Success can only be defined by the people running the company behind the MMO.

If (as a game founder) my goal is make enough money to keep the servers running and me and my ten friends living in a cheap flat while eating lots of take out pizza...and I achieve that, it's a success.

Heck if I am Richard Garriott and have more money than sense and I want to make a game to amuse myself for a year and then walk away when I am bored...that's success of a sort too.

The question is really pretty meaningless; I certainly consider my old favorite pizza place a success even though no one outside the town has likely heard of it and the owner is happy so long as he can pay the rent and support his family...doesn't mean he is going to knock over Pizza Hut or Dominos.

Possibly the barest minimum defination of success: did the game launch and did anyone play it.....

Originally posted by Myrdek

Like many said it all depends on what the expectations were and the definition of success. I see a lot of people defining success as any game that manages to break even and I think that this is a very poor interpretation. Let's look at it this way

You have an exam, you studied really hard and your aiming for 90% but you barely get a passing grade. Thats a failure. Yes, you passed, but you were aiming much higher and the work you put in it was considerable. Would anyone consider that a success?

Now, if you had only studied 10 minutes before the exam and you were aiming for 60% and you get it, that would be a success.

Why would MMOs be any different? If you spent 100 millions and were aiming for 500k subs but only get 300k then how is it not a failure? Sure your not going to go bankrupt but you wanted much more than this and worked really hard to make that happen. It could have been worse of course, it could be a huge failure and end up with 75k subs like Tabula Rasa, just like your passing grade could have been 30% and you have to go to summer classes :)     

I'm not saying Warhammer won't get better, only time will tell if they can get a second chance. I sure as hell think that their patch notes are moving the game in the right direction.

I agree with this definition.  If I made a cheep 2D game just to play with me and 4 friends and got 6 of my friends to play then that would be a success.  Even if I only got the four friends I expected in the first place it would be a success.  Granted four people playing together isn't an MMO but I feel that success is determined the same way.  Some old games are still around with a few hundred subscribers while games like TR are on their way out with more subscriber numbers.

 I would say he big question here is considered successful by whom?

If we are talking about general gaming public, for quite some foreseeable future there is going to be only 1 successful MMORPG, WOW. Many would-be WOW killers came and went while WOW subs kept multiplying. It is about as plausible to raise subs into the millions and compete with WOW as it is deciding to come out with new OS and software portfolio with the aim to compete with M$ or a set of tiles you can put together in various ways and take on Lego head to head.

The best companies can do is come with varying degrees of their own twist on things, get called niche to varying degree and be happy with that. The big generic all-covering MMO is already out there, noone is going to beat it. The chance was there, Blizz took it, it's not there any more. The big success story happened to WOW, if we are going to measure against it, we will not come out with any positive results.

If we are talking about considered a business success by the company, it's all about what you set to do. If you manage to appeal to a particular set of gamers and keep them entertained and grow with small initial investment, it's a success, look at EVE.

I'd say if the company can maintain a player base and be in the green its a success.

Here are my thoughts --

1. Most people only subscribe to 1 mmo at a time -- if you have dedicated players then you've pretty much taken that money from another company

2. If the company's are in the green then you've budgeted/predicted correctly at least

3. If the company's are maintaining their player base and have low churn then they have long term customers willing to continue to pay

If subscription fee income > operating costs then game is success!

Originally posted by skeaser

If subscription fee income > operating costs then game is success!

No, it's no that simple.

If they can barely earn a little more than the costs, then it's a horrible investment. If I ran such a company, I'd fear bankrupsy every day. I would not consider that a success.

The amount of subs needed to make a MMO a commercial success, is dependant on the initial investments for development and the costs to keep it running.

Because this figure will be different for different MMO's, it is useless to ask how high the amount of subscribers need to be.

Its like any other commercial business. Easiest to compare with subs for a magazine publisher. The magazine will excist as long as its profitable, while at the same time trying to get a larger share of the market.

The way a lot of players determine a MMO's success, is often an unrealistic one. To me it looks often like the way ppl support a sportsteam.

In the eyes of an investor, I would have to say that a game would need to make enough profit so that I am making the most out of my money that I put in.  If I could've put my money into a savings bond or a CD and gotten more then I would rather do that than invest in the said MMO.

