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5 million registered beta users! 10 million users by end of year.
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The traditional TES business model has been B2P with paid DLC for many years now so I think one could argue that would be the safer bet business wise. I think Zenimax is going to have a hard time proving value of that $15 a month to both people who play MMO's and those who don't. I'm not saying it's not possible but I wonder if instead of subscriptions they had sold DLC packs for new content that releases every 30-60 days if that wouldn't have gone over better.
I can understand how selling DLC instead of all inclusive sub's can segment the player base and DDO did try this in the beginning of F2P and for whatever reasons it wasn't enough for them so they had to go off the deep cash shop wise so maybe sustaining a game on DLC alone isn't practical.
Either way Zenimax has their work cut out for them to sustain even a quarter of the numbers you are estimating. I'm not saying they can't do it just that I don't know if they will be able to do it.
I used one email address. Now you know somebody and I can assure you, many, many more only used one email address.
That's just, like, my opinion, man.
@Udon
ZOS has said rather boldly when defending their subs. That they believe that the size their content expansions warrant the sub fee. After saying that, I'm sure there are millions who are going to hold them to that statement, myself included.
The traditional model has been single player. Apples and oranges.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
Great point! I think many of us base our expectations over, like you said, only the MMO crowd and our past experiences with MMO launches. My first reaction to your post was to counter with some snarky post like "10 million? Come on, you're lowballing. Let's go 20!" But you know something, you may be on to something.
Still, 10 million first year is doubtful. Let's not forget all those console players and ES single-player fans are not used to the subscription model which will turn a lot of them off.
That's just, like, my opinion, man.
Same here. I think anyone who wanted to enter beta could have gotten in with only one email. Anyone who thought they needed to use more then one email would have had to be insanely crazy about the game and getting in without knowing it only takes one email.
/agree, I would like to see what other people come up with for totals after using this equation formula stated. Lets see it!
I know but it was the exact same thing Bioware said about SWTOR and we all know how that turned out. The first 90 days post launch of TOR was bogged down with bug fixes and balance changes and when most of the player based started to drift away instead of doubling down on the team and pushing out new significant new content EA panicked and cut costs to make the quarterly SEC filings look better. That created a death spiral of sorts that only really ended when the game went F2P.
Now I'm not saying Zenimax will follow the same pattern and one would hope they have learned lessons from their sister SPG companies first trip into a MMO but I think being skeptical of these promises at this point is probably fair. The companies can promise all they want but as long as it's backed up with a unwritten "as long as the sub numbers are north of X" there is a huge risk of this falling though. After all if you sit on the board of directors controlling budgets to one of these games it would be very tempting to look at WoW's content schedule of a few updates a year and draw the conclusion if that's good enough for them it's good enough for our game which I think would be a bad decision, WoW has had many years to build it's player base ESO is doing it from scratch and in a much different market place.
I'm hopeful that Zenimax can prove all the sub naysayers who are telling us P2P is a dead model wrong but I'm cautious to claim success just yet until Zenimax really shows us how committed to the P2P model they are.
You forget:
With F2P = likely 10-20 mil playing within THE MONTH (even I would, the crafting looks pretty sick)
With B2P model = probably
With P2P model = dicey... depends on how well they manage to make the game worth 15 USD a month + client purchase in a world where you can get similar quality for one time purchases or even no purchase whatsoever.
Well if it gives you any comfort that they will live up to this statement. Take a look at Skyrim, their offline game and how often they gave that offline game content updates in form of DLC exapnsions. Which were pretty big content updates to the game.
I have no reason to think they will end up like EA games based on the completely different companies. SWTOR, SOE, WoW, so many past game companies have the worst retention rate because of their lack of serious content updates or expansions. When every expansion starts looking like its last one and brings no new features, that's when its a problem.
I think Lotro did a fine job with its expansions like Mines of moria, huge content upgrades, if ZOS can keep up with Content updates and expansions the size of Moria or feature type updates to content Housing like their hearthfire expansion for skyrim, they will do just fine.
So far I think they have a pretty solid track record that shows this, and have repeatedly confirmed this as one of their top major goals and focus of the game after launch, knowing full well they cant be like SOE and WoW was in this increasing competitive MMO world we are seeing now. In fact I think ESO will be forcing SOE and WoW to actually do Major content updates for their games in order to keep their customers finally. Which is a good thing for the entire MMO worlds progress forward.
