Le'ts be serious here. Do you really think that lightsabers and space combat will take.. let's say even 3 million subs away from blizzard? In all seriousness you guys can hype TOR all you want but, really? lightsabers? space combat? R2D2? seriously? Just think about it. Think about all the stay at home mothers, children, and even grown males who aren't star wars nerds. Do you think they are going to jump ship entirely, cancel their subs entirely, and jump into basically what is a wow clone with glowing swords and werid pew pew sounds?
Come on, folks let's be real. Also, if some how bioware does seem to pull it off, do you honestly think that blizzard will lay down and just take it without putting up a fight? and I'm not talking about f2p nonsense like some of you are, Im talking about patch 4.4. Yes, it's coming.
I understand some of you love to hate wow, and I understand some of you really want TOR to succeed but this is getting out of hand. Let the game out first before you start doing probable math. The game is coming tuesday, so, we'll actually get to see how much of a success these cutscenes and "questing will never ever be the same again" pan out for bioware after the first free 30 days are up.
My opinion, TOR loses more than half it's subs in less than half a year, and is going to be free 2 play way before it's 6th anniversary.
Yes I do think it will easily take three million subs from Blizzard . You do know ToR is on course for the most box sale pre-orders for an mmo game ever (not talking about expansions to established mmos here) . Most people playing it seem to love it so if thats the case then they wont be going anywhere soon . Of course some will chop and change between the two or play both but even industry analyists which are known for being conservative estimate a loss of between 800,000 to 1.6 million . Also dont forget WoW lost 1.7 million players in the last two quarters this was before thier was a beast of a game like TOR as an alternative . I daresay you'll believe your right untill you see the figures in the coming months and then you'll come down to earth with an almighty bump .
I dont know how much creedence you can give the TOR facebook page. I would guess as much as you can lend to this site. If TOR fans want to see how the "overwhelming majority" feels maybe they should look around and give some thought to the opinions of others instead of jumping to the defense of the game everytime someone questions its greatness. A record number of box sales doesnt mean much to folks dealing with known issues that arnt being resolved such a the secret question bug, long Q's and general boredom with the wonderfull VO selling point and undending cut scenes. I would like to see what EA will never publish and that is the number of preorder cancellations. Within three months this game will be just another game of many and people will go back to trolling about how WOW destroyed the genre and how the next wow clone is going to destroy it.
Really? This game sucks and Im not having fun? Im going to unsub right now. Thanks for the tip.
Most people playing it seem to love it so if thats the case then they wont be going anywhere soon .
No they dont, a large portion of people think its medicore or worse. Man even people I know that thought it was ok aren't going to bother getting it. The sub drop off at the beginning of next year is going to be huge.
TOR will be lucky to retain over a million players at this point.
WoW is a casual MMO. The current subs are comprised of a lot of people who have lives.......responsibilities. I could see more of the pizza hut working living in mom's basement using an MMO as a second job type players to leave and go to SW:TOR. But WoW isn't gonna lose that many. And NO SW:TOR isn't going to take 3 million subs. Thats retarded. Especially since there are a helluva lot more MMOs other than SW:TOR and WoW. Blizz if anything will easily replace those more traditional hardcore gamers lost with newer casual players. Blizz isn't going to hurt over anything.
Pandas.....are cool in my opinion. LONG before Kung Fu Panda even existed they were cool. And its a "fantasy" world with OTHER bear like creatures. And while I was too old for the Pokemon thing at the time it was big, I have no issues with a pet battle system. Its nice for an MMO to have side attractions to keep players in the game even when they want a break from questing, raids...etc. And we get another explorable area AND a monk.....MONK class.
No one is handing anything to anyone. SW:TOR will have a chance to shine and Blizz will keep making money.
In the end its just a game. Its meant to be fun. Not a job.
WoW is a casual MMO. The current subs are comprised of a lot of people who have lives.......responsibilities. I could see more of the pizza hut working living in mom's basement using an MMO as a second job type players to leave and go to SW:TOR. But WoW isn't gonna lose that many. And NO SW:TOR isn't going to take 3 million subs. Thats retarded. Especially since there are a helluva lot more MMOs other than SW:TOR and WoW. Blizz if anything will easily replace those more traditional hardcore gamers lost with newer casual players. Blizz isn't going to hurt over anything.
