What he is saying is that someone who pays a few yuan to play a month and then goes onto another game is still considered an active subscription when clearly they are not. The chinese have different subscription rules, they pay per hour of play. Many of them come and go between many games. They are not directly comparable to a hard $15 a month no matter what subscriber. Thus 1 chinese account does not = 1 US/EU account. WoW did not have 12 million subscribers in the way that we commonly mean by subscribers to MMOs. SWTOR had 1.7m, that was nearly half of WOW.

This man is accurate. WoW at its peak only had 4m real subs that we actually compare to other games.

I got to play that game in the beta, its pretty fun, I really like the scale of the world around you, it feels like you are in a city when you are for example. I am more a fantasy or futuristic sci-fi fan myself though, but I think that people who go for that apocalyptic modern day thing will really enjoy that game. There looks like there is a lot to it.

Yes, and if that shocks you.. with respect, have you been living under a rock?

The only reason this game has any population at all is because bioware got one thing right... timing. There is no other MMO to play. Everyone is bored to death of WoW, and the next generation of games are not out yet. Everyone is still waiting on GW2 release in the next few months, and then the host of other MMOs that follow that. If it were not for the good luck timing this game would already be shutting down.

Ok, I tried not to laugh out loud when I read the topic of this thread, but wow, really? You people still believe this? This game has already reached its peak and it will never grow past that point. At this point its a steady decline into obscurity, though I have no doubt the population will hold at a certain point for awhile. This game has no chance of hitting even 2 million subs, let alone 10 million. Zero chance, no matter how good of a job they do. There is SUCH a bad taste in the mouth of a lot of players now, and first impressions matter a lot in the MMO genre. Not to mention that there are a whole slew of actually innovative and new games coming out very soon: Elder Scrolls Online, The Secret World, Marvel Heroes, Arch Age, Blizzard's 'Titan', Planetside 2, Everquest Next, Wildstar, etc.. Not to mention the biggest release of them all... Guild Wars 2 There is just simply no where for SWTOR to go but down, its already lost hundreds of thousands of subscribers, and I bet the next investors call will be no better, and the one after that FAR FAR worse as GW2 and other games will be released during that time. SWTORs chance is over.

Sorry your logic does not hold up. One of World of Warcrafts biggest contributions to the MMO genre was the idea that leveling should be done by doing quest after quest after quest in order to draw your attention away from the fact that you were grinding out XP for leveling purposes. It did this rather successfully. However Everquest had quests too, like.. enough quests to give you 1 out of your 65 levels =P The difference was the scale and the fact that World of Warcraft had been built from the ground up. It was revolutionary with "quest leveling" and it worked, even though questing had been done before. In the same way, dynamic events have been done before in games like warhammer and rift. However just like in Everquest vs World of warcraft, the scale is completely off. Guild Wars 2 is built from the ground up around the idea that dynamic event leveling is how you should level, and much the same way that World of Warcraft defined Quests, Guild Wars 2 is defining dynamic events. So in the end your comparison is way off base. There is some truth to what you are saying, and thats why the MAJOR cities in GW2 for each race (like the fleet in SWTOR, or Orgrimmar/Stormwind in WoW) are not up for being over run by dynamic events. They are safe places where you can count on your vendor being there every time you go. Out in the world however, when you go adventuring, that is compeltely different, things are different and exciting, and that IS what players are wanting now and from having played GW2 the feedback is extremely positive. Remember back when Everquest was THE mmo to play, people sat around in groups they didnt necessarily want to be in because you couldnt solo, and just grinded monsters for XP. World of Warcraft came along and said every class can now solo no problem at all, and questing shall be how you level now, no more grinding mobs for xp. Guess what? WoW was a HUGE success, people loved it. It changed. People will accept certain change. Guild Wars 2 is along this level of change. People said the same thing about World of Warcraft before it was released too. You try to appear like you know what you are talking about in your post, but you have actually provided absolutely no actual reasons why GW2 won't be the game changer a lot of people are saying it will be. Your "facts" above were effortlessly taken care of in my replies above. Nice try.

There is a massive difference that you are ignoring, perhaps to suit your own purposes. The public has played GW2, several times, for long periods of time not just short demos and the general response is that the game is delivering on the promises, living up to the hype, and people cannot wait to get back in. So yeah.. different situation I am affraid.

Well they were accurate about the Nov article, perhaps they are also accurate about the comparison article. When I read it, I have to say, its spot on.