I agree with your F2P statement, but the F2P model would do two things, alienante the sub buyers who hate cash shops that the F2P model would need to be successful, and if you seen their last stress test, the cause of all the bugs by having too many people on the mega server, I think they would rather have fewer people paying much more money at this point then millions more which could cause instability in the games quality. After launch they can have a better picture on how many players they will need servers for and all that. They would then have to see subs drop to a point where F2P would be a better option at the cost of alienating their sub player base, which will cause high losses of retention rates with the sub players when faced with new upcoming games.
B2P is a great way to go. I could see ESO eventuanly adopting this model before F2P, as a lot of sub players do not care if other players B2P. Lotro went this path with great success and never alienated a single Sub player from it, keeping retention rates high for Lotro.
P2P. For now it works and itll stay that way till they have more server stability and a real idea on how many base players they will have for the next few months.
Problem is if they cannot deal with F2P levels of player use that will mean 10 mil by the end of the year is out the door because by what I know it took over a year for WoW to be able to support that without dying horribly AND having no waiting lists for logon or weird lag-based glitches. They either have the support for 10 mil or they do not, model doth not affect this it merely grants you more people.
Also the sub players who have a problem with their game going F2P [mod edit] do not aid the community in any way and are a very vocal and, thankfully, ignored minority out of the entire sub-willing population.
Stop making s*it up please. Unless you are in touch with all the millions of Elder Scroll fans you have no idea how many are going to stick with the game after the free month.
So nope you have no idea if it has won PVE fans over...you have no sample of any kind to back up your ridiculous claims.
What a bloody pointless thread about a beta that is actually just a damn demo.
The OP contributes to nothing other than his ego, if you ask me. Let us just stop feeding him.
There are far more interesting topics than this one that needs to be discussed.
Once upon a time ...
agreeing with your own post ! yes this thread is full of win! or maybe you pulled a MMOExposed where he was trying to post on an alt and got caught. O_O
I would rather have seen your projection of subcribers by the end of the year using my equation rather then going off topic.... and to satisfy your curiousity, it was a harmless bump to the next page after being buried by off topic remarks, I thank you for doing that for me this page, and I don't think people will think your my alt because of that. I still want to know what you would project from that equation, I have yet to see someone rebut my equation used in determining my 10 million end of year prediction by using numbers from each category.
Your equation is overly idealized and misses out on key factors (retention, popularity, etc).
That isn't saying much. Tons of other companies have said the same spin. You do realize that out of the 600+ MMOs out there currently for the western market only 9 remain that exclusively use the P2P business model. 6 of those 9 were released prior to 2005 while 3 of those released post 2005. Meaning… every other MMO released from 2006-present that "boldly" defended their P2P business model (at release) has shut down, gone F2P, or F2P + P2W. This isn't one or two particular examples but the trend or rather the current P2P MMO landscape in the past 9 years.
When you read romance novels you come across a hero as they term it in the novels so stupid they need a cast iron saucepan over the head. You sir need it.
Almost of these games that you say have survived, have had little investments into them to modernize them or give huge content updates to them because lack of competition. When ESO comes out it has a company that will be able to compete with WoW, SOE games, SWTOR and other games. It will have to update its content better then them and stay modernized in order to stay on top of all of these games in the future. ZOS has promised it, and doesn't have shareholders or lack of completio like the games of the past have had the luxuary of not having. It will have the resources and name brand to protect like FFXIV had to recreate its game as much as it needed to be to make it what fans wanted. Because of this ESO will have a higher retention rate then any of these past games.
keypoints:
Brand name to protect like the final fantasy series.
Its has a modernized advantage at launch.
Valid point but that has more to do with the quality of the games than the pay model ....I left playing Lotro and Rift while they were both P2P for various reasons but having them turn F2P sure didn't bring me back to play them , even a good B2P game like GW2 doesn't seem to have the appeal of drawing me back once I loose interest . So in my mind it's a quality issue not a cost issue that effects the number of subs being retained by a game , and going F2P will draw another crowd of folks but doesn't attract the original sub playing members.
Wait...what? You responded to your own thread? So how many accounts do you have with MMORPG.com? Because it looks like you were thinking you were on a different account and responding to your own comment. That is a bannable offense. Wonder if the mods have seen this.
If they have Rift's population I would be happy.
Never played the single player part of the franchise. But have been in this beta from the start and nah not my thing I am sure folks will enjoy it but yeah not my thing.... The game is like 8 years backwards. And no i'm not some young person that just started mmo's.
I've played t hem and I have been a gm in some of them for the last 20 years yeah maybe doe snot mean much to you but if I am still here then at least I stand by my opinions.
woah woah buddy don't get me caught up in your crazy world. =P i am just saying you sound a little off balance agreeing to your own post. BTW that did not seem like a bump, it seemed like you wanted to post on another account.