A couple of years ago something was a bit different from today. A new mmo that reached 300k's were considered to be a huge success. Then, 04 camed WoW and things were about to change...

WoW has something like 11-12 millions of subs, thoses numbers can surely be discussed though. However, when a game launches today and after a few months it turns out to have approximately around 250-300k subs it's still considered as a success for some peoples.

Well, as for a small developement I'm pretty sure that it really is a success! But what about those hyped highly expensive games, the ones with a budget way over the average game? Fanbois, we all heard of them, are claiming that as low as 150-200k users are to be considered as a huge success.  Even for games that took years and lots, lots, lots of money to develope.

Age of Conan was a game that I didn't followed much but I'm aware of the hype that surrounded it. It seems like it finally stabled around 200k+. That's a success? I think not!

Personally I followed Warhammer Online - Age of Reckoning. Or should I say:

Failhammer Offline - Age of Flopping ? Because that's what I think it is. The game seemed to have it all. I thought that this is the "one". The "one" that actually could challenge WoW. The game turned out to be a pile of crap though.

The internet flamewar was pretty much set to go late 08, especially when the Lich King was launched. The subs were dropping like flies from War, fanbois were in denial, some  went back to WoW and some people just cancelled their subscriptions for a while just to come back later to check out possible improvements.

Today, War is down to below 300k's. Still to be considered as a success?? I don't think so, but you might be of another opinion though?

Now, is 11-12 millions needed? No way!!

WoW may have it, but thats a freak of nature...

However, I do think SWTOR for example needs atleast 1,5-2  millions to be considered as a huge success and you know what, I think/hope it will get those numbers!

Anyway, how many subs would you considered to be a huge success?

300k is plenty.  WoW is an abnormality that probably will not be repeated for a long time.  Then vs Now has nothing to do with the economics of an MMO. It's really all about 'is the MMO profitable enough'.   It all depends on how much they spent on development along with how much it costs for customer service, ongoing development, and how much the data lines are costing them.

300-500k.

Depends really. Can be less can be more.

I would have to agree part-way with the OP. A couple years ago MMOs weren't as popular as they are today. WoW really brought the 'average joe' to the MMO world. Before World of Warcraft had its' huge spout of success and began attracting all varieties of life and not just us anti-social video gamers (kidding, kidding!) the MMO world became a larger market.

I would have to say that 500K would be a good level to say an MMO has been widely "successful"

World of Warcraft came about at the right time. There weren't too many new MMOs on the market (Galaxies had been out for a few years, Evercrack was getting old, and the 3rd party MMOs were going nowhere due to funding issues) and so when World of Warcraft plopped down on the scene it was showcasing an easy-to-run engine so that most anyone's PC could handle it, a balanced and rock-hard system to each class that was being backed by a solid development team, acceptable customer support, and even better: it was easy to learn.
WoW really has had no learning curve to it. You jump into the game and within a day you can learn it top from bottom. It makes it appealing to a wide audience from the casual gamer to the hardcore grinder. It came about when everyone wanted something new and it offered it in a clean stitch and pretty packaging. WoW became a super giant because of that. Anyone can pick it up and anyone can run it.

The impact of this however, has spread out the MMO market. There are a lot more of us now who look into and play the genre of games. So thus, 300k just doesn't seem to make the mark as a "widely successful" MMO anymore.

you need to put it in the bell curve, like everything else in nature, sociology and economics. everything fits in the bell curve (statistically speaking)

you have the masses that are in the middle, in which case its around 200-350k subscribers. then you have the extremes like world of warcraft, at 10+ million then you also have the other extreme with Matrix online (closed), or SWG (i wont say a number but you all know my views on it)

now if only the investors would see that 300k subs is good for a MMORPG. they would not expect 20million subs and then bail out when they only get 300k.

By all of these accounts, EVE is a ridiculous failure. That definitely sounds reasonable. /sarcasm off

I've played MMOs that have 2K or so subscribers and enjoyed  myself  quite a bit.   As a matter of fact you'll notice that some insanely small games are just as busy, because well nearly every MMO purposely tones down their "scale" to "smaller than the small guys" with their server system.

Is the company getting profit from its product?

Are they able to pay all the cash the investors put in for development?

Can they keep enough DEVs to improve the game over time?

Are the consumers (players) happy with it?

Does it matter to you if the game you are playing has 12mil people online or 200k? Do you think you will interact with all of them? Cause I kind remember reading somewhere about servers.........

