John Riccitiello - "Realistically, TOR's a solid success."

Every serious MMORPG plans to take on WoW. The guys who go out and say, "We come in peace WoW, please don't hurt us" are pretty much already dead. WoW only has around 5 million guys paying $15/month (Asian guys pay way less), so if your game pulls 1 million+ subscribers at $15/month you're definitely going to get WoW"s attention whether you want it or not so you better get ready to fight WoW. Whether you'll be successful or not, who knows, but nobody should start a major MMORPG planning for failure.

And honestly WoW's hurting too if you look at their numbers. It seems like all the new MMORPGs do is mutually wipe each other out. People are leaving SWTOR but people are leaving WOW too.

Yep. Considering that BF3 and FIFA each sold over 10 million copies, it's plain to see their priorities.

I think people originally thought SWTOR was going to be like WoW that has maybe 10000% ROI (wouldn't be surprised if it made $10 billion from its $100 million budget) and found out that maybe it's only going to be 100% ROI ($100 million to $200 million). But I'll take double my money even if it's not quite good as getting 100 times my money.

Very few people that left will ever come back once they invest time into another, better, game. It's that simple. Plus, every lose hurts the server population more, making it more likely they will have even more people un-sub. Just the way it is. If my wife didn't want to play this game, I'd be gone. And I will be gone as soon as Guild Wars 2 comes out anyway. This game is a great single player game. Worth the money, but hardly a good MMO.

Actually paying $15/month X 12 = $180/year which is about the cost of 3 games, so a MMORPG with 1/10th the population can net roughly the same as a standard game if it lasted 3 years.

Now for the EA sports game, they're basicaly a MMORPG that costs $5/month for an yearly roster update, you can't really compete against that!

That is a flat out lie, they were anticipating 8-10 million subs at release and they barely broke 2 million. 1-2 million subs were barely enough to cover the development costs.

They were anticipating that many? Really?
I thought they were anticipating like... 1.2 million. Or at least, that's what they told investors before it released...

Right, but even selling 10 million games, those games are so simple to update these days that I bet you and I could do it (not BF, that's probably slightly more more intensive). Think about the current ROI for Madden and FIFA alone - it has to be mind blowing. A few tweaks to the engine, updated rosters, maybe a new stadium every year.

So while those may be "investor" and "profit" priorities, that doesn't mean they would willfully neglect SWTOR because of them. I can only assume that there's no chance in hell that Madden or FIFA needs a staff of 600 employees to develop/update (600 was the last # of employees at Bioware Austin I saw), even when they completely re-do the game engines. Those titles are MASSIVE $ cows.

SWTOR may not have the current ability to compete with the cross platform console games, but...even a game like SWG was making money 8 years after development, with a skeleton crew.

Bottom line, I don't think the statement was made to dis SWTOR as much as it was to say to investors "guys, SWTOR is a drop in the bucket for us, don't freak out, we'll still make $".

Here's what I think:

Doctors Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk are sell outs and they are the ones to blame, at the core.

I knew Bioware was OVER when Ray came out and said "I personally believe Mass Effect 3 is the best work we've yet created" (Baldurs Gate is the best work they've done, NO MATTER WHAT LIES AND BS RAY SPOUTS)

Sell outs. Total sell outs. Their passion is for money, not for great games.

How could they be so stupid to see that Bioware was a PREMIER (one of the BEST) development company, pre-EA...? WHY DID THEY MESS WITH SOMETHING THAT WASN'T BROKEN IN THE FIRST PLACE?! WHY INVOLVE BIOWARE WITH ELECTRONIC ARTS; "The place great studios go to die"

Answer: Greed

I mean really... were they hard up for cash? THEY ARE DOCTORS, they have the credentials to become upper class easily, so it wasn't about living comfortably.

It was about GREED and selling out.

SWTOR would have been great, if Bioware negotiated it out from under EA, and they could have...

Greed destroys... EVERYTHING!

That's what I think.

Making stuff up is fun but maybe you should be more subtle about it. What you just wrote is too obviously a lie.

Learn to blend and bend the truth...not shatter it completely