I don't think we are in Warhammer situation.

Im afraid at the bottom would be WW2-OL launch

People who were there, will know what I am saying

I agree. However, the reason is quite simple, WoW. It brought millions into a genre which was originally meant for a much smaller player base. This endless cycle of wash, rinse, repeat will never end until developers stop producing PC based games, which I believe is rapidly approaching. Walk into any EBGames or GameStop and look for PC games, granted many are digitally downloaded but the sad fact is, we are quickly running to PC endgame. We can only move forward in our MMORPG evolution, and sadly, what we have now is a very irrational player base that wants everything now, not tomorrow, not next week, but today.

in terms of a western market wow has topped out at a max of 4.7 mil western market, so whilst yes that is great it just goes to show that for one this game aint to far behind. I think wow was more lucky in the fact that it was about the time that people switched from console to pcs.

no wow heads jump on me, im not disputing that wow brought alot of people into the genre.

I'm sorry, what?
You're realise you are talking about one of the most popular Sci-fi's ever, right?
That people have been ROLEPLAYING in for the better part of... 30 years?
They're not just going to up and drop the game for 'the next big thing' because there is no 'next big thing' for RP when you want Starwars RP.

I'm very sorry but no, PvPers and PvEers will be the ones to kill this game with their ridiculous demands.

Actually PC games are on the rise again. Due mainly to excellent digital content delivery and more affordable broadband internet.

The playerbase isn't irrational. They just want a new MMO experience. Why would you play a game that plays exactly like WoW when you have (potentially)already spent so much time in that game?
It's time for an AAA game to break the mold. But it won't happen until this template of MMO is completely dead.

The problem is the investors who back the publishers. They do not like to take risks, and are exceptionally greedy. Their line of reasoning is always "WoW has ~11 million subscribers and hauls in piles of money. We want that, but different."
So we get the exact same game experience, only reskinned.

SWTOR only partially broke the mold with their voice acting and robust storylines. But they combined it with the exact same gameplay on top of a broken game engine. So there's that.

I believe Warhammer's primary mistake was thinking that PvPers could sustain an MMO. Once they'd made that decision, they'd pretty much signed their death warrant.

It didn't. But then again, those of us who claimed this were repeatedly called liars and were drowned out by hyperbolic cries of "the engine is broken" "this game is unplayable" and so on.

Typical MMO general forum fare.

PVP players are some of the most hardcore gamers. They can sustain a MMO, but it will just be a niche and not a massive hit like WoW.

WARs mistake was EA rushing the release so it was broken at launch. And the fixes never caught up with the player drop-off. Also, they completely ignored player feedback for roughly 2 years! That was just crazy.
By the time they did fix their game, their reputation as an MMO and a game developer was ruined.

And EA pulled the exact same crap with Bioware. They are issuing patches and listening to feedback much better and faster though, so we may avoid the fate that WAR suffered.

Cant see that happening anytime soon in SWTOR... it can barely run 8 v 8 WZ's without serious FPS drops across a wide spread of hardware setups... lets not even go onto Illum or the complete emptyness of open World PVP full stop.

Personally I think before this game can really take other MMO's on in any serious capacity it needs to first sort out its performance issues... then install the features its already crying out for such as LFG, rPVP, Endgame without bugs.. then maybe it can start to build on all the good stuff like Story, Legacy, Crafting ...

Quality before Quantity then it will really have something to shout about to the rest of the gaming community. ... BUT I am not confident there is enough sand left in the hour glass for it to reach the dizzy heights it was proclaimed to do, instead just fall in line with all the others behind the you know who's in the industry.... still there is hope and I hope they do because there is definately potential in this game.

Well, with the new patch being completely borked, we might be.

rerolled to pre 1.2 status afaik. Black Hole gone, Crystal Vendor back, Guild Bank gone. Strangely enough the UI is still supposedly working.