Star Wars: The Old Republic Random Question/Discussion thread - F2P

[rezn0r]

more additions to betacake (link up above) including sith assassin

[vrumpt]

EA Q1 2012 Earnings conference was today; over 200k pre-orders in the first week

http://darthhater.com/2011/07/26/ele...nference-call/
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/eas-quarter...202510568.html

"We're well over 200,000 pre-orders in the first five or six days. From an EA perspective, that is significantly greater than any other EA title we've ever had in the first week," said the company's finance chief, Eric Brown, in an interview.

Our internal judgement shows in the double digit millions of subscribers. In order how to frame the business model, these are complex, you need information on lifetime of the users, churn rates, ect. We have framed this in prior discussions, half a million subs it breaks even, at a million it will make money but doesn't feel good on investment, anything north of a million starts to look like a great investment and makes our value judgement in the investment in the property through BioWare a very good one.

2:49: Q: You said record preorders, could you elaborate on that? Also curious on the beta testers? EB: Sure, not going to give actual numbers. They are ahead of expecations, largest number that we have done with EA, the next closest title was Battlefield 3 and it was up from there. We have about thousands people in the beta right now, improving the quality on every new release. Purchase intent through third-party research is some of the highest they've ever seen. In the summer we're going to be ramping up our beta campaign and by around the time we get to September, we'll be in a position to call the ball and give the hard ship date.

[Dantrag]

The WoW killer everyone has been touting about?

[Katlan]

The WoW killer everyone has been touting about?

No game will ever be a WoW killer, ppl need to stop thinking that. WoW is about to be released in Britain. Even if the US figures are like 5-6m and they lose 2-3m. Still pushing 8-9m in worldwide subs is a beast.

And WoW alrdy has all that stuff alrdy figured out based on previous trends:

2 weeks in, assume 20% will be lost due to disinterest in the game.

4 weeks in assume an additional 20-40% will be lost due to disinterest in paying for the game.

8-12 weeks in assume an additional 20% lost due to the grind getting to be too much for them and the early game nerfs/buffs of X class that they didnt play.

Assume 20% lost players who came from FFXI or WoW to return to that game if a new major patch/content release arrives.


Medium guild population losses will be for WoW patches from hardcore players who will be returning to their raiding guilds, half of these will return shortly though.

Major guild population loss for an extended period of time when Diablo 3 is release.

Minor loss of players for several weeks when Battlefield 3 / Modern Warfare 3 is release.

Minor loss of players for several weeks when new major fighting game releases. (Super MvC3 / SSF4AE:Turbo Edition / SoulCalibur5)

Blizzard expects to see at least 400,000k people leave for TERA, only 10% of those will cancel their subscriptions, 30% will return in 2-3 weeks, an additional 20% in 4 weeks, 50% when a major content patch is released. They have recovered half of the Rift losses already (300k people returned).

If Diablo 3 is released this year, I can see that being the biggest loss of player population, at least in the non-hardcore side of things. Otherwise it should be stable if the release is sometime in the holidays as Diablo 3 will probably hit early Q1 2012.

So you can assume something similar for SWTOR being added into the mix

[Dantrag]

I left for LoL. Did they take that into account?!?! A Not surprised at all by the Rift figures though. Can we assume that people will join/leave like they did for other MMO's? Who knows, I still think the only thing that will kill wow is blizzard's next mmo. And that might not even do it.

[Katlan]

that was posted by sono based on a friend who works for Blizzard and that was stated as the average trend for mmo's who compete against WoW (taken from previous figures).

[Lucavi]

They're about to release in Brazil as well, so yeah, if/whenever they lose NA/Chinese subs, they'll just pick them back up in another region that didn't have it at first. And wow, its amazing that they have all of that charted and logged and are basically just waiting for other titles to come out so they can compare.

Sounds like they really have us gamers figured out.

[vrumpt]

SWTOR is also going to be pulling in a lot of players who have never played WoW, or even an MMO in general. Theres a completely different audience for Star Wars and Bioware than WoW and Blizzard. Sure a lot of us have played pretty much everything, but there are still people who have not. I personally am much more of a Bioware guy than a Blizzard guy.

Rift obviously appealed to the WoW crowd probably because of word of mouth of people who were sick of WoW and wanted something new. There really wasn't a lot done to drag in a new population entirely, just steal from an already existing crowd which probably is a bad thing to do.

Star Wars and Bioware is something entirely different though. Everybody knows what Star Wars is, its a bigger franchise than Warcraft by a huge margin. Mass Effect, KotoR and Dragon Age are some of the best games ever made and are regarded as some of the best games of all time. This is an entirely different situation and shouldn't even be compared to Rift. Theres going to be more of a new audience here than any other MMO release in past years.

