SWTOR is among the most popular MMO's on PC

There were the remarks he made on the press circuit and remarks he made on the forums and in fan interviews. Sure, he liked to dodge a lot of questions, but he was quite clear in the reasons behind the nerfing of the modding system and the implementation of Hammerpoint Station. The former was a mandate to adhere to a system of "visual progression" in order to appeal to the current MMO market, and the latter was created simply because of an identified gap in the availability of flashpoints during leveling and the need to fill it to suit the expectations of the playerbase. Both were sudden reversals of previous stances. Both were thinly-veiled attempts to emulate WarCraft.

Alas, the forums have such a short memory. What was one day common knowledge becomes an outrageous claim the next. While I will go out of my way to refresh the memories of those who are clearly interested and civil, I will not extend that courtesy to those who do not have those traits.

EA lost faith in that game

Precisely. Something that nearly happened with TOR as well. TOR didn't kill Warhammer, it killed itself and EA quickly pulled the plug. If F2P didn't work for TOR, same would've happened here. But it did work, and is bringing a nice buck to EA. Not on WOW level obviously, but stil significant enough as reflected by quaterly reports to investors.

ALso, there's not gonna be another big EA (or Ubisoft or Activision) MMO announcement anytime soon. AAA MMO "genre" is on the exit. The few remaining titles that managed to rebound will stay and their publishers will continue to support them, but they won't allocate hunderds of millions for developement of another one. Even Blizzard/Activision gave up.

Again, not saying it's worthless. As stated, it's probably the second-most profitable MMO on the market right now. My point is that EA wasn't going for the silver medal. When they make their next attempt for gold, I wouldn't be surprised to see support for SW:TOR drop further than it has.

Again, not saying it's worthless. As stated, it's probably the second-most profitable MMO on the market right now. My point is that EA wasn't going for the silver medal. When they make their next attempt for gold, I wouldn't be surprised to see support for SW:TOR drop further than it has.

Sure. I think you can look back at the post. I was extremely clean and clear in what I asked. Should I have pasted a bunch of smiley faces and sunglasses? In fact, I thought I was being very reasonable.

I think its fair to say this well off course now.

To his credit, if we get a big push back on 3.0 and they actually say something crazy like "its not coming", then we have evidence EA isn't funding the product. But something tells me that isn't going to happen.

Well, I was more alluding to your responses, but naturally you do not need my permission, nor my approval to post. You can do as you wish of course.

I don't think you questioning the validity of the point is anywhere close to off base. I think it is a reasonable question to ask.

As I said earlier, I think one could speculate that at one time it was likely SWTOR was not the favorite child, considering it's poor performance shortly after launch (relatively speaking of course) and how it was treated in public statements by EA....namely the lack of mention a few times, or if mentioned obviously a footnote.

That does not seem to be the case today. The most recent reports, if I am not mistaken, had SWTOR right up front in the limelight, so I would speculate that if at one time EA did not have love for SWTOR, it likely has love now.

Naturally that is just pure speculation on my part.

For me the thing that turned me off GSF is...(may sound lame but...) that the starships are sooo slooowww. It takes you forever to get from one spot to another. It`s just not dynamic.

Even to speculate on a MMO world without a starwars(SW) theme is incredibly naive and underestimating of the business potential in any SW product.

SWToR gives the player its opportunity to be 'that' hero in 'the' galaxy, the fact is that there is probably no more popular culture occurrence that so spreads and stretch over generations like SW. This fact alone makes any speculation on the 'games dying' a huge misjudgement, as it said in a earlier post, Disneys entry on the SW scene isn't one of curiosity, there is money to be made here, and in that fact, will SWToR never cater to the nerdiest and hardcore MMO gamers, that player base is the most ill loyal on the whole MMO market. SWToR will always be the game to attract casuals, with just some sparks for the hardcore gamers if any.

With the upcoming movie and with the start of 'Rebels', a new fanbase is being molded, SWToR will eventually be in phase in what is now considered to be Canon, the updates to come will at some point include a better game engine and with that a whole 'new' game. We all are just now in the most expensive and official, and profitable, Beta testing there ever have been.

By the time E7 will have its premiere SW will celebrate its 37th birthday as a franchise and with Disney at the helm we'll probably experience 37 more . . .