From a Goldman Analyst Perspective on SWTOR

Seriously? I only posted so I could rate this thread as a 1. If anyone falls for this "analyst" I also have some financial advice for you. It will only cost a little.

Yea his numbers are way off....which leads me to believe hes not who he says....if he is I should go work and GS as an mmo market analyst if they even have such a thing...none the less he still makes some valid points.

Aion didnt really 'start off' with 3.5 million players. It was out in korea for over a year before NA lauch. In korea aion had around 2 million subs when it released in NA. I remember aion having 400k NA/UK pre orders so you can maybe at max add another 200k on to that considering aion plummeted to hell in a matter of months after release and absolutely nothing was done to fix the western version until a year later when majority of players were long gone.

Venture capitalist wants a 'Star War' version of World of Warcraft,. So they believe to be successful, you must copy WoW. This is why they shouldn't be designing games, and why most MMORPG fails.

We have to start off with a bit of history. What the world currently known as 'Role Playing Game' originates from the paper game 'Dungeon and Dragon' in the 70s, however it was the Japanese in the 80s who first discover the formula for success : "Level up!". People will continue to play as long as you can improve the character to overcome challenges. Players do not mind 'grinding' if the reward is worth it.

This brings us to the current status of SWTOR. Once you hit level 50, the scope for further advancement is limited. After you have done all the time consuming side quests like collecting datacrons, your only option is to play a new class. While there is potential for a person to play through all 8 classes, most will play 2 for Sith, and 2 for Jedi. As it stands, the lifespan of SWTOR is how long it'll take for a person to level 4 character. The faster players can finish 1-50 in a week, the slower players in around a month. So SWTOR have enough content for 3 months beyond the free period. After which people will unsubscribe.

Unless Bioware do something different, the game will be 'Free to Play' in 6 months.

The solution is not to add more 'raid' or 'PvP' content, since those are not accessible to 95% of the player base. You can try adding new stories and quests, but to keep up with player consumption, around 10 hours of new content must be added every week. As most quest takes half an hour to complete, that is about 80 quests a month.

Producing content at this rate is simply not possible.

What is left is loot. The endgame 'set' idea is simply stupid. Bioware should use the random number generator to their advantage instead of copying WoW : make the gears 'bind on equip', but give all epic gear random looks with random stats, with the 'set bonus' random as well. Similarly, make crafted items same looks but 'random stats'. Players will spend hundreds of hours to achieve the looks and stats they want. It is a simple change that will vastly improve the longevity of the game.

Otherwise, don't buy subscription over 6 months.

I'm really glad a lot of people have read this... I was about to skip it over and figured I'd read a little. I would really like to know what the OP thinks about GW2.

also this...

Why he says he's an analyst, he doesn't actually follow any basics on analyzing data and his profile says he's not an analyst.

The funny part was when he said TOR was funded by venture capital.


LOLOLOL

Goldman annalist posting on a mmo forums?

Yeah right.

Who do you think funds these things? the tooth fairy?

You mean Bioware isn't a small startup company? I mean, they've only been around since 1995 and are owned by one of the largest game publishers in the world.