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EA to cap Star Wars: The Old Republic sales
Precusor
Member UncommonPosts: 3,589
Just a heads up.
Publisher says it will limit the number of retail, digital copies for upcoming MMORPG to ensure server stability at launch.
Comments
I thought EA/Bioware were suppose to be greedy. Dang them for wanting their customers to have an enjoyable experience at launch.
In Bioware we trust!
That is encouraging if you ask me. Some will complain, but not me, I already pre-ordered.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
Or they just want to further push the preorders... nah, they wouldn't do that.... or would they ? ^^
EA? Caring about their customer's experience? My eyebrow is raised in a very doubtful manner.
Old news.
Way I think about it...
Let's say you have the infrastructure to support 1 millions players all starting to play the game at once i.e. launch day.
Do you then sell 1 million copies and those 1 million players can all play successfully?
Or do you try and sell 3 million copies and 0 players can play successfully because the service breaks.
1 million > 0
Blizzard had to ask retailers to pull copies of WoW of the shelves a months after it's launch cus of demand. I am sure if they didn't it would not have 11million subs now.
Tell someone they cannot have somthing and they want it more, but at the same time they made the experience for those in more stable.
I do apologize if this has already been posted.
this is an OLD marketing ploy. do you really thhink they are doing this and making it well known out of the kindness of their hearts?
Don't kid yourself. If the launch goes sour, it will turn more people away than if they limit sales. It is hard to get people to come back, it is easy to get people to bite on the hook when they haven't had a chance yet.
I am sure Bioware cares deeply about the good of their game. Most developers do (except you, Cryptic). It is the suit and tie publishers who are all about the almighty dollar. This is a smart, business-minded ploy. It is not altruism.
If you believe anything else, you aren't ready for the real world yet.
Smart marketing move, EA.
"Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted.
Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world."
Hans Margolius
Good idea EA.
You sell more than 1 million. You can be damn sure that if you sell 1 million copies of the game before launch not all 1 million players will be playing within the first few hours after the servers go live.
They will over-sell the max capacity just like every other business on the planet does.
Unfortunately players are f*cking stupid and don't realize that if the game runs like crap because EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM WANTS TO PLAY ON THE SAME SERVER... its not the developers fault. I know every MMO release in the past 10 years that had server over-population issues had several servers that ran perfectly. People refused to play on those servers, they wanted to be on the "popular" ones...
People pay 100's of dollars every day to go to Disney Land... Worst place on earth. 2+ hour wait for every ride. Yet they keep coming and somehow call it "happiest place on earth"
O.o
I wouldn't be surprised if Bioware demanded a sales cap.
It is a very smart move, both because of marketing, and because of server populations afterwards.
1. Marketing - it builds demand to buy quickly because people don´t know how long it will take before they will be able to buy if they don´t get in the first batch. In a MMORPG, starting a month or two behind the curve means a big deal for endgame content.
2. WOW vs Rift - Two different, but both unideal ways to launch. WOW had a lot of server stability issues along with long queue times to get in the game. Gameplay was far from excellent because of lag. Rift tried to fix this by launching with excessive numbers of servers. While this made launch nice.. it creates two problems down the road. First off, players play a lot more the first few weeks a game is live... even if the game doesn´t lose subscribers, servers are going to be more empty in the second month as players put in less hours. And of course, some players will quit. This leads to two big problems.. first, gameplay sucks if you are playing on a ghost-server.. and secondly, the marketing nightmare of having to merge servers to improve gameplay.
Businesses are kind groups of people, who are trying to create great paying jobs and promote the general welfare of the population in order to improve humanity on all levels, love, children, pets, the safety of the elderly, clean enviroment, the elimation of war, and good old fashioned goodness
And to be anything else is to think to much, now move along children and go play
And play nice!
lol lets see some obvious issues here guys before we praise EA for the niceness
uhhh what if I have 50 people in my guild and only 25 people can get a copy...ohh sorry guys you are screwed until some people quit the game. Needing more details is beyond an understament here
Yes this is marketing at it's best..better get the 150$ the next time it comes up or you might no be able to play go go go go go. These guys are about to make a KILLING on getting money and milking the Star Wars hype hard..gg on them because the stock market is tough right now
We got a winner.
Seriously, do you genuinely believe that "The publisher went on to note that while it has already established what the exact number of copies sold will be, it will not be announcing that figure. If and when that sales figure is reached, the publisher plans to cease digital sales while it expands server capacity" is not just a marketing game? Have you even think about why aren't they publishing that particular figure?
Undoubtedly, it is a marketing trick. Shocking to see how many of you are so naive. Well I guess, they otherwise wouldnt give such ridiculous announcements.
REALITY CHECK
It's EA, nuff said.
I would bet those who think they are doing this for the benefit of players are probably no older than 25. Those of us older gamers who are a bit wiser and business savy know exactly why they are doing it, and it is to make more money. Pre-orders from the 25 and younger set will skyrocket now as they think they will actually miss out if they don't order now. Nothing better than perceived scarcity to drive demand. LOL.
I'll be buying (assuming it gets good reviews) on launch day or later, and will not have any problems obtaining a copy. And to anybody who thinks they won't take your money on launch day, I've got this great bridge in New York I'd like to sell you...
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
It's not to ensure server stability.. they can easily make more servers.. It is to make the people who are on the fence with pre-orders to go ahead and come over to their side.
This is smart move on both fronts. Not only will it panic more people into pre-ordering their game, and upping their initial sales at launch with people trying to get one before they're done for a while, but it'll also mean a smooth launch for the players.
Win win on EA's side. People can bitch about it as much as they want, but it's smart to cap the initial sales, and the marketing side of things with increased pre-orders and such is just a side effect.
<--27 here and I am not buying it. No chance I am dropping money on this until it gets great reviews on release
Didn't Blizzard do the same thing when WoW came out.
If I'm not mistaken WoW was out of stock for a few weeks while Blizzard created more servers to accomodate the huge influx of players.
I remember the queues being hours long, with the looting/stuck bug due to a database problem, made the game unplayable at the beggining.