Ok, I'll bite. What exactly would you define as a "real TES online MMO"? I'm not being sarcastic, I'd actually like for you to detail it out.

Wrong... if they are having to merge servers for an MMO that has only been live for just over six months, they are not rubbing their hands together. They are scratching their heads and wondering which developer to blame for the game not meeting the INTERNAL quota for membership.

A success means your population is growing and you don't need to merge servers. They are merging servers on a game that has only been out for six full months.

The reason people regard TOR as a failure is because it's the most expensive game ever made, and yet its below-expectation sub rate means it's not even in EA's top five priority IPs to maintain. Now in film, the word 'flop' isn't just reserved for a game whose revenue doesn't recoup expenses; it means a product in which the aggregate time and resources could've been far better spent on other projects. In the case of EA, spending more than twice as much as is usual on a game that doesn't even stay within your own top five money-makers is not a success. Also, they just laid off 150 people working on the game - which, before you point out that lots of redunancies occur after an MMO launches, stands in opposition to their claims during development that they'd maintain the same dev team after release for future updates. And it included high profile community manager lay-offs, when usually redundancies occur in - well, redundant roles.

Why not?

How do we know it is not viable considering ever since WoW, nobody has bothered to try revisiting the sandbox side of the MMO equation which Ultima Online did well enough with to still be profotable today.

Star Wars Galaxies pretended to try, but SOE was so constrained by LucasArts that they could not add one single thing to the game without permission. And it was LucasArts who directed SOE to develop the NGE, though it was SOE who decided on the form it was to take. We all know what happened there. SWG did not fail because it was a sandbox game. It failed because LucasArts tied SOE's hands and refused to let them develop anything that would have helped it stay strong.

EvE Online is not a sandbox... It's a freaking meat grinder. Unless you are extreme hardcoe and cut-throat, you're not going to stand a chance in serious competition. If i ever play that game with any serious amount of devoted time, I'll keep my operation small and dedicated to servicing lowbies as they rise.

I long for a new sandbox MMO that gives me the same freedom to be as heroic or common as I could be in UO. Of course it won't be TESO. No developer has the balls to even try to do it.

The greater the risk, the greater the reward. When UO was developed it was a huge risk. No game had ever been developed like that before. But they risked anyway, and it still is alive and well today. They invented a new genre, and since then the corporate suits calling the shots have managed to stagnate it.

I'm hoping that Elder Scrolls Online, Guild Wars 2, and The Secret World will each do things to redefine the perceptions of what can and cannot be done with an MMO.

Games like Ultima Online, operating on servers that by today's industry standards were extremely limited, offered players more freedom than games on cutting edge servers offer. It's STUPID, I wish someone would come along, put all this technology to use and really show the workd what an MMO can be. Of course, that won't really help considering how much hand-holding exists in most post-WoW MMOs. It's created a generation of gamers who will pitch a temper tantrum if they encountered a game that they actually have to get involved with and use their brains. I blame the quest guide and quest tracker that puts a nice big arrow on the minimap leading the player right to whatever their objective is. If I were designing an MMO, that "feature" would get the axe. "Head north of town until you come to the huge oak tree with the corpses hanging from its limbs, then head due east," should be enough direction. And you know? If we relied on directions like that, we'd actually notice more of the world we're playing in, rather than just heading on a straight line across an open field and not even pay attention to what is around us.

I'm sorry... I really didn't want to turn this thread into a rant. But it annoys me when someone just arbitrarilly claims that this or that just isn't viable, when there have been no serious attempts to even explore the possibilities. And here's the kicker. A Sandbox gameworld does not rule out the existance of themepark elements. Let me be who I want to be, doing what I want to be, but if I come across a fortress or whatever and decide to check it out, I would be thrilled to find myself caught up in a storyline that leads me to use skills and abilities I gained through sandbox play to solve themepark problems...

Exactly, to spend that much money, and still release a mediocre game is just as much as a failure imo.

Come on The Elder Scrolls as an MMO? That's an automatic success

I see people continue to claim that one bad MMO means that a second is not possible. Star Wars Galaxies ---> Star Wars: The Old Republic. Even if this MMORPG flopped there is a chance that based on the strong IP there would be another. Stop with this nonsense.

And how long of a gap was there between SWG and SWTOR? >.> 2003-2011 is 8 years, I really don't want to wait 8 more years for an actual Elder Scrolls MMO.

On another forum, I posted some reasons why I think this game will succeed. Here they are, to counter your opinion that this game is doomed:

• Clean, high-performance game engine built from the ground up for this title specifically = 100s of enemies on screen at once in pvp.
  
• Hubless quest system - explore and level as you like
  
• TES lore, world and factions
  
• Deck building skill system = lots more variety in characters - more strategic combat
  
• Stamina based combat - strategy again: do I block, sprint, use a special skill to interrupt, etc., or do I save stamina.
  
• In game factions with interesting faction building techniques and rewards (thieves guild, mages guild, fighters guild, etc.)
  
• Weapon skill-up through use.
  
• Open dungeons. I really hope there is an open dungeon in the PVP area.
  
• 3 faction persistent pvp zone like DAOC had but MORE: capturable villages, towers, keeps, resources.
  
• Destructable capture points with siege equipment.
  
• There's more, but I'll end with this: A game studio managed by people who have a clue about MMO design.