Subs down 25%

You assume I mean those exact people hmm?

No they lost less players then FFXI had period. And still have over 2 times more players then that game did at it's peak.

You mean on one of those 100's of servers that have people crying out for a server merge because there is a lot less playing?

Ok thanks, understand your logic now lol!

Now is a good time to post this:

"At half a million subscribers, the game is substantially profitable, but it's not the kind of thing we would write home about," EA CEO John Riccitiello said in a Gamasutra-attended conference call accompanying EA's third quarter fiscal earnings report today. "Anything north of a million subscribers, it's a very profitable business."

So yeah

Hey Bioware, if you're reading, you know what would give you a big boost? Getting EA to publish the game on Steam with a big cross promotion with Steam trading games like Team Fortress 2.

Just saying.

Because this game doesn't need 100% retention to be profitable. That and a drop in subs was EXPECTED so it's not even a surprise. It's obvious from the vocal minority on this board that this game is not for everyone.

Wrong, the number one rule of game design 101 is: Don't trust the player base to do the right thing and design accordingly. Blaming the player base for half assed design flaws and violating the most basic rule of game design is what a company with no clue about economic/community goodwill/relations or community building.

This is readily apparent with the utter lack of apology for the fail that was ilum and not correcting the exploitation via a rollback when they subsequently patched the game with even worse code, and the eventual bandaid for this? 1.2

I dont think there is any need to explain the failures of 1.2 they are readily apparent every time I log into the game to see 0 other guildies on (because they have chosen to actually NOT play this game while waiting for the release of another game, read that again: MY GUILD WOULD LITERALLY RATHER NOT GAME THAN LOG INTO SWTOR I've been a member of this guild since 1993, it's one of the oldest MMORPG PVP guilds, it takes a lot for them to not want to game.) and 57 people on fleet in prime time on the second most populated PVP server.

The subscription loss is bad. There is no amount of justification you can provide to refute this. Even if I didn't have an MBA with extensive exposure to profit and loss statements and preparation of quarterly financials as well as previous experience working for a game company I could see that.

This is about player perception as well as shareholder perception, either they turn it around or they will have staff cuts down to a skeleton crew. EA has done it before and they will do it again. The only way to correct for shareholder perception is to improve retention of the subscription base. Happy players don't leave. To keep and foster happy players you need to develop community mechanics amenable to retention.

Since I know BW is monitoring this thread closely because it has to due with player perception of a declining subscription base I recommend you read this article from someone who knows about community building in a star wars IP that failed due to poor community relations after the designers moved on and a halfwit named Smedley stuck his foot in it.

Or this Article as the original source of building a successful web community, especially for games you may want to buy the book and pass it out to all the staff Bioware.

And the issue here is not about the numerical loss of players, it's the TIMELINE vis a vie the loss of retention. Frankly it's happening to rapidly given the amount of funding this game was provided with. Those numbers re subscribers who are both active and inactive (stopped playing after paying) and include those people who paid 3 and 6 month subscriptions. The drop you see is standard release retention (30 day's is up) and a drop in monthly recurring retention as well as 3 month pre-paid's.

It's not a matter of numbers of loses, we know those people arent playing, it's a matter of: What % of those subscriptions are subscribed but not playing/inactive because that will be the population level at the end of June.

And from where I sit, looking at the numbers during prime time on Ajunta Pall, with no guildies logged in, and given my experience, BioWare has about 2 months to start bringing their A game, and rebuild some community trust before my so called "populated server" starts to look like the others.

Now is a good time to post this:

"At half a million subscribers, the game is substantially profitable, but it's not the kind of thing we would write home about," EA CEO John Riccitiello said in a Gamasutra-attended conference call accompanying EA's third quarter fiscal earnings report today. "Anything north of a million subscribers, it's a very profitable business."

So yeah