Occaisional Random MMO: Galaxies and TOR

The Escapist has published an article stating that Galaxies is not shutting down with the launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic. The question is, of course, can Sony keep Galaxies running if most of the remaining players leave for TOR? If The Matrix Online is any indication, the answer is "yes". Apparently, an MMO doesn't need very many players at all to be profitable enough to keep around. The Sony Station Pass is probably the prime motivator of that, since additional MMOs, no matter how sparsely populated, is value added for Pass holders.

So Galaxies will persist, but the real question is will you be able to find anyone to play with even on the now-most-populous servers? The game is a virtual ghost town compared to when I played it back in pre-NGE. And it's very concerning that these devs seem to think the NGE was a good thing:

"We also realized what players expect from an online Star Wars game - they expect to be that iconic Star Wars hero as soon as possible. They don't want to play for hundreds of hours just to become a Jedi."

*SIGH!* At least they say they've learned listening to the customer is a good thing to do. NCNC and Cryptic could have told them that.

Read the whole, worrisome thing over at The Escapist.