The end of the arguement. Is SWTOR in decline? Can it be saved?

At 7:30am Central Time today, there were 2 people on the Republic Fleet on my server. Someone explain to me how any game can advertise playable content with 2 people online? That right there tells you a lot on some of the problems that desparately need to be fixed.

You've been down that road Elgarr, you know that road, you know exactly where it ends. And I know that's not where you want to be

7:30am.

See thats the problem you have unrealistic expectations.

At 7:30am Fatman had 38 people on the fleet and no one wanted to do anything that early cause they had to go to work/class/etc soon. So guess what? The most jam packed server in the game no one could be ran with either.

You need more realistic expectations in life.

Well at prime time most servers don't even reach 38 players so what does that tell you?

I just canceled, no reason just boredom from lack of anyone else I know still having a subscription.

And even when we did play the game together we didnt actually do anything together. The game encourages you to play solo. I am not running around an MMO anymore wasting hours trying to find a healer exc exc.

7:30am.

See thats the problem you have unrealistic expectations.

At 7:30am Fatman had 38 people on the fleet and no one wanted to do anything that early cause they had to go to work/class/etc soon. So guess what? The most jam packed server in the game no one could be ran with either.

You need more realistic expectations in life.

At 7:30am Central Time today, there were 2 people on the Republic Fleet on my server. Someone explain to me how any game can advertise playable content with 2 people online? That right there tells you a lot on some of the problems that desparately need to be fixed.

Here is what was actually said:

"As John stated, we have sold through 2 million units of the game since December. We currently have a little over 1.7 million active subscribers. The rest have either not started playing yet or have opted out. This is an outstanding start for an MMO, and the metrics on engagement suggest players are loving the game." [Frank Gibeau, President EA Labels, February 1, 2012]

What does this mean in plain English?

1. The gap of 300,000 includes both players that have opted out of a subscription and players who never started. There are a number of reasons for the latter: Lack of time, change of plans, hardware incompatibilies, etc. I personally have a bunch of games that I owned for quite some time before I started playing them. The fact is that there is no information on what share of the 300,000 opted out and what share never started playing.

2. Practically all MMOs include 30 days of play with the purchase of the game. Enjoyment of games is highly subjective. Just as there are many players who don't play single-player games to completion, there will be players who, for whatever reason, are not sufficiently attracted to a particularl MMO to keep subscribing. Assuming, for argument's sake, that all 300,000 consist of players who opted out, this still represents a capture rate of 85%, which is deemed excellent for an MMO.

Why are all the BioWare crusaders and apologetists saying these sources are not reliable? We have confirmation from EA that they are indeed laying off 500 - 1,000 employees (to be expected, the EA PR machine has already spun this layoff as a "restructuring plan where we expect to recuperate the number of people being shifted around by the end of the year") and that poor performance for BF3 and SWTOR is reflected by the huge losses resulting from a huge investment on marketing strategies which are not returning a proper return on investment.

1.2 was not the resurgent patch that BW was looking for. This is obvious by the free month of gameplay to keep a hemorrhaging playerbase from dwindling even faster. You can ignore all of the complaints you want from all the people who are having a dismal gameplay experience on low populated servers and the innumerable number of players who are dissatisfied to the game but that would be turning a blind eye to very real issues facing this game in both the short-term and the long-term. Although the forums are probably frequented by a minority of the playerbase, there is still a sufficient number of players to draw a population sample from which would accurately predict the sentiments players are currently having and whether or not this indignation can be statistically projected to result in unsubscribing. Player complaints are not superficial either; they demand answers to very obvious issues.

Let's not forget that BioWare has to compete with Diablo 3 next month which is the behemoth to compete against for every single game developer this year -- add GW2 to this furious battle between game developers and SWTOR finds itself in an extremely competitive market.

Investors are not dumb. Within two weeks of the game's release, Brean Murray Carret & Co (a reputable investment banking firm) quickly "issued a note to investors on Thursday morning, slashing its price target on EA stock from $22 to $28. Analyst Todd Mitchell said he had “creeping concerns” over Star Wars: the Old Republic’s profitability." These investors did not re-issue another note even when the numbers for February were released. They know this game had too many issues when it came out and no amount of post-release patching was going to save it.

EA has already made its initial ROI on this game. But, internally, the management is obviously not happy with the subscription numbers (as expressed in the article linked by the OP) and seem extremely wary about the future health of this game. When the developers include a "preview pane" for the Legacy abilities to come out in 1.3, it's quite pathetic that they need to show players future updates to hopefully keep people playing for their subscriptions for the incoming new features.

IMO, the omission of Ranked WZs and a complete destruction of the finely crafted class balanced present pre-1.2 has damaged the game beyond repair.

Anyways, I'll be here until Wednesday. Then my subscription is over.