Found this on TORWARS (http://torwars.com/2012/08/06/torwars-podcast-93-subscription-numbers-and-free-to-play/)

 

EA Statement on Subscriber Numbers

 

 

“First, the game many of you have been tracking closely, Star Wars: The Old Republic. Although it launched well, subscriptions have been on a declining trajectory and have now slipped below one million. Last year we announced that the breakeven point was roughly 500,000 subscribers. And while we are well above that today, that’s not good enough. The message from players exiting the game is clear – 40 percent say they were turned off by the monthly subscription. And many indicated they would come back if we offered a free-to-play model. Our plan now is to pivot and provide a two-tiered pricing plan which will make the game more accessible and grow the audience. The new pricing will go into effect in November.”

 

MMORPG Interview with Jeff Hickman and Matthew Bromberg – Source

 

“They plan on releasing these every six weeks, and they’ll include different sorts of content each time: warzones, operations, public events, and so on (even a mix of all three might be possible). And while there’s no set price point for each update, they plan to break it down into different options enough so that PVP folks can focus on buying the content they want, and dungeon folks can focus on what they want, while others can buy everything in one package if they want as well. They also have a brand new event for all subscribers coming in August which is a public world event like the Rhakgoul Invasion.”

 

Game Analysts Predict that F2P could bring 50 million Monthly Users to SWTOR

 

Wedbush currently has a 12-month price target of $29 and a rating of “Outperform” for EA. The market is reacting positively to EA’s fiscal news, which involved making Star Wars: The Old Republic free. EA’s stock closed up almost six percent at $11.68.

 

Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter:

 

“We believe the free-to-play option and lower retail price will combine to significantly increase the number of Star Wars players by the end of the year as the two largest barriers to entry for potential Star Wars gamers (apart from an appreciation for the franchise and PC gaming) have been significantly reduced or eliminated. We expect the network effect to augment the number of gamers further. In the long-term, we believe the adjustments will result in incremental revenue and earnings growth as high-margin Cartel Coin purchases by a much larger pool of gamers and additional advertising generate more revenue than was lost through declining subscription fees and the lower MSRP.”

 

Ultimately, Pachter believes that Star Wars now has the potential to “attract at least 10 million Monthly Active Users indefinitely, with upside to perhaps 50 million.” He added, “Thus, we believe that contribution from the model shift could be significant for years to come.”

 

i see a big problem here:

EA fumbels the game, and after realizing, that normal players wont pay for it, they decide to give parts of it away

 

AND THE STOCKMARKET IS POSITIVE TO THIS FAILURE?

 

no wonder its getting harder to find good games,,if they can earn money, by this kind of "success"

i see a big problem here:

EA fumbels the game, and after realizing, that normal players wont pay for it, they decide to give parts of it away

 

AND THE STOCKMARKET IS POSITIVE TO THIS FAILURE?

 

no wonder its getting harder to find good games,,if they can earn money, by this kind of "success"

 

monetization. Look it up.

Currently the model for SWTOR is not bringing in enough customers or cash. So F2play would fix that by attracting new customers, throw in cool looking items you can only purchase with money and bam you have an income revenue.

 

Believe me when I say most people will pay through the nose for cool looking gear that gives them a robotic voice or black colour crystals or a riding tauntaun. Not only that but more players playing the game for free means more bug reports and suggestions to improve the game.

 

The idea here is a loyalty system for subs to make them feel a little more appreciated for paying to play their game rather then feel like the company only cares about their money and wants you to pay more for extra items.

 

Exactly. Not to mention there is an additional chance that anyone who chooses or continues to subscribe may also spend additional money beyond their subfee on those cash shop items because they're going to run into those F2P players riding that cool looking tauntaun or wielding the black lightsaber or whatever and they're going to be impatient for next month's stipend to roll in and they're going to login to the cartel points store and impulsively buy some cartel points in order to keep up with the Joneses. We see this in LOTRO and we see this in STO (The STO effect is actually pretty pronounced, you see a lot of people running around with the cash shop costumes, "exclusive" ship costumes, and also the latest flavor of gambling box ships all the time). Exploiting people's psychology of desire and jealousy sounds creepy but this is how corporations have been making profits for decades.

Edited October 6, 2012 by Foobert

EA has interpreted the exiting players incorrectly. They're saying:

"This game isn't worth paying for."

 

Yeah, some people who left the game will come back with a F2P option. Most won't. Most of the ones who left already have level 50 characters who are interested in more content, PvP, bug fixes, and better overall gameplay. F2P does not address those concerns.

 

You are wrong.

