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EA to cap Star Wars: The Old Republic sales

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Comments

  • GrumpyMel2GrumpyMel2 Member Posts: 1,832

    False Scarcity is a very old marketing tactic. It's designed to increase the anxiety of the buyer that if they don't make a purchase decision right away...they'll "miss out" on something very important.  While there are real resource concerns, IT has made leaps and bounds in terms of technical measures to address rapid scalability and spikes in demand. Dollars to doughnuts EA has some very serious and robust contingency plans in order to address a variety of launch day scenerio's and how to scale.

    These days, there are definately options to increase most resources in minutes or at most hours if you set yourself up that way....as opposed to days or sometimes even weeks that it might have taken 10 years ago.

    I definately see this as something more driven by marketing then operations. An operations guy ( I happen to be one) who tells management that they have to dial back sales in order to make the service usable, is typicaly one that had better have is resume updated in short order these days. At least if it was well known in advance that scaling was likely to be a major concern for the product.

  • DrunkWolfDrunkWolf Member RarePosts: 1,701

    Originally posted by Precusor

    Just a heads up.

    Publisher says it will limit the number of retail, digital copies for upcoming MMORPG to ensure server stability at launch.

    http://gamescom.gamespot.com/story/6330062/ea-to-cap-star-wars-the-old-republic-sales/?tag=updates%3Beditor%3Ball%3Btitle%3B3

     I guess more sheep better hurry and pre order.

  • DerWotanDerWotan Member Posts: 1,012

    Wow with some guys its always the same. Can't believe people can be stupid enough buying into this marketing ploy:

    how can a digital key be sold out? Thats impossible

    Seems to me like no matter how often €A is screwing over people some will  just buy their PR crap time and time again.

     All this does is creating more hype (good luck living up to that)  and trap  people into quick preordering. If they would seriously be concerned about things like  overload (they have already stated the starting areas will be instanced!)

    they would simple use an open beta as a stresstest and upgrade their server software, problem fixed.

    So take it for what its worth: its called marketing ploy/trap

    We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!

    "Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
    "Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."

  • JimmydeanJimmydean Member UncommonPosts: 1,290

    OMG I better hurry up and pre-order or its possible that I could never play this game! EA is so worried about making sure we have an enjoyable experience that I'm positive if you don't pre-order right now, you may never get to play this game, ever.

  • GMan3GMan3 Member CommonPosts: 2,127

    Originally posted by DerWotan

    Wow with some guys its always the same. Can't believe people can be stupid enough buying into this marketing ploy:

    how can a digital key be sold out? Thats impossible

    Seems to me like no matter how often €A is screwing over people some will  just buy their PR crap time and time again.

     All this does is creating more hype (good luck living up to that)  and trap  people into quick preordering. If they would seriously be concerned about things like  overload (they have already stated the starting areas will be instanced!)

    they would simple use an open beta as a stresstest and upgrade their server software, problem fixed.

    So take it for what its worth: its called marketing ploy/trap

         You do realize they never said anything about selling out of their product?  They said they were limiting sales.  Supposedly to make for a more stable launch.  Of course everyone know it has marketing written all over it, but do try to get the facts right.  Oh, you are wrong the the starter areas as well.

    "If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"

  • Distopia2Distopia2 Member Posts: 574

    Originally posted by GrumpyMel2

    False Scarcity is a very old marketing tactic. It's designed to increase the anxiety of the buyer that if they don't make a purchase decision right away...they'll "miss out" on something very important.  While there are real resource concerns, IT has made leaps and bounds in terms of technical measures to address rapid scalability and spikes in demand. Dollars to doughnuts EA has some very serious and robust contingency plans in order to address a variety of launch day scenerio's and how to scale.

    These days, there are definately options to increase most resources in minutes or at most hours if you set yourself up that way....as opposed to days or sometimes even weeks that it might have taken 10 years ago.

    I definately see this as something more driven by marketing then operations. An operations guy ( I happen to be one) who tells management that they have to dial back sales in order to make the service usable, is typicaly one that had better have is resume updated in short order these days. At least if it was well known in advance that scaling was likely to be a major concern for the product.

