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Let's have it, predictions: launch sales, retention, etc
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Ill play Swtor for its pve story experience and on offtime ill do pvp in guild wars.
One million first year subs.
320,000 by beginning of next year.
Well this is sort of OFF topic and also untrue. GW was,is untraditional but is an mmorpg. GW2 however is fully seemless so that arguement holds no weight anymore. also its not the it's the first mmorpg to not have a monthly sub fee. To use that as a stipulation would be foolish. TOR better have some serious pve muscle there in no way it competes on a PVP scale with GW2, thats just a fact.
People forget that a majority of 30+ years of age gamers grew up in the era of Star Wars, that in itself has my family all rolling SWTOR accounts, wife and two kids age 16 and 14 who caught on to Star Wars from me.
How many other "kid" gamers are following the force of their parents exposing them to Star Wars?
That is the question.
If you don't like a game don't play it, and quit running to MMORPG.com to trash it.
F2P will NEVER happen. SWTOR will have a Wow-like success and if Bioware puts out new content quickly (especially space combat) it will rocket right ahead. This isn't just another AAA MMO coming out - this is Star Wars and the fact that SWG has lasted this long as a P2P model is proof of the power of the SW IP.
Your retention numbers are skewed low and you will be proved wrong.
Currently playing SWTOR and it's MUCH better than it was at launch.
Anyone saying 1 million subs first year 320,000 after doestn have a clue. Im sorry its just uninformed they have 1 mill box sales in us alone. Thats not counting europe box sales or digital sales. so they are gonna sell over 4 million copies by launch day.
In those 2 regions. People in other regions are pre ordering to play in there countries also. I gaurantee people in australia arent waiting for it to come there as release to buy it.
that said tor will maintain at least 80 pct of it splayer base. Because its starwars. Its bioware story and the players i talked to in beta all wanted to play all the classes. Not just one.
So yea go ahead underestimate the replayablility of tor not to mention bioware is already hard at work on new content.
If bioware puts otu content on a 2 month schedule for the first year they may lose 2-3 pt of there sub base but thats it.
Truth is this game is gonna do so much better then those sayign free 2 play and 320 subs affter a yr realize
They underestimate how many non mmo gamers re coming into the mmos for tor. Or how many star wars, and biowre fans there are out there.
Oh ill buy mass effect 3 and play it and tor. U know sometimes i need time off from my mmos never more then a day or so but during that time i play my console. I can also play my console when i let my nephews on my computer or share it with others.
Sometimes ill play my console to wait for my gf to get done her facebook crap so we can level together.
so people buy console games and play mmos and dont stop subbing for that. I dont see anyone dropping a sub to tor for any bioware single player game.
Taht said to many understimate the power of the star wars ip on this forum just cause they dont liek the game its why they are wrong also.l
I am fascinated by this analysis.... especially more so given the post count by the author... I'm not be sarcastic of facitiious, but this analysis seems to have some "insider" knowledge or you're a market analyst in this area of the market (gaming).
As for me, I played Sith Warrior to 11, knowing fully well I was going to be Repubic side for launch, so I didn't want to spoil the story. For the first beta I was invited to, 2 months ago, I played for 10 minutes... said it was a WoW clone with slightly better graphics and a worse Ui.
Fast forward to two weeks ago. I played the game on max settings after getting a new graphics card. I actually played the story at my own pace.... LOVED IT. Brought me back to the days of Koto 1 and 2... Kotor 1 being one of my favorite games of all time.
For someone like me... a midcore (not casual not hardcore) the story content ALONE will sustain me for a VERY LONG time. On weekends I can do group oriented and pvp stuff....
Long story short.....
First month 2-2.5 million
First 6 months 50% retention at 1 million + continuing box sales ~1.5 million total.
After one year.... stabolizes at 1 million subs, depending on the rate and QUALITY of the content. If they add only raid content where someone like me won't be utilizing... then it will severly hurt the casual player base. IF they ad more and more (sidequests/story content) the game can survive.
Most people on these forums are hardcore players. You are the minority. The success of SWTOR is dependent on the casual, constantly churning player bases alla WoW.