WoW will keep its fans but it looks like more and more are growing increasingly frustrated and disappointed with Blizzard, so I think eventually WoW will kill itself. This is especially true since new ideas are being funneled into Titan, rather than trying to revamp WoW and add some new system to revive interest in it.

Bioware on the other hand made it apparent at SDCC that they have plenty left to talk about with TOR, so i'm looking forward to what this new build is since i'm sure a lot of that is being included for testing in it.

[Zerocool]

Box sales will obviously be huge, there's no denying that. Whether they will be able to retain subs is another story though (no pun intended). Now, I think SWTOR will be one of the most, if not the most, Alt heavy MMOs to be released. Each class having their own unique story and having 4 different starting planets between the 2 factions will go a long way for re-playability. We know they will be launching with one raid and a few different end game flashpoints. Then you'll have dailies and PvP. Whether or not this is enough to hold people's attention or not remains to be seen. I guess it depends on how it's implemented and how repetitive it gets to determine that. I do think that with the game having high re-playability value gives them time to put out new content.

[Isiolia]

that was posted by sono based on a friend who works for Blizzard and that was stated as the average trend for mmo's who compete against WoW (taken from previous figures).

Wouldn't it adjust somewhat the older WoW n' the like get? I agree to the point that nothing will release and outright kill WoW. What I'd look at more is if something could release and actually compete in terms of market share/subscribers. Right now, nothing else even does a tenth of WoW's business right?

I think part of the issue is that many non/former MMO players are not looking for a game that hooks you into playing as much as the current MMO formula does. You might get more people willing to give the game a shot - and arguably make a better game - but not succeed in hooking people for years and years like older, more exploitative titles have.

[volcanicweather]

All you have to do is look at recent history to understand what happens when an IP that not currently in the MMO space (Galaxies is so dated it doesn't count) enters this space. I'm talking about DCUO.

People talk about how huge Star Wars is but honestly Superman/Batman combined is probably on the same level. While it's not a pure apples to apples comparison because SOE sucks I think Bioware, if they are smart, can learn a lot about the mentality of the "first time" MMO gamer from the release of DCUO. For those of you who weren't a part of the game, here's how it went:

- Huge sales initially for both the PC and PS3, broke SOE records
- Servers overloaded and long wait times to log on
- People leveled their characters solo for the most part (only took a couple days for max level in DCUO, will take a couple weeks in TOR from what I'm hearing)
- Once they got to max level and the story missions were over, the "what next?" factor set in
- People either quit the game or started to get gear via grinding group missions or raiding
- Next, people either got sick of doing the same missions over and over again and quit or kept going
- Once people got their gear, the "now what?" question was asked and because there wasn't an answer many players quit
- People playing the game are still grinding some of the same raids which have been in the game since day 1 and only the hardcore players remain - of this I would say it's probably 25% first time MMO players, which is a good percentage thanks to their love of the DC Universe themes

It's not rocket science and the WoW stats Katlan posted are pretty reflective of that. The group of gamers which I like to call the "serial MMO" gamers (which some people here are) and the lack of good current MMOs is the reason why we're seeing MMO sales through the roof but we all point and laugh when in 6 months the servers are dead. To cut this short and put it simply, the reason why we're not seeing any MMO trump WoW is because the MMO model isn't really sustainable except for rare instances. It's currently a front-loaded value model where people buy the game and play for a couple months before moving onto the next MMO - there's no aspect of sustanability and the volume of long-term revenue subscription fees is not large enough to keep up with the demands and short-term nature of today's gamers. What an MMO needs to do is what Guild Wars 2 is doing, back away from the subscription model to increase your initial revenue and create dynamic content to meet the demands of their audience.

[Man0warr]

They lost a lot more to RIFT than previous games, and fewer came back (even if they quit RIFT).

WoW never had more than 3 million NA subs, not sure where people are getting 5-6mil from. The majority of their "subs" are Chinese. Estimates actually put US subs under 2 million at this point.

Just going by worldofwarcraft.com web traffic (which correlates somewhat to interest/population), they are at an all time low since before the first expansion - the decline started about a month after Cataclysm released and hasn't recovered even after RIFT.

Nothing is going to kill the game though, even UO, EQ, etc still have 100k+ people playing. The game is 7 years old though, nothing they can do at this point will stop the bleeding, but the game will not die any time soon.

As RIFT showed, and WoW's bleeding are starting to show, the tried and true MMO model started by EverQuest is starting to fail.

It takes too long to generate end game content, so what usually happens now is once people finish the current content they unsub until 4-6 months later when a new patch is released. EverQuest actually had other things to do instead of raid to advance your character, like alternate advancement XP, but it was still pretty much a raiding endgame.

