Star Wars: TOR fans worried about communication

One of my regulars back when I played Legend of the Five Rings online, Tairu has continued to be a regular reader and attends the daily streams. He pointed out an interesting article he wrote regarding Bioware’s seeming lack of attention to the player base for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Click to read more.

The article makes several good points, namely that livestreams and the like are a big opportunity to excite the game population, but they are seemingly allowing other forces to drive the narrative. Livestreams like this are the best way to encourage interest in the MMO amongst dedicated players (which is one of the best ways to encourage their friends to sign up, and to retain a playing base).

To hear these kind of complaints about a lack of engagement make me a bit worried about SW:TOR. It’s a weird combination of subscriber-based and free to play, and it’s definitely not in the same quadrant as World of Warcraft, but then again, what is? In 2014, two years after they announced the limited opening of free-to-play options, they continued to record over 1 million monthly users, but there’s no break down on how many subscribers and how many were free-to-play.

I’m not a prognosticator, but with the Star Wars trilogies being released over the next couple of years, I worry that The Old Republic will languish, and eventually suffer the same fate as Star Wars Galaxies.