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Category Archives: SWTOR

LoreHound Crier: The Week Up to 5/12 in a Glance

Eeek! I’m late I’m late! I must beg forgiveness to anyone looking forward to my weekly summary; a vacation combined with the opening of The Secret World‘s beta weekend sent me spinning off into the land of distractions. But it’s been another pretty exciting week here at LoreHound! We’ve got item giveaways, MineCraft goodies, news about a few betas and several lengthier pieces that go into more detail than just providing news. I love the longer pieces, as an unabashed MMO addict there’s very little that I love more than long talks about gaming. Game theory, character building, analyses of subscription numbers and playerbase makeup, how to guides –  I love it all.

And of course, my favorite topic – The Secret World! The open beta! Yes, it’s here at last! I have a ton of screenshots that I’ll be posting up later as well as a preview. I’ve been spending way too much time with this game, wanting to squeeze out every possible moment while the servers are up. I think I was up playing until 5am, my eyeballs feel like they’re about to fall out, but I’m still looking forward to later this afternoon after I’ve finished up my errands when I’ll be able to play again! Here’s a screenshot to keep you all entertained until I’m able to put up the full review:

And now, on with the show!

  • LoreHound has a MineCraft server! Today we’re holding a stress test, so if you like MineCraft and like LoreHound, then head on over and join Mordil! Here are the downloads you’ll need to hop into the fun.
  • iTZKooPA has a follow up interview with Todd Harris of HiRez Studios, about the launch of Tribes: Ascend! Want to know about female models? Check it out!
  • Diablo 3 is on its way, and Heartbourne provides a nice analysis of fees and market strategies. Interested in making a killing playing video games? Or just making enough to pay for your World of Warcraft subscription? Heartbourne has you covered.
  • Like closed betas? Realm of the Titans just started its closed beta. Head on over and give it a look!
  • There’ve been plenty of games that have claimed to be “WoW killers” but are they? Unless they can beat 10.2 million subscribers, I’ll have to say no.
  • I love dancing in my MMOs. I’m that girl in the skimpy clothes doing the shimmy while I wait for absent groupmates or am afk. If you’re like me, you might be interested in the pandaren dance that was recently discovered on the World of Warcraft beta servers.
  • It’s the time! The Secret World First Open Beta Weekend! Nope, I can’t help my fangirl excitement from showing through with exclamation points! Lots of them!!
  • We’ve got a Twelve Sky 2 item giveaway! Who doesn’t love freebies in the games they play?
  • Curious what EA has to say about their declining SWTOR subs? Mike gave out the details.
  • There was drama in the world of E-Sports, when Starcraft 2 e-sport team Evil Geniuses gave a team member the boot.

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EA Responds to Declining SWTOR Subscription Numbers

The first stage of grief is denial, which seems to be where EA is after it released its financial report yesterday revealing that subscription numbers for Star Wars: The Old Republic dropped 23.5% from its peak last quarter.

Active subscribers dropped from 1.7 million to 1.3 million, to which President of EA Labels, Frank Gibeau, responded saying this was due to casual gamers leaving the game.

We brought in a lot of users, and with a brand like Star Wars, it reaches out much past the hardcore MMO fan base into the broader market. And as the service evolves from here, what we’re seeing is that some of the initial casual customers have gone through a billing cycle and decided not to subscribe to the game.

Mr. Gibeau goes on to counter, saying that it’s core is actually growing,

the percentage of paying subscribers from our peak until now has actually gone up, and the folks that we have are as engaged as they were when they first bought the product.

Make no mistake, BioWare intends to grow subscribers.

I don’t believe the Gibeau mentioned to shareholders that EA gave every single player a free month of game-time only a few weeks ago. Hmm, I wonder if this 1.3 million number is at all deceptively inflated? I wouldn’t at all be surprised if the real number is already under 1 million.

Also mentioned during the conference call was that SWTOR was in EA’s top 10 franchises in terms of profitability, but was less profitable then the following franchises; Medal of Honor, Battlefield, FIFA, Madden, The Sims and SimCity, but it did beat Tiger Woods Golf. This places SWTOR somewhere between 7-9 on the list.

