I'm starting this thread as a place to discuss the state of the game while keeping things in perspective without employing excessive hyperbole to make my point. I hope it can generate a good discussion.

The Truth in Numbers

It is only fair to judge a game to it's direct competition. This is an attempt to do that based on the information available to us. After viewing the data we can then extrapolate from there.

This is the information we have to use in this endeavor. You can debate the validity of the info (some of it is dated) but it's all we have otherwise the debate is pointless and turns into an opinion based debate rather than a fact based one. There has to be a base foundation in which you can make a deduction. An updated chart is on the way and at that point we can reassess.

http://www.mmodata.net/

How many subscribers does SWTOR have? Per EA SWTOR has between 1 million and 500k. This number will be updated at the EA shareholders meeting at the end of the month. The human mind tends to latch onto the negative immediately when ever a projection is given. Depending on your POV you'll choose a number in that range that fits your mindset, however for these purposes the range itself is fine.

Since SWTOR does not have a eastern (China) based operation this is only a comparison of western players where the numbers allow the distinction to be made. Additionally games that do not have a subscription based model are not compared here. They do not release numbers of active accounts and having played the game only once you would be a subscriber for life essentially. While they can be compared for game play elements their financial models are completely different and not a part of the scope of this discussion.

Direct MMO competitors with a subscription or subscription + F2P model (Western Subscription numbers only):

World of Warcraft has ~5.1 million players

SWTOR has between 1mil-500k players.

Eve Online has ~350k players.

LOTOR has ~250k players.

Rift has ~250k players.

Star Trek Online has less than ~60k players.

SWG had under 30k players before the sunsetting announcement.

The outlier is of course WoW with over 6.5 million subs no surprise there. Otherwise SWTOR is solidly the industry number two when compared to it's peers with similar payment access models.

Retention, It's all about perspective

Immediately the focus then shifts to what about the subscription retention numbers? In order to give something weight it has to have a viable comparison. Next let's examine all of the MMOs with the same payment access model that have come on to the scene in the last 4 years. This comparison will start in 2008 because from 2008 to the present the market conditions and number of existing games illustrates the current market saturation of MMOs. Additionally 2008 represents the start of the rapid decline in the US economy. Not accounting for this would be illogical.

These will be based on a peak subscriptions number as high number for retention as box sales do not exist for all of these games specifically broken down to the first year sales. The comparison has to be equal for it to be worth considering. If actual date including box sales can be obtained this will be amended to show those numbers.

Retention Rate of Direct MMO competitors with a subscription or subscription + F2P model since 2008 over a 1 year period:

STO: 107k to 58k. (54% Retention Rate)

SWTOR: 1.7 million to 1 million- 500k. (59%-29% Retention Rate -Median is 45%)

RIFT: 600k to 248k. (41% Retention Rate)

Warhammer Online: 800k to 175k. (22% Retention Rate)

Age of Conan: 700k to 110k. (15% Retention Rate)

Clearly we can see the trend of newly released MMO's with a similar payment model has taken quite a hit since 2008. STO doesn't have a player base anywhere near the other games but has apparently carved out a loyal niche during their first year. SWTOR is on par with the average when compared with it's recently released peers. The new release of SWTOR subscription numbers next week will paint a better picture.

Summary and Conclusion

Based on the information presented we can draw several conclusions.

1. SWTOR is the #2 game in the MMO market when compared to other games with a Subscription or Subscription + F2P model.

2. SWTOR's subscription retention rate is typical of the trend all MMO's released within the last 4 years that share the same payment access model.

Having viewed the data the question is obvious, why does the gaming community that pays for SWTOR continue to tout it as a failure? Unrealistic expectations that the game would just go up and up and up in terms of subscription numbers. That trend isn't realistic based on the data.

Expectations are set by people. That is an important thing to consider. SWTOR isn't a living entity so the game itself never said it was going to be a WoW killer, you will not find a single interview prior to launch with anyone from Bioware stating they believed they had the next WoW killer on their hands. We set those expectations ourselves. Speculating on EA's motives is also pointless endeavor, as a business they internally have to hope any game they sell has blockbuster potential.

If SWTOR is a failure then all other games with the exception of WoW are failures as MMO's that use a subscription or subscription + F2P model. Objectively people may have expected more from the title in the first year but it performed on par with it's directly comparable competition.

If leveraged correctly SWTOR can increase it's #2 market share position with the F2P release. It is not unrealistic to expect growth going forward with this new model as the charts show the game that grew adopted the F2P service.

Change log:

10.26.12: Updated WoW's current subscriber numbers to reflect the chart referenced. I mistakenly pulled the China numbers originally.