In the eyes of a gaming enthusiast, I would have to say as long as I'm having fun, idc what the sub numbers look like.

Overall I would have to say though as long as it's profitable, it's a success.

These options suck there is a big difference between 10k, 50k, 100k, 200k, 300k. I cant vote because i believe 300k is succesful and voting under 500k says every single mmo ever is succesful.

It's been said a couple of times before already and I agree with it. A game is successfull if the refenues can cover the development costs and maintenance. Of course, a game does have to keep a certain poplation to maintian the game as well.

Why the population? 10K players paying 15 US$ a year long for a game that has costed 1M US$ to develop would be successful because the 10K subscribers pay off for the game. But since this game has almost no population, and the server looks a bit dead, new players won't come into the game anymore.
Having 100K players for a game that costes 10M US$ to fevelop will give the game a chance however. 100K players are able to keep the server populated (at a very low minimum though), that new players will see a "living" world.

About the hype thing...The hypes (as well as my clan) took me to AoC and WAR, and both failed misserably for me (and many others as well). It's not that hyping a game is a bad thing, but if it's hyped oto much, expectations can be too high,which in turn results in players buying the game, who probablywon't go past the 1st month...

Anarchy Online has been running for years now and is still generating sufficient income to warrant it's continued operation despite the fact that it's dated and sub numbers are way down from it's heyday. I would think that it is a good representation of a successful game. Longevity of a game and the willingness of the developers to continue to suppor it suggest that it is still an asset rather than a liability. Player preferences and technology will always change but the simple fact that beating a dead horse is pointless (not that I ever have or would condone it!) will never change. Success is measured by the developers when they do the math at the bank and, although player support is crucial for making a "WoW Killer", if enough people enjoy the game to satisfy the bottom line then it ranks as a success.

Originally posted by pileopoop

These options suck there is a big difference between 10k, 50k, 100k, 200k, 300k. I cant vote because i believe 300k is succesful and voting under 500k says every single mmo ever is succesful.

I had the same impression

you get 4 choices to a quantitative number which does not reflect reality at all

Less than 500K
› 500K - 1 Million
› 1 Million or more
› 10 Million or more

seriously, how many mmos have 500k or more subs?

yet the poll is restrictive to "3 out of 4" choices being 500k or more? 

you have games like City of Heroes that have had a stable 150k subs for years

and not doing poorly

Definately a lot of factors involved.

One problem as I see it is that with higher quality games a lot of people get used to that level of quality and are having problems playing something with less. Other developers see that and to meet the quality of the other game they have to spend a lot of extra money on development. The games get more and more expensive and the need for more subscribers increases.

WoW is one factor in this. It's not that other developers need to make something similar in gameplay, style, lore and world to be successful... but they really must match the quality of WoW if they are going to make it big. All those players that bought Age of Conan and Warhammer but went back to WoW a month or two later is a testimony of that. And I read a lot of WoW players saying that they want another game to play just that there isn't anything better to play.

I'm not trying to give any of my own thoughts here, just a reflection on how I see it from talking to other poeple, or watching what other people read. 

Developing costs is a major factor, as stated, on how many subscribers are needed. I don't know any figures for EVE but I can't imagine it had the same development costs as say Warhammer and since it is a game for a niche market without much competition it's not strange it is very successful.

I agree with many of the others here; the voting options are severely lacking. Older MMO's like EQ2 have been chugging along for years with between 100K and 200K subs (last I checked). The continuing support, frequency of ubpdates, and continuing development of large expansions would seem to indicate a successful MMO in this case, whether you actually like the game or not.

I suppose a line has to be drawn between MMO's released before and after the genre went mainstream. Before WoW, it seemed most companies would have been content with at least 100K subs.

Numbers will always be important for the MMO because it has them in its name (massively).

WoW should be thanked for what it is. No, really. The NUMBERS it boasts are a constant holy grail for MMO developers and their investors. Thanks to that, there's an incentive to try and make the game that will tap into that vast populace. That is why they will try to make better, different games.

