EA is undoubtedly wearing a big smile following the successful launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR). Analyst are calling the game the fastest growing MMORPG in history, managing to pull in over 1 million players in just its first three days of live service and those numbers are predicted to continue growing.

Baird Equity Research analyst Colin Sebastian believes that SWTOR’s growth indicates a “viable market for multiple million-user MMOs in the U.S. and Europe."  Analysts are also predicting that SWTOR will sell over 3 million copies before the end of EA’s fiscal year ending in March 2012. Despite that, there are some limits to their expectations.

We think Street expectations for 1.5-2 million paid monthly users through 2012 may be too optimistic.

The MMORPG business is a tricky one. We’ve seen many games take off running with a positive sign of growth only to seemingly come unraveled and bleed players after launch. Time will tell what the future will hold for SWTOR.

Source: Gamasutra