People just don't play this game for long anymore. Time for a new star wars mmo?

I can't speak to broad trends in the game, but a few things in this thread strike me as odd:

• The idea that if you've been playing the same video game for 2-3 years and are now bored with it, that's somehow indicative of a problem with that game. That's more likely an indicator that you should do other things with your free time for a while, until you miss SWTOR and want to play again. Let your sub lapse and only re-sub when you're truly interested. It's way too easy to let MMOs become a second job, where you just log in every day because you logged in the day before, and you have all these self-imposed obligations (running dailies, raids, farming, playing the market, etc) that feel very tedious and boring. You're playing a game, it's supposed to be fun - so if it's not, don't criticize the game for failing to keep you interested; take a hard look at how you're spending your time and ask yourself if you're really enjoying what you're doing. If not, move on - there's no harm in doing so and it doesn't mean the game is bad if you do, it just means you need to break out of the monotonous rut you've gotten yourself into.
  
  
• The idea that recruiting faceless masses into a guild by inviting any randoms simply b/c they don't have a guild tag - and then not having those players become active members - is somehow indicative of a problem with the game. I just recently started and on almost every new character, I get invited to a random guild without any preamble whatsoever. Once in that guild, I'm generally ignored - I'm just another anonymous number to these guilds and they're just looking to cast the widest net possible WRT recruiting. They obviously just want to inflate their member numbers, they don't really want to invest any time into their membership. Only once have I seen a new guild try to engage its new members - set up guild FP runs, encourage grouping for Heroics, offer to help with questing and gearing, etc. All the others are just big collections of total strangers who never interact with each other. Go figure, when you run your guild like that, people are likely to leave because there's nothing about your guild that makes any different than any other guild (or really any different than being guildless). You have to provide something to your members that makes them want to stay and get involved, and bring all their alts into the same guild b/c they have such a good time with the people in that guild. If you're basically ignoring 80% of your members and they leave your guild or stop logging in to that character as a result, it's not the game that's at fault.

No they would likely ruin it, they would butcher it so it had the same combat mechanics as every other mmo, with enemies that stand still (lol)

Sorry but I watched what they did to the elder scrolls... never want to see a single player game made into an mmo ever again.

What exactly is TORtanic?

Oh, I got it now. It was the nostradamus type people online that forsaw this game dying (which it didn't) The cute trolls online that said TOR is like the Titanic and it's going to hit the iceberg and sink and TOR sounds a little like *** and has the T at the beginning and happens to be 3 letters so you substitute *** and put TORtanic.

That's cute It really is.

OFF TOPIC - Like other people said I would LOVE a SWG 2!

ON TOPIC - I don't think thats it when you talk about guild numbers, I engage with my players every day, I do fps, i help low levels with quest, I hold contest and giveaways every weekend for things like mounts and cartel packs. But the problem is, they DONT log on anymore, and nothing myself or my guild can do to change the fact that they don't want to play anymore.

This is absolutely true of a lot of the "leveling" guilds (I aplogize about the classification I just don't really know how else to describe the guild you join for the XP bonus, and guild ship access, while you're leveling to speed up the process). If you do not engage at all with your members then your retention rate will always be insanely low. People definitely play this game a ton still. Guilds succeed when their members know one another and interact. I know for me the guild I am in now is fantastic. I love logging into TS and then the game just to see who is online. We've all gotten to the point where we'll just have a great time talking in TS for hours on end instead of even play the game. There've been times where we're all having a great time laughing at all of our awful jokes, and I found myself just running around my strong hold. Every Sunday we have mandatory meetings followed up by a guild event for those who can make it. We have newsletters going out weekly, and we are always hanging out in TS. There's something to be said for that kind of structure. People connect with each other that way.

Bottom line, you have to be engaged to have the kind of experience in guild that most people look for whether they realize it or not. And most importantly, you have to have the leadership in place that really wants to have that guild be awesome for its members. If you're the leader, that responsibility is on you. Unless you just did it for the tag in which case it's all good.

I'd say that if you're able to recruit 200 people to your guild that that is the real sign of how many people are playing this game. That would say to me "a lot".

To just be totally honest in an attempt to help you, just doing flashpoints or any kind of content doesn't really distinguish you from the pack. Every guild does content. Give aways are fun little additives, but you have to be able to connect them to something or else you'll get the "plate licker effect". They may not be logging in to that specific character, but there's a better than average chance they are logging on somewhere in game. I'd examine your structure. Having voice comms, and urging people to use them, or set it up so that as a guild training session you walk them through setting up team speak or something could really make a difference. It sounds like you need to provide a hub for your players to actually connect. I would say that if you're in a leveling guild, you're probably fighting up stream. It's much easier to form those connections with comms when you're in a raiding guild, or really end game guild. The leveling experience is too solo minded for people to even think about really getting into the human side of the game. If you are a leveling guild, maybe you re-examine your priorities in game to include end game in some capacity?

Sandbox Star Wars MMO on Frostbite 3.

Do it EA.

Dude this game has been known as one of the biggest MMO failures of all time.

Just because the game didn't shut down doesn't mean it didn't fail.

It wasn't too long after that they adopted the F2P model and cash market option so many MMO's turn to once they starting hemorrhaging subs.

Dude this game has been known as one of the biggest MMO failures of all time. Just because the game didn't shut down doesn't mean it didn't fail. They spent upwards of $300 Million to develop this game and they had 1.1million subs at launch and lost about half that within the first 6 months. It wasn't too long after that they adopted the F2P model and cash market option so many MMO's turn to once they starting hemorrhaging subs.