     When people talk about this why do they act as though the last 7 years of MMO launches hasn't happened? Sure they can "scale" to just about any number they want, but why would they want to do that with the trends in this industry?

    Sure they can add 100 servers and be ready for 10 million customers. The problem is three months down the road they'll be scaling back because they have thousands on dead servers.

    To SB fans, please stop making our demographic look bad.Stop invading threads that have nothing to do with sandboxes.

    SW:TOR Graphics Evolution and Comparison

    SW:TOR Compare MMO Quests, Combat and More...

  • Distopia2Distopia2 Member Posts: 574

    Originally posted by DerWotan

    Wow with some guys its always the same. Can't believe people can be stupid enough buying into this marketing ploy:

    how can a digital key be sold out? Thats impossible

    Easily they put a cap on how many they are selling.

    To SB fans, please stop making our demographic look bad.Stop invading threads that have nothing to do with sandboxes.

    SW:TOR Graphics Evolution and Comparison

    SW:TOR Compare MMO Quests, Combat and More...

  • GrumpyMel2GrumpyMel2 Member Posts: 1,832

    Originally posted by maskedweasel

    Originally posted by gainesvilleg


    Originally posted by Sukiyaki

    Damn

    good luck we have our oldschool forumdwellers to warn us fools and noobs about the evil hidden intent of EA to increase their profits with this move!

    And I just were to believe they are some charitiy organization. Who could have thought!

     Ha, just trying to educate the lads and lasses here.  I own both ATVI and ERTS stock and I'm all for them making profits and the higher the better.  Lets just educate the unwashed masses a bit about the way the world works.  We will all be better off in the end for it...

    Honestly, I think it really depends on how many preorders there are.  If they are showing 1 million preorders,  they would likely have to cap that,  depending on how many other boxes they plan to ship for the actual release.

     

    A big problem MMOs have is increasing servers to accomodate a lot of players,  and then the servers end up dead in 6 months.  While EA isn't at a lack of resources,  they could easily put up 20 times the amount of servers needed for 3 million players on day 1 if they wanted to,  this could be just as much of a precautionary measure for growth as it would be a marketing tool.

    Thing is that with modern archetecture "servers" generaly aren't servers. They are clusters of boxes (or even collections of services on different boxes) that are abstracted from thier external advertisement. Thus when you see "Server 7", it's more then likely just a logical label for a collection of boxes or services that can be added to or subtracted from without the end user ever being the wiser.

    The real bottle-neck is more on the client end...where you have so many players crammed into one area that the typical client machine can't handle presenting and keeping track of them all to the player. Although alot of games (not sure if TOR utilizes this or not) build in mechanisms like "dynamic layering" or agressive instancing to deal with stuff like that.

    Setup properly, it's theoriticaly possible to run something that's even the size of WoW on a single "server". My gut tells me this is more marketing driven then operations......or at the very least something that marketing is very supportive of.

  • GrumpyMel2GrumpyMel2 Member Posts: 1,832



    Originally posted by Distopia


    Originally posted by GrumpyMel2

    False Scarcity is a very old marketing tactic. It's designed to increase the anxiety of the buyer that if they don't make a purchase decision right away...they'll "miss out" on something very important.  While there are real resource concerns, IT has made leaps and bounds in terms of technical measures to address rapid scalability and spikes in demand. Dollars to doughnuts EA has some very serious and robust contingency plans in order to address a variety of launch day scenerio's and how to scale.
    These days, there are definately options to increase most resources in minutes or at most hours if you set yourself up that way....as opposed to days or sometimes even weeks that it might have taken 10 years ago.
    I definately see this as something more driven by marketing then operations. An operations guy ( I happen to be one) who tells management that they have to dial back sales in order to make the service usable, is typicaly one that had better have is resume updated in short order these days. At least if it was well known in advance that scaling was likely to be a major concern for the product.

     When people talk about this why do they act as though the last 7 years of MMO launches hasn't happened? Sure they can "scale" to just about any number they want, but why would they want to do that with the trends in this industry?
    Sure they can add 100 servers and be ready for 10 million customers. The problem is three months down the road they'll be scaling back because they have thousands on dead servers.


