SWTOR: Random Complaint thread. F2P means P2Win

[The Blackrose]

5. Casual players have unsubscribed.

This point is in dire need of some clarification. If EA just called all of the people who are hardcore gamer "casuals" just because they unsubscribed... Well now.

[ringthree]

This point is in dire need of some clarification. If EA just called all of the people who are hardcore gamer "casuals" just because they unsubscribed... Well now.

By casual, I am guessing they mean anyone that didn't sub after the first 30 days. It's a little early to even be thinking about having casual players.

[Lucavi]

This point is in dire need of some clarification. If EA just called all of the people who are hardcore gamer "casuals" just because they unsubscribed... Well now.

Either post-launch subs or anyone under a certain amount of hours played per week? Perhaps 8-10 hours a week is the cutoff between casual and "Trekkies from another Galaxy"?

[Ambrosia]

A little update to the whole casual numbers thingy. Yeah it is a whole lot worse than what they actually put out. But hey... there are no softening or fudging of the numbers with Arts of Electronica. Going to break up these 3 parts/quotes here:


Part I


Statement in the investor conference call:

"In our last call we indicated that we had 1.7 million active subscribers, and as of the end of April we now have 1.3 million, with a substantial portion of the decrease due to casual and trial players cycling out of the subscriber base, driving up the overall percentage of paying subscribers."

The response to that was the following:

"You know what's worse. Ricetello got it wrong. It was 1.3 million at the end of March. The clown can't even get his own company's fiscal-year-end right. The financial statement package clearly says:"

Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: EA) today announced preliminary financial results for its fourth fiscal quarter and fiscal year ended March 31, 2012.

And goes on to say:

STAR WARS®: The Old Republic™ active subscribers are 1.3 million.


http://investor.ea.com/releasedetail...leaseID=671113


"It's March 31st. Not the end of April. The guy is a clown (or he could have done it on purpose and is a liar). This is as pathetic as it gets. The guy just talks out his butt fast and furious and screws up important details. I honestly don't know why he hasn't been fired. He is to EA what Carley Fiorina was to HP."


Part II


"In our last call we indicated that we had 1.7 million active subscribers, and as of the end of April we now have 1.3 million, with a substantial portion of the decrease due to casual and trial players cycling out of the subscriber base, driving up the overall percentage of paying subscribers."

The response to that was the following:

"And yet they claimed last quarter that the vast majority were paying subscribers, now they claim a substantial portion were casuals and trialists? They can't both be right."

"So the 1.3M is at the end of April. Anyone know what a trial player who is also a subscriber is? Or how many of the 1.3M are on a free 30 days?"

The response to that was the following:

"The 1.3m at the end of April includes everyone who they gave a free month to whether they wanted it or not."


Part III


"EA, according to their figures, sells 67% of this game at wholesale. They don't get one-half of 67% of the gross revenue. And Lucas Arts, the Publisher, takes 30% of everything Star Wars. From Jelly Beans to the SWG license, to phony light sabers. I doubt SWTOR is any different.

So, post Lucas Arts, they get 70% of Origin store and 35% of retail (70% of 50%). That $150 million revenue stream from 2.4 million box sales, by the time it gets to EA... $35 million from the Origin store. Another $35 million from the retailers. You've now got $70 million in your pocket. For a $200 million (minimum) game. You're not profitable. You haven't even covered development costs.

Then the marketing. The marketing campaign was huge. Ricetello said BF3's was $50 million. SWTOR's is broader in scope, but less expensive since it was mostly post-holiday. With estimates anywhere from $35 million to $50 million. And considering EA's marketing went up close to $100 million last year thanks to the impact of BF3, SWTOR and ME3 on marketing... I believe those estimates.

Things cost money to make. They cost money to operate. Other people get a piece of your pie. Games are no different. There is no special magic that all the money gets to the developer. And yet people who clearly don't understand business or accounting tell us the game is profitable. It's clearly not even close at this point."

[tol]

Do you mind providing a source for your copy pasta? I'd love to look at it without having to read your bias spin and clever cut and paste job.

[tol]

oh nevermind I found it, a thread on MMORPGamer with fans giving their 'expert' opinion on what this means.

