Wednesday, August 1, 2012



   What the hell do I make of this?

On subs:





On the switch to FtP








  1. I'm looking forward to trying it out. They probably would have earned more from me if they had packaged it as a series of GW-like stories, though; pay for a story, keep access forever. Now, it's going to be harder to convince me to give them money.

    1. I think the pricing structure is a bit odd too. The planets are already divided up rather nicely, it seems like they could have made more money selling non-class quests on different planets...say after the first two? Still, for players like me that don't care at all about raiding or PvP it will be a great value.

  2. I still chalk it up to irrational expectations combined with excessive development investment. They thought they could break Blizzard's golden goose.

    1. The insane hype around this game before launch really destroyed any chance it had of meeting most expectations. Anything short of WoW levels of success were doomed to be viewed as a failure by a lot of commentators. In today's crowded market, I doubt even WoW could have that level of success.

    2. @Rowan - Hard to argue with that.

      I still like the game a lot and plan on subbing regardless, but now all those who hate TOR have more of a reason to dump on the game.

  3. To be honest, the most grating thing to me in this whole situation is EA's attitude. Maybe it's just me, but when I read between the lines their quotes are nuanced with defeatist or negative vibes and it almost seems like EA has given up on SWTOR already. Sometimes it takes more than a F2P switch, the heart's gotta be there too.

    1. I completely agree with you. Reading between the lines of some recent statements, EA has all but decided that unless the switch to FtP gets them into millions of players and a ton more revenue, the game is going on life support just like DAoC, WAR, and UO currently.

      EA has never had the mindset necessary to run a successful mid-tier MMO as near as I can tell. Google Sims Online and Motor City Online for early cautionary tales.

  4. It is a bit interesting to see that there is all this failure and doom attitude even from EA, when their execs claimed maybe 2 years ago that they would be quite ok with 500K subscriptions and really great with 1 million.

    Either the costs went out of control after that, or they were simply adjusting the truthfulness of their statements.

    I certainly would like to continue with some of the class stories, but other parts of the game got in the way in order to focus on that. So I am not so sure when I would try it again.

    As for sub-based games with 500K+ subscribers, I am pretty sure Final Fantasy XI was at the 500K mark back when I played it, in 2004. That is Western+Japanese players, since everyone were on the same servers.

    1. FFXI had 500K steady subs for a very long time according to what I read. Now that I think about it, they must have had more at some point if that's true. The original EQ hit 500K subs but didn't stay there for very long. It remains to be seen whether SWTOR is going to be steady more than 500K subs or is just passing through that point like AoC and WAR did.

  5. I have to admit, I'm very surprised the it went F2P this quickly. Like you and GC, I'm also concerned with EA's wording for the announcement. It does feel like there's a lack of commitment on their part, which given how they've mishandled Warhammer is not a good sign.

    Still, this news has actually gotten me considering playing again which I never expected after the whole transfer/name thing. If nothing else, I'd just have fun popping in occasionally to play the space battles.