    I don't think you understand the implications of "rapid scalability" these days. It's not just the ability to scale up, but to scale down as well.....and to even deal with rapid fluctuations in demand. There are pretty robust solutions for all those sorts of things. In most online services that deal with large volumes of use, these days the "servers" aren't actualy servers at all...they are just logical labels that entirely abstract the end user or the external adverstisement of services from the physical hardware doing the work.

    If you set it up properly, these days you can have a server that supports 10,000 concurrent users, 15 minutes later supports 100,000 and 15 minutes after that goes back to supporting only 10,000. Depending on the hosting model you use...you can even only pay for the amount of hardware resources that you are using at any given minute....and not pay for them the next minute if they aren't needed. That's one of the big attractions of the Cloud Services hosting models.

    The real bottle-neck would be on the client side...and the number of character objects crammed into one area. But MMO's do even have techniques to address those sorts of issues if they want to do so. Things like the dynamic layering that LOTRO uses...can be used to address client side bottle-necks. No idea if TOR decided to impliment anything like that.....but it's certainly something that can be done.


  • OnetoOneto Member UncommonPosts: 26

    Oh no! The evil corporation is out to get me! We all know that evil corporations never ever do anything that would be beneficial to the consumer. 

    Some people may be naive but some people on here are just pessimistic jackwagon trolls. Not everything is a conspiracy.

  • drbaltazardrbaltazar Member UncommonPosts: 7,856

    so basicly they re saying to us:our server arent stable and wont be at lunch!since calling microsoft for help in including donnybrooks ,differential compression etc would be to much work for a game dev we decided to limit the number of copy avail

    wow this is the future!

    and we were thinking some game dev were bad!

    i wont touch this game,any dev doing this i wont touch the game.if the game cant be smooth at lunch.it wont be smooth in lot of place elswhere!didnt they see what the major complain were in various game lol!i guess not!

  • gainesvilleggainesvilleg Member CommonPosts: 1,053

    Originally posted by Oneto

    Oh no! The evil corporation is out to get me! We all know that evil corporations never ever do anything that would be beneficial to the consumer. 

    Some people may be naive but some people on here are just pessimistic jackwagon trolls. Not everything is a conspiracy.

     Have you ever sat in a marketing meeting for a product focussed company?  Have you ever worked in CIO office and tried to tell the business that they need to scale back their profit forcasts because of a network/server scalability issue?

    Well I've experienced both many times, and there is no "conspiracy theory" here.  It is simply the way the business world works, especially when there are stockholders.  Some private companies may have a little more leeway in how they approach short versus long term profits.

    Don't get offended, I personally like the move.  Smart.

    But I'm not going to pretend otherwise why they are doing it...

    GW2 "built from the ground up with microtransactions in mind"
    1) Cash->Gems->Gold->Influence->WvWvWBoosts = PAY2WIN
    2) Mystic Chests = Crass in-game cash shop advertisements

  • gainesvilleggainesvilleg Member CommonPosts: 1,053

    Originally posted by gainesvilleg

    Originally posted by Oneto

    Oh no! The evil corporation is out to get me! We all know that evil corporations never ever do anything that would be beneficial to the consumer. 

    Some people may be naive but some people on here are just pessimistic jackwagon trolls. Not everything is a conspiracy.

     Have you ever sat in a marketing meeting for a product focussed company?  Have you ever worked in CIO office and tried to tell the business that they need to scale back their profit forcasts because of a network/server scalability issue?

    Well I've experienced both many times, and there is no "conspiracy theory" here.  It is simply the way the business world works, especially when there are stockholders.  Some private companies may have a little more leeway in how they approach short versus long term profits.

    Don't get offended, I personally like the move.  Smart.

    But I'm not going to pretend otherwise why they are doing it...

     Now, the only scenario where they would limit new accounts due to scalability would be AFTER launch if they under estimated the demand.  In that case they would be doing it only while they rapidly ramp up their capacity (with tech guys working 24X7 until fixed).

    But to think they are estimating this demand in advance and are making a business decision to under-scale the infrastructure and purposely defer profits because of this is just ridiculous.

