EA just released their earnings and Star Wars subs are down 25% for the quarter. This can't be a good thing. Can we get server mergers ASAP?

Added link

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ea-sales-beat-targets-star-wars-takes-hit-2012-05-07?siteid=yhoof2

Hello everyone,

The previous version of this thread exceeded our threshold for maximum thread length, so we have recreated it here to continue the conversation!

As a reminder to everyone, please keep in mind the following:

• Insults - Please do not resort to or use them in any way in your posts. Posts should be productive, not destructive.
  
• Disruptive Behavior - Please do not post messages that are purposefully designed to provoke, antagonize, or otherwise elicit a negative emotional response.
  
• Agree to Disagree - Be respectful of others' viewpoints even if they are opposite of your own. Discuss disagreements constructively.
  
• Flag, Don't Fight - Utilize the "Report Post" feature to report possible rules violations, rather than responding to or fighting them.
  

The community Rules of Conduct can be found here.

Thanks!

24% your off by a percent *** bro take your stuffs else were

I take it math is not your strong suit...

OP hate to tell you wow loses close more than that a quarter

People will ignore this to the ends of the earth. Just watch. They already have. They'll tell you that TOR is the first MMO in history to lose this many and that the sky is falling.

If I could have Fried Chicken Littles for dinner, I'd feed an entire nation on as many Chicken Littles as are here. OM NOM NOM!!

People will ignore this to the ends of the earth. Just watch. They already have. They'll tell you that TOR is the first MMO in history to lose this many and that the sky is falling.

 

If I could have Fried Chicken Littles for dinner, I'd feed an entire nation on as many Chicken Littles as are here. OM NOM NOM!!

If BioWare had to pay you JeramieCrowe, you would have clocked up a lot of overtime. You have to work too hard trying to justify yourself in these threads. Keep batting

*note this post is not meant to imply you are in any way a BW staffer.

People will ignore this to the ends of the earth. Just watch. They already have. They'll tell you that TOR is the first MMO in history to lose this many and that the sky is falling.

 

If I could have Fried Chicken Littles for dinner, I'd feed an entire nation on as many Chicken Littles as are here. OM NOM NOM!!

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA!!!!

WoW has over 10m subscribers, has been going strong since 2004 and Activision ONLY counts paid subscriptions that have been active in the last 30 days.

SWTOR has dropped to an alleged 1.3m subscribers, is 5 months old and EA are cynically including trial accounts and free gametime promotions as 'active subscriptions', including the free month they gave away (by SHEER COINCIDENCE) immediately prior to the quarterly report.

LOL!

They could right the ship somewhat with either cross server ques or merges.

As someone that LOVES the game, Im ready to fold up because I play alone most of the time.

If BioWare had to pay you JeramieCrowe, you would have clocked up a lot of overtime. You have to work too hard trying to justify yourself in these threads. Keep batting

 

*note this post is not meant to imply you are in any way a BW staffer.

I think it's interesting that all the haters are calling any realistic post a "fanboi" post, don't you think? I mean, it really shows how deep the pessimism runs on this forum when reality is so far above their heads. It's fascinating to watch, truth be told.

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA!!!!

 

WoW has over 10m subscribers, has been going strong since 2004 and Activision ONLY counts paid subscriptions that have been active in the last 30 days.

 

SWTOR has dropped to an alleged 1.3m subscribers, is 5 months old and EA are cynically including trial accounts and free gametime promotions as 'active subscriptions', including the free month they gave away (by SHEER COINCIDENCE) immediately prior to the quarterly report.

 

LOL!

Thank you for illustrating my point beautifully.

24% is above the typical MMO curve. Put away your "hate" and look at it objectively. It's actually good news.

Look, it's really not a matter of 'hate' here, just look at the situation as it is. The subs are down and are down far beyond expectation. Saying and (I guess) believe such drop off is a 'good news' its, in my opinion, simply not facing the reality. Even the BBC made an article obout it.

BBC NEWS - Star Wars: The Old Republic's subscriber numbers fall

Moreover I don't like to do comparison but again the facts are there. So far we know, according to EA, the active subs in SWTOR are 1.3M dropped from 1.7, right? Do we agree on these figures? Well the 'Panda lovers & kiddie game' aka WoW have, as per today, 10.2M active subs. Period.