So boreline... you dont care if the game is fun or not. You just want to be a *cool kid* like all the other *cool kids* playing the same thing. Being different is bad and you just want to point at everyone that is not like you and say: buhhh you are not playing my game you suck.

Pity really.

Numbers wise EVE was / is a failure, for that matter this website is the only place ive ever even seen EVE mentioned.

For new games 1-2 million is a good mark but 300k I would consider faiL. Even guild wars had 1-2 million at this height.

Originally posted by DrChicken

By all of these accounts, EVE is a ridiculous failure. That definitely sounds reasonable. /sarcasm off

You can put sarcasm on again if you want.

EvE is for me a success!!  It was a minor game, not a 100 million$ developement but it turned out to be quite good actually. I believe it has somewere 300k+ right?  Now, that's good for EvE!

I'm talking about those games that "everyone" knows about. The games that been talked about for a loooong time and are highly expensive to develope, the very hyped ones.

Well to put in perspective 2mil box sales(roughly of a medium size mmo) equales into 80.000.000$ and with 300k subscribers theyl earn 4.200.000$ a month, combined over a year and youl have 50.400.000$ in just sub fees.

or a smaller mmo with say 500k sales at about 20.000.000$ with say 100k subs results in 1.400.000$ each month and 16.800.000$ each year

so yeah real failures there. Only thing funny is how we put up with those overpriced monthly fees. Neither servers nor development costs that much a month, its mostly  pure profit once taxes and corp fees have been paid.

I voted 500k but if any mmo doesn't atleast maintain there fanbase or atleast attempt to grow throughout the years then I think that any mmo will fail.

arbitrary numbers.

if the company can turn a profit and maintain to, the game is successful.

I would go for 500 K WESTERN subscriptions after the 6 months launch period.

Multiple reasons:

1. Forget the almost free to play internet cafés in China and Korea. 4 Million Lineage 2 means ... 60 K western subs for L2. A game can ONLY be judged as succesful if people want to play a full 180 hard dollars a year just to play it (or 90 dollars for 6 months minimum).

2. Since 400/500 K records were already attained 10 years ago, a really succesful game would have 500 K players now.

3. If a dull, leg less, planet less and boring game like EVE can obtain 300K subs, that means the others are even worse. So 500K should be the minimum to attain.

4. The only subscription game that I see in the near future to break this barrier is SW: kotor as the Lore and perhaps the change in playing style is different enough to warrant such intrest. EA presence is not exaclty motivating...

5. Games that hover around the 100-200K can not be called mainstream, but can survive.

6. Games under that 100K barrier are only kept alive by regrouped/combo subs and by one man "push the server button" maintance "crews" and so are technically dead.

Originally posted by crunchyblack

arbitrary numbers.

if the company can turn a profit and maintain to, the game is successful.

QFT.

This thread is worthless. I always love it when people try to speculate whether a company's subs make the game a success or not -- especially given the fact that so many people here know jack about software development, game development, and general business practices.

It is kind of amusing though -- watching people making complete fools of themselves.

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt." - Abraham Lincoln 

EDIT: typo
 

Originally posted by crunchyblack

arbitrary numbers.

if the company can turn a profit and maintain to, the game is successful.

Exactly.

As long as the game design and server layout don't fragment the community, 100k is plenty.

I vote enough is enough... and take that statement any way you want.

Its a success if its made more money then it cost to create. So, a arbitrary subscriber number doesn't mean jack.

It its making more cash in subs then it costs to keep it operational, its a success.

yes, wow has a ton of subs, but I wonder what its operating costs are for blizzard....i mean they have a TON of servers. I am sure they're making a killing..but it would be an interesting perspective.

a return of 20% or more a year on the initial investment is a Success.

a return of 50% or more each year on the initial investment is a HUGE SUCCESS.

Those numbers that you wrote mean nothing if you don't know how much money was put in the game, how much more is still spent on the game(developers, bandwith, new servers etc). If a game cost 400 000 EUR to make and it gets an active base of 30 000 people(buying the game with 50 EUR each box) then the game makes a profit of 1.1 million which can be then invested(or horded ) by the publishers and developers. On the other hand if a game costs 30-40 million EUR to develop/publish/market and gets 300 000 subscribers then it's at a huge loss(300k*50EUR = 15 mil EUR).

GET IT NOW?

A game with fewer subscribers and a Indy budget can be a much MUCH bigger success than a state of the art game with 1 million subscribers.

Originally posted by crunchyblack

arbitrary numbers.

if the company can turn a profit and maintain to, the game is successful.

Exactly. More people need to realize this.

