958k presales by December 17 and review

[ferraripilot]

Wanted to share some thoughts. I have played tons of MMOs, but mainly SWG way back and Wow.

I believe this places SWTOR 2nd or 3rd in the all-time highest preselling game. Top award of course goes to Mario Kart 7 which presold a staggering 1.3M copies. Point is, approximately 1 million people took the presales jump to in essence dive head first into the game. If the game catches on, early new year growth is inevitable. How much, who knows.

Statistics are hovering around a 97% 'love it' rating by beta testers. If that figure applies to be even 90% accurate to live players then I thoroughly believe this game could bring the same type of cult phenom to the market which wow brought years ago. Make note these statistics are higher than Warcraft had upon its release but I digress the market was very different then as there was no 'juggernaut' around at that time. I believe wow's only competitors at their launch were SWG and EQII which both had under 500k subscribers at their peak.

Regarding server stability to date and buggyness to date, I am pleasantly surprised. Warcraft constantly crashed and had bugged quests 1 in every dozen or so, but Blizz was good about it and gave free days for their errors. I have crashed once in SWTOR and haven't yet had any bugged quests. I'm sure they are out there but I haven't run into them yet. Gameplay and rotation for the consular class so far has been excellent. I can tell they spent some time on this.

Graphics-wise, I am in Tatooine at the moment and it is staggering. Very impressed. It's nice to have a game which fully uses my CPU finally.

[Deleted]

There where way more preorders than that.

They sold 900k-1million in physical copies in the US alone.

[Deleted]

We're talking an MMO here, not a single player game. The number of sold copies is largely meaningless until we know how many of those copies turn into subscriptions. It's a Star Wars game, made by a popular developer that had the hype machine in full swing, of course it would sell well.

[Rooflesstoofless]

We're talking an MMO here, not a single player game. The number of sold copies is largely meaningless until we know how many of those copies turn into subscriptions. It's a Star Wars game, made by a popular developer that had the hype machine in full swing, of course it would sell well.

Its a good thing we have you here as a anti-hype bot or things could get completely out of control.

[wownerd]

I was going to ask if anyone has seen any official sales marks (because usually Blizz is already touting how many copies there expacs have sold by this point in there release cycle), as for server stability, ive been playing seance the first day of early acess, I personally have had no issues with instability, I haven't read anything about servers being shut down due to bugs or lagg issues (blizz has had to do this multiple times, even trion had to shut servers down to fix issues, and there launch was considered 1 of the best mmo launches), everyone i know has been enjoying the game, now i have heard of some CS issues but to be honest with a mmo launch, wait time for ticket or CS issues is usually at its peak.

For me this game is totally living up to the hype machine and then some, So for me it is going to last a long time.

[MuricaIsDead]

my guess is, bioware is going to keep quiet about numbers until things calm down. MMOs always contract in numbers and if they come out touting 4 million sales, then 2 months from now it's down to 2.5 million, it won't look as good and bandwagon/sky falling type people will start proclaiming it dead.

[ferraripilot]

my guess is, bioware is going to keep quiet about numbers until things calm down. MMOs always contract in numbers and if they come out touting 4 million sales, then 2 months from now it's down to 2.5 million, it won't look as good and bandwagon/sky falling type people will start proclaiming it dead.

I'm wondering if MMOs will see a downward trend in younger populations and what that metric might be in terms of age groups. Wow lost some 800-900k subscribers earlier in the year and I wonder if it was due to just not liking wow or not liking mmos in general any longer. Actuaries and statisticians are handy in these instances but it's not likely any company is going to yield this information to the public anyway. It's probably safe to say Bioware did their homework before beginning developement production for such a massive product during a recession.

If Bioware's goal is to challenege Wow then I believe this product with a few tweaks (UI!) could but it won't happen numbers-wise for some time as even Wow took a considerable amount of time to grow to what it was a year or so ago. We'll see what happens, but thus far the game has a fresh look in what I thought was a stagnating mmo world looks-wise.

[Rebirth1108]

There where way more preorders than that.

They sold 900k-1million in physical copies in the US alone.

This for truth!

[Deleted]

SW:TOR has some amazing potential and the naysayers often hold little ground with their claims, it'll be interesting to see how the game will turn out and how many people will keep an active subscription going but I haven't had such a positive feeling about a MMO in a long time, and I've tried out pretty much all the bigger titles. Lets hope BioWare adds some much needed options in the game, such as basic UI customization, and not make any odd turns along the way and we'll be fine. Highly recommend people to try it out at the least.

[Soxoffender]

Initial sales don't always equal a successful game a year or two down the line. Warhammer online claimed 1.2m sales two weeks after release but that became around 300k subscribers less than a year later and nobody really believes that they're topping 100k subscribers now.

I think TOR will do well but it's a little early to say that it will definitely be a success.

[davesurfer]

I think TOR will do well but it's a little early to say that it will definitely be a success.

While I am hooked and dropped out of my raid group after years in this group, you are right.

We need to wait until End game to tell. I will give them until MoP to see how they do with end game, enhancements (like guild stuff and UI), and their first major content patch. These will be some of the make it or break it items for the longevity of this game. Time will tell

[Deleted]

Sources?

Quite more useless to discuss this topic if nobody is able to provide correct numbers ..
Physical + digital version were/are sold out .. another point that makes is impossible to judge how many could have been sold..
Dont start comparing things like "wow" (or any other "old" release) and "swtor" .. when wow has been released there were much fewer computergamers .. and even less mmo-gamers..

[Deleted]

my guess is, bioware is going to keep quiet about numbers until things calm down. MMOs always contract in numbers and if they come out touting 4 million sales, then 2 months from now it's down to 2.5 million, it won't look as good and bandwagon/sky falling type people will start proclaiming it dead.

People will claim this game has died next month probably. =P