Analyst Says World of Warcraft Will Regain TOR Subscribers

Game industry analyst Michael Pachter had some new words to say about SWTOR once again. You may remember him from Pach Attack and Wedbush Securities. He recently appeared on MSNBC’s In-Game to talk about Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ and World of Warcraft™. As if the comparisons have not gotten old already, it’s now time for an industry analyst to weigh in on the topic.

While he sticks to his early report that SWTOR will have 2 million or more subscribers at launch, he says that only 1 in 3 of those will come from active WoW players. He also adds that most of them will return to WoW once the initial appeal and interest in SWTOR fades.

It certainly won’t be the first time that WoW has gone head-to-head with other proposed giants in the MMO field and they still came out victorious. It’s not likely that any one game alone will be a “WoW-killer”, not even SWTOR. For one, there are different market bases and some people just won’t leave WoW for SWTOR because Star Wars isn’t their thing or they are comfortable with their current game. It’s just the way it works. Pachter is doing a good job of analyzing the trends in the industry to come to these predictions, however.

This is all after Pachter helped boost EA’s stock just last week after he added the video game maker’s stock to the “Wedbush Best Ideas” list of stocks with strong prospects.

What do you think? Who will win the SWTOR vs. WoW epic battle of the MMORPGs? MSNBC and In-Game have a fun poll set up for you to cast your official vote. Only time will tell if SWTOR will be a WoW-killer but so far the poll scales are greatly tipping in SWTOR’s favor.

Lisa Clark

Lisa has been an avid gamer since she was old enough to hold her first controller and a game writer for more than a decade. A child of the Nintendo generation, she believes they just don’t make games like they used to but sometimes, they make them even better! While consoles will always be her first love, Lisa spends most of her gaming time on the PC these days- on MMOs and first-person shooters in particular.