[Lucavi]

You guys keep throwing the "Bias" buzzword around like its brand new. Every single goddamn person on this planet has a bias one way or another, including you.

[Ambrosia]

Quick question: How did I put my bias spin into it? If you read the above post I would say roughly 98% of it are from quotes or from the link itself which was used a couple of times.


The main 3 spots I used (one which was already posted before):


http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=4289269


and


http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/g...t-so-much.html


as well as


http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/g...ion-to-13.html


Forget about the whole expert part... the fact that Ricetello was called out so easily is well... you don't need an expert for that do you?

[Ambrosia]

You guys keep throwing the "Bias" buzzword around like its brand new. Every single goddamn person on this planet has a bias one way or another, including you.

I seriously question if he even knows this. But what the hey 2% of what I wrote makes the entire post biased (Spinned). Oh well. And I guess it takes experts to actually see how easy it was to call out on Rici the Italian Stallion.

[Lucavi]

It must be the new form of Star Wars Whiteknighting: call everything biased. This might be worse than XIV.

"Liberal bias~!!"

[tol]

all of your posts are a practical smear campaign riddled with copy paste from really credible sources? It's okay to hate the game, a lot of people do but your posts are hard to read because they are just thick with misinformation you're conjuring up to support your point of view.

@lucavi: no shit? thanks for the clarification..thats some cold unfeeling logic man

[Cleverness]

Nothing can be worse than the 14 launch, don't even go there.

[Lucavi]

Nothing can be worse than the 14 launch, don't even go there.

Are you talking about in terms of White Knighting, because this is getting pretty bad, and it was bad when SW launched as well.

Obviously, no launch has been as bad as XIV's; that would be trolling to state otherwise.

Stay mad, Tol. Niche game is Niche, but most niche games didn't cost in the tens of millions to create. How's it feel to be the bronze medal?

[tol]

How's it feel to be the worst poster on BG?

[BadKarma]

MAH MMO IS BETTAR DEN UR MMO

[Arelian]

How's it feel to be the worst poster on BG?

Sick burn, bro!

But seriously, this thread should be no different than the ones Qalbert and other mods frequent. Kinda dumb to post purely negative things in a thread dedicated to the game. If you don't wanna discuss the game, get outta the thread. No, I don't think calling the game bad is discussing the game in any way shape or form.

[Odin'sLaw]

thread title should be changed to "i'm all biased up in here because i can't get a rainbow lightsaber when i'm not whiteknight" or someone make a better one idc

but none the less i've never had any of the items going missing or money going missing problems had the weird falling through planets glitch a few times (2/3) but i know people that do that on 11 still and that games 10 years old now? no game can be perfect but SW hasn't pissed me off enough yet to unsub (besides no chewie to play as the cool step brother of galka's)

[Katlan]

I mean, not to defend SWTOR since I don't like the game, but people look at WoW's numbers and assume that's the standard. Before that came out if an MMO had 100k subscribers it was pretty much really popular. Even if SWTOR only had half that as active that's not exactly bad, they'd just need to minimize the number of servers so it's not as barren and it'd still be a productive community. I think alot of us are just expecting an MMO to be overall the next big thing instead of just being successful to a niche community.

EVE Online is still popular, and we all played FF11 and we know that game had it's flaws. Nothing really wrong with a small community as long as the game properly caters to that community(like EVE does).

People forgot to account that WoW's numbers are worldwide. While it still has a large NA/EU player base, well over 50% of WoW's players are from oversees. I think only like 2-3m is from NA/EU

[Ezek]

Going off of MMOData's charts, WoW's NA/EU vs Eastern subs aren't that far apart:

http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-1.png

That being said, I'm surprised Aion is doing so well. Although, I'm pretty sure the large majority of their subs are from their eastern players.

[Cleverness]

Sick burn, bro!

But seriously, this thread should be no different than the ones Qalbert and other mods frequent. Kinda dumb to post purely negative things in a thread dedicated to the game. If you don't wanna discuss the game, get outta the thread. No, I don't think calling the game bad is discussing the game in any way shape or form.

Except, if you guys weren't dumb, you'd see this wasn't the normal SWTOR thread, but the RANDOM COMPLAINT THREAD. So no, you can gtfo if you don't like to read random complaints people are dropping because this is the appropriate thread for it.