Gaming & Culture —

Is The Old Republic becoming an old ghost town? OpenForum gamers debate

Are gamers tiring of Star Wars: The Old Republic?

If there's enough subscribers to play, does it matter if the subscriptions dip periodically?

Earlier this week, our gaming editor Kyle Orland reported that EA's Star Wars: The Old Republic might be causing a decline in World of Warcraft subscriber numbers, according to an analyst. What's more, The Old Republic might be seeing its own numbers decline. In order to find out what's really going on in the community of The Old Republic, we turned to the Ars readership to learn more.

Some users confirm these reports of decline. Commenters on our post shared some of their own anecdotes about declines in usage in the MMO game. cobaltplasma noted, "Almost all of my friends who swapped over to TOR have become fairly bored with it and have been filling time with other interests; having a ton more Diablo 3 and Mists of Pandaria beta invites out there certainly isn't helping, but a majority of them say they're just bored with the game. None cited any hatred or distrust for EA, at least not enough to stop them from subbing in TOR, but all of them are letting their subs lapse."

A dip in subscriptions will likely have an impact on a game developer's bottom line, but according to Xavin, dips are part of the regular cycle of a game. He says, "Anyone who knows anything about MMOs can tell you subscription numbers will drop from launch, probably until the first expansion, that always happens. The thing that really matters is whether the game is stable or in a freefall."

While that report is recent, the Ars OpenForum discussions about the game have been happening for a long time. The forum thread for Star Wars: The Old Republic, is huge, and aptly titled Star Wars: The Old Republic (My Bantha brings all the boys to the yard). This thread has more than 16,000 posts, and it's a good chronicle of the evolution of the game from announcement through the present commercially available version. It's also a great place to join other Ars readers in the game. As you can see from its long history, there's a group of players who are dedicated to organizing their time in the game. But is the forum feeling bullish about participation in The Old Republic as of late?

rtylershaw notes that his fascination with the game has faded compared to another well-known MMO: "I feel guilty about it, but I haven't actually logged in and played in a month now. I'm not sure why—it's tough to put a finger on an exact reason—but as someone posted earlier, it just always seems like there's something more interesting to do. I haven't been enthralled like I was with WoW."

On the other hand, other players like Draconos are engaged in the gameplay and even willing to sit through the usual server and patch annoyances that are part of MMOs: "Servers are back online release the KRAKENS!!!!"

Ultimately, it took KParks to address the dropoff cited by the figures in our post: "Yeah, I have to say I give it a bit of a meh. Interesting to know, but I think that everyone expects some dropoff from the initial rush numbers. It always happens, to everyone. What will be interesting is if they are building up a bunch of subscribers or are flat come this time next year. Remember, WoW didn't shoot crazy until a few years after launch when they got worldwide market penetration." Several other users, such as neye_eve, refuted these refuted these claims.

So does the The Old Republic community have enough of a critical mass to continue playing? Does EA have confidence in these numbers to sustain long-term growth, like KParks suggests? If you're playing the game and you have not yet participated, we'd like to hear if you think the game has what it takes to become a true success, or if players should be packing up their things and looking for greener Bantha pastures.

Note: We updated detail to reflect follow-up reactions to KParks' post.

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