I don't want to wait that long between games.
>.< Color me impatient.

Maybe so, but for now Bioware is raking in millions of dollars every month. The game itself has already been wildly profitable, I would guess, between the initial revenue for purchasing the game, coupled with the dozens of millions they've gotten in subscription fees since late January.

So yeah, it's possible that their subscriptions will drop off. In fact, I'm almost positive that they will drop off too. It's kind of the MMO Business model: Hype up a big release, grab 60 bucks from millions of 'Tourist MMO Gamers' who play for a month, complain a lot, move on, and then milk millions of dollars in subscription fees from the hundreds of thousands or even millions of people who remain in the aftermath through the slow decline of your MMO into obscurity. If a 'successful' MMO is defined by profitability rather than 'We killed World of Warcraft', then SW:TOR has been pretty successful...

Right, we have been over it and you are still incorrect. It's not a matter of subjectivity in the slightest. The Elder Scrolls: Online is the "Elder Scrolls MMO." An Elder Scrolls MMO is not going to play like a single player Elder Scrolls game because an MMO and a single player game are both constructed differently.


And I just explained that part.

When you log in, yeah, servers look like ghost towns. Why? Because BioWare made far too many servers.

Not even a year after going live, they are already planning server merges. If that is happening so quickly even with that many subs, then yes. It's a failure.

I am a die-hard Star Wars AND MMO fan, and I refuse to touch TOR with a ten foot pole. So it failed for me.

You can still have millions of subscribers and be a failure. When TOR goes Free To Play (it is inevitable), we'll see how many people stay subscribed. Many hold on only because they hold out hope that BioWare will grow a brain and turn it around. Some actully like it. Some are just biding their time until Guild Wars 2 comes out.

Whatever goals BioWare/Electronic Arts/LucasArts ACTUALLY had in terms of how many subs they were SURE they would get because hey, it's Star Wars and BioWare, they fell drastically short of achieving. Otherwise they would not be merging servers.

Look, if you open a grocery store chain which doesn't get as big as Walmart, but still maybe manages to generate a profit, provide you with a living, etc...then wasn't it a successful venture? You guys just have a weird view of success.

SWTOR was doomed from the beginning because EA was behind it. Anything they touch gets destroyed.

They bought Mythic and destroyed DAoC.
They tried to make a new DAoC with Warhammer, but failed hard.
Now they destroyed a Star Wars MMO.

I have more faith in ZeniMax, a relatively small studio with lots of talented veteran devs, and the backing of a great studio called Bethesda.

From what I understand, all they needed was 500,000 subs to match their budget for the game and thus begin to turn a profit.

So... being as it currently has 1.3 million subs, I think it's making a profit, therefore is a success.

umm actually the latest count puts swtor subs down to about 800k and falling fast

Cited sources please.

When did this turn into a SWTOR discussion? <,<

A successful MMO does not have a player population that plateaus and begins to decline mere months after launch. A successful MMO grows for at least a couple of years before plateauing and starting its decline.

I predicted this would be the outcome. I predicted that they would get their million+ subscribers early on, but once their free trial ends and they have to actually start putting cash into their membership, they would not stick with it. Why? Because people blow through the story content and end up with an endgame that offers nothing but raids and PvP which is the same BS every other post-WoW MMO offers. It would have been different had BioWare not sunk so much of their development budget into full voice acted dialogue, including the player character... All through development all we heard about was story story story. It was suppised to have been the fourth pillar. Instead they shattered the other three pillars and hoped that one would be enough to keep the whole thing from collapsing.

I still remember the BioWare psychophants hurling derision at me for pointing out that what we saw in Beta was what we would get in game. "It's just beta," they said. "They'll reveal the rest of the game when it goes live." Then the early start event happened and they maintained their position: "It's just early start. They'll reveal the rest of the game when it goes live to all." Then it went live to all and the forums erupted with screams about how it was missing so much. I would have saidm "I told you so," but because I was not a paying subscriber, I could not post. So I let them stew in the juices they squeezed for themselves.

TOR FAILED as far as I am concerned. I saw it for what it was as soon as they started talking about what it would be and made it a point to dodge the questions that if answered would reveal without doubt what it wouldn't be, and I refused to get svckered in.

Now I am willing to trust ZOS with TESO, because there is just enough of a hint of a different direction to hold my interest. But then I started out like that with TOR. I hope that history does not repeat itself yet again.

When people overly use it as an example of why TESO will fail.