    GW2 "built from the ground up with microtransactions in mind"
    1) Cash->Gems->Gold->Influence->WvWvWBoosts = PAY2WIN
    2) Mystic Chests = Crass in-game cash shop advertisements

  • OnetoOneto Member UncommonPosts: 26

    Originally posted by gainesvilleg

    Originally posted by Oneto

    Oh no! The evil corporation is out to get me! We all know that evil corporations never ever do anything that would be beneficial to the consumer. 

    Some people may be naive but some people on here are just pessimistic jackwagon trolls. Not everything is a conspiracy.

     Have you ever sat in a marketing meeting for a product focussed company?  Have you ever worked in CIO office and tried to tell the business that they need to scale back their profit forcasts because of a network/server scalability issue?

    Well I've experienced both many times, and there is no "conspiracy theory" here.  It is simply the way the business world works, especially when there are stockholders.  Some private companies may have a little more leeway in how they approach short versus long term profits.

    Don't get offended, I personally like the move.  Smart.

    But I'm not going to pretend otherwise why they are doing it...

    That may well be why they are doing it. It does not make them "the evil corporation" that so many on here make them out to be though. It is common business practice everywhere. EA is not doing anything out of the ordinary so why make it out to be some new scheme to fool the "Sheep". 

  • nerovipus32nerovipus32 Member Posts: 2,735

    I't's a marketing trick to make you rush out and buy the game, dont fall for it sheep.

  • drbaltazardrbaltazar Member UncommonPosts: 7,856

    to run a mmo you need huge bandwith pipe!ask blizzard when they lunched

    back then it was a nightmare,now would also be a nightmare because of cost.i bet att-verizon cable comp and all are waiting around the corner to deal with swtor or any other game.ever got throttled because you were on the wrong part of the network and no deal were done between the game of your choice and networking corp or cable

    it ruins a game in a hurry!

    it s all fine and well to say it will go smooth but the sad truth we all know wgo owns the pipe and it isnt ea or blizzard

    so if ea doesnt make a deal with the network they ll face various game issue very fast!

  • gainesvilleggainesvilleg Member CommonPosts: 1,053

    Originally posted by Oneto

    Originally posted by gainesvilleg


    Originally posted by Oneto

    Oh no! The evil corporation is out to get me! We all know that evil corporations never ever do anything that would be beneficial to the consumer. 

    Some people may be naive but some people on here are just pessimistic jackwagon trolls. Not everything is a conspiracy.

     Have you ever sat in a marketing meeting for a product focussed company?  Have you ever worked in CIO office and tried to tell the business that they need to scale back their profit forcasts because of a network/server scalability issue?

    Well I've experienced both many times, and there is no "conspiracy theory" here.  It is simply the way the business world works, especially when there are stockholders.  Some private companies may have a little more leeway in how they approach short versus long term profits.

    Don't get offended, I personally like the move.  Smart.

    But I'm not going to pretend otherwise why they are doing it...

    That may well be why they are doing it. It does not make them "the evil corporation" that so many on here make them out to be though. It is common business practice everywhere. EA is not doing anything out of the ordinary so why make it out to be some new scheme to fool the "Sheep". 

     You may be referring to others comments, but I never suggested ERTS shouldn't have made that announcement.  I was poking fun at those who believed they would actually limit sales, and was not poking fun at the company for using that tactic.  I like the move by ERTS I think it is smart.

    Just like Battlefield 3 marketing is loudly proclaiming "free online play" to cash in on the mis-perception that ATVI will be charging for online multiplayer in MW3 (ATVI will be charging for some premium features but not online play).

    These type of smart marketing moves by ERTS is why I have shifted half my ATVI holding into ERTS over the last couple years.  Kotick has eaten their lunch for over a decade now but I think ERTS has been scoring a lot of points last couple years...

    GW2 "built from the ground up with microtransactions in mind"
    1) Cash->Gems->Gold->Influence->WvWvWBoosts = PAY2WIN
    2) Mystic Chests = Crass in-game cash shop advertisements

  • Atlan99Atlan99 Member UncommonPosts: 1,332

    Originally posted by nerovipus32

    I't's a marketing trick to make you rush out and buy the game, dont fall for it sheep.

