Captain Placeholder said:
Also, it is common sense that just because you have an IP (Look at nearly every single Movie/Comic title game ever) and VERY few have been successful with just the IP. It takes good gameplay, something that Bioware has proven time and time again. (Fuck off DA2 haters).
Good single player gameplay. I remain sceptical that Bioware's undeniably impressive track record in single player RPGs will really transfer to an MMO.
Next, all the MMO's who are switching to F2P have... for lack of a better term, fucking sucked since its release. D&D? Sucked. Conan? Sucked. (If they didn't they would have managed to continue on its player base and not failed: Look at Warhammer online for an example).
Wait? WAR hasn't failed? First I've heard of it. Snark aside, WAR has trodden a path that I could easily see TOR following - big launch followed a year down the line by server mergers as population drops off. Admittedly WAR really suffered from the diminishing population because of its high PvP aspect, but still, it amazes me that WAR hasn't gone the full F2P route yet, or died altogether.
I can go on and on. WoW has stayed on Subscription because of its solid gameplay and fanbase. I am pretty sure that the Star Wars fanbase exceeds any of Blizzards' and if the gameplay stacks up well it will survive on a Sub.
Stop comparing it to WoW. Haven't you heard? The only thing that will Kill WoW is WoW itself.
Agreed, but...
Tell that to EA. They've poured a ton of money into this game and if there's not an EA exec sitting looking at these pre-order figures and dreaming that this will be the "WoW killer" to himself then I'll eat my PC. EA is greedy enough to go up against COD with Battlefield 3, and I fear they'll be greedy enough to go up against WoW with The Old Republic.
I don't want TOR to fail, really. I think it would be bad for the MMO genre in general if such a hugely hyped, long awaited and high profile title didn't do great business, but I can easily envisage a scenario where EA push it too hard - by having too many servers at launch setting up the dreaded server
mergers consolidations a year down the line, or being too eager to get the cash shop up and running too quick (sub or no sub, I'll be astonished if they don't have a cash shop, and soon.)
That's my biggest fear for this game - that greed, arrogance, over ambition and just straightforward corporate stupidity will force it to try to be everything to everyone and end up being nothing to anyone.