MMO Roundup: SWTOR nets 1.7 million subscribers
by Alex Ziebart 
Feb 7th 2012 at 3:00PM
 |
Star Wars: The Old Republic has 1.7 million active subscribers EA has reported sales of more than 2 million units of The Old Republic, with about 1.7 million subscribers. The publisher reported much better sales than expected for the December quarter, largely thanks to the runaway sales of the new MMO title. |
 |
EverQuest goes free-to-play When EverQuest II made the transition to free-to-play across all servers, many gamers wondered whether its sibling EverQuest would follow. Last week, the speculation has become reality. EverQuest will officially go free-to-play in March, which also is the month that the game first launched back in 1999. |
 |
Dutch Supreme Court declares RuneScape theft a real-world crime Is stealing a virtual good deserving of a real-world criminal sentence? According to a recent ruling by the Dutch Supreme Court, the answer is "yes." The court recently upheld a ruling of a criminal case in which teens attacked another youth and forced him at knifepoint to relinquish his possessions in RuneScape, including an in-game amulet and knife. |
 |
Want to be Massively's next Guild Wars columnist? Are you a passionate Guild Wars fan? Do you know everything there is to know about the game? Are you more excited about Guild Wars 2 than Mists of Pandaria? Can you meet deadlines and follow instructions? Then head over to Massively! |
 |
Massively's week in review Don't let WoW Insider do all of the talking when it comes to Massively's best content of the week. The Massively staff themselves have picked out what they think is the best content their site has to offer in their own weekly roundup. |
Filed under: MMO Roundup
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
ChaseHammerJ Feb 7th 2012 4:36PM
My friends keep trying to get me to play SWTOR but without a demo/trail there isnt a chance in hell that I will drop $60 on a game I may not even like. I bought SWG and that let me down.
Revynn Feb 7th 2012 6:36PM
SWG and SWTOR are completely different games, sharing little more than the IP they're based on.
My advice, spend $10 on KoTOR 1 or 2 and give them a play. The combat mechanics are different for the single player games, but the story-driven gameplay is the real meat of the Old Republic franchise and is in full force in SWTOR. Combine that story-focused and choice-driven questing model with (let's be honest) WoW's combat mechanics and, IMO, you have a game very much worth the money.
I'm really enjoying my time in SWTOR so far. As others have said, time will tell if the subscriber numbers continue to hold or if the game dies off like so many other "wow-killers" have, but I personally am not all that interested in end-game at the moment. Even if the end game is completely non-existant, I still have 7 more stories to play through before I'll be ready to unsub.
Zayd Feb 7th 2012 4:43PM
Good to see SWToR doing well.
Hopefully some serious competition will help to keep Blizz on it's toes.
Grovinofdarkhour Feb 7th 2012 4:52PM
God bless the Dutch.
jfofla Feb 7th 2012 4:57PM
Not so fast there....
If you read the fine print, that 1.7 million was as of Dec 31st, before the free month ended.
Today I am sure that number would be halved.
Thander Feb 7th 2012 5:45PM
The 2 million sales was as of Dec 31st, but the guy says the 1.7 million subs is a mix of paid subscriptions and free 30 days. There is no way there could be paid subscriptions on Dec 31st since everyone was still in their free month. Therefore, the 1.7 subs has to have been taken some time after Dec 31st, or more specifically, sometime after January 13ish when the first players were having to switch over to paid.
1.7 million is pretty good, but I wonder how long it will last. From internet discussions, a lot of players were not even at level cap in the first 30 days. Most seemed to subscribe about 3 months extra to get one or two characters to the cap. The thing is most players do not seem to be liking the endgame. After four months when most players are at level cap, I can see the numbers dropping a bit.
The fun part of SWTOR is the story while leveling up. Bioware absolutely must add new endgame questing zones with lots of story for the game to maintain its numbers. Most of those players at level cap are not going to go back into the same old MMO dungeon/raid grind, but they will stick around if there are continuous story heavy content patches.
