 4 years and i think by the end of the month they will loose 1/2 of there subs. Our guild came to play we had 40 people come over there are only 3 of us left and we all canceled our subs this month. It's sad I really wanted this game to be great but the pvp is just really bad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dschlan Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 It is dropping fast. I've never seen anything like it. This is a game people were waiting to play for 4 years and i think by the end of the month they will loose 1/2 of there subs. Our guild came to play we had 40 people come over there are only 3 of us left and we all canceled our subs this month. It's sad I really wanted this game to be great but the pvp is just really bad. Exactly. We all wanted the game to be amazing. Hell, for a while I thought it was the best MMO ever and was a fanboi. The sad fact is, once you get past your initial feelings of excitement/fanboiness (pretty sure the fanbois are the only defenders left) and the "new and shiny" feeling, this game is really very far from a quality MMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EternalFinality Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 (edited) Exactly. We all wanted the game to be amazing. Hell, for a while I thought it was the best MMO ever and was a fanboi. The sad fact is, once you get past your initial feelings of excitement/fanboiness (pretty sure the fanbois are the only defenders left) and the "new and shiny" feeling, this game is really very far from a quality MMO. It's more like...once you get to 50 you realize there's no story left and no way that Bioware could ever hope to sustain the quality of the 1-50 experience for years (not to mention decades) to come? After 5 years development they produced a month of content. This worked fine for Dragon Age Origins. Not gonna work for an MMO. Edited February 27, 2012 by EternalFinality Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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