You can argue endlessly but when I found myself on a server with 20 player online I can't call it MMO anymore.

You can argue endlessly but when I found myself on a server with 20 player online I can't call it MMO anymore.

Aye, I logged into my old character last week. Three people on the Imperial fleet.

Can't call that much of a MMO.

Personally, I hope they merge into enough servers to make 3-4 heavy servers.

People who do like the game but who haven't rerolled yet should get some of their money's worth.

I think it's interesting that all the haters are calling any realistic post a "fanboi" post, don't you think? I mean, it really shows how deep the pessimism runs on this forum when reality is so far above their heads. It's fascinating to watch, truth be told.

 

 

 

 

Thank you for illustrating my point beautifully.

really? there have been threads about the population drop for some months now. truth? how many fanboys came on those threads and accused everyone that they are just haters, that the population is GROWING (there's still a thread with this... how ironic) and so on and so forth, even though most people complained about the fact that they play this MMO ALONE.

a couple of months later BAM! -20ish % lost subs. i agree that it's not that much (about 40% and i would have unsubbed, wouldn't want to invest more into a dying game anyway) but it's not looking good either, especially considering those 30 days they gave for free (free? ha! i expect even more considering the **** they pull with those patches...).

truth? you can't handle the truth!

don't defend the fanboys. they do as much, if not more, damage than the haters (because i admit, there are haters). it's much better to call things by their name, which, imho is that this is a good and promising MMO, in which people scream to play together but the developer and publisher seem to make all the wrong moves.

if they keep it this way there's won't be long 'till not even the force will be able to save this product (which i really want to play, especially since i gave 120$ for that useless CE... now i'm not even asking them to do something about the CE owners - to give some update for the CE vendor, i only want this game to be OK).

OP hate to tell you wow loses close more than that a quarter

When WoW loses 400k subs, that is a 2-5% loss, where as SWTOR just lost 1 out of every 4 people playing. That is a HUGE difference.

I unsubbed (with 28 days still left of my free month). I think its funny that EA/BW execs claim the 400k lost subs are "casuals" and "trialers", In other MMO's, I have been in server first guilds/organizations and pushed content to the max. While I'm sure the data they have on the cancelled subs makes them appear to be casual, the reason they look that way is because the content was inaccessible (unless you happened to chose a server at launch that maintained its population) due to lack of population. I quit because i had a level 50 of every class, heroic FP gear, but couldn't find a way to run ops with the 4 people online each night.

Look, it's really not a matter of 'hate' here, just look at the situation as it is. The subs are down and are down far beyond expectation. Saying and (I guess) believe such drop off is a 'good news' its, in my opinion, simply not facing the reality. Even the BBC made an article obout it.

 

BBC NEWS - Star Wars: The Old Republic's subscriber numbers fall

 

Moreover I don't like to do comparison but again the facts are there. So far we know, according to EA, the active subs in SWTOR are 1.3M dropped from 1.7, right? Do we agree on this figures? Well the 'Panda lovers & kiddie game' aka WoW have, as per today, 10.2M active subs. Period.

 

You can argue endlessly but when I found myself on a server with 20 player online I can't call it MMO anymore.

His fanboyism runs too deep to accept that SWTOR needs to change in order to not have much higher subscription losses in the coming months. He'll be here in 6 months when SWTOR is down to 700,000 arguing about how the game is still very healthy for it's age. Quite fascinating really, just denying reality with so much conviction.

24% is above the typical MMO curve. Put away your "hate" and look at it objectively. It's actually good news.

Out of curiosity i made a graph based on http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png and http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-1.png (http://mmodata.net/).

It shows subnumber movement between 1.5 and 4.5 month after launch (to match the release dates of SW:Tors numbers) and while it can't be as accurate as the numbers impley it's still a good way to compare these games.

Here you go:

http://www.chartgo.com/share.do?id=ff183fffaa

His fanboyism runs too deep to accept that SWTOR needs to change in order to not have much higher subscription losses in the coming months. He'll be here in 6 months when SWTOR is down to 700,000 arguing about how the game is still very healthy for it's age. Quite fascinating really, just denying reality with so much conviction.

