2011 September

Will F2P Affect SWTOR

This post got me thinking. Will SWTOR have to go Free 2 Play at some point? As we all know, the MMO marketplace is packed with some very solid and fun games that either have gone F2P or are going to have it as an option very soon. Off the top of my head, I can think of Champions Online, Star Trek Online, DC Universe, Lord of the Rings Online, and Fallen Earth.

Why would SWTOR even consider going F2P? Because the word “free” attracts customers. For example, F2P is the only reason that I started playing Lord of the Rings Online. I was looking for a new game to play, and at the time, there weren’t any PC games that interested me. But along came LOTRO and its promise of the ability to play the entire game without (potentially) paying for anything. I could choose to spend as little or as much as I wanted without being worried about having to recommit for another month.

Low and behold, once I started playing, I was hooked and ended up spending $75 over the course of a year on Turbine points. Turbine got a new customer that they never would have gotten before going F2P, and I got a great deal on a fun MMO. F2P ended up being a win for both sides. I didn’t have to purchase the initial game (retail value $50) and I didn’t have to pay the monthly subscription fee (an average of $12.50 a month x 12 months = $150) so I see myself as coming out way ahead on cost savings.

With 3 months until launch, BioWare does not seem concerned with the F2P model. As Greg Zeschuk states here, “The trend for free-to-play doesn’t supplant great top quality premium games that support a subscription.” Clearly Bioware sees their game as one of these “quality premium games” and rightly they should. SWTOR is one of the most anticipated games of the year, and if successful, could end up being one of the most popular games of all time.

But, what would happen if SWTOR begins to lose subscribers? What if the player base decides after a year or two that the game isn’t as fun as it once was, or they can find a better use for their $15 a month? Granted, the die-hards/fanboys probably won’t ever quit, but the casual MMO player may decide, “hey, I can play one of these other F2P titles for much less money. Each one allows me to level up and kill stuff. I just won’t be able to do it with a lightsaber.”

How many subscribers would Bioware need to lose before they feel the pain and see a F2P/cash shop model as a viable business model? 1 million? 2 million? More? Only Bioware knows. Bioware has stated that they have an “aggressive post launch plan,” but how many months do they have planned out? I would hope that they plan a good three to six months ahead since they need time to take things from the “wall of crazy” to development, to test, and finally into production.

Fortunately, I am at a point in life where I don’t have to think twice about spending $15 a month for entertainment. But, for many others, they may think twice about spending up to $180 a year on a video game and choose a cheaper option that is just as fun to play. The bottom line is: will SWTOR create that kind of entertainment value where you can repeatedly say each month, “Yes. It is worth it. I’m having a great time.”

Buffer

Filed Under: Microtransactions Tagged With: microtransactions, MMO, MMORPG, subscription, SWTOR, TOR

How to Make a Guild Recruitment Video

Tim Vankan at TOR Syndicate has posted an excellent tutorial on How to Make a Guild Recruitment Video.

Along with the YouTube instructional video, Tim gives this advice:

A couple of things you should always try to do is:

- Take your time: The game is not out yet so you got all the time in the world, sometimes it might even take a week or so to get back on track just because you ran out of inspiration or you are to busy with real life.

- Ask for feedback: Without feedback you can make a nice video, but with it you can make an amazing video! ask around and see who is interested, if no one of the community wants to help you, ask your friends from school maybe?

- Be willing to change a lot, well nothing to add here really, sometimes things have to change a lot for something to work.

- Look at a lot of other recruitment videos: make sure you aren’t making the same thing someone else also has.

- Make sure youtube doesn’t hate your music, I once made a vid that got deleted from youtube instantly because of the music i used.. well that can be very depressing, upload the music under a random video and see if it gets banned.

This is good advice for making a YouTube video of any kind. If you are into video blogging either for fun or profit, these five steps should be followed at all times.

Filed Under: Guild Tagged With: Guild, SWTOR, TOR

The Hybrid Tax

Kray at AskaJedi wrote an excellent article on “the hybrid tax.”

I don’t know if I trust Bioware to completely balance out the classes. I like to build my characters for survivability, as I tend to play solo at lot. I was thinking about rolling a Jedi Guardian at launch since it seemed to have better defense than the other LS classes, but now I don’t know if I should roll a pure DPS class or not.

In the end, I may just stick with Kray’s advice and just pick which advanced class that I want, meaning the one that sounds like it would be the most fun to play. As Kray points out, this will affect how I choose my companions. Maybe that is how EA will strive to achieve balance in the game, at least in PvE. The variety of the game comes from your companions and how you use them. Genius! Players can whine about how OP a class is, but in reality, it is that particular class with those companions. Bioware can always state that the classes are balanced, just not the companions.

