The Old Republic already being played by 1.5 million people, analyst says

Although it isn't set to launch until midnight tonight, Star Wars: The Old Republic already has over a million people on its servers, analyst Doug Creutz says.

The new, highly-anticipated MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online game) has a launch date of December 20, but those who pre-ordered the game were given the chance to hop online early and begin the battle between the Republic and the Empire one week before everyone else.

Creutz, who is an analyst at Cowan & Company, estimates that the game already has one million people playing on EA's 140 servers. He adds that he is "fairly comfortable" estimating as many as 1.5 million could be playing prior to the game's North American and Europe.

Interestingly, that number is based on the number of people playing World of Warcraft: there are 491 servers supporting 4 to 4.5 million players across North America and Europe. Based on the "relatively high density" of players online in The Old Republic, Creutz and his firm project 1-1.5 million players are active online.

Using World of Warcraft as a comparison is worth noting, because according to The Telegraph, The Old Republic is hoping to unseat WoW from its position as the most successful MMORPG. WoW's numbers are declining, which gives The Old Republic an ideal opportunity to step in and try to scoop up some of the disgruntled MMORPG players as well as Star Wars fans the world over.

It isn't all good news for The Old Republic just yet, though. Developer BioWare has acknowledged that the wait times to log on to the servers are extremely long, some being up to an hour. That doesn't bode well for when the game opens up to all players. Executive Producer of the game Jeff Hickman said in a blog on the game's website over the weekend that they are doing their best to balance wait times with making sure that "people have a dynamic, engaging community to play with long after launch."

(Screengrab from swtor.com)