Game can be viable with 700k, aslong as they have the amount of servers that go with that number.

I half expect though, that BioWare will try to squeeze a buck and make people pay for each and every transfer while keeping the light (empty) servers running till the end of days.

50

Out of curiosity i made a graph based on http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png and http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-1.png (http://mmodata.net/).

 

It shows subnumber movement between 1.5 and 4.5 month after launch (to match the release dates of SW:Tors numbers) and while it can't be as accurate as the numbers impley it's still a good way to compare these games.

 

Here you go:

http://www.chartgo.com/share.do?id=ff183fffaa

It's an interesting chart, because SWTOR has felt very much like Rift population-wise, the only difference is SWTOR has more total population, but equally more total servers.

Look, it's really not a matter of 'hate' here, just look at the situation as it is. The subs are down and are down far beyond expectation. Saying and (I guess) believe such drop off is a 'good news' its, in my opinion, simply not facing the reality. Even the BBC made an article obout it.

BBC NEWS - Star Wars: The Old Republic's subscriber numbers fall

Moreover I don't like to do comparison but again the facts are there. So far we know, according to EA, the active subs in SWTOR are 1.3M dropped from 1.7, right? Do we agree on these figures? Well the 'Panda lovers & kiddie game' aka WoW have, as per today, 10.2M active subs. Period.

You can argue endlessly but when I found myself on a server with 20 player online I can't call it MMO anymore.

Thank you for this link but before you send it read it properly!

Here are some quotes;

However, Michael French, editor-in-chief of the video games trade magazine MCV said the Star Wars title was likely to have a long future.

"It is fairly natural that subscriber numbers change when you start asking people to pay for their subscriptions," he told the BBC.

"EA knows how to push into digital spaces - it's a very powerful brand and they are a very powerful business, so a little user attrition in the first few months isn't too worrying."

"In EA's mind the fact there are other MMORPG's coming is only further evidence that they need to be in this space."

Yeah EA is going bankrupt cause of SW:TOR read here;

For the fourth quarter as a whole EA's net income totalled $400m (£247m), up from $151m the previous year. Sales rose 20% to $1.4bn.

WoW lost 50% in its first 6 months. **** it is still alive with 10.2 million subs........

Game can be viable with 700k, aslong as they have the amount of servers that go with that number.

 

I half expect though, that BioWare will try to squeeze a buck and make people pay for each and every transfer while keeping the light (empty) servers running till the end of days.

 

50

Oh, it can be viable there but definitely not where Bioware/EA would like it. Furthermore, if they would change tier attitude about server transfers followed by mergers and making them available before the end of May it would go a long way to stitching back together the community. However, it doesn't seem to be that they grasp how grave the situation for this game is. At this point Aion has a better reputation and that is very, very sad.

WoW lost 50% in its first 6 months. **** it is still alive with 10.2 million subs........

I keep reading people saying things like that, but I've never seen anything to back it up.

From what I remember WoW maybe had a little dip (or perhaps a dip in growth - which isn't really the same thing), but WoW never had a huge server population drop.

If you're just talking about box sales to long term subs.... then maybe it was 50%, but then with over 2.4m box sales SWTOR is around the 50% retention mark at the moment as well.

Thank you for this link but before you send it read it properly!

Here are some quotes;

However, Michael French, editor-in-chief of the video games trade magazine MCV said the Star Wars title was likely to have a long future.

 

"It is fairly natural that subscriber numbers change when you start asking people to pay for their subscriptions," he told the BBC.

 

"EA knows how to push into digital spaces - it's a very powerful brand and they are a very powerful business, so a little user attrition in the first few months isn't too worrying."

 

"In EA's mind the fact there are other MMORPG's coming is only further evidence that they need to be in this space."

 

Yeah EA is going bankrupt cause of SW:TOR read here;

For the fourth quarter as a whole EA's net income totalled $400m (£247m), up from $151m the previous year. Sales rose 20% to $1.4bn.

 

WoW lost 50% in its first 6 months. **** it is still alive with 10.2 million subs........

I did, but it seems you missed the point. I was looking at figures not opinions. Secondly I don't have evidence WoW lost 50% of subs its 1st 6 months, can you link any sources?

TIA