Is Star Wars: The Old Republic Worth Two Million Users?

That's the question posed by Massively after Electronic Arts and BioWare made the announcement that they're shooting for a minimum of two million subscribers. Considering that they need to have at least one million subscribers just to break even, the editors at Massively seem to think that there's an uphill battle ahead:
...most of the big releases in the last year have been based upon pre-existing IPs, much like SWTOR is built on both the Star Wars and The Old Republic licenses. (Yes, I count them separately, because The Old Republic is very different from the core of Star Wars, in my opinion.) I shouldn't have to reiterate that Warhammer Online, Age of Conan, Star Trek Online, and, to a lesser extent, Champions Online were all quite well known before they made the jump to MMOdom. I also shouldn't have to reiterate that all of these titles had huge openings that only gave way to fiery explosions of user anger.

Beyond that, initial numbers mean nothing if you can't hold them in your game. I'm sure many Trekkies jumped all over Star Trek Online when it first launched just because it was Star Trek, but the IP only brings people to your product. Gameplay is the honey that keeps them there, so you better be sure that the honey is sweet and not filled with dead bees.