The end of the arguement. Is SWTOR in decline? Can it be saved?

True, I been around before even UO and yes, rumors of a games death are always constant.

But over time Ive learned to qualify (to myself) what death means.

Death NEVER MEANS closing of doors in a MMORPG, because that never happens. Even SWG still lives on in Emu. UO has a larger Emu population then its had in retail game for over a decade. MMORPGs never die.

To me death of a MMORPG is when it can not meet the expected market! The predicted sales.

IE: DAoC I call a huge success as it was made to appeal to 500,000 or less (it was profitable with far less but the market expectation was around the 500,000 mark. It sold well over a million and maintained for years 800,000 active subs. DAoC was a success on every level until Mythic ruined the game and drove everyone away in droves from the changes to game.

Conversely: SWG is a grand failure. SWG was created to be a monster game with a predicted 2 million box sales and a long term sub base of 1 million. Instead it reportably sold 1.5 boxes (still respectable) but its 3 month subs was under 300,000 after release. SWG failed to meet the expected numbers.

With TOR: I know the fanbois are claiming it was never expected to do these numbers now, but a year before release these really were the numbers being tossed around for this game. 4-5-6 million SUBS range. This game was to, from all accounts, from all reports, rival WOW (not beat it, just be in the same market) and revolutionalize the MMORPG genre.

Now people can now claim that was over blown and unrealistic, fact of matter is that was the predicted and expected level of success expected.

So to come so far under that and receive so much negative press can be veiwed as failure.

Does it mean they not profitable? Of course not. Success is not written on just turning a profit, success and failure are defined by how much profit for how long is made.

Anyone with over 7 years MMORPG experience (and probably a few with less then 7) knows the numbers EAoware putting out dont pass the smell test and are being artificially propped up by the single month resigns for Patch 1.2. Fact is EAoware qualifies a active account as someone with time left. Not by a actual cancellation notice.

So right now anyone thats been around for awhile knows you can not get a accurate subscription number until the end of the 6 month subs times run out. Till then you just do not know for sure how many players bought the 6 month sub, cancelled, but still counted as active. Plus there is this whole next 2 months for the 1.2 returns that activate for a month, get a free month, not satisfied with patch, and leave.

All we can do is go by the server numbers and those are so arbitrary its silly.

True story, other day I was on Alderaan, Fleet, Tat (before rakghoul stuff), and Quesh and saw no more then 7 people at any location during prime time hours.
Logged out and server status read as standard!
If 7 people on rep fleet during prime time is standard, WTH qualifies as low????

So yeah, every MMORPG has its detractors. TOR no different.
Every MMORPG has its fanbois to and Reading these forums TOR seems to have a pretty dedicated and consistant group of 20 that spend more time on forums then in game they claim to love (I dont get that. When im head over heals in love with a game, I hit forums maybe once a week tops, not every days for hours on end. If I love the game Im playing the game).

But as for TOR failing. Its failed to reach the predicted levels prior to release. Personally I think thats a real shame cause I wanted to love this game and play for years and years and years. I want the genre to get past the disaster to the genre known as WOW and move on to more traditional MMORPG values and ideas while bringing in the new concepts like the voice overs, public groups from RIFT, story archs, crew skills, ect.

I dont think GW2, SW, AION, or others will bring us into a new generation for the Genre. TOR really was the last great hope of this genre (of the announced games). So now we need to wait yet another 5-6 years and hopefully by then someone will have the balls to put quality over the quantity cash grab that the post WOW games have done.

Thats my take anyways. Like yourself, I do enjoy parts of the game. I just expected more and was promised more. And on that level, EAoware has failed amazingly.

And its not hating to be realistic about the product!

Last week my guild was on Tatooine for a guild meeting; there were around sixty of us. It was realign that there were nine people in the area; many other people has said the exact same thing. I think it's safe to say that the population indicator is a bit broken.

I sub because I enjoy the game. In my humble opinion it is far better than WoW and I intend to keep on playing.

I cancelled my sub today as well, because I feel SWTOR was made to be a quick cash grab instead of what it was marketed to be. Unfortunately in my point of view the game was developed by corporate suits instead of passionate gamers that want to bring this MMO to the next level. I am very sad because I had high hopes for this game, and I spent money and time playing it.

60 in a guild these days is impressive, there's more than a few in mine that won't come back and play even with a FREE 30 days.

I find it funny people talk about rating agencies when looking at stocks,boy i have storys to tell you if you ever played the Market but the first thing is never trust the rating agencies,how soon people forget the DotCom bubble and what those agencies did.

Being better than WoW at this point is nothing amazing - actualy in terms of gameplay many f2p korean grinding style MMOs are better. Thing is WoW was amazing when it was Vanilla years ago, when WoW was, let's say (but that is not true) revolutionary. Only thing WoW has now is the number of subscribers, but this won't last long since people are massively abandoning that ship - so rapidly that Blizz took desperate steps. The game will live as long as there will be enough people to participate.

I think the problem is EA (not sure about BW role) - they killed Warhammer Online which could be one of the greatest MMO. Let's hope they will not kill SWTOR and it will fast become something more than a Star Wars version of WoW.

Yeah, I know what they are going through. I logged on twice. 40 mins the first time (day of plague) 1 min the next time.

It is already minus the companions and voice over...

To be fair to the Consumerist, the fix was in. There were many game forums that told people that had probably never heard of the site before to go there and vote for EA. (Is that what astroturfed means? I am not familiar with that term).

I am a regular on the consumerist and that vote had nothing to do with what that site is all about. Just a bunch of cranky gamers with no sense of real world priorities invaded the consumerist so it doesn't really speak to the real legitimacy of that site at all. Other than I suppose they could have tried to figure out what was a real vote and what was a pissed off gamer and excluded those votes but I don't know if that is even possible.