EA expecting two million subscribers for Star Wars: The Old Republic

I dunno. Could be good. Galaxies was pretty well done. Though FF14 is so close. Decisions decisions.

Eh, 2 million wont be hard for a star wars game. There are ALOT of Star Wars geeks out there. Heck Galaxies broke that easily when it first launched I believe...

Eh, it's Star Wars, it's Bioware... I don't see two million being a hard initial sale with EA's marketing team behind it. Now, keeping players subscribing past the first month, well that requires a bit more effort. I'll be checking it out with cautious optimism in hand.

Keeping those 2M initial subscriptions is what they should worry about.

I might try it out, I dunno. I'm not really a Star Wars fan, I've never even seen the movies.

As long as I can be a Mandalorian, I'm buying it. I will also buy it if i cant

I played enough World of Warcraft to make me leery of paid-subscription games. WoW was well-made, and definitely worthy of the Blizzard name..but seriously, I can meet douchebags online for free in some multiplayer FPS game, why would I want to pay $15+ monthly for the privilege? Also, I am not a fan of the blatantly inevitable grind where everyone's a winner. At least with single player games, I don't have to see that. And with multiplayer games, I actually see losers (or lose, myself).

"We think they might be setting the bar a little too high for themselves. Why not make the monthly subscription fee cost $20,000, and then just hope that 500 outrageously wealthy, rabid Star Wars fans hop on board?"

Ah yes...the Quagmire method:

“You could whore yourself out to a thousand chicks for 50 bucks apiece, or 50 really fat chicks for 1,000 bucks apiece.

What?

Fat chicks need love too. But they gotta pay.”

I will never pay a monthly fee to play any game..

the sub fee would currently have to be $1 for that logic to work

Two million isn't a big stretch considering who's making it, and the fanbase that is Star Wars Fanatics.

How long they KEEP that two million however...

well...I'll be one of those....for at least 3-5 months anyways

FF14 please. even though Squeenix didn't include me in the first round of beta... jerks.

I'll be one of those subscribers. Anything that BioWare makes is definitely good. Still want KotOR 3, though.

Aion a formerly no-name IP, which is a grindy PvP oriented, hardcore MMO sold 1 million copies in the first month.

SWTOR will easily do more than that. Depending on their advertising campaign.

It's Star Wars. It's BioWare, the company who arguably has done as much as Lucas has for the franchise. (not to mention they take care of it better). If this doesn't break five million subs, I shall be shocked.

If EA can manage to not screw up the game I will definitely be a subscriber, I have played WoW for years and I am honestly bored with it. They seem to be focusing on drawing in more new players lately, which I understand but it also won't keep me paying for it.

Bioware always gets my business, I hope EA doesn't ruin this game.

They'd have a slightly easier time reaching that number if they'd at least make a WINE version for Mac. I think a lot of Blizzard's success can be attributed to supporting Macs from the start, on the same disc. I certainly know a ton of people who play WoW on Macs, and they'd all be interested in dropping WoW for Old Republic if they could.

Meh...I'm sure all the MMO fans are waiting for the World of StarCraft announcement to get their Sci-Fi MMO fix.

It all depends on the state of the game at release.

There's a very good reason why Age of Conan, Champions Online and Warhammer Online are all dying on their feet. They were in a dire state at launch and it immediately put people off.

Christ, AoC was like being made to pay for an alpha test at launch, it was insulting.

Three things that will keep it alive beyond the first months:

- Generous amounts of End Game content from day one.

- Any areas available at launch need to be properly filled out with content: Dungeons (and quests for these instances so people will want to run them), enough quests to see out the area's level limit.

- Client stability and performance. This is straight from page one of the Captain Obvious operation manual but a lot of MMO developers seem to enjoy waving stupidly as this fact passes them by. EA have to allow Bioware sufficient time to fully optimize the game before release, and luckily it doesn't look like the game engine will be a hardware buster.

Whether or not this MMO is going to be a WoW beater is frankly irrelevant, it still has to compete with a game that has been released, polished, balanced and expanded with 6 years worth of work and content. If players don't feel they're getting their money's worth from their subscription fee in comparison to what's being offered by Blizzard, they will not hit their subscriber targets.

Best of luck to them, I'm looking forward to seeing the results.

At 15$ /month 2 million might be a lot.

Make that 9$ though and I predict double of that... especially in today's economy :)

What I'm looking for is a full single player story inside the MMO.

Provided the game plays as well as it looks, I'm definitely subscribing. This and APB are the two games on top of my MMO games list, by far.

While it is Bioware, I'm still not keen to break my "wait 1 year" approach for MMOs. That way at least most of the launch bugs and nerf/buffs will be done and out of the way

This the first MMO I've been excited for.

I think this game has a good shot at grabbing a lot of first time MMO players as well as some bored WOW players.