From a Goldman Analyst Perspective on SWTOR

they have a high revenue because they lobbied the crap out of taking peoples mortgages and bundling a majority of the lowest rated and gave it the highest rate, rolled it over rinse and repeated it until the bubble burst. I can sell you a sack of c r a p and tell you it's gold, but when you open it, it will still be a sack of c r a p...

They played the stock market they lost, they took our money again, not once not twice but so many times it is not even funny. You cry baby rejects need to quit with this oh this game I could do better syndrome, play the game don't play the game otherwise s t f u and go back to your "other" games.

No. he's not responsible for the collective failure of Goldman simply because he's not part of it. No professional analyst would be so clueless to claim that this game has or ever had 4-5 million subscribers (and most would be very, very careful before even hinting at the possibility of it ever getting that far), without even delving in the shalemess theorycrafting, the ludicrous namedropping and the completely weak suggestions (close for months and then reopen? Just lol. Someone needs a clue) without any kind of solid data to base this all on, and actually going against ALL the little data we have, that shows the game on the raise and definitely not declining.

An actual analyst would send his report where it'd make him money. A concern troll with an agenda would post his ludicrous delirium here impersonating someone he's not to try and give himself a credibility his theories don't earn.

I agree with what you're stating Bodypull. I think one of the primary issues is that in order to maintain a steady growth a gaming company can't slack on the industry standards that exist. Bioware swung and completely missed on the interface responsiveness. That alone makes wow more appealing to some and makes me sit on the fence. I personally like the idea of no auto attack because it forces the player to work harder but in general I think more people won't like it.

When a gaming company sets the bar higher, i.e. WoW the rest have to scramble to both identify A) what's been set higher and B) how to compete with it.

I'm disappointed in some aspects of SWTOR that you didn't mention and I think are important issues. Crafting is not as good as other games. It's a money sink with virtually no return. There's no in-game economy stimulated by crafting. This is a direct problem for a lot of players I know personally. Former SWG players loved the original SWG concept of crafting then Sony went and butchered it and players left SWG in throngs. Bioware completely ignored the past and instead of creating a thriving economy where crafting was important they made a complex crafting system that doesn't really feel like it benefits players in any way. Sure it's more immersive than say wow's crafting but immersiveness doesn't = fun.

I realize some of what I'm saying is biased but I don't think I'm wrong either. Anyhow, good post and it was a great read.

Actually WoW set the bar lower, especially in terms of balance between innovation and iteration.

i'm making quite a lot of money both with artifice and synthweaving. I'min contact with plenty people that do the same with other crafts (especially Biochem). Any chance you may consider the possibility that you're just playing the market wrong?

Way too many misspelled words in the OP for me to believe you are a Goldman analyst ("there" instead of "their", "vary" instead of "very"). If you really are a Goldman analyst, that firm may be in trouble.

I call Bravo Sierra on this whole OP. This guy cannot be as well educated as he claims with all the misspelled words and improperly structured sentences. A couple I could see but the whole thing smacks of a desperate attempt to mimic a subject matter expert. Big words and attempts at legalese do not bring any sort of authority to your rehashed argument of doom.

This is just lame.

Dear OP:

I'm not a professional investment analyst. I am, however, a professional writer.

You may wish to engage my services when dealing with your clients. I assure you, my rates are very cheap (I live in flyover country, I can afford to charge less), and the payoff from being able to appear more professional, and thus, more convincing, when communicating to clients will be considerable. If you're a success now, writing so poorly, imagine how successful you'd be if you had someone making a few corrections to your work?

As it is, it's difficult to take your claims of professional knowledge seriously when you present your argument so sloppily. You may be all you claim to be, but you do not convey that knowledge very well. Argument from authority is only effective when people recognize and trust said authority.

(For example, consider the thread title:"From A Goldman Analyst Perspective on SWTOR"? What does that mean? You probably meant "From a Goldman-Sachs Analyst: A Perspective on TOR", or "A Goldman-Sachs analyst offers his perspective on TOR" or a dozen other variants. How many potential clients of yours never even read your mail because the first sentence or two turns them off? I could make a little extra money, and some useful connections, helping you out; you could make a lot of extra money by having more clients. A good investment, wouldn't you say?)

Contact me privately and we can discuss rates, turnaround time, and so on.

None of which would be allowed to share their analysis or insites into a company's sucess or failuers for free. And if he is a GS analyst, then I'll be suing the guy for everything he's worth if I quit, and this game ends up blowing up and taking down WoW after all. This guy is a joke.

Also....

Good car illustrations..except when I buy and test drive a car, I expect a finished product because:

1. I'm about to drop thousands of dollars on it.

2. I know they won't be rolling out upgrades to it weekly/monthly to fix it as they go. (Which by the way if they did, I would expect the Bat Mobile a year or two after buying an old VW Beetle.

To be honest, anyone with a college degree in marketing/information systems/business could throw out guesses, and terms like this guy.

And if I am wrong, I do apologize, but you are worth at the minimum 45 dollars an hour, considering avg salery for a GS analyst is around 75,000 a year according to salery.com and glassdoor.com, and you probably have better things to be doing than playing MMOs, or giving out advice/predictions for free.

That is all.

Well written up, but with many analysis the same poor assumption is made. The market is what's established not about the market is created.

As a professional your applying your personal play and interest style. While you make a linking correlation between KOTOR players. You assume that most gamers are already familiar playing polished MMO's. This is already inaccurate.

Let's take a step back to 7 years ago to Video Game console company. Struggling with the smallest market share. they made a bet on a console system that in many ways was inferior to the competition. The system had unfamiliar controls, delayed response(complained), poor hardware, software line up that wasn't liked by the established market.

The company I'm talking about of course is Nintendo. ALL analysis made the claim that the Wii would once again be the worst market share. This was based on the establishment of only comparing the product with current market values. Nintendo hired Regis File Aime for the purpose of applying the Blue Ocean strategy. Create a non competition market.

Our analyses here only really uses Red ocean strategy values that are from an already established elite market. Now Nintendo's history with the Wii is not that old. So we all know what the Wii AND the Nintendo DS success. Such vastly overwhelming success that defied all analysis.

So as my suggestion. Don't listen to the OP. He's spouting a far better formed version of the same Elitist argument. He comes from the MMO gamer who wants more. Rather than the Blue Ocean New market that Bioware is aiming for in regards bring NEW story to the MMO market.

Take two different products and create a new experience.

I can't say if Bioware will succeed, but I know the OP post is already fail for being short sighted.

LOL... "Goldman Analyst"? Ummm OK.

• Is this the same "Goldman" that just laid off 1,000 employees in order to cut expenses by $1.2 billion?
  
• Is this the same "Goldman" that had to settle a $60,000,000 settlement for sub-prime mortgages?
  
• Is this the same "Goldman" that was sued by the SEC for FRAUD?

You guys don't have a good track record predicting the stuff you're supposed to be good at predicting... so now you're going to lend such expertise to something you know nothing about???