Pandas.....are cool in my opinion. LONG before Kung Fu Panda even existed they were cool. And its a "fantasy" world with OTHER bear like creatures. And while I was too old for the Pokemon thing at the time it was big, I have no issues with a pet battle system. Its nice for an MMO to have side attractions to keep players in the game even when they want a break from questing, raids...etc. And we get another explorable area AND a monk.....MONK class.
No one is handing anything to anyone. SW:TOR will have a chance to shine and Blizz will keep making money.
In the end its just a game. Its meant to be fun. Not a job.
Wow already replaced most of it's hardcore crowd, and TOR is almost as casual as Wow. Wows problem right now is that it havn't been able to replace the people who quit the last 15 months and it have lost 100K players every month for that period (official numbers).
I don't think TOR will get 3 million subs either, maybe half that but Wow is old and no amount of pandas will stop it from losing players now.
Computer games don't age well and while Wow still will earn plenty of money it already peaked almost 2 years ago. I am pretty sure that Blizz will make a Wow 2 and that might beat Wows peak by a lot but that is many years in the future.
And you could actually play those older games and still have a life. When I played Meridian 59 I played 2 hours a day, but since I don't watch telly I just replaced the time the average Joe spend in front of it. If you are good at a MMO it drops the time you need to play by half.
But yes, MMOs are meant to be fun. But I frankly think that the raid hamsterwheel is as much work as any grinding MMO I ever played during my 15 1/2 years of MMO playing. Work/grind is repeating the same thing over and over, and you still spend plenty time of that in Wow.
There really isn't anything wrong with playing hardcore anyways, or casual for that matter. The player should decide how he/she enjoy the game most.
Wow have been an amazing game, or it wouldn't have become that big but you can't expect it to be the largest MMO forever. There will be other larger games in a few years no matter what.
And no, I don't think the largest MMO in 5 years will be TOR either, it might be GW2 or Titan, but my personal guess is "Class 4".
Most people playing it seem to love it so if thats the case then they wont be going anywhere soon .
No they dont, a large portion of people think its medicore or worse. Man even people I know that thought it was ok aren't going to bother getting it. The sub drop off at the beginning of next year is going to be huge.
TOR will be lucky to retain over a million players at this point.
A large portion of people said that about WoW and continue to do so . It doesn't stop people playing it . Also people said exactly the same thing about WoW seven years ago as your saying about TOR now . If you don't believe me I suggest you look at the oldest threads in these forums and you will see the same exact comments your making now were made back then . Hard to say what it will have in 12 months from now because a lot depends on the patches and updates Bioware put into it .
You have to bare in mind Amazon had to issue a statement about ToR and when they would be sending out the game because order numbers have been so high ( think this is the first time in its history its had to do that ) . Ques at shops for this game apparently are massive today so much so its actually been made a news item on the bbc news in the UK and has made the national press .( maybe its a slow news day lol )
I'll stick my neck out and say if the endgame is there 2-5 million players will leave WoW for ToR in the first six months and even though some of them will return to WoW for MoP it will not be enough to return WoW to anything like the numbers it has seen in the past . I also agree that WoW will continue on top of this to hemorage subs on a monthly basis .
Just seen this news item . It looks with pre-orders alone before a single boxed game has been sold in a shop that between 1 to 1.5 million people could be already playing StarWars ToR . Given the ques in the shops and whats happening at online retailers like amazon that could easily double ( and probably more ) over the holiday period alone .
Que for someone to say the majority will leave in month two when its obvious to anyone with any common sence that thats highly unlikly to happen . Or maybe you could argue the majority are coming from other games and not WoW which is highly unlikly or are simply StarWars fans or are new to the genre .
It'll be interesting to see the doubters reactions when offical figures are released by both Bioware and Blizzard .
Also people said exactly the same thing about WoW seven years ago as your saying about TOR now .
