The layoffs have me confused more then anything else. Help?

wow the tinfoil hat kid that posted got edited out of the thread pretty damn quick, I did'nt think his post was that unreasonable, unsubstantiated and negative yes but only as unsubstantiated as a lot of the positive stuff that is being said here.

Apology accepted, though it's not that difficult. You can either use the "quote" button in the formatting options, or just copy/paste the tags auto-generated by the 'quote' button in the forum if you want to keep the links to the original posts (what I'm doing, basically).

That might not be a bad idea. Like I said, my main problem was how the complaining seems to be negatively affecting other uses for the forum. It's pretty much become a place to either come complain, read complaints, reply to complaints, etc. I'd like to discuss potential future features for the game, developments for later patches, etc, but it's tough to do that without the thread careening off into the topics of whether or not SWtOR is dying, whether or not server populations are too low, how EA sucks, etc. Whatever's currently being done, it isn't enough and I doubt they'd continue to let this go on without changing their policy. I'm just hoping that they don't implement one that ends up censoring/deleting all complaints or outright banning anyone who doesn't have a paying subscription, which may end up being the case. I saw my suggestion as a decent middle-ground. That's all.

Read the threads on the first page and tell me if you find any without off-topic complaints or doomsday predictions. Considering how many QFT responses after promoting that idea, I don't think I'm the only one who feels that way. In game, the general wisdom (judging by comments in the general chat) seems to be "stay off the forums, it's nothing but trolls". Doing nothing isn't going to make or break the experience (IIRC, Blizzard's had the same problem with the WoW forums for years and they're still doing fine), but I feel it's something that should be addressed. Call it my equivalent of unsub whining. :-P

"In the real world"? In the real world, you can't just magically change payment models on a whim, and it's harder to make customized responses to each individual customer than to have one universal response. The company's more likely to go with the option that takes less time, less money, and leaves fewer chances for an error to creep into the accounts (so long as that option doesn't cost them a significant amount in potential customers, i.e. people who would refuse to play because they wouldn't get a refund for unused game time in the event of a cancellation). On top of that, this method allows them to keep the revenue from the unused game time anyway (a far more likely motivation than either your or my idea), so you have even more financial motivation for them to stick to this model.

I'm afraid I don't have that, but the subscriber report goes out of its way to specify the difference between "trial and casual players cycling out of the subscriber base." I'm specifically referring to this exchange here, where a representative from BMO Capital Markets (an investment banking firm) asked specific questions about swtor.

The bolded section indicates that the measurement they're referring to are the currently paying subscribers. There's also this summary earlier in the report:

The language above seems to indicate that the active, paying subscriptions are categorized differently from trials and free time offers. The 1.3 million seems to be primarily composed of these paying subs. You're technically correct that the 1.3 million probably includes subscribers who have cancelled and still have game time. However, the point of contention has to do with just HOW MUCH of the 1.3 million is composed of trials & cancelled subs, which the material seems to indicate is low. However, without additional actions by EA that would indicate trouble (no, the 200 layoffs in the midst of restructuring and "how hiring" adverts on the main page don't indicate trouble. It'd be troubling if there was an overall net reduction in employees, large server shutdowns, cancellations of content updates (the artificial limbs from SWG spring to mind).) and the rather large margin of subscribers they'd have to lose before they were in any kind of trouble, it's hard to conclude that they're in serious trouble.

Now, it's completely possible that I'm entirely off the mark, but the shareholders' info doesn't strike me as the kind of spin a company would employ when they're in serious trouble. At best, it isn't yielding its maximum potential revenue and they're explaining how they plan to change that over the next few years. If it were in trouble, they'd be emphasizing spin about how they need to downsize it to a more "profitable" level or reduce costs. If SWtOR's in serious trouble, the language they're using would probably be misleading enough that shareholders could potentially bring suit against EA's board of directors for misleading investors (violating their fiduciary duties as agents of the shareholders, if you want to get into the legalese). That's why I read the above as "it's not as profitable as it could be, but we're working on it" rather than "it's a sinking ship, and we're going to do whatever we can to save it".

I mainly wanted to reply to statements you made that had value. If I reply to the insults, then it'd just escalate to the point that all we did was insult each other, and that's the last thing this forum needs.

Yeah, it's a shame we don't allow more colorful language at least SOMEWHERE in these forums. I have a killer Gunnery Sergeant Hartman impression. :-P

I'ono. IIRC, alot of SWG's problems stemmed from the fact that SOE cycled out developers and didn't keep adequate records of the development process, so the subsequent team had a hard time figuring out the code of the game they were trying to maintain (and would then inevitably break things when they tried to implement bug fixes). Don't remember where I heard that, though, so take it with a grain of salt. It may have just been a rumor on the SWG forums during all the CU/NGE hooplah (and sheesh, were there alot of THOSE).

But I doubt Bioware/EA would make the same mistake. Even though Bioware games have been the buggiest out of all the games I played. Although, that's actually excluding SWtOR, as I've run into fewer bugs on it than I have playing Dragon Age: Origins on the PS3 for longer than an hour.

It might have been the insult content > 50% that decided it for the moderators. I mean, the substantive elements of his posts (subscriber numbers, percent retention rates), though unsourced, usually came at the end after he went on a tirade that sounded like it came from a badly translated foreign Matrix rip-off. By comparison, he was several times more insulting than you were when your comments got deleted.

