The lights are on
A frank letter from the game’s executive producer talks about how The Old Republic can still improve, but also touts 2 million new active players since going free-to-play.
The prevailing sentiment in many gaming circles is that The Old Republic is struggling to find players, but info from the developer seems to counter that idea. Executive producer Jeff Hickman posted an open letter to the community today, in which he discusses the state of the game.
“Last spring, there was some uncertainty surrounding Star Wars: The Old Republic as we were starting to lose subscribers and players were growing frustrated,” says Hickman. “In fairness, many of the complaints and worries were justified. In an effort to try to address everything, we just weren’t sufficiently focused on improving the core experience.”
In response, the team added the group finder, increased the rate of content release, and brought in new players by offering a free-to-play option. How many new players? “Since launch of the free-to-play option we have had over two million new accounts created and have thousands of new players jumping in every single day,” Hickman states.
No one familiar with the gaming industry can doubt the challenge presented by releasing and then maintaining a high-quality MMO. No matter your opinion of The Old Republic, it’s refreshing to see the developer speaking openly with its audience, as well as acknowledging past challenges and goals for how it hopes to overcome those issues.
Are you one of those two million new TOR players? If not, what would the game have to do to lure you into that galaxy far, far away?
Email the author Matt Miller, or follow on Game Informer.
Awesome!
Yes... well it's a F2P.... if you have a F2P that doesn't have a growing player base, you're failing to the max... How is this news? lol
Meh. I got this game within a month of it's release, played a Bounty Hunter and Jedi Knight to level cap, did a fair amount of PvP with the Jedi and a ton of PvE with the Bounty Hunter.
I've returned to it a few times after not playing it for 3-4 month spans but it just doesn't hold my interest any more.
Hmmm...I need to check out this game.
"2 million new users since going free to play" In tomorrows news, 1.9 million bot accounts have been banned.
I started playing SWTOR about 2 days before Free-to-Play hit, I have been playing ever since. It is so much fun, and it keeps getting better. I can't wait for the new content, the game will get even better as time goes by.
i only find it fun if you play it with friends
It's still an MMO I go back to, if for nothing more than the Star Wars universe and the quite fantastic story lines.
Gameplay isn't bad, either, and the PvP is among my favorite.
I knew sticking around was a good idea. Snagged all the datacrons I needed a couple weeks ago. Some of the methods are VERY UNQIUE such as fighting an ancient droid carrying it, looting it, and sticking it inside this power transfer station at the Star of Coruscant. Now that was fun.
I'm glad to see I'm not the only person complaining because more games aren't released for Mac.
Gee, I can't imagine that maybe that's because you barely let them have access to most features unless they pay anyway? The only MMO I know of that was worse about this sort of thing was LEGO Universe.
i played for one night, and thought it was okay but never picked it up. i run a macbook pro with bootcamp -- i rarely click over to my windows partition. i find it hard to get deep into MMOs with so many console/ handheld games coming out. and my small amount of gaming time makes it hard to stay in guilds and stuff.
definitely interested in checking out Guild Wars 2, though.