 

I would like to know what you're doing still paying for this game? If you had bothered one bit to get informed, you would know we will be having content updates every 6 weeks after F2P goes live. Thats the content everyone wants and why they will stick around. Bug fixes are obviously still in order given they even gaves us a list of known bugs for 1.4 that are beeing adressed.

 

Gameplay needs a little optimization with the missed GCD's issue, but seriously, playing this game is more fun than any other MMO in the market, maybe bar TERA. Go play GW2 and you will see what bad gameplay is. Have fun spamming that auto-attack! Seriously, go play the other MMO's. I challenge everyone badmouthing this game to go play the "revolution" that is GW2 or the "polished" WoW MoP. Dont play it for one or two days though... play it all the way to max level for a couple of weeks. At that point, you will see the light and will come back here, cause this is the best MMO out at the moment.

People just love to poke holes on Bioware because of EA. The level of criticism this game gets is incredibly unfair and hides the great game there is here. People will eventually realise that as they play other MMO's.

Edited October 6, 2012 by Nemmar

You are wrong.

 

I would like to know what you're doing still paying for this game? If you had bothered one bit to get informed, you would know we will be having content updates every 6 weeks after F2P goes live. Thats the content everyone wants and why they will stick around. Bug fixes are obviously still in order given they even gaves us a list of known bugs for 1.4 that are beeing adressed.

 

Gameplay needs a little optimization with the missed GCD's issue, but seriously, playing this game is more fun than any other MMO in the market, maybe bar TERA. Go play GW2 and you will see what bad gameplay is. Have fun spamming that auto-attack! Seriously, go play the other MMO's. I challenge everyone badmouthing this game to go play the "revolution" that is GW2 or the "polished" WoW MoP. Dont play it for one or two days though... play it all the way to max level for a couple of weeks. At that point, you will see the light and will come back here, cause this is the best MMO out at the moment.

People just love to poke holes on Bioware because of EA. The level of criticism this game gets is incredibly unfair and hides the great game there is here. People will eventually realise that as they play other MMO's.

 

TERA is way more beautiful and functional than this game

 

and the gameplay mechanichs are similar

 

and yet TERA is also struggling, while pandalands easy gameplay is still unchallenged in sub numbers

 

perhaps theres a connection?

At the end of the day the elephant in the room is still revolving around the subscription fees though.

 

This. Subs are going the way of the dodo. Microtransactions are the way of the future. Buy 3 pieces of gear on the cash shop and you've paid the monthly sub fee. And you want the other 3 pieces, right? So you buy some more... till something cooler looking comes out.

 

 

same principle, Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, whenever a new multiplayer pack is released, EA racks up on money from casual players who didn't/can't save up millions of in-game currency to buy the 'gambling packs' to get the new gear, characters, and weapons.

At 250,000 active subscribers (I'm sure there are more but I saw this number in this thread) they take in $3.75M / mo on just THIS games subscription revenue. You can't put out a decent patch for $3.75M/mo??? These guys need a Govt contract.

i see a big problem here:

EA fumbels the game, and after realizing, that normal players wont pay for it, they decide to give parts of it away

 

AND THE STOCKMARKET IS POSITIVE TO THIS FAILURE?

 

no wonder its getting harder to find good games,,if they can earn money, by this kind of "success"

 

 

BTW, what is a "normal" player??? Regardless, still plenty of subscribers to this game, so I think you need a reality check, and also need to do some research on how freemium games are dominating the consumer market base (due to consumer demand) and that MMO freemium games in particular see 2X+ active players and much more revenue then when they were subscription only. There is a reason the model is becoming dominant in the marketplace.

I agree with the fact that people are leaving because of lack of content. That alone makes it not worth the sub fee. People aren't going to leave for sub fee alone because they knew that it was coming when they bought the game. In reality, another thing that hurt was the game took at least alot more time in production than originally thought. That had people thinking that alot of the previous and now present issues would have been eliminated pre-launch. Survey says: Wrong Answer! Needless to say that their estimated player estimate is about as far south of reality as the southern most tip of South America is from Alaska. F2P may not kill the game, but paying for every little item or piece of updated content is going to eventually turn off more paying subs to go F2P or worse. I know several of my friends want to comeback or join when F2P happens but the limitations are going to make it less enjoyable considering a few were paying subs at one point.

 

BTW, what is a "normal" player??? Regardless, still plenty of subscribers to this game, so I think you need a reality check, and also need to do some research on how freemium games are dominating the consumer market base (due to consumer demand) and that MMO freemium games in particular see 2X+ active players and much more revenue then when they were subscription only. There is a reason the model is becoming dominant in the marketplace.