On the other hand WoW is the Mc Donald's of an MMO world. It's catering for casuals, kids, it serves more as a social platform rather than a game. It's lore is a rip off of another game, new content made up by the devs (and not by GW) is as lame as it gets. WoW is fashionable. Yup. Celebrities are endorsing it, mentioning in interviews to convince that geek (should we rather say internet generation)  audience that they are "in the know" although most of them have no idea how to turn a PC on. And that's why it's so popular in the western world.

Bright colors, gear dependency, gold farming, endless grinding. And that's why it's so popular in the Far East...

WAR is said on these forums to be a failure in terms of numbers. Although im on Azgal almost every evening and seeing masses of players bashing each other on the head... And i mean masses. Maybe that's the problem. In WAR players PLAY the game. Once you get into a siege or an attempt to dominate a Region, you play the game for hours on end. There's really no downtime. No crafting that takes hours to complete, no fishing or building houses. Once you done your objective you log off and not stay in the game. Thats the difference between WoW and WAR, and maybe the source of the low numbers for WAR.

But i have to appeal to everyone to stop calling WAR a WoW clone. These two games are different apart from the setting which was famously ripped off by Blizzard back in the '90's from original Warhammer lore. Besides WoW failed to show me battles of hundreds of players on open RVR battlefields, sieges that take place every hour... Theres so much activity in every WAR tier that last time i logged on to WoW it felt like a desert. I started from rolling a Warlock. I've played for 5 days and no one wanted to team up! They just send PM's to solo this and that... Where's the fun in that?

Well, thats it for my rant...

 Nice little article by an MMO developer regarding this topic

http://eu.guildwars.com/press/article/jeffgc2007/

Regardless of the business model, the primary factor that determines whether an MMO lives or dies is the size of its active player base. There appears to be a tipping point at around 150,000 players. MMOs that reach this critical mass within a few months of release tend to continue to grow and thrive, and those that do not tend to shrink and ultimately die. The majority of MMOs that are released into the market never reach this threshold.

Originally posted by Maginus00

Originally posted by Damitman

Originally posted by Kilmar

The wow crowd doesnt belong to the rest of the mmo market, since they dont seem to try other MMOs.

 

Well said

 

Well I haven't met anyone in WoW that hasn't tried other MMO's so not sure where your getting your facts. Everyone I know on WoW on a some what personal level has tried several MMO's.

He should have said, "... since they don't seem to stick with any other MMO's."

Now, the reality is that many WoWers do try other games, however they are still drawn to their first love.  It's no different with WoW than it was with UO, EQ, and AC back in the first gen of mmorpgs.  There are just more choices now.  WoW isn't really as much a benchmark as it is an emotional attachment for many.  It will take years before people become unattatched to their first mmorpg avatar, and in WoW's case that means millions of players are not going to let go for another game for some time to come.  And it won't matter how good the other games are that they try.  Without the emotional attachment, they will not stay.

I view this question as an investment question.  I think 10% return is what should be the goal and is the division between success and failure.  Real failure, IMO, is not making back what was invested to make the game... and success is to make 10% on the sale of the game relative to the initial cost of production plus 10 percent on the monthly fee subscription after expenses....  If players want to be amazed then this level of profit to investors is needed on successful launches.... Not all games are succesful and that is ok too...

Originally posted by daeandor

Originally posted by Maginus00

Originally posted by Damitman

Originally posted by Kilmar

The wow crowd doesnt belong to the rest of the mmo market, since they dont seem to try other MMOs.

 

Well said

 

Well I haven't met anyone in WoW that hasn't tried other MMO's so not sure where your getting your facts. Everyone I know on WoW on a some what personal level has tried several MMO's.

He should have said, "... since they don't seem to stick with any other MMO's."

 

Now, the reality is that many WoWers do try other games, however they are still drawn to their first love.  It's no different with WoW than it was with UO, EQ, and AC back in the first gen of mmorpgs.  There are just more choices now.  WoW isn't really as much a benchmark as it is an emotional attachment for many.  It will take years before people become unattatched to their first mmorpg avatar, and in WoW's case that means millions of players are not going to let go for another game for some time to come.  And it won't matter how good the other games are that they try.  Without the emotional attachment, they will not stay.

I was in agreement with your statements until that line.  The problem is that there has been almost zero reason for people to leave wow other than complete and utter burnout of the game, because new mmos are being released in a less than competitive condition. 

