The sky isn't falling. A numbers based view.

thats the downside of big IPs,,they have strong emotions attached to them

just like "real" love, strong feeling can blow things out of proportions

i still cant sleep , because of all the news we had today,,hopefully this is a turning point

MICKEY MOUSE for WORLD PRESIDENT

You're not accounting for the micro-transaction sales that have occurred in GW2 since its launch. Lack of a subscription fee and no obligations to other subscriptions makes paying a little extra (especially for flavor items and a recent, highly successful Halloween event) a lot more appealing than if you were to pay a subscription fee AND have that carrot dangling in front of your face. Okay, so maybe SWTOR's 10 months of subscription revenue from 500k (roughly) subs may give it an edge on GW2, but it pales in comparison to the success GW2 has already known in its first two months of release. Good publicity versus SWTOR's bad publicity.

Going F2P by the game's 1 year anniversary is a good move, whether people will agree with it or not. If they take cues from ArenaNet and make the perks from continuing subs appealing to the longterm player, then there may yet be a recovery in sight for this game. If SWTOR's trend continues, however, then it won't be long before GW2 surpasses SWTOR completely. If you deny that, then you're simply deluding yourself with the blind hope that "your" game will succeed. Many of us have already been down that road with SWG.

You take MMOdata as gospel. Fine. So be it, I'll take that at face value. But I can't rate their stats, or the hard and fast conclusions coming out of it, as more than speculation. Although yours and a few others at least makes an honest effort of it.

There are no airtight figures out there. Likely we never will have any.

SWTOR is considered a failure largely due to it's huge investment cost. None of the other games you listed invested the same amount of money in to the game as SWTOR did and, worse yet, many of them were still considered failure. STO, which according to your own information only have 5% less retention, is often considered a failure at launch. Even most players (and myself) will tell you it didn't get good until a year after launch.

Not to mention a lot of people are expecting another huge drop once the year-long subs that aren't renewing drop. I don't know if anybody remembers the drop after two months from people not renewing.

The problems this weekend after the release of f2p havent help a bit. Rolling back servers and telling people that lost cartel coins to suck it up is not an option. aside from the legalities in some states, this will drive out subscribers and that wont help a bit. They need to step up and actually fix something for once.

Damn no posts on here for about a month! All I can say is the game is well done, has a good story and I will continue to support it via my monthly subscription and buying the expansions, whether or not I'm actually playing.

never seen this one or did I?

The SWG 30k sub at cancel is total players. The last weeks of the game had only 6k-9k peak time players logged in ... and yet, like you joked, you see everyone talking about the game as if it were the greatest mmo ever made.

Other than it's sandbox features the game was quite terrible. If you wanted to play Barbie it was great and even I like those elements but the RPG world, game and physics were quite terrible and largely based upon the engine itself.

I just think Bioware needs to take a hard look at this game and put serious effort into quality of life features that keep players away. The core game has some very fun elements to it and is an alternative themepark play style that will appeal to many players.

It's almost impossible to track this precisely because neither TOR nor GW2 release figures on their Cartel Coin/Gem sales, nor would they have any interest in doing so.

Considering that GW2 (unlike GW1) has a lot more discontent visible over the way the cash shop is being ... encouraged... I'd say it's not quite so clear cut as your somewhat biased post suggests. I speak as an avid player of both games, so it's hardly a case of 'my game'.

LOL, congrats, you found the one usefull line in that OPs post (I stopped reading when he said the truth in the numbers but didnt use the real number and instead created straw man arguements comparing to other games. More fanboi spin)

And love the sarcasm

As for thread, truth is in the number

2.1 million subs at launch
under 400k subs now (as per EA statement)
any other numbers are completely meaningless and nothing but spin

Personally I could care less how TOR ranks to WOW.
WOW was a terrible game with amazing marketing
TOR is a moderate game with terrible marketing

Im waiting on next shareholder meeting for new numbers
Should be a interesting read
Sadly we already know EA counts f2p accounts as subscriptions so hopefully the investors demand more transparency.
I know Id love to know what the real sub numbers are.

And in the end, None of that matters to me and my playing TOR
Ill leave when Im done or when all my friends leave or when it becomes P2W.

But then again im not a employee of EA, hired to spin and promote TOR on the forums (as others are rumored to be). I have no agenda beyond common interest and curiosity.