Star Wars: The Old Republic has already passed the million-man mark, according to a press release issued by EA and BioWare. The companies claim it’s the fastest that any MMO ever reached the number, having soft-launched for early access players on just December 13th.

Additional numbers revealed in the press release show that those million-plus players are a dedicated bunch. Players are putting in an average of five hours per day in-game for a total of some 28 million hours logged. 3.8 million characters have been created, with over 1 million of those being famous light saber-bearers. Right now, Sith Warriors outnumber Jedi Knights; 550,000 to 510,000.

The Old Republic is the “fastest growing subscription MMO” in game industry history, said Dr. Ray Muzyka, BioWare co-founder. Everyone at BioWare, EA and Star Wars property owner LucasArts “is honored and humbled” by the fan response, he added. Muzyka went on to promise that the “months and years ahead” will have regular deliveries of new features and new content on top of one of the most ambitious, content-packed games already launched.

The “fastest growing” number is based on the game’s official launch on December 20th, which ignores the hundreds of thousands of pre-order players who ensured beta access as much as a week in advance of the street date. Still, 1 million players is a number most new MMOs fail to hit at any point in their growth. To BioWare’s credit, the launch has seen few problems. A few long server queues aside, there have been no major events like downtimes, server crashes, or any of the other issues that once plagued major MMO releases.

If you’re still curious about the SWTOR experience, read our guide to the first hours. When you’re ready to level up, be sure to read up on raids – or Flashpoints, in the game’s terminology.

EA concludes that 2 billion NPCs have already died in The Old Republic, so it’s good that the human players are flowing in so quickly.

geek.com