http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-08-01-star-wars-the-old-republic-could-attract-upwards-of-50-million-monthly-players-says-wedbush

"We expect the network effect to augment the number of gamers further. In the long-term, we believe the adjustments will result in incremental revenue and earnings growth as high-margin Cartel Coin purchases by a much larger pool of gamers and additional advertising generate more revenue than was lost through declining subscription fees and the lower MSRP."

Ultimately, Pachter believes that Star Wars now has the potential to "attract at least 10 million MAUs indefinitely, with upside to perhaps 50 million." He added, "Thus, we believe that contribution from the model shift could be significant for years to come."

So when did Pachter completely lose his fucking mind? That is honestly the sort of baseless prediction you'd expect from a 12 year old throwing out numbers that sound big. Clearly EA has no such confidence, or they wouldn't have shrunk their sever count down to a mere 20 worldwide.

Edit: I am aware that this from two months ago, but I'm just reading it now. Sorry if this was linked in one of the other F2P threads.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0308208/

@Fredchuckdave said:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0308208/

Confused.

One day, you'll see. YOU'LL ALL SEE.

@Fredchuckdave said:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0308208/

That makes no goddamn sense.

@SagaciousJones: He's just saying that it could attract 50 million. Not that it will.

Just like the Mariners could win the World Series, but so could a lot of other teams, many of whom have much better chances.

Pachter could predict something correctly. But he probably won't.

Michael Pachter is smarter than you. He's smarter than any gamer. If he wasn't good at what he does, the only place you'd hear from him is Fox News and The Daily Mail. F2P IS going to be huge for ToR, because it is a BioWare game*, because it is Star Wars. Especially now with the Disney acquisition, Star Wars is on everyone's mind.

* If you think the blowback from Mass Effect 3 damaged the brand in any significant way in the mind of the average consumer you're a fucking idiot.

Bioware: Home of delusions of grandeur and broken dreams, promises and patches.

I'm just waiting for "Pachter! The Musical."

I had this whole post written up about how runescape has over 200 million users, and world of tanks over 40 million, but then I realized he is actually talking about MONTHLY active users (reading comprehension is hard huh). Yeah... I would be really surprised.

I wonder if it hurt when he pulled the 50 million number out of his ass?

Why the fuck can't people just ignore him?

If there is anything that will gather the most subscribers, it's guild wars 2. Unlike paid games gone F2P GW2 doesn't rely heavily on microtransactions.

Pachter is great.

Oh come on, not this clown.

Considering his stance on the doctors leaving was that every one of us was personally responsible for their last games being bad and that we shouldn't have called them out on it, I'm not too altogether surprised at this shill's latest EA blowjob.

I'm sure the switch to F2P will bring in a lot of players, but even if it somehow achieves 50 million, how many are going to stick around? The pricing structure was one of the biggest barriers for the game, but the fact it wasn't very good was another. At most, I think a lot of people will return to finish their personal stories, then quit never to return, especially since many of the actual MMO elements are heavily restricted for free players.

He's at least correct about this having a significant impact on future MMO's though, I can't imagine anyone releasing another big MMO, without at least a hybrid model now.

"Maybe more people will play SWTOR."

Analytics!

I think you guys are being a little micro-minded about who will be playing a Star Wars MMO. Pachter's prediction factors in all Star Wars fans who wouldn't normally play an MMO or any kind of hardcore game but would be willing to take a chance on free. It's not a stretch to assume 10 million people out there love Star Wars enough to play it for free. After all, 32 million people play League of Legends every month, and that's a pretty niche game when you think about it.

Sure, Pachter loves EA but that's because he's primarily interested in investment. You may love to hate EA but they are undoubtedly a rock of the game publishing market. Year after year they make money, and each time they have a bad run they always bounce back; hence a sound investment if you're buying stock.

Pachter has said a lot of dumb shit in the past, this isn't a surprise.

Is he saying shockingly... shocking things to get everyone's attention? Is he trying to say with this: "I'm still around, don't forget about me!"

@smcn said:

Michael Pachter is smarter than you. He's smarter than any gamer. If he wasn't good at what he does, the only place you'd hear from him is Fox News and The Daily Mail. F2P IS going to be huge for ToR, because it is a BioWare game*, because it is Star Wars. Especially now with the Disney acquisition, Star Wars is on everyone's mind.

* If you think the blowback from Mass Effect 3 damaged the brand in any significant way in the mind of the average consumer you're a fucking idiot.

'Smarter than any gamer' seems like a bit of a stretch.

