So I've been reading reddit and these forums about how raiding is basically dead in this game. I've come back to experience the rest of the stories i didn't finish and I'd like to do some raiding, but from what I've read this current expansion has been horrible for raids and the upcoming expansion is likely to follow suit. If this is the case, should i bother sticking around to raid?

I never said the 350k was subs, i said the 350k concurrent users and the breadline of 500k supported my estimate of 500k subs ATM. As SWTOR is still going atm, which means they are above the bread line and the last reasonable estimate was 350k subs.

Everyone says it, but only Blizzard can beat WoW. Blizzard and the community all agree WoW came along at the right time, offered the right content for that time and provide exactly what the consumer base wanted. As such it exploded and became the game it is today. SWTOR had the biggest shot out of any MMO ever to take it head on, but it was entered the market at a time of flux, people where bored with the WoW experience, but required the content and polish that WoW offered. They where after change and SWTOR offered more of the same. I think the next biggest hit will be a crowd source funded MMO, because that will be a direct show of demand for what consumers want. Which is why partly Star Citizen is so interesting to watch.

I don't need to google search something that i'm not trying to prove. You don't enter a discussion to prove the OP wrong with evidence and say "well its out there, go look" you provide the evidence to encourage the discussion.

Or your working for EAware

So based on the 350k active concurrent users and and the 500k to be nicely profitable, considering this is the only information we can use to go off, they are already below that amount? If your going to be rude, please just leave. You are not contributing anything and i fail to see where i have been rude to warrant such an attitude.

Thank you for providing that link.

I'm sorry, but you have failed to provide any form of evidence to back up your estimations. The link you provided has no actual "confirmed" numbers and no estimated numbers, while mine has at least some reputable estimations. But please if you can find me a link to your "500k is their baseline, stated way back in 2012. By Daniel before he left, me thinks. It was either him or Jeff Hickman. But that's an official statement. 500k subs= Sustained Game Growth. ( Without any CM revenue.)" I would be greatly appreciate that.

Nothing sells better then Sex and Gambling. And this is exactly what EAware is offering in SWTOR.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/01/03/research-firm-swtor-has-350-000-peak-concurrent-users/ http://www.insidegamingdaily.com/2012/01/03/swtor-has-350000-concurrent-players/ So my estimate of 500k is pretty accurate I feel. If I remember correctly EAware stated that the majority of CM purchases came from subscribers and not F2P players. I think this was in a EAware investor call or something. But again please prove me wrong. I'm also finding it very hard to find this "rumoured 2m" of unknown players. If you are going to bring up grammar errors, then you clearly have nothing left to contribute to the conversation and instead which to aggravate people.

Way to completely ignore the point I was making. What I said was unless EAware produce something to compete, they will find it very hard to hold onto players. MMO's are a self destructive environment, if populations decrease, people notice this and are quick to jump ship. I never said "THE WORLD IS ENDING!!!" Last estimates we have for TOR pop is around 500k, That is a very small fragile amount of players to try and survive an onslaught of MMO's from all angles and platforms. Lets say they loose 15% of their population (75,000), that could be enough to say stop production on new raid content or new pvp content. Remember lack of content = number 1 reason people leave MMO's. Lets say they lost 30% (150,000), that could be more then enough to stop all but cartel market content and even closure of the game. We have no idea of what the actual breadline limit is for this game, but if we are getting this amount of content with 500k players, I would argue that their breadline limit is not that far away.

Will never happen, they don't have the budget to do this. They have about 4 people on the community team and most of them have even less enthusiasm to engage with the community. Hell if they did engage, they'd realise just how broken some aspects of the game are.

While the cartel market saved this game, its like putting a bandage on a severed leg, eventually it'll bleed out. EAware are using the cartel market as the main source for content distribution, making content "less" appealing in content outside of the cartel market. Great example is the dread fortress armour, the vast majority of people I've spoke with hate the look and considering its exactly the same armour just recoloured for every class shows how much little effort they are putting into the non cartel market content. I would argue now that the SWTOR team is around 20 people, 2-5 community guys, 10 cartel market guys, 3 pve/pvp content and 2 art content. This would explain the lack of communication between the community and its customer base and the lack of content added to pve/pvp content and the honorific neglected class balance situation. Then you have the cartel market in its inception which is a gambling system, which is not only morally wrong, but I'm sure possibly illegal in some countries, as the gambling age is lower. The problem you have is the game isn't generating enough money to provide the content the community desires and to keep the share holders at EAware happy they need to keep pumping out this fluff content to milk you for as much as they can. This is also why we will never get a new class, the content they will need to create would be too much and people would not be happy if instead of 1 raid and 1 PvP area, they added a new class. So the question of how to fix these problems is also impossible to fix, you need money to make content, they don't make enough from subs, so they need to pump resources into the cartel market, so therefore we'll forever have a situation of priority around the cartel market. You also have the EAware admission about micro transactions being the way forward for gaming by Riccatello or what ever his name was. So there is no easy fix, unless you can attract more subs, you'll get more and more cartel market content and in the end the game will collapse because it'll swing way to far in favour of fluff content and people will realise there is nothing with real substance and leave. What I feel the community wants in the way of content is a nice long arc'ing story on a new or existing planet, a new class with its own unique content, fixed classes, Essless crash bug fix (come on 2 years?), macro's, news on addons, some meaty PvP updates like new WZ's and ranked seasons, a huge crafting update, engine fixes to allow for functional world PvP, dynamic events i.e. GW2 style or Isle Of Thunder from WoW and by god its about time your art department made some good looking armour again, you managed to make some for the launch of the game. These are just a few from reading around the forums, will we get them.....no way, it costs way to much money to produce the above. But what you will get is minor class fixes that don't address core issues, raid content that is just lacking substance (dread masters for 3 raids worth of content?), lots and lots of cartel market fluff and it'll slowly fall into a downward spiral of fluff content production, more revealing clothing and "sexually" themed content to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Nothing sells better then sex and gambling. I bought the collectors edition of this game, I watched it for years and fell for the hype, I started to see warning signs in beta with the instanced planets (which I posted and the community called me a liar for) and the reports of no content at 50. This game ruined Dragon Age 2 and combined with SWTOR ruined Bioware's reputation as a games development company for producing high quality content, I can now see why the Dr's abandoned ship before it sunk. I want nothing more then to be proven wrong, but you have Wild Star and TESO releasing soon, then midway through 2014 you have games like EQN, Star Citizen and the new WoW expansion, this is just on the PC. Then you have the console MMO's releasing like Destiny and the Tom Clancy one I forget the name. Unless EAware pull something out of their hats, I agree with previous statements, this may well be the last trading year for SWTOR, as I can not see them competing with those games. And I know I'm not alone with that statement.

As always EAware is locking there content away behind their cash shop. When are you going to provide content that isn't forced through the cash shop? Why can i not go and kill a rare Jedi/Sith on a planet to get their robes instead of spending more then the cost of the monthly sub? I guess this: Is your take on SWTOR then.

Well no, EAware would say ok with 1 year and 2.5million we could create xyz, rather then i want this in 2months.