EA is doing what all companies do when they have bad news, put on a happy face and try to explain it away, but casual gamers? I won’t consider anyone that uses Xfire to be casual and from their stats, SWTOR is in serious decline.

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What’s Behind Star Wars: The Old Republic’s Decline?

Pew, pew, pew. Now only 1.3 million to deal with!

Earlier today, Electronic Arts had its stuffy quarterly report. The number, fact and strategy filled report was of little interest to most MMO gamers until the mention of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Following the recent trend of LoreHound coverage, the mention wasn’t good. According to the publisher, TOR lost 24% of its subscribers, shedding 400,000 paying customers from the peak of 1.7 million a quarter earlier (during the included free month).

That places the second Star Wars-based MMORPG over the million subscriber mark, at 1.3 million, but still showing a decline as troubling as the current, yet declining, kind, World of Warcraft. This is roughly on target with the estimate made by an analyst group in mid April.

This has left many players scratching their heads. TOR was easily one of, if not the most, anticipated MMOG releases of 2012. Sure, there’s the just released action-oriented TERA, or a flood of F2P games available and coming, but is there one core aspect that has drained TOR’s base?

Conspiracy theories will abound as analysts and players attempt to isolate the trend.

Further WoW tourist syndrome? Possible. Players ditching story for the action of TERA? Acceptable. A steep decline in the price of a Rift subscription stealing away wishy-washy subscribers? The cash strapped would think twice. Consumers becoming weary of the subscription model? Numerous developers and publishers from Perfect World Entertainment to Red 5 Studios would have you believe F2P is the way to go. What about the upcoming closing of the core MMO season, ie during school. It’s had me venture before. Or was TOR, like so many other titles, over hyped and ultimately under delivered? Makes sense.

Considering the game never came close to captivating me, a dedicated MMORPG player, I’d say it’s mostly due to the title’s execution, with a splash of a shift in market expectation. The shift being a dose of raised expectations thanks to increasing competition from the F2P market.

Let us know where you stand in the comments.

 

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SWTOR Server Mergers Possibly on the Horizon

In an interview with Gamasutra, BioWare lead writer Daniel Erickson tried to put on a positive spin to the recent report that subscription numbers for Star Wars: The Old Republic have been declining.

Daniel stated that “subscriptions are not dropping“, yet in the same interview stated that “the number of concurrent users at peak times has declined. Those light server populations may lead to server mergers“.

One doesn’t have to look very far to realize the only reason subscription numbers are not dropping is because BioWars just gave every player 30 free days of game time. I myself quit by February and if you couple my three month time-card, with the initial 30 free days and now the extra 30 free days from last week, I would still be considered an active player even though I quit two months ago.

The real indicator is server population and if BioWare is already talking about server mergers, that’s not a good sign, no matter how much free time they give out.

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LoreHound Crier: The Week at a Glance

It’s been another great week here at LoreHound. More PAX interviews have appeared, we’ve had a few exclusives, and there’s even been some game industry mudslinging. I was terribly excited to see news about Torchlight 2, and I’m sure there’s even more excitement about Diablo 3. I won’t be playing either game as I’ve got weekend plans, but I’m sure between TERA and Diablo 3 there’ll be lots of beta testing going on this weekend.

This week seems to have flown by so quickly! Maybe it’s because I’ve been sleeping through a nasty flu, or wasting lots of time on The Secret War. Actually, given that I’m ranked #2 for my state on the leaderboards, I’d say I’ve been wasting entirely too much time on The Secret War. What can I say, I’ve got not-so-hidden dreams of world conquest, although I’ve been contenting myself with doing my best to keep Brasil and China in the hands of the Dragons. In any event, I feel like no time has passed at all since I wrote last week’s rundown. But enough about me, I’m sure the week’s news is much more interesting!