People left their first mmos loves like eq, swg, daoc, uo to go play wow.  There is no difference in players today than there was back then. 

People are trying new mmos, but they are failing to deliver either a decent product or one compelling enough to compete with what wow already offers their customers.  The problem is the majority of people do not want to switch to a half finished buggy wow emulator that offers less content while be allowed the priviledge to pay for beta testing. 

While wow is the king of the hill right now I think it is also very vulnerable.  People are interested in another mmo for many various personal reasons.  All it is going to take is for someone to offer something new and most importantly finished.  To many companies are trying to beat wow at wows own game and that is just not going to happen.   People said everquest was unbeatable and look what happened.

Originally posted by Kilmar
The wow crowd doesnt belong to the rest of the mmo market, since they dont seem to try other MMOs.

Originally posted by Maginus00

Well I haven't met anyone in WoW that hasn't tried other MMO's so not sure where your getting your facts. Everyone I know on WoW on a some what personal level has tried several MMO's.

He should have said, "... since they don't seem to stick with any other MMO's."

Originally posted by daeandor

Now, the reality is that many WoWers do try other games, however they are still drawn to their first love. It's no different with WoW than it was with UO, EQ, and AC back in the first gen of mmorpgs. There are just more choices now. WoW isn't really as much a benchmark as it is an emotional attachment for many. It will take years before people become unattatched to their first mmorpg avatar, and in WoW's case that means millions of players are not going to let go for another game for some time to come. And it won't matter how good the other games are that they try. Without the emotional attachment, they will not stay

I have to say that I play LOTRO, and am a leader of a kinship there. I also know several players in the game that came from WOW because they got tired of paying for updates. So to say that they don't try to play other MMO's and to say that even if they try other MMO's they don't stick with them is very much untrue. Granted I'm not saying all WOW players come to another MMO and stay but I am saying I know at least 100 off the top of my head (and guarenteed to know more if I look) that came from WOW and stuck with LOTRO, or Warhammer or even AoC.  Both my husband and my best friend came to LOTRO from WOW and absolutly loved it there and here as well.

I think that success in MMO's can be measured by how much interaction your users recieve from others users. Basically how full and complete the game is. Even if someone sits down and crafts a game by themselves to accomidate 50 people. If that world is small enough to feel comfortable to the 50 people who populate the game where they can enjoy the game together as an MMO should be enjoyed then it could be considered a success (without money).

Now these days, in the case of WAR, where they open wayy too many servers and keep them open without enough population to do so, they make themselves look bad, by funding and operating half empty servers which splits the population and drives newer players away making them obviously think that the game is a failure due to population issues. EvE has one server for its 300k players. There is always someone there. Someone to interact to. Does it matter that its ONLY 300k people populating that world? No, simply because the game world is WELL populated..

Companies kill themselves by aiming too high when releasing a new game. They should be modest these days (you figure they'd be more modest since MMO's "fail" so easily these days) and expect to start off on a small scale with a few servers and build up with the population...

(EDIT: One more thing to further my point... Want to know what the main selling point of WoW to new players is these days? The Graphics? No.. The Sound? No. The Gameplay? Maybe. The Community? Somewhat.. The Lore? Nah..   The population and popularity??? DEFINITELY.. The "1 million players" statistic is getting more and more people to jump off he cliff to see what the fuss is about because people know that when they play this game, they WILL be playing with other people..)

Just my two cents:

I don't think any game should need over 500k subscribers to be successful, and I would go so far as to say, if a company/game is designing their game with that many subscribers in mind, they need to sit back and think about what they are doing.

As a personal rule of thumb, if a game is attempting to build a game to straight out compete with WoW or is even expecting to reach a population of over 500k, I would bet money they will fail.  It is simply an unrealistic goal and to invest that much into an unknown end product seems to me like suicide.  Developers need to balance there funding with a realistic goal, and anything above 500k is not realistic.

This falls back on the vote option of to many factors that influence a success.

I would also like to point out that the type of game is a huge factor for how many subscribers are needed to be successful. 

EQ back in the day, probably needed some pretty solid numbers, but now, the game has been out forever, and technology has advanced so much since then, it probably doesn't cost anything to run it, so they could get by with hardly anything.