And for those of you predicting Fremium or F2P, in a year... you're delusional. Any objective analysis will show F2P, if at all, at least 2-3 years from release. I believe, however, that it will not go F2P at all, and if it does, it will be like WoW, where the first 20 levels are free. That would be a sign of immense success NOT failure.
No it isn't. I did 1-50 in just under 70 hours including warzones, space combat, and spending a lot of time searching for heroic/flaspoint groups. Even with watching all of the cutscenes you're going to need to PvP for 80-100 more hours to hit 200 hours and the xp you get from it will still get you to 50 before you're close to 200 hours. Unless you spend 15-20 hours per planet(normally takes ~6 for most planets), which means 9-14 in exploring, I just dont' see people hitting 200 hours.
Btw the end game OWPvP is a joke, FFA PvP is also a joke just like the OWPvP objectives and arena's in WoW. The end-game solo planet is just a small quest hub, you can finish it in a day(did they fix the rewards for those quests yet? Because there was zero reason to do them last time I was at 50). I'm not saying what's there doesn't qualify as an endgame but besides raiding the rest is about a day's worth a fun before it is completely ignored by 90% of players. The raiding will get boring quickly, especially since lazy Bioware has decided to reuse everything again and again.
Did you do any of the quests or did you power level? Did you press the spacebar during every single dialogue? If you come into this game playing just like every other mmo with text (no voice acting) because you either don't like reading, don't care for the story, or both.
But this game is different, if you're going to skip the content (the story) and then claim there's nothing to do or see, I don't know what to tell you.
I'm playing this game FOR THE STORY among other things. If you got to 50 in 70 hours then the only thing you cared about was getting to 50. You missed out.....or will be missing out.
I call BS on the above.
Above above.
If you finish all the content in only 70 hours, you obviously wore out your spacebar. And the phrase "You're doing it wrong" comes to mind.
What are you on? I guess it is free to play for the first day or two that it takes to get to level 20. If you want to play past that point you have to pony up the 100$ or so to get the full game (though it is on sale deeply discounted to 35$ for everything until the 19th of december).
Yeah, unless leveling speeds up at later levels (which for me it was slowing down every level) I don't see how you can do this without purposefully skipping quests/dialogues. I got to level 17 on the beta weekend playing a total of about 20 hours. As I said it was slowing down quite a bit, it took me about 2 hours to get from 16 to 17 and it had taken steadily longer each level. Now I'm sure this peaks at some point, I don't really expect it to take 20 hours between levels at the high end but even if it were to stay at the 2 hours it was taking me that would be another 66 hours which is still more than what the above poster was claiming.
All nerds are busy with Skyrim, Skyward Sword etc, super nerd EvE players play EvE, poor people play F2P, Trekkies cry themselves to sleep, hippies busy occupying things while high, cops busy beating and pepper spraying hippies, sandbox players enjoying whine and cheese on mmorpg.com and rest think Star Wars isn't so pop anymore. I predict one person logs in on release, and that's Bobby Kotick spamming the GM's with insults.
First off the 1 million box sales does include Europe and digital. EA reports a number and doesn't make the distinction between NA, EU, and Digital. VGCharts just takes that number and tacks it on the NA side.
It seems you are the one misinformed. There are only 2.4 million registered SWTOR users and only 2 million of them signed up for beta. So you're expecting that 2 million more people than were interested in the game are suddenly going to buy it before launch day? The need to have an account for the pre-order code to work so...I'd also like to mention that a good number of those 2.4 million are troll accounts or extra chances at beta.
1.5 million is my bet and its the same bet I've been making since 2009 ish. That will drop to ~750k in 3 months and 400-500k in 6 months. That of course does not account for D3, Secret World, or GW2. GW2 will be the biggest competitor and probably shave at least 250k off. D3 might be100k, and Secret world might be 50k-100k depending on how their marketing does.
As for the replayability, did the players you talked to make it passed 30? I made it to 50 and most of the people I've talked to don't want to have to do all the filler quests again. Once is alright, twice is painful. A lot of people start skipping the VO/cutscenes at ~30 when filler quests are 95% of what you do. Replayability was brought up time and time again on the forums as a major concern so there is definitely a good chance it will be an issue in retention.