 

normal= casual

 

soo,,even if they made enough money with subs, they still go F2P, because they can make even more that way?

 

ok, ill buy that, but why not start as F2P then? and i seem to recall one of the devs stating the opposite less than

 

a year ago,,something with "the F2Pers cant deliver the same quality as we do",,do u remember?

 

no this is a emergency brake , and F2P will not save it, they need to revamp the game

Being a reasonable kind of person, I can see the reasoning behind going F2P. They say it will bring in more players, and to me, it makes sense.

 

But where do they get 10 to 50 Million new active players from? That seems like a crazy high number to me. I can see 50 thousand to maybe even a couple of million new players, but 10 to 50 million? Thats an insane number of players!

 

Are there even 50 million MMO Gamers that are Star Wars fans? Are there even 50 million MMO Gamers in the entire world?

 

Also, I wish they would stop saying that people quit the game because they were turned off by the subscription model. People quit because they felt that the game as it stood (atleast at that time) wasnt Worth paying a subscription for. BIG Difference.

 

And for the record, I like the game. Even with all of its faults, I still enjoy myself and I plan on being a subscriber even after the game goes F2P.

 

However, I wont be a subscriber after F2P if they put all of the best goodies up for sale in the Cartel Shop, and want to make me pay more monies on top of my subscription to acquire. THAT would really tick me off.

That and lack of end game content. The sub wasn't the issue. Soon that reality will hit Bioware too.

 

Flawless assessment.

Flawless assessment.

 

Hate to break it to you, but when the sub numbers started their slide, very few people knew anything about end-game content or lack there of. Try another idea.

I think that people said "the game isnt worth the montyly sub" and BW read that as "Id play it if it were free". Id bet my farm that the people who left did so due to LACK OF CONTENT and wont be back until they have something more to do. The people that F2P will attract will be the HUGE crowd of "free gamers" who go from free game to free game and pretty much ruin any sense of community or loyalty in each game. NOT the people who have played out the content in THIS game and left due to the lack of something NEW to do.

 

That is just my guess though....

 

M

 

not revamp, but:

 

1. when almost all players click on the enter button, they get in the game.

 

2. when almost all players are in the game they STAY in the game and don't visit a never ending load screen, or their windows screen.

 

3. when most players are in the game it appears smooth and their actions seem to work right(no stuttering anyone?, no delays on the action bars anyone?, no stuck on your ship forever?)

 

You get NO MONEY from micro-transactions when the players quit out, due to poor game play/game engine/game systems. FTP will take them down the same path as ptp, unless they fix the bloody game, so it is playable by a whole bunch of peeps, unlike for all the ones that quit.(of course if they could fix it we'd still have north of 1million playing and no need for ftp)

If WoW were released today, in the condition it was when it hit the streets, it would flop. .

 

And this game released TODAY in WORSE condition than WoW did 8 yrs ago. People have to stop comparing the release success/failure of a game that released almost a decade ago to a game that released within the last year. The bar has been raised. We now expect our games to offer things that we didnt even know were going to exist when WoW came out. (LFG for example. This game should have shipped with an LFG system in place. When WoW released there WAS no game with an LFG system in place so we didnt expect WoW to have one either). Truth be told, if WoW released today exactly as it was when it DID release it would still beat the heck out of SWTOR. Sorry but it would.

 

M

.... Truth be told, if WoW released today exactly as it was when it DID release it would still beat the heck out of SWTOR. Sorry but it would.

 

M

 

Sorry it wouldn't, the conditions then don't exist now. The little old ladies in Kansas, and the soccer moms thru out the US, would not subscribe, they have lots of social networking choices now. And the explosive US growth of wow was due to those peeps, not hard-core mmo players. They simply used wow as a social network. Remember all those folks standing around the major hubs just talking/emoting? Guess who?

Hate to break it to you, but when the sub numbers started their slide, very few people knew anything about end-game content or lack there of. Try another idea.

 

 

End game content was a complaint within the first month... i remember clearly, so yeah hes right.

Hate to break it to you, but when the sub numbers started their slide, very few people knew anything about end-game content or lack there of. Try another idea.

 

yup a lot of us didnt even get that far,,some even dumped it hours after trying it

 

after a month,,i just couldnt stand it anymore

 

the total lack of freedom, the bugs

 

the annoying grindy mobs i have to hack my way through

 

the lack of immersion, static world, weird music cues

 

this game felt like unpleasent work so now i hope for a revamp

End game content was a complaint within the first month... i remember clearly, so yeah hes right.

 

so?? this is a new game, and less than a month after launch, they have to deliver more?