Disclaimer: We can never be 100% accurate with any of this and you should already know that. Where possible the most accurate and available datapoints have been used for the time frames under consideration. Companies do not have to give us the information unless they are publicly traded and even then it can be vague. Accepting this as the medium we have to work in then you can still draw conclusions from the data. This will ALWAYS be more accurate than feelings based discussion. Conversely you can state that this can never be 100% accurately assessed therefore is worthless and move on. I don't believe that is logical however.

**** I will gladly update and revise this based on any new or more reliable data that can be obtained. ****

If SWTOR is a failure then all other games with the exception of WoW are failures

This is the only thing the Media will ever see regarding MMOs until WoW is dethroned.

Well the sky is falling on the APAC servers

The population is to low on the pvp server which is ruining the mmo experience we are paying for

Other than this glaring important issue the game is great

SWG had under 30k players before the sunsetting announcement.

 

NOOOOO but SWG was the greatest game evar!!! TOR needs to be turned into SWG2 NAO!!!!

/sarcasm off

If that's accurate, then the WoW decline has begun as I predicted before Pandaria release.

Keep in mind these numbers are western subscriber only. WoW has an even more lucrative China operation that beefs up the overall number of their subs.

If SWTOR can roll out a game to China we won't have to worry about revenue.

I think the real concern is how much money the game is actually generating for EA, and how that compares to the development cost, but I suspect that's something they're keeping to themselves. If you can find that, though, it would lend a lot of weight to your argument.

Somewhere I read that SWTOR would need to keep over 500k subs for over 1 year to break even; anything over that is a win for them. Just a few more months to go... With the rate of updates right now I think they will break even, especially with the Cartel Market coming to the game. It's amazing how much money people are willing to spend on a f2p game... lol

I'm starting this thread as a place to discuss the state of the game while keeping things in perspective without employing excessive hyperbole to make my point. I hope it can generate a good discussion.

I've been saying essentially the same things for months now, and using MMOdata as source data (since it's the only persistent and reliable data on the MMO portfolio), so it's nice to see someone else applying thought and common sense in the face of the hyperbole hurricane.

The only comment I would add is that WoW (West) numbers shown at MMO data in the charts are rather old and do not reflect the 2M+ bleed out (admittd publicly by Blizzard)... so the 6.5 number is really about 4 (though I'm sure they got a short term pop from the expansion release, which if it follows WoW expansion trend in modern times will evaprate by January again). Basically, all publicly available data says Wow will continue to decline, which is what you expect for an aging MMO, even if it is the whale in the pond.

I think the real concern is how much money the game is actually generating for EA, and how that compares to the development cost, but I suspect that's something they're keeping to themselves. If you can find that, though, it would lend a lot of weight to your argument.

Let me explain why that is not really relevant. EA resizes their opeations cost (ie: labor and other resources) on their MMOs to match projected subsrcriptions. There is ample evidence of this with DaOC, and Warhammer. Factor into that that EA essentially is a box sales company more then all other aspects of their business (no matter how much they say they want it to be otherwise) and is a holding company of a diverse portfolio.... so profit margin is king to them. In other words, as long as a business line continues to meet profit margin requirements, even though it may be less in total dollars then they aspire to... the business remains sound and will be continued. If you resize your operations to maintain your profit curve under reduced subscriptions... you can run an MMO game forever effectively. DaOC amply proves this.

As for development cost, as I have shared often in the forums here..... development cost is a sunk capital investment and is not part of profit analysis of an ongoing operation like an MMO. They sunk the cost over time (the years of development) and depreciated it and wrote most of it off as a tax decuction at the EA level. It does not factor into operations cost or profit margins or profit contribution at all.

Somewhere I read that SWTOR would need to keep over 500k subs for over 1 year to break even; anything over that is a win for them. Just a few more months to go... With the rate of updates right now I think they will break even, especially with the Cartel Market coming to the game. It's amazing how much money people are willing to spend on a f2p game... lol

That was before they resized their operation in June to match projected post launch subscription levels. So it's an invalid number today. Not only that, but if they follow normal practices, they will reanalyze every six months and adjust their operations baseline up/down depending on the business projected in the coming two quarters. For example, with F2P coming in a few weeks, they will project and expect a very nice revenue bump incremental to their current revenue and will likely bump up their operations plan for 1st half of 2013. That would translate to more assets developing and releasing more content (ie: reaffirms their faster more frequent content patching).

If that's accurate, then the WoW decline has begun as I predicted before Pandaria release.