80% retention is also a huge overestimation. If I remember correctly most MMO's shoot for >50%, 60% is good and 70% is great. Bioware couldn't even retain 80% of people in ME2(Only 50% ever finished one playthrough) so what makes you think they will hit 80%? Is it because it is Star Wars? I hate to say it but Star Wars only gets people in the door, it isn't a retention mechanic. The reason SWG stuck around so long was purely the community, which will not be good in SWTOR.
What part of F2P is hard to understand?
Ironic the "special" is over the day before SWTOR release, not that I care.
If you don't like a game don't play it, and quit running to MMORPG.com to trash it.
I will not weigh in majorly on this debate about retention.
But I will use myself as an example of someone who was past 30 numerous times and still has a desire to see the stories again. Below are my playthroughs since last November as a Tester.
Agent Act 1 played through 9 times.
Agent Act 2 played through 6 times.
Bounty Hunter Act 1 played through 5 times.
Bounty Hunter Act 2 played through 3 times.
Bounty Hunter Act 3 finished including epilogue 2 times.
Sith Inquisitor Act 1 played through 3 times.
Sith Inquisitor Act 2 played through 1 time.
Sith Warrior Act 1 played through 1 time.
I still intend to max an Agent first (saved Act 3), then a BH. I do not, and really never have been a fan of spacebarring. Every playthrough I find nuances I did not see in previous ones, except on Hutta which I know ever cranny of.
I am still eager for early access. I am still planning to be there the second I can play. And I still plan to play almost exclusively sith side, which as you can tell I have done to death.
To each their own, the game will hold some players very well and does so with ease.
Alexis
*smiles*
I agree. There is no precedent that demonstates that TOR will retain a much higher number than most other MMOs before it. Iirc, SWG sold over a million boxes, as did STO, and both lost most of those subs with in the few months. Regardless of opinions of the game, its a simple demonstration that the IP does not guarentee resubs.
Sure, TOR could do it, but there is no evidence other than wishful thinking for the most part. Again, I am not saying it cannot, but simply pointing out there there is not some unbaised factor that indicates that it will. Past games have failed to do so, and TOR is not presenting something that has been proven to make a significant difference in MMORPG subscriber retention.
Why do you all think WoW made Mop? I can tell you why! It's not cause there scared of the western market. It's because they already know they have "lost" the western market! They will cater and keep catering to their asian crowd, who quite honestly love that game way more then the west does!
I like many have watched this game (ToR) be in development for a long.... time! If you don't think they were not watching it as well you're crazy! Blizzard know's as well as anyone that, hey they (BW) have a good game! A game why maybe not as content heavy as our's (for now), but damn good for launch, could make an impact. So lets refocus our playerbase focus. We know we are loved in asia. Lets appease to these people with, hey... pandas! We will keep them selling gold to each other and because the west is looking for more, this sounds like a great logistical idea!
I played WoW for quite sometime. I quite enjoyed it from vanilla till TBC. Lost all interest after that, like many! WoW isn't scared of nothing, they have 7 million asians playing. When they will be scared is when the asians learn how to gold (credit) farm us weak westerner's that buy credits like we buy plots on farmville. Then Blizzard will be scared.
Of course Blizzard knows they do better than anyone, TOR reskinned 95% of WoW.
I used to play MMOs like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee.
I think it would have been better to have gone father - and copied things like individual bodies and more variety in the player races, less linear progression, and customizable UI.
Will be minimum 1mil. subscribers. This game target more ppl than u think: kotor fanbase, a legion of star wars fans and here i mean first time mmo players even fans of clone wars. Like some people said before SWTOR is casual friendly and this is majority now on mmos marketplace.
Some hardcore top WoW guilds also pointed as good to SWTOR and that mean alot for normal wow players. MoP expansion seems to be the worst expansion in WoW history . All that things are favorable to SWTOR. On release will sell 3-4mil copies and after depends on Bioware how fast can deliver content on end game, improve gameplay and release patches/ expansions. From what i've seen they plan to do 100 planets + so i will not be surprised about Bioware already prepared some new content.
Of course Blizzard knows they do better than anyone, TOR reskinned 95% of WoW.
I think it would have been better to have gone father - and copied things like individual bodies and more variety in the player races, less linear progression, and customizable UI.
Well they had to put so many resources toward their one gimmick, much like Rift did with the rifts, all of those things were sacrificed for talking.