Skarn Feb 7th 2012 6:00PM
I am amused. Back in December all I heard was "WoW is dead, SWTOR will be king!" now I hear a lot of "SWTOR is a failure!" It's people making a lot of noise with little substance. I am curious to see how the game fares in the future.
I'm enjoying it, but almost entirely for the story aspect. Also, lightsabers. I don't currently have interest in doing end-game stuff. Partly because I'm not sure I want to spend the time since I still raid in WoW, but also because the interface is "clunkier" than WoW's, even just the default WoW interface. (Add-ons don't exist in TOR.) One thing that drives me nuts is that TOR has name plates for enemies, but you can't click on the name plate itself to target. I LOVE this in WoW, it's fantastic. You have to click the enemy itself in TOR and that's a huge pain when you've got 4-5 mobs on top of each other. Blarg.
I'm enjoying the game, but there are obvious improvements that can be made. Looking forward to when they add dual-spec. Each spec had better come with it's own set of action bars too....
Revynn Feb 7th 2012 6:54PM
@ Skarn - The part I find amusing (or infuriating, depending on the person) is the people who want to raise their "SWTOR SUCKS" banner and bash the game to no end . . . but haven't played it. So far, I think the loudest critics of the game are simply people who logged in expecting a quick jaunt to end game and raiding and, upon (God forbid) being forced to watch a cutscene and make a decision, promptly unsubbed.
There are definitely problems with the game, but none that I would classify as anything more than quality of life issues that someone at Bioware didn't think were particularly important. The ability to scale your UI, the fact that you can't bind your NumPad seperately from your 1-9 keys, clicking on nameplates, etc. They're certainly not game killing problems though. Likewise, there are some things in SWTOR that I would LOVE to see Blizzard implement into WoW. AoE looting, for example.
It's a good game, regardless of what the haters say. Time will tell how subscription numbers hold up, but I'm glad I bought my copy.
Shrikesnest Feb 7th 2012 6:16PM
I'd actually really like SWTOR to succeed. As others have said, some competition could only do WoW players good, and from what I've seen SWTOR looks like a lot of fun. It'll be interesting to see where they are in a few patches.
Noah Feb 7th 2012 7:08PM
I've been playing SWTOR for the last month, and it's the story that's really kept me on the hook. I blasted through the Bounty Hunter story as a light-side, (which was a shame, I wish it had lasted longer) and now I'm starting on the Jedi Knight. Or the Smuggler. Or the Trooper. I CAN'T DECIDE AND IT'S DRIVING ME CRAZY. But I can tell you that the biggest thing that's keeping me around is the interactive missions and stories. It's truly an awesome change, and it's certainly something that WoW could learn from. I'd like to get back into WoW and get my money's worth, as well as my year-long contract's worth, but SWTOR is really a feat of genius in MMO's. I'll be playing for the next couple of months, I can tell you that right now. I'll be giving it a break, though, to check out Diablo 3 and Mists of Pandaria. In the meantime, however, I wish Blizzard the best of luck, I'll be logging out of WoW for now.
chaosdefined Feb 8th 2012 4:53AM
Having played WoW for 6 years and currently having an inactive guild and being a little bored I decided to check out SW, as I'm a huge SW fan anyway.
I love it, I've only been played for a week and a half but I'm addicted. I've been playing almost every night for a couple of hours after work, got my Sith Assassin up to level 22. I love the story and the worlds are beautiful. I love that I actually feel like I have a character with a story and a personality. It's not just a case like in WoW where I have to imagine what my character's personality is like, despite making the same decisions as every other played in every quest. With this, I actually have choices that affect what I have to do or how my character is percieved. It's incredible.
Though WoW was always the winner with End Game content, I'll be interested in how this holds up. My big problem with Cataclysm was none of the raids excited me, they were just far too much of the same old stuff and it became boring. I'm hoping MoP changes this. Otherwise that's one way I can see SW taking the lead.