Just my two cents. Though it's also possible that they deleted his comments to 'censor the truth'. *Tinfoil Hat*

I was referring to your other comments to the other posters. If you are an investor of EA, why would you be comparing your company to other companies? You should be focusing on EA *only* especially when the gaming industry itself is extremely volatile.

"Let me provide you with an update on Star Wars. Through the end of the quarter approximately 2.4 million units have sold through. In our last call we indicated that we had 1.7 million active subscribers, and as of the end of April, we now have 1.3 million, with a substantial portion of the decrease due to casual and trial players cycling out of the subscriber "

1.7M -> 1.3M at the end of April. This only considers active accounts, not active players. Again this is a shareholder event so no point in mentioning active population. People care about how much revenue a game is making them, not how many people are playing. Active accounts encompass trial players, subscribed accounts, inactive subscriptions. He also never defined the word "casual." I defined my thoughts on the word casual in an earlier post.

"driving up people who are all percentage of paying subscribers. We have already launched a number of initiatives designed to growth subscriptions. Initial responses have been positive and we are encouraged by the gaming community's reaction. "

A number of initiatives in layman's terms could include hot patches, the rak ghoul event, communication on public forums following 1.2, offering free trial events, etc. "Initial responses have been positive" just means that initially people think it's cool. It makes no reference to actual forecasting or current trends following that. There's no reason for them to panic their investors by mentioning it.

If you deduced all that, you will realize it's suffering as a MMO. The fact that server populations, not active subscribers, at prime time is a clear indication of declining trends.

Lastly, you don't need training to deduce this. You will figure this out after you start working for corporations and listen to your SVP/CTOs give spiels about your last quarterly results from your projects. No one is going to tell you, "we're doing bad guys."

The glass is always half full.

They should have made a mention of new hirees that they've taken on simultaneously... common sense.

If you'll remember, the comment that elicited my response was-

And as I said, I only focused on stock price in a debate with another person where the performance of the stock was the primary issue. The comparison was to demonstrate that there was an industry-wide slump not unique to EA, as opposed to the stock price drop being strictly an element of EA (as the person I was speaking to had claimed). And in case you're not aware, comparing EA's stock to other companies in the same field will tell you how the field itself is performing, how the company is performing compared to others in the same field, and how both the company and other companies are doing compared to the overall market. All of this would yield information on the performance of the stock & the company, and all of this would be relevant to investment decisions.

Actually, they did mention the active population. Read the comment two entries above yours where I quoted the relevant items in the transcript of the Q4 FY12 conference call. The use of the word casual was also measured against an opposing example in the "more active players". Take that with the dictionary definition of the word "casual", and it's very likely that they mean "less active". And again, they DID talk about the ratio of paying subscribers to non-paying subscribers, indicating that it was high and stable, leading to a significant profit.

Again, I refer to two comments above you where I quoted from the transcript. It's rather apparent that they're referring to 1.1 & 1.2 as their "initiatives". "Initial responses have been positive" means that the impressions upon release have been positive, and this means that the updates are being positively received. It's also hard to get more than "initial responses" a month past release (Imagine if movies declared the total gross ticket sales 4 days from release. That makes about the same amount of sense.). And, again, if you actually read the transcript, you would see that the question and answer directly above was about the future trends you claim weren't discussed.

And your source for this is...?

I'm sorry, but just about every claim you've made is either unsourced or directly contradicted by the investor materials. If the game were failing, then EA would be cutting back production and cancelling the big updates. Instead, every indication is that they intend to expand production and push further development into the future. Businesses don't tend to sink money into failing projects. They'd be more likely to start shrinking their work force by a significant margin and more immediately shutting down servers (far more than the 200 employees laid off as part of the restructuring, and they certainly wouldn't be planning to purchase entirely new upgraded servers when the ones they have would function just fine for a so-called "failing game".

I was asking for specific examples since you were the one who made the claim in the first place. If you have nothing, then I guess that's all that needs to be said on the subject.

Secondly, as I've said before, the shareholders can sue the board of directors (who can then file indemnification lawsuits against the executive officers) for misleading investors (violating their fiduciary duties as agents of the shareholders).

And finally, as I said before, EA's actions DO NOT match those of a company attempting to downsize in order to cut their losses. The tone in the shareholders' reports don't indicate this, the accounts don't indicate this, the stock price behavior doesn't indicate this, the actions of the company itself don't indicate this. The only way you can reach this conclusion is by taking items out of context and/or making assumptions without citations or evidence.

Most of your responses shows why you're still in school in your major. If you believed that much in investor materials, maybe you should have also invested into Facebook.

I'm pretty much done. Keep at your major. You're doing an excellent job

Yes, they should have. It's on BioWare Austin's hire site, not like it's a secret they're rehiring.

The go to plan for most people who have no more arguments or evidence to support their previous arguments- attack your opponents credentials and address what they say as little as possible.

We're not talking about investors' current preferences, or predictions of future stock value. We're talking about how profitable SWtOR is and how EA is treating it going forward. The fact that you would link the two just indicates how clueless you are on this subject.

Thank you for your words of support. It would certainly seem I'm doing better than you.