    Too late.

    All your base are belong to EA.

  • PuremallacePuremallace Member Posts: 1,856

    Originally posted by nerovipus32

    I't's a marketing trick to make you rush out and buy the game, dont fall for it sheep.

    http://www.bestgraph.com/gifs/animaux/moutons/moutons-14.gif

     

    ^ EA just counting the money

  • Distopia2Distopia2 Member Posts: 574

    Originally posted by GrumpyMel



     



    I don't think you understand the implications of "rapid scalability" these days. It's not just the ability to scale up, but to scale down as well.....and to even deal with rapid fluctuations in demand. There are pretty robust solutions for all those sorts of things. In most online services that deal with large volumes of use, these days the "servers" aren't actualy servers at all...they are just logical labels that entirely abstract the end user or the external adverstisement of services from the physical hardware doing the work.

    If you set it up properly, these days you can have a server that supports 10,000 concurrent users, 15 minutes later supports 100,000 and 15 minutes after that goes back to supporting only 10,000. Depending on the hosting model you use...you can even only pay for the amount of hardware resources that you are using at any given minute....and not pay for them the next minute if they aren't needed. That's one of the big attractions of the Cloud Services hosting models.

    The real bottle-neck would be on the client side...and the number of character objects crammed into one area. But MMO's do even have techniques to address those sorts of issues if they want to do so. Things like the dynamic layering that LOTRO uses...can be used to address client side bottle-necks. No idea if TOR decided to impliment anything like that.....but it's certainly something that can be done.

     

     

    No I'm not a server tech, so no I do not understand, but you seem to be assuming you know what architecture they're using.  Who's to say they're not cutting costs by using outdated architecture as an example?

    It would seem to me they'd have no need to scale their launch back (cap it) if they're using the technology you're describing.

    To SB fans, please stop making our demographic look bad.Stop invading threads that have nothing to do with sandboxes.

    SW:TOR Graphics Evolution and Comparison

    SW:TOR Compare MMO Quests, Combat and More...

  • GrumpyMel2GrumpyMel2 Member Posts: 1,832

    Originally posted by gainesvilleg

    Originally posted by Oneto

    Oh no! The evil corporation is out to get me! We all know that evil corporations never ever do anything that would be beneficial to the consumer. 

    Some people may be naive but some people on here are just pessimistic jackwagon trolls. Not everything is a conspiracy.

     Have you ever sat in a marketing meeting for a product focussed company?  Have you ever worked in CIO office and tried to tell the business that they need to scale back their profit forcasts because of a network/server scalability issue?

    Well I've experienced both many times, and there is no "conspiracy theory" here.  It is simply the way the business world works, especially when there are stockholders.  Some private companies may have a little more leeway in how they approach short versus long term profits.

    Don't get offended, I personally like the move.  Smart.

    But I'm not going to pretend otherwise why they are doing it...

    Exactly, if this were a small startup without much prior experience at product launches or handling large scale infrastructure issues, I could maybe see something like that happening....but EA has been around the block more then a few times. Plus this far out from launch....there is no way they couldn't make adjustments to deal with those sort of demand issues. This has marketing written all over it.

    I don't think they are "evil" for trying it....but I don't think people should be fooled about the tactic being used either.

  • gainesvilleggainesvilleg Member CommonPosts: 1,053

    Originally posted by Distopia

    Originally posted by GrumpyMel



     



    I don't think you understand the implications of "rapid scalability" these days. It's not just the ability to scale up, but to scale down as well.....and to even deal with rapid fluctuations in demand. There are pretty robust solutions for all those sorts of things. In most online services that deal with large volumes of use, these days the "servers" aren't actualy servers at all...they are just logical labels that entirely abstract the end user or the external adverstisement of services from the physical hardware doing the work.

    If you set it up properly, these days you can have a server that supports 10,000 concurrent users, 15 minutes later supports 100,000 and 15 minutes after that goes back to supporting only 10,000. Depending on the hosting model you use...you can even only pay for the amount of hardware resources that you are using at any given minute....and not pay for them the next minute if they aren't needed. That's one of the big attractions of the Cloud Services hosting models.

