The sky isn't falling. A numbers based view.

In other words, you're guessing.

Why do people chose to comment on things they know nothing about?

You realize SWG is a game that went through many changes, every change was worse than the change before it, which pushed the countless fans away from the game over a period of time. People left the game in a mass exodus, while the few refused to admit that Sony was screwing up would tell them, "See ya, can I haz ur stuffs?!?!" and do them the same way the players do the quitters here. Until there were only 30K left.

SWG was the "greatest game evar" until sony change the mechanics of the game all together, and dumbed it down for the nine year olds that "want to be jedi nao!!!"

So your comment up there shows just how little you really understand and know about SWG.

Except that you can actually play SWG as it was in it's hayday right now if you want. I had a Pre-CU full template Jedi and I loved that game more than anything else when I played it.

I played it in August for 3 days on the EMU. My nostalgia factor was high, I loved seeing the old skill tree, but it doesn't stand on it's own as a 'good' game compared to what we are offered on the market today in my own opinion.

Anyone that is interested in seeing what they think of that game is also able to do so.

But lets try to stay on topic about SWTOR's numbers compared to the competition. It is telling however that the games that people cry for the loudest in terms of design were never successful in their own right.

Gor give it up man

These fanbois will never admit the truth about the shape this game in

He says no spin and in his first lines hes spin fantasy like mad!

TOR, even though I enjoy it (and yes fanbois, one can enjoy something but still see its shortcomings), is a market failure. plain and simple.

But your always going to have your paid supporters, err I mean passionate fanbois , who just refuse to admit the truth of the topic.

TOR should be millions strong and growing at this stage
Its not and its going f2p in under a year to push up profits
Many of the game designs are absolutely stupid beyond beleif and if the original devs had bothered to do any real research into the genre they would have seen these errors before repeating them.

Some blame EA
Some blame Mythic
Personally I think this game had to big a budget that the exes got comfortable lifing the high life (so to speak) rather then worrying about finances and what not that most MMORPGs have to deal with.
The devs simply got lazy

I still hold out hope that the new blood coming in actually plays the game and experiences the games short comings first hand and stop relying on "metrics".

But by the numbers this title failed to meet its market share and failed to capture a majority of subscribers imaginations to hold them long term.

And anyone disagreeing with those truths really not worth argueing with
They simply the internet version of the kid in the school yard saying "I know you are but what am I' over and over and over!

The sky not falling
It already fell hard
now is time to rebuild from the rubble

This game sold 2.1 million copies and failed to maintain even 30% of those subs from all reports.

Thats really the only important number out there!
All those other games dont matter squat
2.1 million people bought this game knowing it had a monthly sub and the game failed to keep them entertained longer then 2 months for the most part.

Thats not the genres fault
Thats the designers fault

But what ever, the OP and that other one will continue to heap senseless accolades on TOR. Never fully managing to grasp the entire story being played out.

There's no accolades here. I'm not a paid fanboy. I don't care what you think of me if you can't view this from a non bias perspective.

This is a numbers based analysis and your view is an extremely bias one bringing up design issues. I'm not disputing that in anyway at all. My post doesn't touch design issues because that's not something that can be quantified. Only subscriptions as an absolute can be quantified. The reason for sub loss is complex guessing at it based on your feelings isn't reliable. If the market says that 30-40% is an expected rate of retention currently for new games, then that is the information from which we judge the game. Not made up numbers in our heads.

The bottom line is the expectations were unrealistic. Once we have data that proves this the next step is to set a more logical expectation for the game going forward AND for new games being released so you don't fall into the same trap.

Scientific theory actually works like this:

Hypothesis development
Predictions from the hypothesis
Experiments
Evaluation and improvement
Confirmation

Your hypothesis is that the game should have many many millions of subs. This has been proven to be not the case in reality and examining the market was unlikely to ever be the case.

Now that we know that it's time to reanalyze the hypothesis based on the data. We don't claim the hypothesis (million and millions of subs) is infallible if we are being objective.

In fact here's a completely uneducated guess I made on the growth of the game prior to launch because I had no idea what I was doing. I thought comparing the game only to WoW made sense (it doesn't). I was completely wrong, admit it and now did the market research I should have before.

http://followtheforce.net/swtor-info...-republic.html

I understand your passion for the game in wanting it to have bucked the trend of all of the other MMO's. I shared this same passion. Now I am realizing after viewing the data that this was an unrealistic expectation. While I'm personally disappointed by that it doesn't mean the game is a 'failure'. It means it couldn't live up to my expectations that were not based on scientific research into the genre model.

If you can't accept this I understand. Based on the attitudes on the forum many people can't accept it either.

yup, ignore the stupid trolls, enjoy our game and move along =P

You forgot GW2... i think SWTRo is actually the 3rd in place

I specifically stated in the post that completely Free to play models without a subscription component (Aion and GW2) are not a part of this comparison. They are akin to buying a console game because there is no ongoing monetary commitment to the those games while receiving full benefits of playing.

Subscriptions themselves are what we base SWTOR on and are exactly the opposite model of GW2. SWTOR is given flak because they are losing subscribers. If we based SWTOR on the same criteria as GW2 then the total box sales would be the final word there and even that wouldn't be a good comparison since you are buying into different payment models.

GW2 its a f2p MMO dude, not a subs MMO model.

I had to reply to your post just to read it. Seriously, consider a different color font.