That is totally unture.

Plent of meh games had devoted fanbases.

It doesnt need to be some genre defing materpiece to be fun or survive.

We have gotten terribly off topic though

Seems to be how it goes, haha. But while true that some games do have devoted fan-bases (Elder Scrolls is obviously a representation of that) they're not able to meet the size required to keep the MMO going indefinitely and keep the expansions etc. coming. At least not the majority of the time.

True but no MMO will last forever or have all the possible expanions it oculd have had made actually get made.

True enough.

Pete Hines is "not remotely" surprised by the amount of hate the MMO is getting.

http://imgur.com/QgwxG

Either that or he hopes it DOESN'T work out, hahaha!

If the MMO flops it will adversely affect the single player games and the corporation as a whole. There are millions of dollars at stake.

Not to mention shareholders and investors will be less likely to devote the kind of budget toward another iteration of TES that Skyrim had, lessening the chance for it to surpass Skyrim in any way shape or form. You all have to remember that by and large the suits don't play the same games we do, they play the stock market and simply run the numbers. They know nothing about the difference between the MMO versus the SP game and you're only as good as your last success. If the MMO fails, that will be the latest game in the TES franchise, and confidence in the franchise AS A WHOLE being the #1 fantasy RPG franchise in the world will diminish significantly. The number guys won't be able to justify the spend quantifiably. I wouldn't be surprised if they force Zenimax to move on from TES and devote BGS solely to Fallout from then on.

Their expectations are the same kind of success when Warcraft jumped from RTS to MMO and that is simply not realistic. Their expectations will be shattered. They are saying: "Well if there's any franchise that can compete with WoW, it's TES, look how amazingly past titles have sold, and our fanbase is huge! We can't lose!" They can, and they will, badly.

Think about the scenario of a Call of Duty MMO, except that it is third-person only, with cooldown/hotkey non-interactive combat and takes place in WW1. Now imagine how many of the rabid COD fanbase would buy it. I'd go with roughly 5% as a fair estimate. You think after that, regardless of developer, Activision is gonna devote so many resources into the next installment of the COD SP/MP games? Hell. No.

They've already spent millions in development money and now a MMO comes out that is free to play with many of the same feature of their game. Its called Guild Wars 2.

Good luck Bethesda. You will need it. The MMO market is even more competitive than other gaming markets and the players there are way more bitter, angry and jaded.

You could find millions of players sign up and buy the game on release and then most all of them drop out after the first free month and move on to the next best MMO on the horizon. Also word of mouth will kill your game and you will never recover from a bad first impression

These are great anologies. My primary concern is that this will negatively affect the single player games and franchise. "Oh, it's different studios..." say those trying to retain some hope. However, if Zenimax is stupid enough to greenlight a "me-too" Hero Engine MMO and stick the TES name on it, they could very well be stupid enough to scrap future development on the franchise when "the franchise" ceases to meet sales expectations. Corporations can often act [censored] in ways that boggle the mind, it's why I love Valve so much.