EA has announced that as of Feb 1 SWTOR only has 1.7 million active subs, which amounts to a mere 85% player retention rate. Obviously most of the folks that have tried SWTOR can't stand it. After the first six weeks, it seems that Star Wars the Old Republic is an abject failure.
In all seriousness, I'm really glad to see that SWTOR is off to such a good start. It remains to be seen whether the game can maintain this level of success in the long term. But it's also obvious that the great bulk of players didn't rush to the cap and cancel their subs in the first month, as some have been predicting.
I personally have hit the ripe old age of 40 on my main, after playing nearly every night in January. I don't know that I'll be taking 8 characters to the cap to see all the storylines. But I'll certainly play up at least one Republic character after I finish playing the Empire side (they get a completely different storyline and a few planets that the Sith don't). That will get Bioware at least a few more months of sub time out of me whether they manage to iron out a decent endgame or not.
Oh no! I don't want SWTOR to be doomed!
ReplyDeleteWhen companies start trotting out real numbers like active subscriptions, that is a very good sign. I hope that we start seeing some talk about future plans for the game rather than the occasional patched instance. It is very early, though, so there is no need to complain about a lack of content yet.
It does bode well for the game. In fact, I can't think of too many recent games that have released their sub numbers. Turbine never released any sub numbers for LoTRO, for example, and that was by most accounts a pretty successful launch (that asinine press release where they bragged that more than a million characters had been created does not count).
ReplyDeleteAs far as future plans, supposedly the game is getting a big update some time in March. A legacy system that does something other than unexpectedly force you to pick a last name for your characters would be nice.