 

  • PAX East Interview with Jared Gerritzen of Zombie Studios, who discussed Blacklight: Retribution with iTZKooPA. New maps, game modes, heroes and more!
  • PAX East Interview with Chris Rippy of Robot Entertainment where iTZKooPA gets the scoop on lots of gameplay footage for Orcs Must Die 2.
  • PAX East Interview with Tor Egil Andersen and Erling Ellingsen of Funcom, talking about character progression in The Secret World. Part Two is where iTZKooPA asks tougher questions, like when will we see more ARGs.
  • itZKooPA talked about the new content patch in Champions Online, and how it put the game back on his radar.
  • PAX East Interview with Victor Kislyi , CEO of Wargaming.net about the upcoming flying MMO World of Warplanes. If you want to take to the skies, there’ll be a public beta in June!
  • Mike told us about Yet Another Free SWTOR Weekend. How many of these do they plan on having? I agree with Mike, they should just get it over with and open up a fulltime free trial.
  • I was excited to see the launch of The Secret War, the Facebook app that’s paired with The Secret World, and discussed the unexpected success that shut it down for a few hours. My wild speculations turned me into a laughingstock – I honestly expected the app would be down for days or weeks instead of hours!
  • The first beta weekend for Guild Wars 2 was announced!
  • TERA‘s open beta weekend kicked of yesterday. Everyone can play this weekend, even if you’ve not purchsed the game.
  • SWTOR‘s subscription numbers may be declining, according to analyst group Cowen and Company.
  • Bluehole Studios called NCSoft a corporate bully, and said they won’t back down. TERA will be released, even if they have to fearlessly stomp through the grist of rumors and lawsuits.
  • PAX Interview with Stefan Ramirez of Bluehole Studios. iTZKoopa got the scoop on how the “holy trinity” will play out in TERA, as well as more details about the lauded political system.
  • The Diablo 3 open beta stress test weekend is underway, allowing anyone to get their hands on the game. I haven’t had much interest in this, but I’ll admit to being slightly disappointed it’s this weekend when I won’t be at home to play.
  • PARTY!! It’s the five-year anniversary of Lord of the Rings Online, and iTZKooPA spoke with Aaron Campbell, Senior Producer of LotRO, about the exciting events happening within the game to celebrate. Fireworks, mounts and costumes are just a few of the goodies available during the festivities.
  • PAX Interview with Max Schaefer of Runic Games about co-op, quest sharing and other exciting tidbits in Torchlight 2.

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SWTOR Subscription Numbers in Decline says Analyst Group

Cowen and Company, an analyst group, has released a new report that states, subscription numbers for Star Wars: The Old Republic have already peaked in February and the game is currently in decline.

The reports states that from the game’s peak of 1.7 million subscribers, it has declined to about 1.25 million at the end of March, based on server statistics provided on TorStatus.net.

The report suggest that the reason for the decline is lack of end-game content. Cowen’s Doug Creutz stated the following,

We believe that the apparent decline in subscribers is most likely due to a lack of ‘end-game’ content for the title, meaning that players who hit the level cap have few compelling options in terms of ongoing game play. While the game got off to a good start, the relatively light amount of end-game content does appear to be taking a toll.

We believe EA is attempting to address the end-game content issue, including a recent major game update, but momentum appears to have stalled and we believe it is prudent to adopt a more conservative forecast on subscribers at this time.

For those of us following SWTOR, this comes at no surprise considering the amount of promotions EA and BioWare have been giving out over the last month.  Checking Xfire stats, you can also clearly see the the decline in activity for the game, although it looks like for April it’s plateaued a bit.

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Another Free SWTOR Weekend Pass Announced


Since announcing the free Weekend Pass five weeks ago, BioWare has hosted three free weekends and has just announced the fourth, making this 4 out of the last 6 weekends. Actually calling them free “weekends” isn’t very accurate since each event lasts for three and a half days, so really they should be called free half-weeks, but I’m getting side-tracked.

It seems lately that EA and BioWare are throwing out a lot of free game-time. Aside from these free weekends, players also recently received 30 free days of game-time and additional friend passes to give out.  That’s a lot of free time and one wonders why they just aren’t making it a permanent free-trial instead of multiple free promotions that only last a few days.  I guess it’s a marketing thing, maybe some statistic showed you get more players by limiting the free trials instead, who knows.

Anyway the next Star Wars: The Old Republic free Weekend Pass  begin on Thursday, April 19th at 12:01AM CDT / 5:01AM GDT and run until Monday, April 23rd at 2:00AM CDT / 7:00AM GDT.

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