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Star Wars: The Old Republic sub numbers already declining - analyst

vaelic

Banned
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...ic_sub_numbers_already_declining__analyst.php

Analyst group Cowen and Company suggests in a new report that player subscriptions for Star Wars: The Old Republic have begun to decline since Electronic Arts said earlier this year that the game has 1.7 million subscribers.

Cowen's Doug Creutz estimates that subscriber numbers for the game peaked at 1.7 million in February, and that by the end of the current fiscal year in March 2013, the game will have around 1.25 million subscribers, based on server statistics provided on TorStatus.net.

Creutz also noted that EA has begun to heavily promote the game, leading him to believe that this is in response to the stalling subscriber numbers.

"We believe that the apparent decline in subscribers is most likely due to a lack of 'end-game' content for the title, meaning that players who hit the level cap have few compelling options in terms of ongoing game play," he noted. "While the game got off to a good start, the relatively light amount of end-game content does appear to be taking a toll."
 
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Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
Blizzard has heavily advertised WoW throughout its whole lifespan. Analysts are dumb.

Free weekends. You don't do free weekends if you're satisfied with your subscription growth.
 

Busty

Banned
I'm surprised that people have hung on this long.

Presumably they are hanging around hoping to bump into a dancing Jeff Gerstmann.
 

Ulairi

Banned
Free weekends. You don't do free weekends if you're satisfied with your subscription growth.

Yeah. And you'll continue to see those even if the game had 10,000,000 subscribers. The market for MMOs has changed. I still see TOR going F2P next year but analysts don't know jack and really shouldn't be treated as experts at anything.
 

Busty

Banned
..., but analysts don't know jack and really shouldn't be treated as experts at anything.

Good grief.

azztina.gif
 
Free weekends. You don't do free weekends if you're satisfied with your subscription growth.

All that is, is signs of marketing tactics in an increasingly bloated genre of gaming. There are so many MMOs with subscriptions, and most people will not subscribe to two different games at a time, so stuff like free weekends, free till level 20 and so on is just further steps in a marketing war.

Is SWTORs subs decilining? Sure.

Has the same thing happened to every MMO since WoW? Yep.

This is why MMOs need to stop opening so many servers at launch, its inevitable that you are going to lose subscribers as time goes on.

Also this guy gets paid to look at third party sites that have no concrete data and write about them? Damn I need to change majors.
 

Ulairi

Banned
WoW will never be beaten.

Don't know why companies keep trying.

Companies aren't trying to "beat" WoW. MMOGs that have a sustainable subscriber base are hugely profitable. The marginal revenue per subscriber gets higher as the game gets older. You know what is a hugely profitable game that most likely only has 100,000 subscribers? Ultima Online. The marginal revenue per subscriber for UO is probably the highest in the space.
 
Project Titan has a shot.

Only because it's Blizzard lol. That said, I enjoyed SWTOR but got bored when I hit lvl 50 and beat my story line and had nothing much to do. That plus they really need to merge servers because many planets are just empty, particularly those in the later game.
 

Solid07

Banned
I totally forgot that I had this game. I haven't played this game since my free trial ended at the end of January.

If I could return the game, I would've done it in a heartbeat.
 
I thought it might draw in people like me who won't play MMO's for whatever reason by being Star Wars. Then again I was just reminded of why I won't pay monthly fees to play games. The free trial of WoW should have done that, but I do so love The Old Republic franchise.
 
How does this compare with SWG?

SWG peaked at around 400k I believe

I don't see TOR as being an MMO. Its a single player experience with the option to do co op play. Both had potential to be slam dunk MMOs but SWG crashed and burned and TOR just never took off.

The analyst in the OP is saying the game will have around 1.25 mil subs in another year (end of fiscal March 2013). That is far more successful than majority of MMOs released in the past decade.
 

Draxal

Member
How does this compare with SWG?

Two very different type of mmos. SWG is pure sandbox, TOR is themepark ride like Wow.

Old Republic was released way too early, and it's engame is based on an older 2008 Wow. There's going to be growing pains with it until they find their niche.

In all honesty, some of the storylines are better than anything in Kotor1/2 because the pc's are not limited as playing as the "good guys".
 
I don't see TOR as being an MMO. Its a single player experience with the option to do co op play. Both had potential to be slam dunk MMOs but SWG crashed and burned and TOR just never took off.

That's one reason I thought I would like it more, but yeah I'm not paying $240 to play a worse KotOR.

I'll be interested when its Free2Play. :) But its backed by EA, so it'll never happen.
Or it'll be virtually unplayable without major amounts of microtransactions.
 

Desaan

Member
After TOR, DA2 and ME3 I can safely say I won't be buying any more BioWare games.
They are also off my Christmas card list!
 
Kind of related, but how does this compare to D.C. Universe Online?

DCUO combined on two platforms was about 500k max but it went free to play in less than a year of release. This analysis guess is claiming the game will still have 1.25 mil at the end of the next March fiscal year in 2013. Seeing as they stated the game needs 500k to be profitable, the game is still going to be successful for EA at that time.
 

Chairman Yang

if he talks about books, you better damn well listen
I think the analyst is being ridiculously overoptimistic. There's no way the game will have 1.25M subs a year from now, unless EA gives them away for free or something.
 
I just can't fathom why anyone would continue to sub after the first month or two. I had planned on leveling a Repub after my Empire character hit 50, but I was done with the game after 4 weeks.
 

sangreal

Member
I don't see TOR as being an MMO. Its a single player experience with the option to do co op play. Both had potential to be slam dunk MMOs but SWG crashed and burned and TOR just never took off.


Exactly, it is very good as a co-op/single player game. It fails as a MMO (badly)
 

Trouble

Banned
I don't see TOR as being an MMO. Its a single player experience with the option to do co op play. Both had potential to be slam dunk MMOs but SWG crashed and burned and TOR just never took off.

Have you played it? GAF guilds raid several times a week. End-game is almost identical to WoW in activities.
 
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