F2P in 3....2...1...
he demands of building a fully-voiced MMO means that new missions and planets have to be planned far in advance but that doesnt necessarily mean that BioWare cant change tack if the community demands it. Were getting spryer all the time Erickson explains usually its a question of priority and since we have separate teams working on different initiatives we can usually change priorities for a particular game update fairly easily.
BioWare claim that subscriber numbers havent dropped, but concurrent users at peak times have. This, Erickson says, is the reason why players are noticing a lot of light server populations and also why mergers are on the cards, but not a priority. According to Erickson, theyre doing anything and everything to bring that concurrent users number up. Nothing is off the table when it comes to making sure our communities are strong and active on each server.
game over?
I did not have a lot of fun playing this game
Game over?
Selective quoting?
So it is tanking? Will Bioware have some serious 're-structuring' as a result?
Game over?
Selective quoting?
If it looked and felt like Star Wars in the first place, then they wouldn't have player count issues.
I think it's a matter of time. They had 2 games in a row which dissapointed their core fanbase and they failed to to widen their audience enough to stop caring about their core fans.
Mass Effect 3 nor Dragon Age 2 were commercial failures.
Should've made KOTOR 3 fool.
I did not have a lot of fun playing this game
Why don't they just make it a fun game?
It’s important to BioWare that the Rakghoul plague is a one-off. “Events are, by their very nature, transient things that build a sense of history within the game” Erickson explains. “Later you’ll pull out your red rakling pet and say, ‘remember when the rakghoul plague hit.’”
Gamasutra reports on one such forecast for Star Wars: The Old Republic by Cowen and Company. Analyst Doug Creutz says that though TOR's subs peaked at 1.7 million in February, he expects them to drop to around 1.25 million by March of 2013.
"At half a million subscribers, the game is substantially profitable, but it's not the kind of thing we would write home about," he said. "Anything north of a million subscribers, it's a very profitable business."
Curious on those who are calling for F2P. Why exactly? What F2P MMOs do you currently play? How much do you buy from them? Do you buy anything? How many are you playing at once? Any? How much content to you continue to expect when a game goes F2P?
Curious on those who are calling for F2P. Why exactly? What F2P MMOs do you currently play? How much do you buy from them? Do you buy anything? How many are you playing at once? Any? How much content to you continue to expect when a game goes F2P?
It looks and feels exactly like Star Wars from the perspective of some bloke carrying out a bunch of tasks and collecting rewards.
Mass Effect 3 nor Dragon Age 2 were commercial failures.
This game doesn't even need to be F2P. You can max a character in a month and never pay a subscription. You have seen all that is worth seeing and spent a lot more hours than any normal single player game doing it.
I'm playing Star Trek Online off and on. I've spent around $40 in real money total, and I dont feel that obligation to play in order to justify the subscription. I can stop playing for a month and sign back in, no worries. Or just quit and not have to worry about canceling.
EDIT: Most importantly, I can download and try the game for free to see if I'll like it, then pay what I want to have the experience I want.