To the Anonymous Insider

Because the insider you're quoting wrote that as an anonymous comment on a SWTOR article and is not really an insider at all.

That "information" is hysterical.

First off: The fanbase were/are mostly SWG fans (before and after the patch of destruction). They wanted their game re-designed with KotOR elements and be "rebooted" with current tech. A hybrid themepark/sandbox that would've been extremely innovative. Bioware came out from the beginning stating that this game would not be like SWG and would be a theme park game.... LIKE WARCRAFT. They further stated that anyone would be a fool to steer away from the model that Blizzard used: As they put it : "It would be mmo-suicide".

Second: Bioware failed because they followed the path of every other MMO. They did the same things, have the same game play, have the same talent trees, have the same xp system, have the same pointless grind with nothing new and exciting to keep the game play fresh. Hell, their classes can be directly compared to any class based RPG game on the market. They did barely anything innovative except add story...and huttball. (Which were the only amazing, innovative aspects of the game.)

They never listened to their fanbase, especially in Beta when players across the board were making posts about: -How the game ends at 50.
-How the space combat shouldn't be on rails.
-etc etc.

Isn't SWTOR currently the 2nd most played MMO as far as subs? How is that a failure?

Quoting this part again, because it makes the entire article lose any credibility. The official forums have been up since 2008.

Failure as in they have lost the most players in 7 months than other MMO's have after launch.

You have to look at it this way. If someone made a game and at launch 10 million people bought the game and 6 months later only 2 million people were still playing would you consider that game better than a game that had 100k at launch and 1 million people after 6 months?

The number of players at launch has nothing to do with the actual gameplay. Its the number of players that remain with the game that tells us that the game is a success or not.

Right now SWTOR is down to 26 servers total and only 3-5 of them hit full status on sun. Compare that to launch,jan,feb,mar,apr,may,jun and even last week or the week before and each week it gets lower and lower.

Then add in that the servers now also include people that are using the F2P to level 15. That being people who may or may not buy/sub to the game.

This game in the first 7 months has been a big failure. The question is will they actually fix the problems or just ignore them and hope that a new companion or a new planet will get people to keep playing for a few months.

Thank you.

History of Subscriber World of Warcraft subscriber growth.

According to Blizzard:

11.5 million Dec 23 2008
11.0 million Oct 28 2008
10.0 million Jan 22 2008
9.0 million July 24 2007
8.0 million Jan 24, 2007
7. 0 million Sept 6, 2006
6.0 million March 2006

According to MMOGData:

5.5 million Dec 2005
0.75 million Jan 2005
0.25 million Jan 2004

WoW started with 250,000 subscribers when it launched and it took over a year to cross the 1m threshhold. Star Wars even at its current level is 3x that.

No I don't think this is a failure at all.

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http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=509853

It's not about the number. It's about the trend. Notice that in your data, WoW's sub numbers were going up.
In SWTORs case, the sub numbers have been going down every quarter since release. This is bad news since it drives away potential investors. No investor == no money/resources to spend on the game. Equates RIF.

On this forum it is a failure to the very vocal minority who wanted something they didn't get. Could the product be better? Sure. Anything can be improved. Is it worth my 15 a month? Yep. If someone truly hates the game as much as some of these folks claim it boggles the mind they pay to stay here.