    The real bottle-neck would be on the client side...and the number of character objects crammed into one area. But MMO's do even have techniques to address those sorts of issues if they want to do so. Things like the dynamic layering that LOTRO uses...can be used to address client side bottle-necks. No idea if TOR decided to impliment anything like that.....but it's certainly something that can be done.

     

     

    No I'm not a server tech, so no I do not understand, but you seem to be assuming you know what architecture they're using.  Who's to say they're not cutting costs by using outdated architecture as an example?

    It would seem to me they'd have no need to scale their launch back (cap it) if they're using the technology you're describing.

     I would add to the previous poster's comments that that "pay for what you use" model is supported by many vendors even without using cloud hosting services.  I've been part of deal like this in the past if the customer is big enough and the overall sale is high enough.

    For instance, ERTS could easily cut a deal with their suppliers to say "Look we will be using a boatload of your servers, but we'd like to have a bunch of extra on hand in case we need them and demand exceeds our estimates.  But we don't want to pay for them unless we use them."

    This is done all the time, especially in this weak economic environment.  If the servers aren't used the vendor could easily repurpose them.

    GW2 "built from the ground up with microtransactions in mind"
    1) Cash->Gems->Gold->Influence->WvWvWBoosts = PAY2WIN
    2) Mystic Chests = Crass in-game cash shop advertisements

  • drbaltazardrbaltazar Member UncommonPosts: 7,856

    server end was never an issue and client end was rarelly an issue even all the way back to eq1 lol.the main issue every game maker and gamer face is betwwen point a(server x.y.z)and point z
    (client in new york for exemple)
    how many network do you think swotr will need to cross to get to any client at any given time
    l3 is often the main issue lot of game face.
    basicly it is this.game maker need to deal to have unthrottled access.(a very hard to do thing these days)since every network in existance in usa want to limit limit limit
    not because they cant support the data they could support 10 to 30 time the actual data without a change and could support 10000 more with very inexpensive ways .the issue is greed.
    and fcc or crtc(canada)wont do much on this because those in crtc and fcc want jobs when they stop working for fcc and crtc.(we wouldnt want to have corp hating us now would we!
    so citizen and those using the bandwith like game are the main looser here!

  • Distopia2Distopia2 Member Posts: 574

    Originally posted by GrumpyMel2

    Originally posted by gainesvilleg


    Originally posted by Oneto

    Oh no! The evil corporation is out to get me! We all know that evil corporations never ever do anything that would be beneficial to the consumer. 

    Some people may be naive but some people on here are just pessimistic jackwagon trolls. Not everything is a conspiracy.

     Have you ever sat in a marketing meeting for a product focussed company?  Have you ever worked in CIO office and tried to tell the business that they need to scale back their profit forcasts because of a network/server scalability issue?

    Well I've experienced both many times, and there is no "conspiracy theory" here.  It is simply the way the business world works, especially when there are stockholders.  Some private companies may have a little more leeway in how they approach short versus long term profits.

    Don't get offended, I personally like the move.  Smart.

    But I'm not going to pretend otherwise why they are doing it...

    Exactly, if this were a small startup without much prior experience at product launches or handling large scale infrastructure issues, I could maybe see something like that happening....but EA has been around the block more then a few times. Plus this far out from launch....there is no way they couldn't make adjustments to deal with those sort of demand issues. This has marketing written all over it.

    I don't think they are "evil" for trying it....but I don't think people should be fooled about the tactic being used either.

    Quick question for the both of you, what get rich quick scheme are they applying in not doing a global release? Again under the banner of, "we want a smooth launch"? That sure as hell didn't win them any cookies from the global audience at large.

    To SB fans, please stop making our demographic look bad.Stop invading threads that have nothing to do with sandboxes.

    SW:TOR Graphics Evolution and Comparison

    SW:TOR Compare MMO Quests, Combat and More...

  • SlothnChunkSlothnChunk Member UncommonPosts: 788

    Not surprsing EA wants to keep thep initial price artifically high considering how much this MMO cost to make and many subs they can expect to lose within the first six months.

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