I fear for the future of this game.

qft.

If the city you are in had 2+ million people last year, and 500k this year, and there is no zombie apocalypse currently underway, then your city is in trouble.

Not if the 500k who are left are paying more than 4x what the 2 million previously paid to live in that city. Which they are, and then some.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/05/10/sw...nce-going-f2p/

Gibeau himself states subs have stabilised at just below 500k. Right before they hit F2P, they announced sub numbers wavered between 500k and 1mil (can't be bothered to look that up, do it yourself if you wish).

That would be great, if it were true, but it isn't.

The non-subscribers are paying roughly what 500k subscribers would be paying, according to EA's figures.

The underlying point here is that in the regard of fearing the future we moved from the realm of fearing for the very existence of TOR itself to fearing for the "creative direction" of it.

Much to the heartbreak of many a hater no doubt.

I'm talking about the 500k subscribers. No one knows how many non-subscribers there are, but altogether revenues have more than doubled since going FTP. I know I myself have spent over $1,000 USD on the game since it went FTP and I am sure I'm not the only one. I'm not a wealthy individual but when Bioware and EA continue to give us content that is worth paying for, and I would go so far as to say that the Cartel Market is probably the single most successful and attractive (at least in my eyes) revenue model I've ever seen in a free-to-play environment, I'll continue to shell out every time a new pack is released. If I'm already paying more for this game than I would have in the entire decade-long lifetime of a game like World of Warcraft, then yes, they're doing something right.

Ignorance is thick on the forums today.

Just another armchair analyst who ignores facts and postulates that 500k subs is a bad thing and completely discounts the million "free" accounts and millions they made from those accounts.

That's exactly my point...

Revenues have doubled since the move to F2P. We had somewhere around 500k subscribers before that. This means the revenue is equivalent to (2 x 500k) 1 million subscribers, which means the F2P are the equivalent of (1M/2) 500k subscribers.

First, EA itself has stated that it sold 2 million copies, not 6 million.

Second, that number is how many were sold to retail stores, not players. At it's (subscription) height, SWTOR had 1.7 million players. This was a month after launch and when it was still subscription-only. Take note of the "missing" 300,000. This is common when a publishing company reports sales. It reports how many it sold to retailers.

Third, there is NO WAY to definitively and objectively know how many players are playing SWTOR, nor how many are making micro-transactions outside of what EA claims. There isn't even a way to judge how many players are subbing independent of EA or Bioware's statements. Why? Because SWTOR does not allow third-party addons, thus the programs that gather that information are unusable.

So, in the end, how you view the state of the game is totally subjective and anecdotal.