 

this is the unreasonable pressure that kills games,,no dev will ever keep up with these guys

 

like pressuring a normal car to go as fast as a racing car

 

and when the devs listen and give them content, that they cant beat? they rage the forums for nerfs

 

devs nerf it, and they flame again for now its too easy

 

those players are the real plagues of mmo,not the casuals

 

they rip through any content, at ludicrous speed, and yell for MORE

 

their favorite answer is "L2PNOOB"

 

and when they have ruined a game , they flame it for being "too easy", and go look for a new victim

 

this is a game that is build for their specifications,,not for a normal player to have fun

End game content was a complaint within the first month... i remember clearly, so yeah hes right.

 

Yes, it was a complaint. By the less than 5% that had already reached the end game.

 

Well, as to that complaint.. they can go fish..(CS guys would pick on me if I said what I really thought).

Yes, it was a complaint. By the less than 5% that had already reached the end game.

 

Well, as to that complaint.. they can go fish..(CS guys would pick on me if I said what I really thought).

 

Well i remember alot of people complaining about the end game.. I actually think thats one of the biggest reason subs slipped... I deff dont think it was because a monthly sub.

Sorry it wouldn't, the conditions then don't exist now. The little old ladies in Kansas, and the soccer moms thru out the US, would not subscribe, they have lots of social networking choices now. And the explosive US growth of wow was due to those peeps, not hard-core mmo players. They simply used wow as a social network. Remember all those folks standing around the major hubs just talking/emoting? Guess who?

 

Let me define what I meant by "beat the heck out of". Im not going to even TRY to guess how many people would sub to WoW if it released today with all the game options that are available. You are right, probably less than what it was back then. That is not what I meant though. Sub numbers dont always tell the truth about how good or bad a game is. What I meant by it was that the game itself would be a better game. It WAS a better game. At release WoW had more content, more things to do and was more fun to play than this one is today. The reason it was successful is that people didnt get SO bored in the first month or two that they left in droves. In fact the subs increased all the way until Cata. Because it is a fun game that keeps peoples attention for more than a nanosecond. A lot of people.

Dont get me wrong, I think THIS game is fun. I am still playing it and enjoying it. But the 20 or so people who came over here with me from WoW disagreed. They played one or two chars through, some even did some OPs and got pretty serious about it, and were gone within 2 months. I am the only one left out of ALL of them . They went back to the game they had been playing for 8 years. They didnt quit SWTOR and stop gaming, or go to Warhammer or LOTRO or...... They went back to the game theyd been playing for almost a decade. Why? Because they STILL felt like there was something to DO over there. And apparently there was because they are all still over there playing it.

 

Apparently over a million other people agree with them at least in that this game got boring enough to quit playing it.

 

M

Edited October 6, 2012 by hippiechick

lack of patience is sad. I dont remember WoW being the perfect MMO model during its first year. In fact when I tried it early on I thought it sucked. I never did give it another chance because the time frame didn't appeal to me. This game sure isn't perfect, but you know what? It has potential. If it didn't there wouldn't be people coming on the forums and going on the FB page complaining. Unless they are trolls, in which case they have to worth to the real world let alone in this game. The worst thing that could possibly happen is if nobody says anything and they all leave and ignore the games existence.

 

That being said, this game is 10 months old. It can improve. In my opinion the single player elements alone make it worth 15 a month. I enjoy all my different characters. They have until I beat all 8 class stories to hook me. And by then there should be an expansion, a new level cap, and majority of the issues fixed. If by year 2 this game isn't fixed I will call it a lost cause. Patience young ones, this game can go from Padawan to Master. Just give it a break, and some freaking time.

 

Pretty much this. I'll concede that 1.4 broke quite a few things, and that that was at least partially due to the fact that there was limited playtesting (this wasn't the first time they did such a closed "beta" if you will, however), but beyond that, I am having more fun now than ever before in the game.

 

Not enough content? Since launch they have added 3 new operations, 2 new flashpoint instances, and a 4th and (with the next update) a 5th warzone instance. There is the confirmation of a new planet on the way with higher player caps, likely alluding to further class story and more. It remains to be seen how deep that or the Legacy HK-51 mission (requiring an Imp and a Rep) plays out, but I look forward to it. And all of that is to be within the first year. I think that's a job well done, actually.

 

At least for me, the game has been more than worth my money. But opinions are like ***holes, everyone's got one.

AFAIK they sold around 2,4 mio boxes

 

a month later it was 1,9 mio, right?

 

so they lost 500000 endgamers in a month?

 

no , a lot of players dropped it as fast as they could

 

maybe theyre the smartest of us all, but i still hope for a GOOD SW MMO