People keep leaning on the "but... but that game didn't do well, so that means this game will svck!" crutch far too much.

Meh, in my opinion, a succesfull MMO is one that is:
Immersive
Treats it's customers like actual people
Has a dedicated following.

It's too early to judge TESO on any of these, though it's still not an Elder Scrolls Game.
>.>

A successful MMO is one that makes a profit.

And it still is an Elder Scrolls game. Once again, this is not a subjective point.

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. Spin it however you like, but that is NOT a good thing, They should have filled up those servers and be bringing new ones online. Remember... TOR was supposed to be the WoW killer. It took a while but even BioWare people started to say that. That right there told me that TOR was developed in response to WoW, rather than in SPITE of it, as it should have been, Well in terms of the MMO aspect, WoW has more to offer than TOR.

So TOR FAILED.

But these are NOT the TOR forums.

I do not believe that TESO is going to fail. Elder Scrolls does not have a previous MMO that did not achieve its potential hanging like a millstone around its neck. This will be the first MMO developed for this studio with a solid IP to base it upon, and developers who exhibit true passion for what they are trying to do. If TESO can be reconciled with both Elder Scrolls fans AND MMO fans as the core audience, then it stands to do very well. If it cannot, or worse, the core audience is NOT Elder Scrolls fans who also like MMOs, then it will run into serious problems very quickly upon going live. I've seen it happen with too many MMOs.

Yeah. To insist that Elder Scrolls Online is not an Elder Scrolls game is kind of petty...especially since you don't really have much basis to judge the game itself.

You hit your budget and exceeded it, thus making a profit.

At worst, TOR is a one hit wonder.

But one hit wonders are still successful.

i dont really like the idea of the new stylized look, but the third person view seems very fitting for an MMO. In most MMOs you need to see everything that is going on around you, not just in front.

I don't mean it with any disrespect, TESO may be an awesome MMO, but as it stands, I do not consider it an Elder Scrolls Game. It's the same way you don't talk about the Starship Troopers movies.

There's different kinds of success.

Speaking only for myself, it failed to attract me to subscribe and I am both a die hard Star Wars fand and an MMO fan. So for ME it was a failure.
Now speaking in terms of facts in evidence, like I said, they are about to merge servers for an MMO that has just been live for a little over half a year. That is NOT a sign of true success.

Yeah, for YOU it was a failure. But like most opinionated individuals, YOU don't really matter.

The corporate powers that be, the executives, the accountants, and all of those fellows are rubbing their hands thinking 'Wow, we made money...' and they'll go on to make more games because of it.

Occupy Illium!
<,<

It will fail as a single player sandbox RPG. It will excel as a 3 faction, war time MMO RPG. I guess we can't have it all.

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. They may have told the public that they could be profitable with just 500,000 subscribers, but do you think for one moment that that was their GOAL? If they had met their goal, they would not be merging servers. And their GOAL is their measurement of success. 500k might keep them in the black, but they don't want minimal success. They wanted phenomenal success. And because they launched with way more servers than they need indicates how many they were expecting to have.

What is BioWare-Austin going to go on to make next? Dragon Age Online? Mass Effect Online? Because that is the studio that developed TOR. And TOR was not the phenomenal success it by all rights could have and should have been had it been handled correctly. Would you play an MMO based on Mass Effect, especially how poorly received Mass Effect 3 was? And many have said that Dragon Age 2 ruined the whole Dragon Age saga for them. You thing THAT will make a good MMO? BioWare, now that they are an extension of Electrinic Arts cannot even hold their own IPs on a steady course. So I see whatever they do next... IF they do anything next... as being even more lackluster than TOR is.

But ZOS on the other hand has a real chance at actually reaching potential here. For one thing, the IP belongs to Zenemax Media. Because Bethesda Game Studios is a subsodiary company just like ZOS. Therefore the IP belongs to Zenimax Media and can be interchange between subsidiaries. MMOs based upon IPs that belong to the companies that develop them tend to enjoy greater success than those based on IPs that belong to a third party. Look at how successful EverQuest 1 and 2 are for SOE, yet The Matrix Online crashed and burned and they ran Star Wars Galaxies into the fround. Ultima Online was based on the Ultima IP that belonged to Origin Systems and it was a success. Yet every MMO that comes out after EA bought them out cannot claim the same. Blizzard owns the Warcraft IP and developed WoW which remains a stellar success today.

So in light of this, I feel that because the IP belongs to the parent company that controls both BGS and ZOS, we will see some very good things out of this title.