Its a pretty simple question: do you honestly think that it was the mere existence of the sub model that drove all those subscribers away, thus forcing the games to go free to play?

Simple answer yes I do think it contributed

Because people can justify to themselves playing for free instead of paying for content that svcked. Looking for "why swtor failed" or "tortanic" doesn't bring up a subscription as the reason people bailed.

http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Paragus1/082012/23610_Rant-The-Tortanic

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/04/15/mmo-week-in-review-tortanic/

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=207669

And they blamed the players: http://blogs.bettor.com/Anonymous-Bioware-Insider-blames-fans-for-SWTOR-Video-Games-Update-a173317 Apparently they managed to miss the feedback that said things needed to be fixed/changed/updated while it was still in beta. The people who complained ended up suspended or banned.

Not one mention about the sub.

You'd be wrong. It was almost completely due lack of content and it pretty much being WoW with a Star Wars skin instead of something unique that they repeatedly stated it would be.

Another thing you need to keep in mind is that in ftp number of players =/= number of people paying.

Since Elder Scrolls online, is going to be p2p, It has kept my interest, because I have been playing mmo's since the mid 90's I buy a box and pay a sub, I have either liked the game or not, had nothing to do with the sub, a good game is a good game..but on the other hand I have played a boat load of f2p games, and a few b2p games and did not like any of them, for more than a few days, so for my PERSONAL taste if ESO, would have been a f2p game, I doubt I would have even given it a second thought, I am just not a fan of f2p, I have never found a good one.. that's my personal opnion, and how it works for me.. so I guess you can put me in the lost customer slot if the game had been f2p, and if the game goes from a p2p to a f2p game, then I will be gone, on to the next great adventure..

So, when TOR launched with over 1.7 million people subscribed to the game, and three months later still had 1.3 million, it was all due to those people somehow being tricked into playing a game that they didn't realise would be a sub, and the moment they did they quit out of outrage and indignation?

Sorry, but in any MMO you are ALWAYS renting your character. Even if it's a F2P game, you can be banned and thus lose access to the game and your character. It's the nature of online games.

Yes I know I was there at pre-launch & post launch, players where burning through content and once it dried up players stop subing maybe I should of elaborated.

Yes your correct but the sub cash is the bottom line which got hurt

SWTOR it dropped to half a million then to 2 million after the switch

You have a point but I don't think that Skyrims numbers can comfortably predict TESO success

And again, what does the sub model have to do with the failure of the game, thus forcing the company to switch to a free to play format in order to salvage what they could? By the way, they most certainly do not have two million subs. They have two million unique accounts. There's a difference.

OMG!!! Wow, what a flashback. Congratz, you are my new favorite person on the Intarwebz!!!

I was just correcting those figures =)

Except you didn't. TOR started their run with 1.7 million subs. As of their first investors' call, they still had 1.3 million. By the time they announced they were going free to play eight months after launch, they were only admitting to "more than 500 000." As of their last call, they were below 500 000, but "stable." Does that satisfy your picking of nits? If so, then would you mind answering my question?

Do you believe that the 1.3 million people still subscribing to the game after the first three months were doing so because they had somehow been tricked into a subscription, and once these people discovered this they quit out of outrage?

I'm going to do you a favour. I'm going to point you to ahttp://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=476966 titled "Unsubscriber's Thread: Tell Us a Few Things." This is the second part of that, since the first thread capped out at 1000 posts. Would you be so kind as to point out to me all those who left the game because of the subscription requirement?

Anyone who has lots of experience with all kinds of MMO's and payment models knows that the subscription payment model that Zenimax has announced is the absolute cheapest way there is for the consumer to pay to play an MMO.

The only other method would of course be what some call buy to play, however with an MMO in development with the budget of ESO B2P is not a viable payment method and would not even be considered.

The only other option that would have worked for ESO is the Free to Play payment method however free to play is the most expensive payment model for the consumer and Zenimax actually would recover their development budget just as quickly if not faster using a F2P model like Cryptic uses for games like Star Trek Online and Neverwinter.

So having said that I am very happy to see that ESO will be Pay to Play and I hope it is good enough that I want to subscribe to it for at least the next 5 years.

No I don't think they where tricked.

I'm curious to know how you can make this statement with such certainty. The buy2play model has worked very well with such titles as Guild Wars 2.

In my opinion, the buy2play model is more inclusive of a wider swath of players. Casual players will not be forced to pay for time they aren't using, and hardcoe players will get a choice about which content they wish to purchase. Everybody wins.

I'm just closing these all for review until we figure something out, because obviously our strategy of attempting to let this community create their own topics and discuss things in a civilized manner just isn't panning out.