NOW = 1.7 Million Active Subscribers | 3 Months from now = Guess What

I do think wow broke 1 million before year one (dont hold me to it but I think they did, thats why some idiots thought the CU/NGE would be a good idea)

There were plenty of crafted items in wow that were useful. Not so many in TOR

Guess you havent read all the issues with operations.

Having something bad in the game like warzones.battlegrounds isnt something to be proud of.

As in to world PVP all I have to say is TM vs SS. WoW wins wolrd pvp by a landslide.

Compairing a launch from 8 years ago to today is fair.

Thats like opening a new heart transplant hospital today and telling your clients that you have a better success rating than one that opened 8 years ago had when it opened. Ever hear of learn from others mistakes as to not repeat their failures.

I can answer these questions for you.

1. It was a success yes, but people are ready to move on. The dichotomy of Raid or Die, or PVP or Die is getting very stale. The average gamer these day's doesn't want to be forced into anything. SWTOR kind of made the right move in making leveling extremely casual and you don't have to really worry about others - however they should Not have gone with the End Game is Raids model, that, I'd say after over a decade, is done.

2. The kind of content the majority is looking for is fun content that lets them get Into the content quickly, easily, and be fun to play without making you want to stop playing because it's frustrating. They also want, and this is a big one. Re-playability. This for some is what SWTOR offers, however around the 3rd toon, it's just a big samey mess.

How do you sustain them? Simple. By basing your content design off of something that can be made moderately quickly, while making sure older content is not invalidated, and still holds worth/ease of access, so that players can go back easily and help their friends and families, without feeling bored.

Answer: Guild Wars 2. This will be the 1st game that's really trying to do these things. Will it be perfect? Is a 1st try ever perfect? No. However, this is the direction the Genre needs to move in if it wants to survive, there's no other way to look at it.

It caters to casuals in that you don't have to form parties, objectives, kills, exp, loot, they're all equally shared via participating and doing the event at hand, or attacking the monster, whatever. It all counts.

It caters to the PVPers, because it offers that competitive group makeup PVP, smaller matches, more focused on player skill and less on gear. The combat system is action oriented, and not just pure skill mashing, positioning counts. They'll love it.

It caters to the World PVP'ers, in a different way but still we must try new things. With World v World v World, 3 servers are matched up every 2 weeks, and you can access at any time, with any amount of players, a massive area to do battle, siege weapons, take keeps and display your guild banner. This can be coordinated, or not. Your gear is yours, and your kicked up to max level to brawl it out for domination, eventually pushing into the other servers home keeps and controlling it. (This system is most risky, but yields much potential. They've modified DAOC's 3 faction warfare, and made it into 3 server warfare, while at the same time catering to people who don't want to be randomly PVP'ed. If they want it, they can go get it. Anytime.)

It caters to the hard-core PVE players as well, in a smaller sense than raids do. Giving dungeons that have a Story mode, and then Unlocked Exploration mode, that has Dynamic events for a 5 man team, objectives are random, and update as you go, changing your gameplay. These encounters are going to have different abilities each time you encounter them. With 8 dungeons to start, a possible 32 different paths can be taken at first. A dev team failed to complete a level 80 explore more dungeon after a few hours, it offers a lot of challenge. (These dungeons have unique armor skins as drops, based on the dungeon theme. As well as tokens to trade for other armor/skins.)

Content is episodic for GW2, it will hopefully be released in a timely fashion, naturally for a small charge since there is no Sub, so it should maintain the casuals, depending on speed.

Even if it all doesn't work out - it's the only game that's trying to really break free of the Raid or Die mentality - that isn't a pure sandbox.

If nothing else, it's going to be a presence in how MMO's can change, and maybe force developers out of this "WoW model is God" theme they've been following. Stagnation is Death.

Probably around 500k.

Honestly, I don't see myself playing this game a month from now. My main is in the 40s, will likely be 50 by then. Level 50 content is rather unimpressive, and I don't feel like grinding PvP for gear. I'm guessing most people will be the same.

Then, factor in the new releases. Such as ME3, possibly Diablo 3, Torchlight 2, etc., etc. They will also release just around the time when SWTOR will start getting mighty boring.

Yeah, I'm gonna go with about 500k in 3 months.

Interesting read

It was interesting to write! I love being able to put my thoughts down like that.

Well over 2 million copies sold and 1.7 active subs means over 300,000 are no longer playing the game.

Dont try to say that the people who have bought the game and not started playing yet is a number above 1000. so 2 million - 1.7 million = 300,000 with the plus being the number over 2 million and the group of the 1.7 million that canceled and still have active play time.

Using common sense when looking at numbers is hard for some people I guess.

Boo, why didnt any of thouse 1.7 million pick the server im on!

Jung Ma is always looking for more. If it gets bad, really the only option right now is to just re-roll on another server. If you're interested in moving to Jung Ma as a BH or something Sith or even Republic, I have lots of credits to give away + gear.

They are all part of the new stealth class being tested by the empire. They are training on a top secret planet that you dont have access to since you are not part of that group so you dont see them.

They have the ability to evade the /who ability and are able to avoid being detected by the server.

No it isn't a 85% retention rate is astounding and the people harping on those 300k are grabbing at the flimsiest if straws...and it further proves that there is a segment of this population that purchased the game and hang around for sole purpose of bashing it and crying doom at every opportunity and that is the most pathetic yellow thing that any gamer could do.