10 Video Games That Have Epically Failed This Decade

5. Star Wars: The Old Republic Can't Topple World Of Warcraft

Hopes were high in 2011 that BioWare's $200 million MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic would finally be the game to bring down reigning champion World of Warcraft. With an in-built fanbase, huge budget and years in development, it had as great a chance as any video game, and released to solid critical acclaim, as well as an insane 1 million players within its first three days. The game was certainly a fine effort, with solid graphics and comprehensive voice acting, but a major issue is that BioWare simply hadn't planned on how quickly players would reach the level cap, and hadn't prepared much to keep them playing afterwards. As a result, with no reason to stick around, player subscriptions began to drop off (peaking at 1.7 million in February 2012 and dropping fast thereafter), and it wasn't until 18 months following the original game's release that the first expansion, Rise of the Hutt Cartel, was released. By this time, most players had moved onto other games and just weren't fussed about re-installing the game, even with it going free-to-play (as is basically the death knell for MMOs) in November 2012 after subscriptions dropped below 1 million. Though it had plenty of promise, BioWare left players in the lurch after a strong start and simply didn't have enough end-game content to keep people coming back. Many may dismiss the game as a "reskinned WoW clone", but it's still the closest any MMO has gotten to dethroning the King of the genre.