Ten million plus subs is still feasible...(only have one shot though bioware)

This man is accurate. WoW at its peak only had 4m real subs that we actually compare to other games.

Nope, once the player cancels his/her sub then it is not counted as an active sub in later years. Now if someone stops playing the game, but forgets to cancel his/her sub then it is counted. If what you claim is true, why are wow players complaining that they are now down to around 10 million from about 12 million?

so what your saying is Chinese people don't count...

As a rule of thumb, if you see Mr Smedley doing something......... do the exact opposite.

What he is saying is that someone who pays a few yuan to play a month and then goes onto another game is still considered an active subscription when clearly they are not.

The chinese have different subscription rules, they pay per hour of play. Many of them come and go between many games.

They are not directly comparable to a hard $15 a month no matter what subscriber. Thus 1 chinese account does not = 1 US/EU account.

WoW did not have 12 million subscribers in the way that we commonly mean by subscribers to MMOs. SWTOR had 1.7m, that was nearly half of WOW.

well then TOR needs to release in China and do the same thing... then they too can claim huge sub numbers and shut up the drooling masses who think such numbers matter

They cant release 3d space until the rest of the game is up to speed with the competition. No other mmo has a tool as powerful as 3d space in swtor to bring people back to the game or even to bring in new people. If they wasted that and came out with it before they fixed the rest of the game bw would be even more of a laughing stock than it is now.

Not sure if serious....

2/10 either way.

I appreciate your enthusiam, especially since I too, would like a free-flight space model, but unfortunately, you are incorrect.

1) Space was done very well in JTL, but only a small part of the population used it with any kind of frequency. This is why we didn't get a whole lot of new space content. Like another poster said, it split dev time and resources in a way that can be detrimental for the business.

2) Developing new content for Space is a whole different can of worms...even if there is no PvP. Tuning the AI alone, is a nightmare. JTL went with the more enemies/more firepower approach to make you fly better, but we all wanted more intelligent AI. Adding in PvP makes it even worse. On top of this, you also have to realize that this game, in terms of releasing new content is probably going to follow this priority system; PvE>PvP>Other Content>Space.

3) It is possible that adding a solid, free-flight Space component to this game could bring in more subscribers that don't normally play MMO's - virtual pilots, in other words. Sure, it could. In order to do this on any kind of scale, Space would have to be good enough for these folks to justify $15/month, when they currrently pay nothing. See point number 2 again, for why this is unlikely, and point number 1 for current subscriber usage of Space content.

On a more positive note - Bioware knew that they could not release this game without a Space component. SWG proved that a Star Wars MMO needs a Space component. So, they contracted some company to build what we have now, so they could have Space at launch. I do believe we are going to get (opt-in) free-flight Space, and it will probably come with the first expansion.

Just know that content updates for Space are going to be low on the priority list. In terms of content updates per year, PvE will probably get 4-5, PvP will probably get 3-4, and Space will probably get 1, maybe 2.

Things like Space, Swoop Racing, Pazaak, and other such mini-games will definitely set this game apart from its competitors, and Bioware should definitely be working on all of them. Just know, that these things will never be a priority in terms of continued development, nor will any (or all of them together) bring in nearly as many subs as you are projecting.

With good, solid additions to this game that set it apart, I think 2-3 million is a reasonable target goal, but I seriously doubt it would go much higher.

Riôt

if only they would! Actually I don't care about numbers either. It's the blind hate that bothers me.