SWTOR Video News: the 400K Drop Issue

Asher has backed up with an extra episode of his video news, dedicating an episode to the issue of SWTOR’s 400K drop in subscribers.

He makes some interesting points, some I agree with and others I don’t – which is what makes discussing any MMO fun! I too like the point on higher population servers increasing the chance of people getting their friends involved in the game.

Have a look for yourself:

What do YOU think?

Comments

  1. Variance says

    Personally I have now started to find it difficult to do lower level flashpoints to date. But this might just be bad luck :p

  2. davyandrews247 says

    I hope BioWare are committed to the game on a long term basis and don’t make any rash decisions based on such a short period of time. They have only just opened up new territories to the game, and those numbers are not included here so i think more time is required to really see where the game is going.

    •  I’m from this new territories (former red zones). And the game here is sold since it’s release date in December. The only difference now is that game shops buy it officially from EA and as result they have bigger cut. Before they just needed to import it in unofficial ways. Our regional SWTOR facebook group is 140+ ppl – last we checked less then 10 ppl were still subscribed. Thats it about the new “old” territories.

  3. 1.3m subs as of May 7th now March 31st.

    • Ashermoore says

      Those numbers are for Q4 2012 only regardless off what anyones says which ends march 31st 2012. That number was pulled from the report. It was releaed on May 7 as like with any major corparation it takes time to colate all the other numbers such as EBITDA etc and again is staed in the first couple of lines off the offical report “REDWOOD CITY, CA – May 7, 2012 – Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: EA) today announced 
      preliminary financial results for its fourth fiscal quarter and fiscal year ended March 31, 2012.”

      source: http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ERTS/1864758766x0x566945/3aaa2f1a-342b-4cbc-b067-c974f720ecc1/EA_News_2012_5_7_General.pdf

      Regards,

      Asher

      • Actually, the 1.3 million subscriber count is from the end of April, according to EA execs during the investor call:

        “Let me provide you with an update on Star Wars. Through the end of the quarter approximately 2.4 million units have sold through. In our last call we indicated that we had 1.7 million active subscribers, and as of the end of April, we now have 1.3 million, with a substantial portion of the decrease due to casual and trial players cycling out of the subscriber base, driving up people who are all percentage of paying subscribers.”

        Source: http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ERTS/1855166033x6388803x567536/7f7dd5ef-7f36-4c7e-bcd6-0e80ea43cf45/ERTS_Q4FY12_Transcript.pdf

        • That was the point I tried to make above, but last time I did people jumped down my throat. Clearly subs as of March 31st had to be even lower than 1.3, as EA needed to give out free month game time to people to bolster current subs for the shareholder meeting in May.

  4. forceslinger says

    Quality over quantity.. hopefully this means the community will tighten up

  5. Very cool review/discussion.

  6. So this is basically a (very) long-winded denial video?

    If SWTOR has 1m active subcribers at the moment I’d be amazed, the way they are going they won’t have 500,000 in a month or two.

    Server activity (the best measure of active subs for anyone that is not in Bioware) is currently nose-diving.

    SWTOR is in serious trouble.  Videos like this trying to pretend otherwise help no one, not Bioware, not the game and certainly not the players that want SWTOR to get better.