Its not hard to tell who the little kiddies are that are running around saying this failed that failed. The only number that determines if a game fails is dollars. If the MMO is not covering its development cost and maintance cost its failing. What that is depends on the company and they wont run around telling this information.

There will never be another MMO with WoW type numbers. Not even blizzards next MMO. They were the first ones to make the "easy button" brought all these people into the genre. (the ones who run around crying fail fail fail is part of them) WoW has such a head start on all these other casual mmo's that nothing will catch it. The only MMO that will kill WoW is WoW, and time is WoW's worst enemy. To many MMO's are coping wow thus splitting up the players that have left WoW.

Originally posted by toddze

Originally posted by crunchyblack

arbitrary numbers.

if the company can turn a profit and maintain to, the game is successful.

 

Exactly. More people need to realize this.

Its not hard to tell who the little kiddies are that are running around saying this failed that failed. The only number that determines if a game fails is dollars. If the MMO is not covering its development cost and maintance cost its failing. What that is depends on the company and they wont run around telling this information.

There will never be another MMO with WoW type numbers. Not even blizzards next MMO. They were the first ones to make the "easy button" brought all these people into the genre. (the ones who run around crying fail fail fail is part of them) WoW has such a head start on all these other casual mmo's that nothing will catch it. The only MMO that will kill WoW is WoW, and time is WoW's worst enemy. To many MMO's are coping wow thus splitting up the players that have left WoW.

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Again, thread is not supposing a mmo needs 12 millions to be considered as successful.

One doesn't need to be a kid because he/she consider a game not living up to it's hype!

That may be true, no one said otherwise! (This may...may be true!)

500k is a enough. once you push past that , then you have to upgrade the infrastructer to maintain and keep everything stable. Fro a new game developer like Fallen Earth, i think they would be quite happy with 100k retained players. If something grows faster then a developer can grow, then there will be a high rate of losing retained players.

Originally posted by kal08

Is the company getting profit from its product?

Are they able to pay all the cash the investors put in for development?

Can they keep enough DEVs to improve the game over time?

Are the consumers (players) happy with it?

 

....

That's it in a nutshell.

The measure of 'fail' is very diferent for a game with a 200 man dev team hyped as the next sliced bread compared to a game with a 5 man dev team.

FWIW I play a couple of Browser Based MMOs.  
Nothing flash and in one case I think the Dev 'team' is only a couple of people.  But players like it and some of the game play is quite good.

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Originally posted by Shazzel1
Numbers wise EVE was / is a failure, for that matter this website is the only place ive ever even seen EVE mentioned.
 
For new games 1-2 million is a good mark but 300k I would consider faiL. Even guild wars had 1-2 million at this height.

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EVE isnt a failure.

Whether one site mentions eve and others dont...or people talk about one game and others dont really doesnt matter.

This is where WoW fkd things up. I played daoc and it was a great game. Had a lot of fun. But I didnt expect it to be mainstream popular. It was a mmo afterall.

Then WoW happens, and everyone who plays wow thinks they know something about mmos and bases every mmo off of its success.

LIKE ZOMG IVE NEVER HEARD OF THAT GAME LULZ< IT MUST SUK!!

Originally posted by PapaB34R

Well to put in perspective 2mil box sales(roughly of a medium size mmo) equales into 80.000.000$ and with 300k subscribers theyl earn 4.200.000$ a month, combined over a year and youl have 50.400.000$ in just sub fees.

or a smaller mmo with say 500k sales at about 20.000.000$ with say 100k subs results in 1.400.000$ each month and 16.800.000$ each year

 

so yeah real failures there. Only thing funny is how we put up with those overpriced monthly fees. Neither servers nor development costs that much a month, its mostly  pure profit once taxes and corp fees have been paid.

Have you considered that offa box sales...companies get very little of that? Much goes to the box artists, packaging,delivery, and a good mark-up by the stores. Ever notice when a game is brand new it goes for $50+ and after a few months goes for $20 or less...the store is still selling them for a profit...a smaller profit but still a profit. So if they can sell a game for $20 and still make money...how much do you think the MMO company made offa those boxes?

And offa your sub fees, there is more than just money in the pocket. Say 100mill is spent on an mmo. I am guessing since an MMO life can be rather short, people want their money back.  If a company is only making a couple million a month...that is just scraping by. Loans, investors, employees, teck personal, advertizing costs, building costs and a whole wack of busness costs need to be paid. So sure it may sound like glorious income to you, but the expences to gain such an income are also pretty large. 

Takes years to gain a profit...so yeah...perhaps you should learn a little about busness before you make yourself look like someone with no idea what they are talking about.