That was seven years ago dood, Classic WoW would crash and burn by todays standards too. Even with that in mind, classic WoW was a better game than TOR is, TOR is a medicore game with a few gimmicks and Star Wars branding.
You can bang on about sales all you want but the fact is 90% of those people only know that they are buying a Star Wars game and will likely only play for a month or so. General opinion of us more "hardcore" gamers has fallen pretty sharply after this last beta weekend, so unless TOR has some actual MMO content hidden up its sleeves its envitable that it will see pretty low retention. Its also not new or significant at all for a major video game release to get a mention in the news, its been going on for years now.
You can tell yourself whatever you want but if WoW loses 50% of its subs it sure isn't going to be to TOR.
Also people said exactly the same thing about WoW seven years ago as your saying about TOR now .
That was seven years ago dood, Classic WoW would crash and burn by todays standards too. Even with that in mind, classic WoW was a better game than TOR is, TOR is a medicore game with a few gimmicks and Star Wars branding.
You can bang on about sales all you want but the fact is 90% of those people only know that they are buying a Star Wars game and will likely only play for a month or so. General opinion of us more "hardcore" gamers has fallen pretty sharply after this last beta weekend, so unless TOR has some actual MMO content hidden up its sleeves its envitable that it will see pretty low retention. Its also not new or significant at all for a major video game release to get a mention in the news, its been going on for years now.
You can tell yourself whatever you want but if WoW loses 50% of its subs it sure isn't going to be to TOR.
Maybe you should learn to read what was actually said in the report . 50 percent of WoW players polled said they would try it .
As for retention rates I would think it will be pretty high . Classic WoW probably would still do well today because it got a lot of things right even by todays standards it was a solid game .
It seams to me the WoW fans are fast moving the goal posts . ToR has gone from fail to mediocre, from it wont sell well to it wont hold on subscriptions in month two . When month two comes along and it becomes obvious people arnt leaving it ll be well it wont last because MoP is out and people will leave for that . And so on untill it finally dawns on them that WoW has some serious competition .
Maybe you should learn to read what was actually said in the report . 50 percent of WoW players polled said they would try it .
As for retention rates I would think it will be pretty high . Classic WoW probably would still do well today because it got a lot of things right even by todays standards it was a solid game .
It seams to me the WoW fans are fast moving the goal posts . ToR has gone from fail to mediocre, from it wont sell well to it wont hold on subscriptions in month two . When month two comes along and it becomes obvious people arnt leaving it ll be well it wont last because MoP is out and people will leave for that . And so on untill it finally dawns on them that WoW has some serious competition .
50% of WoW players said they might try another MMO! That's a shocking revelation that no one expected.
I don't think anyone has ever said TOR won't sell, it's been a pretty much foregone conclusion that it will sell from the moment it was annouced. As for it being good or fail, the only thing that's really changed in that regard is former fanboys changing their minds from it being the best game ever made to a medicore WoW clone with lightsabers. It's pretty telling when a games hype train derails so quickly and easily.
You can try to sensationalize all the pointless figures you want but in the end it doesn't change the fact TOR isn't that good and the only person here that even cares is you. I'd tell you to stick to the TOR forums if all you want to read is how awesome TOR is but you can't even go there for that can you.
I do not think ST:ToR is having such success because of how great the game is. I have to admit, I have been caught off guard how positive the buzz is for that game. But Blizzard's passive approach in Cataclysm and then expecting people to embrace MoP pretty much blew up in their faces.
I think they should delay the launch of MoP and really add some meaningful depth and layers to Cata.
*Finish revamping BC zones
*New quests to all zones
*Flying in all zones
*Balance changes for PVP/PVE
Blizzard has been caught flat footed, and it shows. And ST:ToR is solid but not great, as GWII will really ratchet up the competition when it launches.
Meh. I wouldn't read too much into Metacritic. They don't have the best track record for accurate reviews. In no way does SWTOR deserve that low a score. Too many people trying to compare a freshly launched game to 7 year old WoW. But, trying to explain the difference is like trying to talk to a wall.