Filed Under: Classes Tagged With: classes, SWTOR, TOR

New Beta Invites Are Out

According to our sources, members of the regular beta program have received new invites for beta. The new build is available for them to test. Once they have everything patched, they should be able to log in and play. Hopefully this means that new invitations for the weekend beta testers are not far behind!

Filed Under: Beta Tagged With: Beta, SWTOR, TOR

3 Million Reasons to Invest in Electronic Arts

Electronic Arts is on the verge of releasing potentially one of the best selling games of the year and possibly the decade. While there is no official release date set, Electronic Arts through its BioWare division has stated during their Q1 2012 Conference Call that they are targeting the 2011 holiday season to release its upcoming massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Like Activision’s World of Warcraft, this MMORPG will require the initial purchase of the game as well as a recurring monthly fee to continue playing. If the game is popular and can keep a healthy subscription base, this can translate into significant revenue generation for Electronic Arts which in turn can reward EA shareholders.

The MMORPG space is a crowded one with numerous companies both small and large competing to put out a quality product that enough people are willing to keep paying for month after month. The risk at investing at this stage of the game (pun intended) is that no one knows if the game will thrive or flop. Every investor knows that nothing is guaranteed, but there are some pretty compelling arguments that SWTOR can reach blockbuster status and keep a loyal ~~customer~~ player base ~~paying~~ playing for years:

Record Breaking Pre Order Sales

EA began taking pre-orders for SWTOR on July 21. As of September 17th, the total number of copies that have been pre-ordered stand at 463,121. In the first 5 days since pre-ordering was announced, SWTOR broke EA’s previous record set by Battlefront 3 for the most number of pre-orders.

Different versions of the game were available for pre-order: a standard edition ( $60.00), a digital deluxe edition ($80.00), and a collector’s edition ($150.00) . Doing some quick math, (463,121 * $60) we see that EA will earn at least $27,787,260 in revenue from SWTOR pre-order sales. That number assumes that only the $60 standard edition was sold.

According to the SWTOR pre-order page, the collector’s edition has been sold out and we don’t know how many deluxe editions of the game have been sold. Assuming a formula of 70% standard edition, 20% deluxe edition, and 10% collector’s edition, this figure increases to $33,807,833.

An Estimated 3 Million Units Will Sell

As a result of these strong pre-order figures, analyst group Cowen and Company estimated that SWTOR will sell 3 million copies its first year, and retain 2 million subscribers during this same period. These figures are up from their original estimate of 1.5 million copies sold the first year and a retention of 1 million subscribers.

Applying the same 70, 20, 10 formula to 3 million we get a yearly revenue figure of $219,000,000. Along with that, 2 million subscribers at an average rate of $12.50 a month will bring in $25,000,000 each month.

Recurring Subscriptions is the Key

When Star Wars the Old Republic launches, it will bring a significant amount of revenue to Electronic Arts. As pre-order sales indicate, the game has already piqued the interest of gamers and has the potential to keep them as paying customers month after month. BioWare is counting on their deep storytelling to make their game highly immersive and may contend with World of Warcraft for the world’s most popular MMO video game.

The key for EA is to maintain subscribers in the subsequent months after release. Activision/Blizzard has mastered the ability to keep dangling the carrot in front of their customers to keep them coming back month after month. EA is very aware of this. EA CFO Eric Brown has stated that EA has followed the World of Warcraft lifecycle very carefully and has paid close attention to what has worked and what hasn’t in terms of keeping the game fresh and interesting for their players.

Conclusion

Preorder sales as well as analyst predictions indicate that SWTOR will be a successful game for Electronic Arts, at least in the first year after it is released. During this first year, if EA reports a significant revenue increase, that could translate into a significant gain in their stock’s share price. Granted, there are no guarantees, but at this point, it appears that the reward outweighs the risk.

Disclosure: Author owns no shares of any companies mentioned in this article.