Something in the MMO model needs to change - maybe the direction GW2 is heading or what SWTOR is trying with over 200 hours of class story content - basically 8 KOTOR length games in one MMO.

[Alderaan]

There's a growing trend right now of people that are tired of the raiding system. They're tired of the gear treadmill. People don't want to do it anymore. People don't want to leave one raiding game for another. I agree with what Manowarr says about the EQ model starting to fail. Hopefully GW2 can change this but who knows.

[Insanecyclone]

I guess in summary, people are just lazy and want stuff instantly with no work done for it?

[Zerocool]

I wouldn't necessarily say it's all laziness. I think people are just tired of the grind. Really though, I think it has more to do with the content than anything else. Most devs slap in an instanced zone with some trash mobs and a few bosses and call it good. If developers can provide a way for people to progress while maintaining a level of fun it really takes away from the grind feeling. I think like said above, GW2 has the best chance to do this. Between the dynamic content, dynamic combat, and WvWvW PvP, they have the tools to provide a way for their players to progress while just playing the game and having fun.

[fantasticdan]

There's a growing trend right now of people that are tired of the raiding system. They're tired of the gear treadmill. People don't want to do it anymore. People don't want to leave one raiding game for another. I agree with what Manowarr says about the EQ model starting to fail. Hopefully GW2 can change this but who knows.

I don't think that has much to do with WoW's current bleeding of subscriptions. I mean if cata was basically just wotlk 2.0, it wouldn't be doing much worse than then, and no where near what it's down to now.

[Katlan]

I guess in summary, people are just lazy and want stuff instantly with no work done for it?

I think it boils down to doing the same thing in every mmo. And if its the same experience w/ different graphics, small game play differences, and different looking mobs, why not just stick w/ the one you have alrdy been playing for years?

I don't think that has much to do with WoW's current bleeding of subscriptions. I mean if cata was basically just wotlk 2.0, it wouldn't be doing much worse than then, and no where near what it's down to now.

Cata started strong, buit blizz went super slow on patches and ppl got bored. 6 months in we got lol ZA/ZG which is zero content for anybody who has been raiding

[vrumpt]

Box sales will obviously be huge, there's no denying that. Whether they will be able to retain subs is another story though (no pun intended). Now, I think SWTOR will be one of the most, if not the most, Alt heavy MMOs to be released. Each class having their own unique story and having 4 different starting planets between the 2 factions will go a long way for re-playability. We know they will be launching with one raid and a few different end game flashpoints. Then you'll have dailies and PvP. Whether or not this is enough to hold people's attention or not remains to be seen. I guess it depends on how it's implemented and how repetitive it gets to determine that. I do think that with the game having high re-playability value gives them time to put out new content.

Alt heavy is going to be very true. Bioware has something called the Legacy System, which they've only hinted on thrice in the past three years, but it was brought up again at comic-con (thank you James Ohlen), so apparently it survived development. Basically, as the name suggests, its a system to have players carry on their legacy in the game with each successive alt they roll.

7:28p: JO: We have an unannounced feature that will unlock other races/species for factions. (Legacy system)

Specifics are still in flux and he goes into a little more detail in the video version, but thats basically their goal.


With engame, they said Illum is their PvE endgame planet to provide alternative content to non-raiders, which i hope just doesn't turn into a giant daily quest hub. They've touched on PvP "lakes" in the past, which they haven't talked a lot about, and there may or may not be an equivalent end game PvP planet. Hard mode flashpoints are in the game, whether or not they are the same ones from leveling up I think is still to be determined, but they are there.

From betacake Q&A #12 (which is a good read if you haven't read it yet)

Q : Are there more flashpoints then those on the main site? If so how many more?

Yes. Currently, there's one for each faction around level 10, two for each faction around level 30, and two for each faction around level 47.

There is also a “heroic” flashpoint available at level 50, which to a large degree ties together the stories from the previous ones.
Now, BioWare isn't actually TELLING us where to find these, so it's very possible that there are more level 50 flashpoints people haven't found yet.

I'm still anxious to see what Bioware has in store for endgame though, as they have a good opportunity to innovate here

Bioware only releases info on stuff they know is going to make it to ship. They know that the basic MMO bells and whistles is going to make it to ship, but that doesn't mean they aren't still working on new stuff

[Man0warr]

Each Class has unique quests/stories too so there's plenty of incentive to make alts.

[Katlan]

Each Class has unique quests/stories too so there's plenty of incentive to make alts.

You will still be visiting the same area, in the same order, killing the same mobs, after you get off the noob island though