And if you think the 'average consumer' has the first clue who Bioware is, you're the fucking idiot. There is no Bioware brand in the mind of the average consumer. The brand only ever carried weight with people who closely follow gaming, and among those people it has been significantly damaged (by the end of ME3 being so bad they had to apologise for it and try again, by Dragon Age 2 being half-assed, by TOR being a massive failure as a subscription MMO and now by the Doctors leaving).

TOR will undoubtedly be more successful as a F2P MMO (how could it not be?), but it's not going to have 50 million monthly active users. He might as well have said 50 bajillion.

He has clearly never played the game. Runs like shit. There aren't even 50 million MMO fans who have machines that can run that game to any meaningful degree.

Just ignore this asshat and move on.

Pachter once again showing he's out of his mind.

God I hope not they only have like 8 servers and they are packed the lag is crazy right now lol.

Ha!

Oh man, I needed this morning laugh, the day was starting kinda depressing, now everything is right and amusing with the world again.

@smcn said:

Michael Pachter is smarter than you. He's smarter than any gamer. If he wasn't good at what he does, the only place you'd hear from him is Fox News and The Daily Mail. F2P IS going to be huge for ToR, because it is a BioWare game*, because it is Star Wars. Especially now with the Disney acquisition, Star Wars is on everyone's mind.

* If you think the blowback from Mass Effect 3 damaged the brand in any significant way in the mind of the average consumer you're a fucking idiot.

I think you've completely misunderstood what Pachter does. Any public prediction he has is in no way a represantation of what his actual proffesional opinion is. All this is is him having some fun with us hyper-sensitive gamers. He wouldn't get payed well by rich investors if he just shared all his opinions publically.

"If you're good at something, never do it for free".

Michael Pachter reads a lot of numbers so I wouldn't call anything he says baseless, just more or less exaggerated. And there's always the element of chance (since the future isn't written. Or is it?) F2P seems to do pretty well for some companies and it's not always equivalent with failure.

@smcn said:

Michael Pachter is smarter than you. He's smarter than any gamer. If he wasn't good at what he does, the only place you'd hear from him is Fox News and The Daily Mail. F2P IS going to be huge for ToR, because it is a BioWare game*, because it is Star Wars. Especially now with the Disney acquisition, Star Wars is on everyone's mind.

* If you think the blowback from Mass Effect 3 damaged the brand in any significant way in the mind of the average consumer you're a fucking idiot.

I agree with you that he is probably a smart guy in his line of work, no doubt about that ... but 50 Million? thats almost 5 times as much as WoW had as is peak. Tbh. I even think 10 million active players on a long term base are a stretch. F2P will probably do the game good and I would agree that between 5 Million and 10 Million short term players and maybe 3 to 7 Million long term players are realistic. But 50 Million is just crazy.

Pachter predicting things again...its cute when he does that

Pachman's job is to predict the future. Tough job...

@Ares42 said:

@smcn said:

Michael Pachter is smarter than you. He's smarter than any gamer. If he wasn't good at what he does, the only place you'd hear from him is Fox News and The Daily Mail. F2P IS going to be huge for ToR, because it is a BioWare game*, because it is Star Wars. Especially now with the Disney acquisition, Star Wars is on everyone's mind.

* If you think the blowback from Mass Effect 3 damaged the brand in any significant way in the mind of the average consumer you're a fucking idiot.

I think you've completely misunderstood what Pachter does. Any public prediction he has is in no way a represantation of what his actual proffesional opinion is. All this is is him having some fun with us hyper-sensitive gamers. He wouldn't get payed well by rich investors if he just shared all his opinions publically.

"If you're good at something, never do it for free".

I like this theory. Pach has some mischief in his eyes in public appearances.

FYI- if you're a former owner/subscriber, don't delete your characters before checking to see if content on those characters is now behind a paywall! i had a sub, had a level 5 imperial chiss- then unsub'd, and logged back in to check out the new F2P stuff. since i forgot all the beats of the story, i figured i'd delete my character and just recreate to start fresh...when i did so, i was locked out of recreating a chiss- as i mentioned, it's now behind a paywall. my fault for not thoroughly researching the details of the F2P model but between that and restricted fast travel for free players- fuck this game forever.

Are there even 50 million MMO players total? WoW has 10 and it seems like everything else is fighting for scraps around 1m or less.

Also, the f2p implementation in ToR isn't attractive at all, I doubt much happens unless that changes.

It's not free, it costs 25GB to install.

Four More Years.