Fair enough criticism, respectable honestly. GW2 has shown however that they have a lot of functionality crammed into a few skills. They also organize it better. Instead of having bars all over your screen for abilities you need to only click on the night of a full moon when its raining and only if there is a red flower in front of you (exaggeration i know heh), they have a bar with 10 buttons. Add to that a weapon swap that changes the first 5 buttons into another 5 new buttons. This translates to a controller well. Also instead of having three different melee attacks that all do damage, GW2 has weapon chains press 1 do the first strike, press 1 again and you get the second different kind of strike, press it again and get some special effect. Same as the three buttons but streamlined into one button. It is really something you have to play to understand. I can say that there is enough variety, that leveling is not boring with "the same old skills". Also, most MMOs you have your basic set of skills early on. In WOW my mage had all the abilities i used by like 28 or so for the most part. But level cap was 60 heh, As for the cash shop, when they announced that it pissed me right off, I immediately thought they were ruining a great game. However arena net has over a decade long history of running cash shop (GW1) and not letting it ever effect game play balance. They have stated that they take it very seriously and that unlike other games no in game power can be bought through the cash shop. Once I understood how it all works, it actually seems quite neat =)

The fact that it is neither TOR nor WOW will be exactly why it succeeds. It is different, it is the next generation.

I agree that GW2 end game is untested by the mass public. We will have to see if it works. I am not a blind fan boy I can admit that. Lets wait and see, but so far anet and the core testers who have been in the game quite a long time seem to think that its working. We will see if the public agrees. Some things to keep in mind, Anet has already announced that they have developed Dynamic Event building tools to help them make dynamic events quickly after launch of the game. This way they can add a bunch of new events in at random different parts of the world. The next time you walk through some zone, something new might happen. Apparently this is a pretty big deal. We will have to wait and see on that. All I know currently is that the PC version is far and away the best MMO I have played so far. Maybe the console version will be worse, but I am not sure. The game seems designed from the ground up to work well with a controller too. Compare the amount of buttons on your bar to that of SWTOR, GW2 seems like it may work on a console. Either way, I will wait and buy the console version later, I already purchased the PC version which I know is great =)

Yep, I agree actually heh. I am not sure if you had a chance to play GW2 from one of the beta weekends yet or not though. Once you play it, you can easily see how it could translate to a console, its very streamlined, look at the ability bar and weapon swapping, a controller has enough buttons to manage that . Grab it for the PC first, wait and see what people say about the console version, if it pans out the same as the fantastic PC version we have, then heck I will buy that one too and I can play relaxed on my couch and big screen TV =)

That is EXACTLY what GW2 is doing though, I am not sure why you can't see that. GW2 is vastly different from any other MMO out there, the game play experience IS different. SWTOR is a lot like WoW, but GW2 is not, it plays and feels completely different. If you played it, then you know that is true and not just me making some out landish claim. The mass of players that have played GW2 have said that the game feels new and a breath of fresh air into the stale MMO genre. I would say that Anet has learned the valid lesson that you pointed out above, they are not copying WoW, they are making something new and extremely accessible. Did you know that GW2 is going to be released for console as well? Even non-MMO players are picking up GW2 and enjoying it. This is exactly what happened when WoW came along.

GW2 is lacking the traditional end game from out dated MMOs, which I explained above. It is not lacking an end game, it has innovated end game and has a different definition of it, that is in my opinion FAR superior. Time will tell if this is better or not objectively, but in the mean time we cannot simply say it is worse because it is different. The fact is, end game is in GW2, their version of it. Could not be further from the truth, GW2 actually has the MOST balance between players of any character progression MMO thus far. Again I have to question how much you know about the game if you believe this is not true. This again is not true, and I am not attempting to be a contrarian but you are factually wrong. One of the biggest complaints from the public coming out of the beta weekends has been that the game is "too challenging". Players find GW2 quite challenging. For those who have made it high enough level to experience the dungeon content, they can attest that the dungeons in GW2 are as hard as the hardest raids in any traditional MMO thus far, possibly harder. Challenge is abundant in GW2, some people use that as a criticism, but your claim makes absolutely no sense. I really am not sure if you are trolling, or just seriously genuinely misinformed. When you hit level cap in GW2, you probably have more options of challenging content open to you then any MMO that has not had years of expansions available to it thus far. Once you hit level cap in SWTOR and other freshly released MMOs, from a pve perspective, you can raid the 1 or 2 raids that are available and run the max level dungeon, all the previous dungeons and other content are now too easy. All of your points are so far off base.

I can't wait for the debate in 6 months, it will be interesting to see where things are at, I agree. However you have to keep in mind that a great many people are already playing GW2. Yes it is not released yet, but the mass public has already played it due to the non-NDA beta weekend events, and it seems that people feel that anet has delivered their promises, it's not just smoke and mirrors. Now admittedly not everything can be tested on those beta weekends (should have another one coming up fairly soon), they also have a large amount of core testers who have experienced the later parts of the game and reported that what the weekenders experienced holds true all the way. Glowing reviews all around.

