for the past 10 years every single thing that has had the Star Wars brand name on it has been nothing more than overpriced shit some company put together to bleed out the most loyal fan base on the face of this planet.
So... Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic too?
or....Jedi Academy?
Honestly, in my writing I had forgotten about these Bioware games and credit is due where credit is due. I should also mention that Episode III wasn't a total money-grab, there were some moving scenes and it almost felt like a real Star Wars. Perhaps you can even credit Fanboys as a Star Wars related thing, it was also a good comedy.
Beyond that, though, you're looking at a machine that pumps out calendars, coasters, shitty action figures, and LEGO games like candy. It's a business, I get that and I have no problem with that, but it doesn't help me believe SWTOR will be a massive success. I also don't feel that the single-player games can truly relate to the switch to MMO. Time will tell, of course, and I will have no problem at all admitting it if I'm wrong in a couple of years.
I really want you guys who are screaming about its potential success to reread what you're writing. Most of your posts talk about the bored WoW playerbase - guys that want something fresh and new and that SWTOR looks like it's going to be the one. Now, I want you to remember these titles:
Warhammer Online
Aion
LOTRO
FFXI
FFXIV
Rift
Of those, Rift and Aion are actually fairly successful in the MMO market. I'm only going to say this once because it's the honest truth:
Warhammer Online (fantasy based like WoW)
Aion (fantasy based like WoW)
LOTRO (fantasy based like WoW)
FFXI (fantasy based like WoW)
FFXIV (fantasy based like WoW)
Rift (fantasy based like WoW)
Yet you failed to mention an MMO that's different than WoW yet it's still a relatively popular niche game: Eve Online. It's not fantasy based, and yet it still has people who are paying $15 a month for YEARS like WoW. I'm not saying EVERYONE from WoW will play it, but SWTOR can definitely have the potential to eat into WoW's percent of the market share.
I mentioned the big name releases that have a gameplay similar to what we've seen from SWTOR. Eve plays like no other game I've ever played before and doesn't really belong in the discussion. The setting of the game only matters in this case because we're talking about Star Wars. The playability of the game, though, is what will be the deciding factor and it seems the game will play just like Rift, Aion, WoW, AoC, and all the other Everquest spin-offs. Do you really think the Star Wars brand will keep the players who have tried to jumpship from WoW several times already? I just don't see it. Especially with the
need of instant gratification the typical MMO player has. I jumped to Rift after over 4 years of WoW along with many, many others and I watched them all dwindle away, angered by what should have been expected. Overloaded servers along with bugs and glitches. After a month, I watched more leave because the
gameplay was identical to WoW and they already had dedicated years to that other game. I then followed them back for the same reasons.
In short, the setting doesn't
really matter for the average MMORPG player - it's the gameplay that will determine if they stick out the rough start or not.
The only WoW killer is WoW itself.
WoW is an anomaly. No MMO has ever seen its success, ever, and no other MMO likely ever will. It's huge beyond belief and insanely profitable because of it. Rift has been a success if you compare its subscribers to its true competitors. Aion was a success in the same regard.
Now, I don't look at SWTOR pessimistically because I know it won't destroy WoW or come anywhere close to its subscriber base. I don't even look at SWTOR pessimistically because I know it will have glitches and bugs like every single major MMO that has ever been released, ever and that because of these glitches and bugs at launch, at least 25% of the preorder players will drop the game immediately and go back to WoW. I don't look at it pessimistically because at least half of the WoW players who try and switch will think back on the 4 years or so they dedicated to their character(s) in WoW and will go back to WoW after a month not wanting all that work to go to waste.
I lol'ed semi-hard at this part. Let's look at this page for a second, close to 4 million characters that are made on all WoW servers combined, right? Now you might say that "Oh! That addon only sees how many people are on at the time that the addon is run." True... so lets double that number to 8 million characters on WoW... sound reasonable? Guess what? How many characters did YOU have across all the servers you played on (this is a question aimed at everyone). You didn't just have one character... you had one main and AT LEAST one other toon (if not many more at various levels). So the true number of people who are still playing WoW would probably be in the 2 million to 3 million mark around the world (not this stupid 12 million subscribers... maybe since 2004... but not active subscribers). "That still makes it the most popular MMO game to date and all those other MMO's failed!" Yeah, from what I stated above... WoW did the best fantasy style MMO game on the market... yet it didn't affect how many people went to Eve Online and continued to play there.
As of their last meeting with their investors, Blizzard reported a 600k active subscription drop worldwide to 11.4 million. The wow census tool is not run on every server or on every faction at peak hours, as you reported. It's also not run on Asian servers at all, only American and EU. It's also not run on the few Latin servers either. Even if their reported number is inflated slightly, I would highly doubt WoW's subscription base right now is far below 10 million worldwide.
Beyond that, you're also ignoring that Eve Online is not just different in its environment - it's totally different in its playstyle. Totally.
Now remember that 12 million subscribers that Blizz claims? The rest of those ~8 million past subscribers are familiar with how to play an MMO, yet there is a new AAA MMO that for once... isn't fantasy based and has a solid IP. Am I saying that WoW will be defeated entirely? No... Will SWTOR be the new WoW? I don't know... Will there be a lot of people who play the game? Judging by their forums and the amount of hardcore people have already pre-ordered, I would say yes (just wait until they start their TV ad campaign to see the total number of pre-orders).
I have no doubt there will be a giant preorder and immediate subscription base but I also believe those numbers will dwindle down after a week and even further just before the first subscription payment has to be made, just like every other major MMORPG, and it will survive and do well just like Rift and Aion have. Doing well is not the same as doing a WoW. At the root and at best the game will play remarkably like WoW does and people will simply go back to the toons they have worked on for years. The setting only helps initial sales, not continued play.