You can't really look at absolute subscriber numbers (although at this point it helps since their first rate of change is actually negative). WoW was already in decline when considering annual rate of sales/conversion growth, which had been flat to negative by the time of WotLK. That expansion and associated marketing campaign allowed for short term sustained subscriber retention and the sales to cover the previous saturation but diminishing subscribers over the last couple of years just puts the nail in the coffin. The general economic downturn did not help things as it occurred right when Blizzard needed to maintain sales/conversion momentum. We saw this in some other companies, like SiriusXM radio.

Clearly we can see the trend of newly released MMO's with a similar payment model has taken quite a hit since 2008. STO doesn't have a player base anywhere near the other games but has apparently carved out a loyal niche during their first year. SWTOR is on par with the average when compared with it's recently released peers. The new release of SWTOR subscription numbers next week will paint a better picture.

I think an important factor for both STO and SWTOR is that a statistically significant portion of the playerbase is there more or less for the specific IP (Star Trek, Star Wars) instead of playing that particular MMO for other reasons (overall genre, gameplay). While SWTOR was designed out of the box with an IP-specific company written story campaign, STO's support for IP-specific player-generated content (the Foundry) appears to be part of its appeal and perceived value but both games also cater to players who wish to participate in a story-rich game universe.

Keep in mind these numbers are western subscriber only. WoW has an even more lucrative China operation that beefs up the overall number of their subs.

 

If SWTOR can roll out a game to China we won't have to worry about revenue.

but EA won't , they just restrict lots of asia countries to buy this game.

Um, SWTOR definitely has less than 500K.

You know this?

While it was a good OP and there are alot of truths (speaking only from available public data), it doesnt matter.

First thing is first. The numbers ToR has may not be anywhere near that any longer. Its not likely to be above it. It may be the same but we dont know. Again, speaking from truths from available data is ok here but I just want to point that out.

The real thing that matters though..... The CEO from EA said that ToR is a miss. When a product is a miss to a company it wont reciever the support that is originally intended. Thats bad for subscribers. F2P may do wonders for ToR. It may also spike and then fall off in a tidal wave. Anything can happen at this point. One thing I do know, is that if F2P also becomes a "miss" in EA eyes, the game will recieve little to no support at all. It will probably move to a skeleton crew to basically maintain servers and not much else. Thats an IF so dont go flying off the wire here. We dont know what will happen.

I do know that Lotro is now a miss, even under F2P, as they just had another round off layoffs and restructuring. Since they just released their expansion, it must not have sold to the mark they wanted. So for those that claim "Look at Lotro" well that game is going down too.

NOOOOO but SWG was the greatest game evar!!! TOR needs to be turned into SWG2 NAO!!!!

 

/sarcasm off

You obviously haven't played SWG. When SWG had under 30k players, it was a totally a different game, not the one that it used to be at first. When you change the game too radically, of course the numbers will drop radically too if the game changes don't please the players.

You know this?

Yeah it's quite obvious by just logging in. Not to mention there's this thing I like to use common sense. Not everyone needs things spoon fed to them.

Yeah it's quite obvious by just logging in. Not to mention there's this thing I like to use common sense. Not everyone needs things spoon fed to them.

I didn't mean to be hostile. I just prefer factual evidence to "vibe". If my friends are anything to go by, there are probably a lot of subscribers who are just playing less lately due to lack of new content, hence I wouldn't be surprised if the subscription numbers are higher than many believe.

 

 

Direct MMO competitors with a subscription or subscription + F2P model (Western Subscription numbers only):

 

World of Warcraft has 6.5 million players

SWTOR has between 1mil-500k players.

Eve Online has ~350k players.

LOTOR has ~250k players.

Rift has ~250k players.

Star Trek Online has less than ~60k players.

SWG had under 30k players before the sunsetting announcement.

 

The outlier is of course WoW with over 6.5 million subs no surprise there. Otherwise SWTOR is solidly the industry number two when compared to it's peers with similar payment access models.

 

The big difference is all of those MMORPG, except SWTOR, don't need 500,000 subs to make a profit (assuming that figure is still correct).

And SWTOR is currently much closer to 500,000 than 1,000,000 it could even be slightly below it.

The big difference is all of those MMORPG, except SWTOR, don't need 500,000 subs to make a profit (assuming that figure is still correct).

 

And SWTOR is currently much closer to 500,000 than 1,000,000 it could even be slightly below it.

Yeah, I was just about to say the same thing. Sub numbers are arbitrary, substantial net gain is all that matters. I personally think that F2P will save them and keep it at least "viable."

The big difference is all of those MMORPG, except SWTOR, don't need 500,000 subs to make a profit (assuming that figure is still correct).

You don't think bringing that number down has been a priority then, with all the lay-offs and reconstructions they've made?

I don't think any of the games mentioned, including SWTOR, need 500.000 subs anymore.