The sky isn't falling. A numbers based view.

That's just it, man, they are. Every single MMO since WoW has crashed and burned. SWTOR was said to be the last subscription based MMO to be developed and if it failed, it meant no other MMO will go for a subscription model in the foreseeable future. And that's exactly what happened.

I hate to agree with Goretzu on this, he and I so rarely see eye-to-eye, but I do. He echoes my sentiments in that time periods must be comparable. Launch to one year, same time period over ALL games, or some funtion that allows comparison. Otherwise you hamstring your arguement and only YOU can win with facts that YOU provide.

Your flippant attitude about going somewhere else to discuss OUR point of view just reinforces my contention that you are just here to pat those who agree with you on the back and dismiss those who don't. Effectively gathering about you those of like mind to show how "right" you are and dismissing others as "haters." That's what people like Bill Maher and Bill O'Reily do. That means that this is not a debate, but a club or guild where you are the leader.

Wow! Way to bring it on home, Anubis.

I agree with you to a point. All other games didn't achieve the same numbers as WoW so in that respect they 'failed' even if it's an unrealistic premise.

Looking at the total profitability of any of the games however will show you that while WoW can print the GDP of many small 3rd world countries on a monthly basis even if you can do a fraction of that it's a great revenue generator.

Now we can look at SWTOR specifically and see that it still generates anywhere from 90-180 million gross revenue yearly based on the sub range they provided. That is still a considerable amount of money and something that is lost on the average forum poster.

F2P might be the way forward for the industry as you state and I agree with you. The only other MMO in development that I would consider to have a chance at a large success is Elder Scrolls and I'm very curious to see what type of payment gateway model they ultimately use.

I don't get the impression Tim is claiming that he corners the market on the reason the game lost subs here. It looks to me like hes looking at trying to speak logically about the possibility that the game lost subs due to normal attrition. He has gathered his information, and is probably looking to like minded individuals to discuss the issue.

I stand in opposition to this view and the others that have presented it for many of the same reasons stated in this thread...ones I have pointed out before. But that doesn't mean, IMO, that this is any less valid of a reason for lost subs than any other. And I think that we should not interfere with those that wish to logically discuss the issue.

Perhaps they will discover there is no basis for this contention. Perhaps not. But I think it's not beyond consideration.

After all, losses by attrition is a common occurrence and well known fact. What is in question here is whether or not the losses incurred can be attributed ENTIRELY or in large part to attrition.

I say the evidence is overwhelmingly against that contention. But I think TIm and like minded individuals have a right to discuss their point of view unmolested.

Just my view of course.

I thought your post is old, because I didnt see guild wars 2 in the list..

WoW have lots of subscribers for 2 reasons. Before diablo 3 release, they offered 1 year sub with diablo 3 free.... So many wow players pay 70 euro and they got 1 year full sub and a brand new game with all betas included..

Now pandaria came, so it was a nice marketing move, to keep up this players...

EVE is a brilliand hard core game, so I am surprised for this population... You need tutorials to be able start and play this game.. so hard.. But I love it be that hard...

after edit:

I did some research abou it, and gw2 have arround 5 million players... They said (we banned about 4-5k exploiters that is 0.001% of the overall population).. that means about 5 million.. And they also made a world record, of people being online at the same time... So its more like gw2 + wow at the same level.. at this point

You arent discussing subs though. This thread is based on retention. Buying a box and then not subscribing is a loss in retention.

Eloquent as always.

As far as the data goes I presented what I could based on the data that was available to us. 1 year time frame is valid in that sense it's as close to it as possible data points allow. That isn't unreasonable or I guess we could just continue to make up our own facts. If that is more your style there's a thread on if the game will end next year. You (informal plural) will probably be happier there.

The reason I started this thread was to see if a discussion here could be started based on data rather than 'feeling' as the basis for the discussion itself. It did generate discussion, the flaming of me is generating exposure. I'm ok with that.

Things that are absolute stated in the first post are still true even if you don't like the presentation or disagree slightly in how they were complied. SWTOR is still the #2 sub based MMO and from 2008 the comparable games have had the same trend of high to low sub retention. Those statements can be made as facts because they have data that PROVES them.

That isn't a debatable subject, even if you want it to be. Maybe you think that 2006-12 is a better fit but that doesn't make the facts presented any less true it would just give a different viewpoint. Changing the date range doesn't change the fact that from 2008-present there is a decline in all games of nearly the same amount. So I reject the notion that the data is cherrypicked on that basis.

The interpretation is up for debate and I welcome it. But at the very least frame your argument on the facts presented, not feelings, assumptions, or innuendo.

And if you aren't able to do that please don't post here. This thread is better suited to that style of 'debate': http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=547607

This is why it is my contention that the same timeframe should be used in this analysis. He wants to do a few things with the OP. 1 is to show retention and 2 is to show a market trend. The flaw in that is that a launch game will show more retention in the first 6 months then any time after. So if you use a game during its first 6 months subscriber numbers and then compare it to a game that is showing subscriber numbers for a year or more later... the data is already skewed in favor of the new MMO.

Market trends show one thing very clearly. The first 6 months of the game has the strongest subscriber numbers. Its no coincidence that ToR looks to be the best game out there when you are showing numbers from its first 6 months, while comparing to MMOs that are using numbers past the first year mark.

Im sorry but this is a major flaw in your analysis. You cannot skew the numbers like that and expect correct results.

We will have 10 month old numbers next week after the conference call and I will add them in and recalculate. And if necessary change my opinion of the data. That's only logical, the debate always has purpose because we can see it progress and measure against that.

The bottom line is this though. We can never be 100% accurate with any of this and you should already know that. Companies do not have to give us the information unless they are publically 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.