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

Yes, I think most reasonable people can agree that almost all games on the market have suffered sub loss, and the information gathered supports that contention. I would agree with that.

I will not argue against your point Tim, as we have had this discussion before, I don't feel it's necessary to rehash it here and I think you should be able to discuss your conclusions with those that agree in whole or part without being berated by opposing views.

I may make comments from time to time but do not want to derail your thread. Discuss on.

There may just about be just 500,000 subscribers at present, but only because people have been resubscribing the last few weeks for the FTP bonus coins. There is absolutely no way in hell there are 500,000 active players, and there is a big difference between the two.

It is also more likely those people who only resubscribed for the bonus coins, will be the first to unsubscribe again. So I wouldn't get too excited over the current number of subscriptions if I were you.

I added this to the original post. That should satisfy the people that do not agree with the data itself. I believe it to be self evident but apparently it's not.


Disclaimer: We can never be 100% accurate with any of this and you should already know that. Where possible the most accurate and available datapoints have been used for the time frames under consideration. Companies do not have to give us the information unless they are publicly 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.

Thats not my entire point though. Its not a matter of using 6 month or 8 month or 10 month. Its a matter of you using 6 months worth of data on a launch game versus the last 6 months of data of a game that is more then a year old.

Lets agree on a few things. I really dont think you would disagree with this.

1. Most MMOs have a decline in subs at a certain point. Only a few MMOs increase rather then decline. This is indicative from the MMO data chart that is linked in your OP.
2. Almost all MMOs have their peak subs in the first 6 months before going on decline. Only a few still gain subs.
3. A big part of your OP is retention rate.
4. You are showing ToR to have a higher retention rate

Im sure you agree with these 4 points. If you do not then I would like an explanation as to why you dont agree with them.

Saying that.... Is it not fair to say that the data is skewed in favor of ToR? Think about this logically now.

1. Almost all MMOs have their sub peak inside their first 6 months from launch
2. The data you are using for ToR is inside its first 6 months from launch
3. The data you are using to compare ToR against is data not from the first 6 months of launch of other MMOs... but rather data from an entire year or more after launch.

If you were to look at data from the first 6 months of launch of the other compared MMOs, you would come out with a different retention rate for those MMOs. The reason is because after the first 6 months most MMOs hit a fairly large decline. For a fair comparison you would need to compare the time frame from launch and stop at the 6 month mark. If you do not do this then your data is skewed and your OP is flawed.

Then if you go on to update the 10 month mark then you must update all of them from the 10 month mark.

That is my biggest disagreement with your analysis. I wont go into the fact that you conviently chose the 2008 starting point. Because if you went back farther you would have to add in MMOs that totally destroy your opinion. WoW for one and Eve Online for two. Both of those MMOs have well over 100% retention because both of those games have done nothing but grown. Then you would also have to factor in alot of other MMOs such as Lotro, EQ2, DAoC, etc.

Its not a matter of berating him because we have opposing views. You cannot have a discussion that is one sided. Its like playing chess and dictating where your opponent can move his piece.

You cant just start a thread and exclaim "agree with me or your wrong and get out of my thread" . Topics of debate do not work like that.

Logical, since people woke up and saw that subscription is just a greey method and not because of the servers.

Servers today cost nothing for the big companies, its more like 0.1p per person...

I think EA rushed the game a bit? And it came out earlier than expected?

1 - 3 are correct. 4 is not, and I'll explain below.

It would be illogical to state that a fair comparison is the one where I have to lower TOR's retention date based on a number that exists only for this title and not the rest we are comparing. Having considered that dilemma the only solution that makes sense is using the equal data that exists in terms of max subs.

There's no deception here, I clearly stated what I was doing, and should the first year box sales number be available for those other games I will gladly use them- they aren't however anywhere I can find them. Logically you can't believe that only TOR has a discrepancy between box sales and max subs upon launch.

Your argument is that I am artificially raising that number, when in reality using the boxes sold only for SWTOR makes the retention % meaningless without similar context. I hope you understand what I mean.

I will gladly recalculate this if those numbers become available.

To your other point... I don't agree. We'll leave it at that. It's perfectly ok to use what we have an continue to refine it as we go along and have more data added. Next week that number will change, I will update and draw new conclusions. 3 months from now we will have the approximate 1 year data for TOR. We will reassess again. This is not an absolute.

You can have your own opinions but not your own facts. I presented where my facts came from and drew my conclusions. If you disagree with the data itself (which is imperfect of course) unless you are able to specifically fix said data you are just disagreeing based on your feelings and missing the bigger picture.

We can determine trends with statistics, then discuss what they mean, in fact your last post agreed with me in principal. The rest of what you are doing here is because you refuse to accept my conclusions and you don't have to agree with me. I'm ok with that but the data presented is the best we have. If you exclude that then this is a feelings based debate again.

not he sky isnt falling,,,why?

BECAUSE IT FELL SEVERAL MONTHS AGO, AND TRIGGERED THE LAYOFFS AND F2P PLAN

this isnt ANY game,,,this is STAR WARS ,,the BIGGEST IP on market

they had SO much more time and resources to make this, than other games have

and the fact that its doing no better than those , MAKES it a failure

This is the last post I'll make for a while because I want to see the discussion unfold on it's own but I think a few of you are being terribly biased here.

If I had posted "Will the game end in 2013?" you would have accepted this as a perfectly reasonable premise and commented on it as you have in that thread never actually pointing out the flaws with the illogical statement that you are being asked to evaluate. In fact a few of you have even agreed it could be shut down under certain conditions and that isn't based on anything factual whatsoever.

Instead I came into a discussion with numbers I actually looked up, and drew conclusions based on that. You are rejecting that premise as flawed for technicalities that you consider enough to invalidate the whole thread. The discussion then turns from discussion of my conclusions themselves and proposing your own to questioning my methods, motivations, and objectivity.

See the difference? I am sure that because I posted this that plays a role so I'm not taking that personally. Just step back an look at it again in context.