Leave it to a Star Wars property to claim yet another top spot in a category. Star Wars: The Old Republic, BioWare’s critically acclaimed subscription MMO, is now the fastest growing MMO in gaming history.
The Old Republic already boasts more than one million registered users since launching December 20, 2011. However, BioWare and Electronic Arts will continue to steadily pulse players into the game through the holiday period and into 2012 by limiting supply in order to create a smooth and more enjoyable player experience – all the while growing the community further.
Industry acclaim has been very positive, with a Metacritic score, as of this writing, at 88% – though the user score is considerably lower at 6.1. This could be in part due to some of the frustrations players have felt with registration code errors and high traffic servers - issues that should not be indicative of the actual in-game experience.
As of December 23, players had already logged more than 28 million in-game hours, which is equivalent to watching both Star Wars movie trilogies two million times. On average, each player is also playing more than five hours per day, with the same players creating 3.8 million characters, 510,000 Jedi Knights and 550,000 Sith Warriors to name a few. Non-playing characters (NPCs) have bit the dust 2 billion times in the eight days since early game access began.
Dr. Ray Muzyka, General Manager of EA’s BioWare label and co-founder of BioWare expressed his gratitude for the amount of players and is excited about what is coming next.
“Already over a million players strong after our December 20 launch, The Old Republic has become the fastest growing subscription MMO in the history of our industry. Everyone at BioWare, EA and LucasArts is honored – and humbled – by the stellar response from our fans. We’re going to work together closely with our community in the weeks, months and years ahead, continually serving our audience with regular delivery of compelling new features and content.”
A story-driven MMO game, The Old Republic should continue to grow and evolve as even more players join the ranks and further DLC/expansions are released. The five year undertaking seems to have paid off for all those involved.
Keep it tuned to Game Rant for further news on The Old Republic, which is currently available for the PC.
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It really doesn’t matter how many players they’ve started with. What matters is how many to the retain on a month-to-month basis. In six months we’ll know if it’s a success or not.
MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU …HELL YEA!!!!!!!!!
STAR WARS IS FOREVER
hell yea this game kicks ass dont hate sorry sky rim
look for me in game juggernaut lvl 72
Wow I think EA could take on Activision on all fronts now.
The industry has been begging for a new MMORPG to take the place of the aging World of Warcraft. But like already said, what will matter most is how many people stick around…not how many people have started playing it.
Many people declared that Aion was going to be a WoW killer and we all saw how that went…
Agreed. The mmo market is starving for new content but star wars fails to really add anything new to the genre. Given enough hype, any game can sell a lot of copies. Which can be seen with a lot of games. Same goes for games backed with a big developer. So it could all be hype, and being an mmo you can’t judge anything in the first couple of weeks. i mean come on people. Give it at least 6 months and a whole content patch (if they can do that) and then see how well they excel at keeping players. thats where it counts
“…but star wars fails to really add anything new to the genre” ~ Daniel
“Star Wars” has failed to add anything ‘significantly’ new. After the “Star Wars” prequels arrived on the scene, the entire franchise is just repackaging their theatrical movie trailers. If you look at all the “SW: TOR” trailers, the same music, action tempo, and concepts were recycled.
“Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic I & II” was the last time I actually cared about the franchise. “Star Wars: Episode I, II, & III” turned the franchise into absolute action sequences with pumped up music. “Star Wars: Episode IV, V, & VI” were a success due to a heavy focus on character development. Sure, you had action sequences in the original trilogy; however, those moments didn’t get in the way of the humanistic elements. Once they turned Vader and Fett into kids, I think they took away the dark mystery of both characters.
“Star Wars: The Old Republic” is a means to an end. Once this game runs its course, people will finally feel franchise fatigue.
People will eventually dislike “Star Wars” as it gets overly exposed.