The first stage of grief is denial, which seems to be where EA is headed 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 that Gibeau mentioned to shareholders that EA gave every single player players with a level 50 character 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 be surprised at all 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 than the following franchises: Medal of Honor, Battlefield, FIFA, Madden, The Sims, and SimCity. However, 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.

Yesterday, ZeniMax announced that the many rumors of an Elder Scrolls MMO were true, and officially announced The Elder Scrolls Online, only to be met with fan backlash. The main reason being, that fans believe that Bethesda will be less likely to release another single-player Elder Scroll game, since they do not want to compete with themselves.

While Bethesda is owned by ZeniMax, they are two separate development studios; with ZeniMax developing the Elder Scrolls MMO, and Bethesda doing what it normally does. As a MMORPG gamer first, and Elder Scroll fan second, I don’t see a conflict of interest.  A single-player RPG and a MMORPG are not in the same market. It’s like World of Warcraft and Warcraft 3, one’s a RTS game, and the other a MMORPG. Both can exist at the same time without affecting the other.

One comment on the Bethesda blog stated,

Please say this won’t indefinitely post-pone the release of the next real TES title, the way World of Warcraft has indefinitely put Warcraft 4 on hold.

This user is failing to see that  Warcraft 4 was not put on hold for WoW, but for Starcraft 2. Both are RTS games that do compete in the same market. A single-player RPG is no more of a threat to a MMORPG than any other single-player game.

The only issue I could see is that Bethesda wouldn’t want to saturate and cheapen the Elder Scrolls name by releasing too many games around the same time. However, considering that the Elder Scrolls RPGs normally have a 4-5 year development cycle, we won’t see Elder Scrolls VI for at least another 3-4 years anyway. Elder Scrolls Online has a release date of 2013, which provides a big enough buffer that it probably won’t have any affect on the next Elder Scrolls RPG release date anyway.

Regardless, I can’t wait to learn more about Elder Scrolls Online.

It’s only been two days since TERA official launched, but really, the game’s been live for almost two weeks (when the unofficial open beta head-start began). Since then, I’ve managed to level my Popori Archer all the way to level 27, allowing me to get a better feel for the game than I did during the closed beta phase.

To begin with, I went with the Popori race, which is sort of like an Ewok, but cuter. Not because I enjoy being a two foot tall cuddly bear, but because TERA‘s all about action combat. My idea was to pick the race that was the smallest, so my hit-boxes would be smaller, making me harder to hit.

Once I customized my character, I was off to the Island of Dawn, which is the starting area for all characters. This entire island is an intro to the game, and sadly, there wasn’t anything noteworthy that I saw. Once I reached the main city of Velika, the fun finally began.

I’m sure you’re already familiar with TERA‘s action combat system, but what you might not have heard about is its combo system. TERA features a nifty new combat system that allows you to instantly follow up an ability move with the next one in the chain. These chains are completely customizable so players can pair up any moves they want, although some abilities do give bonuses when they follow another ability, so that’s something to take into consideration.

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This morning Pitchblack Games announced, via their forums, that development on their sandbox MMORPG, Dominus, is being shut down effective immediately. No exact reason was given other then stating the company does not have the resources to continue development on the game.

It is with a heavy heart that I have to say goodbye, or at least goodbye for now. We simply cannot deliver the game you deserve with the resources we have. We never quit trying, even when hope faded, because you – our community – kept us inspired.

With so few sandbox MMO games being worked on, it’s sad to see this one go. I was really looking forward to trying it out.