In my opinion, and this is strictly my own opinion and not indicative of anyone elses, SWTOR is a very nice change from the hand holding of WoW. Things are a bit tougher and actaully take thought and planning. A nice change of pace from the snoozefest of Warcraft.
Naw, too many people feel the need to go either attack it or defend it to say.
Would have to go and throw out all the 1,2 and 9,10 scores then average it all out to see real score.
Unless a game is horrible at launch we wont know the real scoop till 60 days in. And the launch was not bad, so we just have to wait on the replay part of game, and again that will only go up, as they add more end game and so on.
I think the true score will be around 7. Just another decent game. Same as WOW, but WOW, after all this time and polish, and content, would be an 8.
Naw, too many people feel the need to go either attack it or defend it to say.
Would have to go and throw out all the 1,2 and 9,10 scores then average it all out to see real score.
Unless a game is horrible at launch we wont know the real scoop till 60 days in. And the launch was not bad, so we just have to wait on the replay part of game, and again that will only go up, as they add more end game and so on.
I think the true score will be around 7. Just another decent game. Same as WOW, but WOW, after all this time and polish, and content, would be an 8.
7 or 8 seems a fair score, but I think pro reviews will end up around 9. The user ratings seem pointless to me at the moment. 10's and 0's are worthless reviews, especially when the 10's are just attacking the 0's and the 0's are filled with people who haven't played the game. Some on both sides actually have interesting things to say, but the score itself is rubbish.
I've been in almost every major MMO launch since a little game called Meridian 59, and this was by far the smoothest launch I've personally be apart of. Nonetheless, I'd say we need to wait at least 90 days for a lot of players to get over the honeymoon glamour of a new game, and really decide if it's worth sticking with.
I've always thought StarWars was going to be successful but the degree of success was always in question . The elephant in the room was always what Blizzard were going to do to combat the potential competition from TOR . With the annoucement of the Kung Fu Panda expanion yesterday which seams extremly weak in concept I think Blizzard have given it to TOR on a plate . If the game is as polished and fun as early reviews make it out to be the potential exodus from WoW to StarWars could now be on a epic scale . There must be howls of delight and relief in the Bioware offices at the huge miss step by Blizzard just as they are about to release TOR .
An early Christmas present indeed .
You could be right, Blizzard dont seem to be giving a flying hoot about low populated servers. Now the guild i was in have all moved to SWtor with only a handful not doing so. Alot of the very few alliance players on the server have gone to see what its like for the next 2-3 months. Only then will that game say if its worth staying or not. I am now wondering if they will be returning, if they do then how many, if most come back then the game sucked and i did the right thing, if hardly any come back then the game is a success and will undoubtedly start to pull more players over to it (myself could be one of them).
However i am not about to fork out £40 from amazon to find out if its just like the rest and really sucky. I will wait for 3-6mths before knowing (yes this would put me at a somewhat dissadvantage to the straight away starters, but thats the way thinsg go when one did not get to look at it beforehand.
I dont put much stock in box sales, they could have gotten record box sales on the die hard Star Wars fans alone, who have never even played an mmorpg. AOC at the time had recored box sales, wait 4 to 6 months and see if they can hold on to their 1. to 1.5 million subs or so. I dont know what besides it being Star Wars is the holding point of the game, it wont be the most competitive PVE Raid mmo, it certainly wont be the best pvp mmo, and alot of people say its dull and boring. Its going to have to retain subs past a certain point, and its going to have to get good word of mouth from other gamers who know other gamers.
The fanatics are currently in the TOR forums trying to convice people that being put on a payment plan to even play your free first month is normal. I dont remeber having to do that since maybe the early early days.
There is no doubt that Blizzard have screwed up, you only have to look at the amount of subscriptions they have lost per quarter (currently around 900k for this quarter). If wow was released today it would be a massive fail because it would not hold on to it's player base.
Blizzard were counting on people staying with wow and then moving to their new MMO when that is released. But Bioware has thrown a spanner in the works, TOR is a very good game and Blizzard assumed it wouldn't be because past competition wasn't. Now Blizzard are panicing, which is why they are offering stuff like Diablo 3 for "free" with a year subscription, they are desparate to hang on to subscriptions for the kung-fu panda expansion and until their next game.