There's 3 real character models in the game. female, lil' male, big male, and recolorations otherwise. The progress had to be so liner to allow for all those recorded bits to play out in their predictable order. The UI will probably get an overhaul by 1.5. Just having the game work is more important than allowing bits of it to be morphed.
I don't think the talking will keep players around longer than necessary. I think even people like me who have had paid subscriptions to MMOs for better than a decade now will see much value in it sadly.
If Bioware sticks with it tho'. I think they can take this base game and model and turn it into something unique in 2 or 3 more year's time.
I used to play MMOs like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee.
I agree, TOR will not lose subs to GW2 and as much as the GW2 fanboys do not want to admit to themselves, GW2 will directly be competing with WoW even more so than TOR will be. I will be buying GW2 and TSW but GW2 will be my last game out of TSW and TOR to be playing---why? Because its still just a fantasy game at its core, and I just finished playing a fantasy game with WoW so I am a bit burnt out by EURO fantasy right now. I think GW2 will not sell as well as the first one, though the B2P idea is a good thing, there is just not enough to separate it from WoW, the first one had an edge with its focus on pvp. Now don't get me wrong I know its going to be better than WoW ever was, but for the average mmo player its just a new variation on Vanilla ice cream.
I see TOR losing more subs to TSW than GW2 because TSW has a different setting from anything that is out there, as long as Funcom doesn't screw things up (which they won't with Ragnar behind the helm-this is his first mmo). TSW is not going to get a super huge amount of subs from TOR, but it will get more than GW2 (its a boutique/niche mmo, so it is not going to have huge numbers just a VERY dedicated hardcore fanbase, similar to GW2, its also a "Blue Ocean" mmo, which GW2 is not)
Tor will do just fine as long as Bioware keeps up the story expansions, I only think problems will arise when they try to put in new classes I mean what other possible classes can you put into a thempark star wars game? That is going to be interesting.....Though they can really go crazy with new races (Where the hell are the Torgruta?).
Tor will keep people for alts, it will also increase the rp community in mmos because of its story presentation, and it being the first mmo to make non rpers care about their characters. The TOR rp community in about six months is going to be the best that we have seen in a long time in a big budget mmorpg (The TSW rpers will probably more sophisticated, but will be less in number).
GW2 and TSW's impact on TOR will be interesting, TERA will be a non factor due to its twitch gameplay (which I am a fan of but most mmo gamers are not).
Mark my words though more subs will be lost to TSW than GW2 and GW2 will most players backup mmo if they are not playing TOR or TSW at the time (there is no need to play GW2 and WoW at the same time-and there will be alot of people who leave WoW for GW2, but not as many as people anticipate, I find both games to be indicative of next years republican primaries-all they are going to do is split the vote and compete against each other, thus hurting their chances against the other competition like TOR. And with the Copernicus mmo (Kingdoms of Amalur universe) on the horizon the fantasy three way will have three direct high quality competitors on the market-again splitting the numbers of the Euro fantasy pie and again lowering impact on taking away subs from TOR (and to a lower extent TSW)
Tor will be fine, the fantasy mmos are in trouble, direct competition is increasing, and will be increasing more soon (Copernicus-Ken Rolston-Morrowind, R.A. Savatore writing te world lore/storyline-don't sleep on this combo), similar gameplay or not there is nothing like Star Wars (the setting, having lightsabers means alot to people even if the game is similar to WoW in gameplay) out there on the horizon, and nothing like TSW on the horizon either.
I just don't see people justifying playing more than one Euro Fantasy game at the same time, but I do see people still playing TOR or TSW along with WoW/GW2/Copernicus at the same time. (Good idea that GW2 is b2p, I wonder how Copernicus is going to deal with this?)
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
I'd like to revisit this point. That doesn't sound right to me, but I could be mistaken. Everything I've read has stated the VGCharts are only counting US box sales. Can anyone else verify this? I know on their site it says US box preorders, but if the above poster is correct, than that is only because EA doesn't differentiate when they send them the numbers? However, I could have sworn EA stated their number was much larger than the numbers we were getting from the VGCharts.
Anyone know for sure one way or the other? The above poster's claim may be correct, but it's the first I've heard of it.