Industry analyst Colin Sebastian of Baird Equity Research states that the MMO market is healthy, pointing to the fact that Star Wars: The Old Republic was able to achieve a concurrent user count of 350,000 at its peak. This proves, according to Sebastian, that World of Warcraft is not obstructive towards another major AAA subscriber-based MMO with over 1M+ monthly paying players.
Sebastian reported, ”We view the early success of Star Wars as an indication of a healthy MMO market. While there is likely some shifting of usage from Activision’s World of Warcraft, we see a viable market for multiple million-user MMOs in the US and Europe.”
The Old Republic utilizes 215 servers (as of the 31st December), with 124 in North America and 91 in Europe. For comparison, World of Warcraft has a total of 491 servers worldwide. However, the World of Warcraft subscriber base had dropped in the last few months of 2011. According to sources, roughly 2.5% of the user base had stopped subscribing to Blizzard’s MMO.
Star Wars: The Old Republic has received generally positive reviews and feedback since its release on the 20th December, enjoying an 88 Metacritic score.
