SWTOR Losing Subscribers, Not All Hope Is Lost
In their earnings statement, released yesterday, EA announced that subscribers for the MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic have dropped from their peak of 1.7 million active subscribers to 1.3 million. For those of you who aren’t math majors, that’s about 25%. Generally, if you’ve lost 25% of your subscriber base in a few months, that’s not a good thing.
EA, however, is not panicking at this time. People have speculated that part of the dramatic drop in numbers is coming from the fact that many of the casual players and people who gained free trials are dropping off, and indeed, that’s what EA is saying. That doesn’t mean that EA isn’t watching the trends for the game. If the numbers keep dipping down, then there might be a problem. If, however, the numbers even out and stay steady, then expect SWTOR to be around for a good, long while.
Now that the causal gamers are getting out of the game, expect to see a good portion of new content focus on keeping the older, more hardcore players interested. For instance, in the next patch 1.3, you can expect to see people gaining access to level 25 speeders at level 10, boosted affection gains for companions from events, and even the option to access mailboxes, reset the skill tree, and repair items in the field. These are the kinds of things that will keep players wanting to play the game, as they won’t have to waste so much time going back and forth to town to repair their items. The more streamlined the game is, the more fun the players are having, and the more often they’ll want to roll new characters. I have a feeling that this is going to work out pretty well.