Filed Under: EA Tagged With: EA, MMO, MMORPG, SWTOR, TOR

Guild Phase 2

Guild Phase 2 has begun. The guild FAQ has been updated to reflect the new features:

Here are a few of the highlighted answered questions.
Guilds wanting to align, but have selected a different server type, (PVP, RP, PVE, etc.), and/or different time zone will be placed listed as, “Not a server match.” Basically, to give best possible chance to be on the same server, have the same type of server and time zone.
The Guild Leader or Officers, given permission by the leader can to create guild alignments.
A Guild Can NOT change faction, after the guild is created and faction has been selected.
A Guild can have a total of three alignments. This means a guild can have three allies, or two allies and one adversary, or any combination that equals no more than three alignments.
Allies have to be of the same faction and Adversaries have to be of the opposite faction. This means no opposite faction Allies or same faction Adversaries.
There is no guarantee that all Allies and/or Adversaries will be on the same server come release, but Bioware will do their best to accommodate in the best interest of server space and for the guilds.
Guild leaders and members now have the ability to invite new members through email.

Filed Under: Guild Tagged With: Guild, SWTOR, TOR

The Best Crew Skills for Your Class

AskAJedi had a nice little post over the weekend that talks about matching the proper crew skills to the appropriate class, essentially attempting to determine which crew skills would be the best ones to help your character along their journey to endgame and beyond:

For me, personally, I plan on linking crew skills to my alts that make sense – and that poll changed my opinion. Here’s my plan currently:

Jedi Shadow – Synthweaving, Archaeology, Diplomacy

Jedi Sage – Biochem, Bioanalysis, Underworld

Jedi Guardian – Artifice, Archaeology, Investigation

Gunslinger – Cybertech, Slicing, Treasure Hunting

Vanguard – Armormech, Scavenging, Slicing

Commando – Armstech, Slicing, Treasure Hunting

How many alts will you have just dedicated to crafting? Let us know in the comments below.

Filed Under: Crafting, Crew Skills Tagged With: Crafting, Crew Skills, SWTOR, TOR

Dressing Room Confirmed

TORwars has an exclusive interview up with Damion Schubert, SWTOR’s lead system designer (I hope TOR has systems made with other elements besides lead. High amounts of it can be dangerous). In the interview, Damion states that a dressing room option has made it into the game:

Of particular note, the dressing room made it in (alt-rightclick to preview an equipment piece’s appearance on you or your companion).

Cool. LOTRO has similar dressing room option. If you are looking for that perfect compliment to your cosmetic outfit, you can preview the item before you decide to buy it. This works both for the auction house as well as NPC vendors.

I can’t wait to see what else from the “wall of crazy” makes it into the game!

Filed Under: General Tagged With: SWTOR, TOR

Dual Spec Coming Soon After Launch

There was an interesting statement made by Principal Lead PvP Designer Gabe Amatangelo in the community Q&A section in today’s Studio Insider:

Q: Since it has been clearly stated that there will not be dual specs for characters in the game, can you explain your philosophy behind the skill trees and how you are taking into account players that want to be able to play PvP and PvE content on the same character? – illumineart

A: Dual Speccing is something we want to add soon after launch. Also, features like Guard, PvP Taunt, Resolve, etc. work to narrow the gap between PvP and PvE specialized skills (i.e. a +Block skill would be helpful in both PvE and PvP).

I wish that he had clarified that statement. Is this dual spec just for pvp or would pve be available as well? How does the dual spec work? Are you only able to take a few minor traits from another class, or would you be able to pick and choose which ones you wanted like when you’re buying a car?

Also, how big is “we?” The entire Bioware team? The pvp team? The two guys who are always coming up with crazy stuff to say during interviews? Frankly, I find it hard to believe that EA would want to make a major change to their class system “soon” after launch. Abilities and traits will most likely be nerfed in order to level the playing field, but I can’t see bringing in an entirely new barrage of choices that would come with a dual spec system.

At least EA is thinking about the possibility (or at least someone is). We’ll see if this ever comes to light.

Filed Under: Classes Tagged With: Class, SWTOR, TOR

Will Same Gender Romance Options Affect SWTOR’s Rating?

As you may have heard by now, same gender romances will be available in SWTOR post launch. As speculated, SWTOR will have a T for Teen rating at launch. I wonder if this decision to delay SGR was done in order to solidify the T rating from the ESRB. If that was an option at launch, the ESRB may have given the game a M rating.

It makes some sense. All that EA has to do is put in a disclaimer that “updated content not rated by the ESRB.” That way, mom and dad will still buy the game since it carries a “mild” rating, until CNN does an expose on the matter and they hear about it.

I’m surprised that EA decided to pursue such a controversial topic, especially when they know that so many children will be playing SWTOR. In the long run, it may have been easier to decide that SGR just isn’t an option in SWTOR and avoid any headaches it may cause.

Filed Under: Companions Tagged With: Companions, SWTOR, TOR