This is of course pure speculation since we don't even know their payment model of choice, but do you think (based on market appeal, lore, single series popularity, hype machine, the competition etc...etc...) that TESO has a real shot at becoming the most successful mmo-rpg in existence? WOW has been dominating this niche for so long but let's face it, it is old and some subscribers have left, but it's still impressive how they managed to reach a peak of 12 million paying customers, and keep many of them interested for so long.

On the other hand, Guild Wars 2, a "buy once and play free" mmo-rpg has only reached 3 million sales this January, I honestly expected more since it was a sequel of a popular title and was hyper-hyped as "the new revolution in how mmo-rpg's are played".

What do you think would be the strengths of TESO compared to the other big competitors in this market? The heritage of the single player series? The sales of Skyrim? (Skyrim has supposedly sold 11-12 million copies by now). If every Skyrim buyer gave TESO a try, that alone would grant a player base equal or bigger than WOW's.

Doubt it, don't think it's mainstream enough for that. It will do better keeping to its niche.

No. No game will ever be as 'big' as WoW. I don't like WoW, I think it's sh?t. But a game will never be better in it in sence of sales and the massiveness of the game (A b?tchload of people have heard about WoW at least once one way or the other).

Fat chance imo. I know players that bought SKyrim and didn't enjoy it. Out of those 10.mil players of SKyrim maybe only 2.mil will give this one a try. I also think it's not tes'ish enough as to lure all the tes players and definitly not wow'ish enough as to lure the wow players, it's more like gw2 (communist player level scaling, carebear pvp handholding, non-competitive world resources) so I think the sales will be more than gw2 but nowhere near wow.

WoW is an oddity in the MMO genre. It is the first and only game to get that many subs. Typically a successful MMO only needs 100k-500k subs to pull a profit and be successful. It just depends on their operating costs.

No. WoW has to kill itself. Nothing will ever change that. Evvveeerrrrr.

Out of curiosity, have you read about the game?

Even if WoW 'Kills istelf' as a game, it still won't truly 'die'. It has made a name of itself. Maybe because of clever marketing, maybe because of pure luck, but either way they did. People will remember WoW for a long time to come, even those who have never even played it. The media helped with this a lot.

No game will ever be as big as that. Neither P2P nor B2P, singleplayer or multiplayer.