Comments
It beats me but for some reason they happen to make up most of the core raiders in my guild.
"Everything the light touches is our kingdom" -- Mufasa
---
The same reason your trolling the forum of a video game website.
Yes I do think it will easily take three million subs from Blizzard . You do know ToR is on course for the most box sale pre-orders for an mmo game ever (not talking about expansions to established mmos here) . Most people playing it seem to love it so if thats the case then they wont be going anywhere soon . Of course some will chop and change between the two or play both but even industry analyists which are known for being conservative estimate a loss of between 800,000 to 1.6 million . Also dont forget WoW lost 1.7 million players in the last two quarters this was before thier was a beast of a game like TOR as an alternative . I daresay you'll believe your right untill you see the figures in the coming months and then you'll come down to earth with an almighty bump .
I dont know how much creedence you can give the TOR facebook page. I would guess as much as you can lend to this site. If TOR fans want to see how the "overwhelming majority" feels maybe they should look around and give some thought to the opinions of others instead of jumping to the defense of the game everytime someone questions its greatness. A record number of box sales doesnt mean much to folks dealing with known issues that arnt being resolved such a the secret question bug, long Q's and general boredom with the wonderfull VO selling point and undending cut scenes. I would like to see what EA will never publish and that is the number of preorder cancellations. Within three months this game will be just another game of many and people will go back to trolling about how WOW destroyed the genre and how the next wow clone is going to destroy it.
Really? This game sucks and Im not having fun? Im going to unsub right now. Thanks for the tip.
No they dont, a large portion of people think its medicore or worse. Man even people I know that thought it was ok aren't going to bother getting it. The sub drop off at the beginning of next year is going to be huge.
TOR will be lucky to retain over a million players at this point.
WoW is a casual MMO. The current subs are comprised of a lot of people who have lives.......responsibilities. I could see more of the pizza hut working living in mom's basement using an MMO as a second job type players to leave and go to SW:TOR. But WoW isn't gonna lose that many. And NO SW:TOR isn't going to take 3 million subs. Thats retarded. Especially since there are a helluva lot more MMOs other than SW:TOR and WoW. Blizz if anything will easily replace those more traditional hardcore gamers lost with newer casual players. Blizz isn't going to hurt over anything.
Pandas.....are cool in my opinion. LONG before Kung Fu Panda even existed they were cool. And its a "fantasy" world with OTHER bear like creatures. And while I was too old for the Pokemon thing at the time it was big, I have no issues with a pet battle system. Its nice for an MMO to have side attractions to keep players in the game even when they want a break from questing, raids...etc. And we get another explorable area AND a monk.....MONK class.
No one is handing anything to anyone. SW:TOR will have a chance to shine and Blizz will keep making money.
In the end its just a game. Its meant to be fun. Not a job.
(o'')-O Vs Q('' Q)
http://www.thedailyblink.com/2011/12/zero-sum-games/
Best summary of this topic.
Wow already replaced most of it's hardcore crowd, and TOR is almost as casual as Wow. Wows problem right now is that it havn't been able to replace the people who quit the last 15 months and it have lost 100K players every month for that period (official numbers).
I don't think TOR will get 3 million subs either, maybe half that but Wow is old and no amount of pandas will stop it from losing players now.
Computer games don't age well and while Wow still will earn plenty of money it already peaked almost 2 years ago. I am pretty sure that Blizz will make a Wow 2 and that might beat Wows peak by a lot but that is many years in the future.
And you could actually play those older games and still have a life. When I played Meridian 59 I played 2 hours a day, but since I don't watch telly I just replaced the time the average Joe spend in front of it. If you are good at a MMO it drops the time you need to play by half.
But yes, MMOs are meant to be fun. But I frankly think that the raid hamsterwheel is as much work as any grinding MMO I ever played during my 15 1/2 years of MMO playing. Work/grind is repeating the same thing over and over, and you still spend plenty time of that in Wow.
There really isn't anything wrong with playing hardcore anyways, or casual for that matter. The player should decide how he/she enjoy the game most.