And WoW did it before TOR, and EQ did it before WOW and Ultima did it before EQ. World bosses are nothing new, that was not my point. Dynamic events add an entirely new level of fun to the equation and THAT is new (yes warhammer and rift have some semblance of it as well, but no where near the level that GW2 has, that would be like saying "WoW was not innovative because EQ had quests too" lol)

I think a lot of people get hung up on "GW2 has no end game! omg". What they mean is that there is no end game in the traditional sense that out dated MMOs have had it. That being: level to max level, and then you can begin "raiding" the same 1 or 2 raids over and over again with a bunch of people. Arenanet realized that kind of "endgame" was not fun. However there were some cool things about it.. namely fighting a big bad boss mob with a lot of other players. So rather then sticking that at level 80 they put a whole bunch of it through the entire game from levels 1 all the way to 80. Combine that with the fact that the game scales your level to the content, means that you can rerun these "raids" (otherwise known in gw2 as major dynamic events) as many times as you want with your guild and still be challenged and have fun. Take a look at this video to understand what GW2 is truly doing to "end game", there is TONS of "end game" it has just been innovated:

Care to provide me with some professional reviews that basically say GW2 is lackluster? Otherwise, I will assume you are just trolling, because everything I have read are overwhelmingly positive. There is no NDA and vast amounts of players have played GW2 quite a bit over the two BWEs and so far the feedback is that people are quite impressed.

I think the people who worry about "end game" are really missing the point that GW2 is making. Those "raids" that people are use to in other MMOs endgame content are experienced at levels 1-80 in GW2, all the way up, and the nature of level scaling and dynamic events means that you are always free and able and challenged to go back through the level 1-80 content and still have fun. This time you may lose the event against the big dragon attacking a town and so the dragons minions may control the town, where as when you were leveling up you defeated the dragon and the event lead you chasing him back to his cave where all this treasure is.. who knows. Its a living breathing world and playing the game really feels like it. Raiders raid the same static boss over and over and this is considered end game? How is that different from participating in GW2s more major event chains that lead to a big boss that you have already done? The answer.. its not in any significant way, other then the fact that dynamic events can actually branch off in different directions depending on success or failure.. for added fun. It is also important to note that redoing lower level events is still worth while since you get Karma from any level event and karma is a universal currency that allows you to buy gear, so you can still gear up by helping new players with events you have already enjoyed (although a bit slower).

1. Trandoshan A Trandoshan Bounty Hunter and Trandoshan Jedi is really all I wanted, and they only gave us Humans and Differently colored humans. Disappointing.

Your theory has some holes in it, if you go further back you can add the World of Warcraft hype back when everyone was playing Everquest and the like. Lots of people were like oh yeah Everquest will be the game still and only Everquest 2 can suceeed because sony has so much experience in MMOs while blizzard has none, they will make it too casual and that will break the game. However WoW became the next evolution in the MMO genre. Just like GW2 is the next evolution in the mmo genre. As WoW showed, some hype DOES live up to expectations. GW2 is showing that same trend, people have already played GW2 a lot, and they love it. There is no hush hush here.

It already has, people have played it and love the massive innovations. I am convinced that part of the reason SWTOR is struggling is because people see something much better in GW2 (after having actually played it) and know that they dont have to pay monthly fees to get it. I like SWTOR, but I have to admit, playing GW2 made my interest in SWTOR really begin to wane. Maybe they can do some stuff to fix it, but I think the problems are too deeply rooted in this games mechanics. I think you almost need a redesign with the new age mechanics that GW2 brings. Fast paced action 'twitch' combat, dynamic events, etc.. is what people want, that's why Terra and even elder scrolls online are bringing that as well. Guild Wars 2 is definately the first of the new generation of MMOs. My bet is that it will be the best of the bunch for years to come, just like World of warcraft was the first of the really successful "quest" MMOs as compared to Everquest which ironically did not level you with quests. Now quests have become dynamic events, and that is a huge transition.

I really would not hold out any hope for 'titan'. The old blizzard developers who made the games that made blizzard so popular (SC1, Diablo 2, WoW) are not working there anymore. MMOs are a very bait and switch genre. As far as I am concerned there is a hard major progression in the genre and it goes something like this: Everquest -> World of Warcraft -> Guild Wars 2. Most every other MMO outside of the 'major progression' are just distractions and usually failures. The question then becomes will titan be the fourth spot? I think it will be too soon after GW2, I am guessing titan will be a distraction.

I think a fair difference might be that GW2 has beta weekends that are available to the public with no NDA at all. Most players have already poured lots of playtime into GW2 and the reviews are still coming out positive in almost every respect. It doesn't appear that there are any smoke and mirrors here, it looks like this game is actually delivering.