DAoC is not as old but similar in that the cost of keeping it running is now probably far less than it was originally, however DAoC faces another issue, and that is the competitive nature of the game.  Realm vs Realm fighting is all well and good, but to be enjoyable and attractive to new players, there has to be an already established and active community of players, otherwise, who are you going to fight?

This falls back on the vote option of to many factors that influence a success.  Adding on top of that, competitive games via large scale pvp requires more players than an instanced pvp or pve game would need.

In regards to WAR which I believe is the reason for this poll, made several key errors, although I still believe that they are successful at this point in time.

They started up the game with a huge number of servers, simply because of low population caps, this limited the number of players who could play on each server.  Then after the initial launch and people trying it out, deciding if they liked it, if they could put up with the new mechanics, new content etc.  There was alot of people leaving as well as coming in, but they were all on different servers.  This caused a good number of servers to have very low populations, again due to the competitive nature of the game, this is very bad, and those remaing players on dead servers where half of the game, as well as majority of end game was now impossible, left as well.  Individual server population fell, resulting in number of servers to fall.

However, they have been working hard to turn this decline around, and I think they will make it out and back up.  But once again, there are many factors that contribute to the success of a game and how many subscribers are needed to make it so.

Overall, there are many factors that determine what a game needs to succeed, but a game should never need over 500k.  Thats just poor planning.

I would say 300k-500k should be enough to make a profit and still be a successful game.

Numbers can be misleading as alot of the games that get pushed out the door too soon tend to count on pre-orders to survive the first few months.

Too many factors because if it makes money then yeah thats it's a success in one area but what about other areas? I mean Planetside makes money but is it a success? World of Warcraft has 50 trillion subs but is a success gameplay wise?

Originally posted by Daffid011

Originally posted by daeandor

He should have said, "... since they don't seem to stick with any other MMO's."

 

Now, the reality is that many WoWers do try other games, however they are still drawn to their first love.  It's no different with WoW than it was with UO, EQ, and AC back in the first gen of mmorpgs.  There are just more choices now.  WoW isn't really as much a benchmark as it is an emotional attachment for many.  It will take years before people become unattatched to their first mmorpg avatar, and in WoW's case that means millions of players are not going to let go for another game for some time to come.  And it won't matter how good the other games are that they try.  Without the emotional attachment, they will not stay.

I was in agreement with your statements until that line.  The problem is that there has been almost zero reason for people to leave wow other than complete and utter burnout of the game, because new mmos are being released in a less than competitive condition. 

People left their first mmos loves like eq, swg, daoc, uo to go play wow.  There is no difference in players today than there was back then. 

People are trying new mmos, but they are failing to deliver either a decent product or one compelling enough to compete with what wow already offers their customers.  The problem is the majority of people do not want to switch to a half finished buggy wow emulator that offers less content while be allowed the priviledge to pay for beta testing. 

 

While wow is the king of the hill right now I think it is also very vulnerable.  People are interested in another mmo for many various personal reasons.  All it is going to take is for someone to offer something new and most importantly finished.  To many companies are trying to beat wow at wows own game and that is just not going to happen.   People said everquest was unbeatable and look what happened.

I disagree.  There are games that are as good and better than WoW out there.  What games have failed to do is deliver on unrealistic expectations, barring the few that have had dismal releases (AoC and VG in particular).  I could list them all, but there is no point as there is no objective measure.

Oh, and yeah, look at EQ.  Blizzard is doing nearly the exact same thing SOE did with EQ.  Once subs take a slight dip, release an expansion for pay and raise the level / advancement cap.  For this same reason, WoW will follow the same path as EQ.  Eventually people will get tired of that cycle.  The good news for Blizzard is that their pool of players is much larger than EQ's and when only the hardcore remain, it will number in the several hundred thousands unlike EQ's paltry thousands now days.

Lastly, with the recession, don't get your hopes up on a game to dethrone WoW.  The good news is that games which launch badly, will disappear quickly too.  Eventually, we will only have WoW and other games worth playing in the sense that they will have a subscriber base which can support development.  As a side note, I suspect that the recession will be the end for SOE as they won't be able to sustain the games they have in their lineup and aren't developing anything worth a darn.