'The Old Republic' Estimated at 1.5 Million Users; Long Server Lines

Dec 19, 2011 by Anthony Mole

Star Wars: The Old Republic hasn’t even launched yet and it already looks like it’s on the way to becoming a huge success. According to analyst Doug Cruetz, he estimates that around 1.5 million people are already playing the game through the promotional pre-access program.

Earlier this year, EA stated that they only need to see 500 000 subscriptions in order for The Old Republic to generate a profit. With pre-access numbers already triple that, it’s pretty safe to say that The Old Republic will be the success EA hopes it to be.

Cruetz does also note that while the first month of The Old Republic will be free, the number of players in pre-access does reflect the number of people who have purchased the game, so even without subscription fees for the first month EA can still expect to make their money back on the game. It also helps that the game has the Star Wars title attached to it.

“Based on the number of servers now in operation, and the relatively high densities thereon, we feel fairly comfortable estimating that the game already has in excess of 1 million players, and potentially could have as many as 1.5 million, with the official launch date of the game yet to come.

“We note that EA gives players the first month free, so ‘players’ does not yet signify paying subscribers; however, our estimate does at least signify the number of people who have bought the game (and thus far, includes only a subset of those who pre-ordered the title).”

Doug Cruetz is also part of the same firm that believes The Old Republic could sell three million copies in its first year - and judging by these numbers, we wouldn’t refute that.

However, if there’s one downside to this success it’s that the servers for The Old Republic are being bombarded more than the planet Taris in Knights of The Old Republic. Players are reportedly having to wait forty to sixty minutes just to get into a server due to the amount of people playing the game, guess EA’s plan to limit available copies of The Old Republic wasn’t such a bad idea after all. BioWare is aware of the issue, and though they cannot promise there will never be queue lines for The Old Republic they will be working to resolve the issue the best they can:

“While we can’t promise that there won’t ever be queues, we can promise you that we are taking this matter seriously and constantly reviewing them to make sure that they are manageable and reasonable.”

Have you been able to get into a game of The Old Republic, if so, what do you think? Will you be sticking around with the game post launch?