Wow have been an amazing game, or it wouldn't have become that big but you can't expect it to be the largest MMO forever. There will be other larger games in a few years no matter what.
And no, I don't think the largest MMO in 5 years will be TOR either, it might be GW2 or Titan, but my personal guess is "Class 4".
A large portion of people said that about WoW and continue to do so . It doesn't stop people playing it . Also people said exactly the same thing about WoW seven years ago as your saying about TOR now . If you don't believe me I suggest you look at the oldest threads in these forums and you will see the same exact comments your making now were made back then . Hard to say what it will have in 12 months from now because a lot depends on the patches and updates Bioware put into it .
You have to bare in mind Amazon had to issue a statement about ToR and when they would be sending out the game because order numbers have been so high ( think this is the first time in its history its had to do that ) . Ques at shops for this game apparently are massive today so much so its actually been made a news item on the bbc news in the UK and has made the national press .( maybe its a slow news day lol )
I'll stick my neck out and say if the endgame is there 2-5 million players will leave WoW for ToR in the first six months and even though some of them will return to WoW for MoP it will not be enough to return WoW to anything like the numbers it has seen in the past . I also agree that WoW will continue on top of this to hemorage subs on a monthly basis .
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/4629163/postAction/reply
Just seen this news item . It looks with pre-orders alone before a single boxed game has been sold in a shop that between 1 to 1.5 million people could be already playing StarWars ToR . Given the ques in the shops and whats happening at online retailers like amazon that could easily double ( and probably more ) over the holiday period alone .
Que for someone to say the majority will leave in month two when its obvious to anyone with any common sence that thats highly unlikly to happen . Or maybe you could argue the majority are coming from other games and not WoW which is highly unlikly or are simply StarWars fans or are new to the genre .
It'll be interesting to see the doubters reactions when offical figures are released by both Bioware and Blizzard .
That was seven years ago dood, Classic WoW would crash and burn by todays standards too. Even with that in mind, classic WoW was a better game than TOR is, TOR is a medicore game with a few gimmicks and Star Wars branding.
You can bang on about sales all you want but the fact is 90% of those people only know that they are buying a Star Wars game and will likely only play for a month or so. General opinion of us more "hardcore" gamers has fallen pretty sharply after this last beta weekend, so unless TOR has some actual MMO content hidden up its sleeves its envitable that it will see pretty low retention. Its also not new or significant at all for a major video game release to get a mention in the news, its been going on for years now.
You can tell yourself whatever you want but if WoW loses 50% of its subs it sure isn't going to be to TOR.
Maybe you should learn to read what was actually said in the report . 50 percent of WoW players polled said they would try it .
As for retention rates I would think it will be pretty high . Classic WoW probably would still do well today because it got a lot of things right even by todays standards it was a solid game .
It seams to me the WoW fans are fast moving the goal posts . ToR has gone from fail to mediocre, from it wont sell well to it wont hold on subscriptions in month two . When month two comes along and it becomes obvious people arnt leaving it ll be well it wont last because MoP is out and people will leave for that . And so on untill it finally dawns on them that WoW has some serious competition .
50% of WoW players said they might try another MMO! That's a shocking revelation that no one expected.
I don't think anyone has ever said TOR won't sell, it's been a pretty much foregone conclusion that it will sell from the moment it was annouced. As for it being good or fail, the only thing that's really changed in that regard is former fanboys changing their minds from it being the best game ever made to a medicore WoW clone with lightsabers. It's pretty telling when a games hype train derails so quickly and easily.
You can try to sensationalize all the pointless figures you want but in the end it doesn't change the fact TOR isn't that good and the only person here that even cares is you. I'd tell you to stick to the TOR forums if all you want to read is how awesome TOR is but you can't even go there for that can you.
I do not think ST:ToR is having such success because of how great the game is. I have to admit, I have been caught off guard how positive the buzz is for that game. But Blizzard's passive approach in Cataclysm and then expecting people to embrace MoP pretty much blew up in their faces.
I think they should delay the launch of MoP and really add some meaningful depth and layers to Cata.
