*****Official Star Wars: The Old Republic Thread*****

Im astonished they are so casually rejecting customers, especially with the uphill struggle they face drawing away WoW subscribers. If they want to take this as serously as they need to to topple WoW they should be investing heavily in infrastructure for the launch not throttling customers. Hopefully they just underestimated intrest and stock will pick up quickly.
 
Do they really need to topple WoW though? I'm not sure we'll ever see a western MMO achieve WoW style numbers again, I truly believe its an anomaly in the genre rather than something likely to be repeated. I'm not sure they particularly need 10 million subscribers, nor am I sure we'll ever see another western MMO achieve that anyway.
 
Monkeymatt said:
I believe CaptainRAVE said that Beta(Or atleast this phase of beta) has finished now, might be mistaken though.
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The beta/playtest that we were a part of has finished.

I suspect there will be a larger open beta in due course - at least based on the launch of almost every other MMO.

Tombstone said:
Do they really need to topple WoW though? I'm not sure we'll ever see a western MMO achieve WoW style numbers again, I truly believe its an anomaly in the genre rather than something likely to be repeated. I'm not sure they particularly need 10 million subscribers, nor am I sure we'll ever see another western MMO achieve that anyway.
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It was quoted a while back that they will need 1 million subscribers to break even.
 
WILD9 said:
Im astonished they are so casually rejecting customers, especially with the uphill struggle they face drawing away WoW subscribers. If they want to take this as serously as they need to to topple WoW they should be investing heavily in infrastructure for the launch not throttling customers. Hopefully they just underestimated intrest and stock will pick up quickly.
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They have enough stock, they realised their prices are quite high compared to what we expect from MMO's and are trying to drive demand and create a frenzy to get the game sold by pretending that there is limited stock. I mean running out of digital stock? Pull the other one.

This is EA, they are a giant company worth Billions, if they were even close to running out of stock they would have half of Asia working to produce more. I mean look at Play.com and Amazon, both said they were sold out, then mysteriously had more stock within an hour or so(And Amazon increased their prices by a fiver during this)
 
Tombstone said:
Do they really need to topple WoW though? I'm not sure we'll ever see a western MMO achieve WoW style numbers again, I truly believe its an anomaly in the genre rather than something likely to be repeated. I'm not sure they particularly need 10 million subscribers, nor am I sure we'll ever see another western MMO achieve that anyway.
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Topple was probably not the right word, but they need to draw a large percentage of their subscribers away from WoW those 10 Million people are probably 90% of all the (western)worlds MMO customers.
 
WILD9 said:
Topple was probably not the right word, but they need to draw a large percentage of their subscribers away from WoW those 10 Million people are probably 90% of all the worlds MMO customers.
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Well I used the 10 million figure somewhat arbitrarily. I'd imagine 1-2 million would suffice nicely.
 
Monkeymatt said:
They have enough stock, they realised their prices are quite high compared to what we expect from MMO's and are trying to drive demand and create a frenzy to get the game sold by pretending that there is limited stock. I mean running out of digital stock? Pull the other one.

This is EA, they are a giant company worth Billions, if they were even close to running out of stock they would have half of Asia working to produce more. I mean look at Play.com and Amazon, both said they were sold out, then mysteriously had more stock within an hour or so(And Amazon increased their prices by a fiver during this)
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I don't for a second believe they will "run out of stock" - we had a survey near the end of the beta that asked us questions pertaining to whether we would be more likely to buy it if stock was limited etc. etc. - none of us actually believed it would be.

I can completely understand this. Control the numbers coming in and develop your servers accordingly - I have been a part of far too many MMOs where during the headstart the servers are down most of the time and we are all queuing to get in!

Of course, if the release is shaky, then they will have angered people even more...

Edit: btw, for those limited by ISPs, expect the download to be near 40GB!!!
 
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Tombstone said:
Well I used the 10 million figure somewhat arbitrarily. I'd imagine 1-2 million would suffice nicely.
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I wasnt suggesting SWTOR needed 10 million I was suggesting that most of their customers need to be drawn from WoWs 10ish million customers. I agree completely that WoWs scale is a one off and a 10th of that would make SWTOR very profitable
 
WILD9 said:
Topple was probably not the right word, but they need to draw a large percentage of their subscribers away from WoW those 10 Million people are probably 90% of all the (western)worlds MMO customers.
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I think I read somewhere that about 70% of the paying MMO players in the west are playing WoW, but whatever the number is, it is indeed a big share of the market.
 
Tombstone said:
Do they really need to topple WoW though? I'm not sure we'll ever see a western MMO achieve WoW style numbers again, I truly believe its an anomaly in the genre rather than something likely to be repeated. I'm not sure they particularly need 10 million subscribers, nor am I sure we'll ever see another western MMO achieve that anyway.
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I read an article ( the website was jedi something!!) saying that they only need 500 000 suncribers to make profit!
 
WILD9 said:
I wasnt suggesting SWTOR needed 10 million I was suggesting that most of their custemers need to be drawn from WoWs 10ish million customers. I agree completely that WoWs scale is a one off and a 10th of that would make SWTOR very profitable
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Ah, well I can see them drawing 1-2m of WoWs userbase (wouldnt topple WoW of course but thats by the by) , retaining them may well prove harder though as I do notice a tendency for WoW players to , almost seemingly inevitably, drift back to WoW.
 
Monkeymatt said:
My internet download speed is about 1gb an hour, so to download this it will be almost 2 consecutive days... I hope they do an Open Beta now just so I can use that time to download the client in time for Headstart...
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Same - I am uncapped until mid-August. After that I will probably be with Virgin or a similar ISP :(
 
Went with Amazon for my order, code received.

They'll have plenty of stock for the standard game, CE will be limited but it won't be a small number. If they need a million to break even, I reckon they'll do that easily - I bet they've already got close to that in pre-orders!

No MMO launch is ever painfree, but i'm praying they don't screw up and underestimate the playerbase - enough servers for all please EA!
 
Vuvuzela said:
I read an article ( the website was jedi something!!) saying that they only need 500 000 suncribers to make profit!
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Probably quite possible, the numbers an MMO requires to have a running profit is actually quite small, most of the needed money is to regain the original development fees. I'm not sure how much original cash was piled into SWToR though. 500,000 people paying say £10 a month, soon adds up :)
 
Monkeymatt said:
My internet download speed is about 1gb an hour, so to download this it will be almost 2 consecutive days... I hope they do an Open Beta now just so I can use that time to download the client in time for Headstart...
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CE edition is all on disc, which is great. I guess the only thing needed is a patch or two when you launch the game.

Code entered. Now we wait!:D
 
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