*Finish revamping BC zones
*New quests to all zones
*Flying in all zones
*Balance changes for PVP/PVE
Blizzard has been caught flat footed, and it shows. And ST:ToR is solid but not great, as GWII will really ratchet up the competition when it launches.
The results are in!
SW:TOR has a 5.7 metacritic score.
...and pwned.
Meh. I wouldn't read too much into Metacritic. They don't have the best track record for accurate reviews. In no way does SWTOR deserve that low a score. Too many people trying to compare a freshly launched game to 7 year old WoW. But, trying to explain the difference is like trying to talk to a wall.
In my opinion, and this is strictly my own opinion and not indicative of anyone elses, SWTOR is a very nice change from the hand holding of WoW. Things are a bit tougher and actaully take thought and planning. A nice change of pace from the snoozefest of Warcraft.
Naw, too many people feel the need to go either attack it or defend it to say.
Would have to go and throw out all the 1,2 and 9,10 scores then average it all out to see real score.
Unless a game is horrible at launch we wont know the real scoop till 60 days in. And the launch was not bad, so we just have to wait on the replay part of game, and again that will only go up, as they add more end game and so on.
I think the true score will be around 7. Just another decent game. Same as WOW, but WOW, after all this time and polish, and content, would be an 8.
7 or 8 seems a fair score, but I think pro reviews will end up around 9. The user ratings seem pointless to me at the moment. 10's and 0's are worthless reviews, especially when the 10's are just attacking the 0's and the 0's are filled with people who haven't played the game. Some on both sides actually have interesting things to say, but the score itself is rubbish.
I've been in almost every major MMO launch since a little game called Meridian 59, and this was by far the smoothest launch I've personally be apart of. Nonetheless, I'd say we need to wait at least 90 days for a lot of players to get over the honeymoon glamour of a new game, and really decide if it's worth sticking with.
You could be right, Blizzard dont seem to be giving a flying hoot about low populated servers. Now the guild i was in have all moved to SWtor with only a handful not doing so. Alot of the very few alliance players on the server have gone to see what its like for the next 2-3 months. Only then will that game say if its worth staying or not. I am now wondering if they will be returning, if they do then how many, if most come back then the game sucked and i did the right thing, if hardly any come back then the game is a success and will undoubtedly start to pull more players over to it (myself could be one of them).
However i am not about to fork out £40 from amazon to find out if its just like the rest and really sucky. I will wait for 3-6mths before knowing (yes this would put me at a somewhat dissadvantage to the straight away starters, but thats the way thinsg go when one did not get to look at it beforehand.
Waiting is the only reasonable path these days, especially after shitfests like Warhammer, Age of Conan, Rift, Vanguard, etc.
I dont put much stock in box sales, they could have gotten record box sales on the die hard Star Wars fans alone, who have never even played an mmorpg. AOC at the time had recored box sales, wait 4 to 6 months and see if they can hold on to their 1. to 1.5 million subs or so. I dont know what besides it being Star Wars is the holding point of the game, it wont be the most competitive PVE Raid mmo, it certainly wont be the best pvp mmo, and alot of people say its dull and boring. Its going to have to retain subs past a certain point, and its going to have to get good word of mouth from other gamers who know other gamers.
Not very good for 48h out of the gates. (52-53 servers at about 4.5k a pop)
The fanatics are currently in the TOR forums trying to convice people that being put on a payment plan to even play your free first month is normal. I dont remeber having to do that since maybe the early early days.
There is no doubt that Blizzard have screwed up, you only have to look at the amount of subscriptions they have lost per quarter (currently around 900k for this quarter). If wow was released today it would be a massive fail because it would not hold on to it's player base.
Blizzard were counting on people staying with wow and then moving to their new MMO when that is released. But Bioware has thrown a spanner in the works, TOR is a very good game and Blizzard assumed it wouldn't be because past competition wasn't. Now Blizzard are panicing, which is why they are offering stuff like Diablo 3 for "free" with a year subscription, they are desparate to hang on to subscriptions for the kung-fu panda expansion and until their next game.