Today we’d like to start what will become a new series of discussion features on MMORPG.com, where we post a few thoughts on a particular MMO game related topic, and then ask the readers to weigh in with their opinions by responding in the forum thread or casting a vote in the related poll. Once the poll has been open for a reasonable amount of time we’ll then come back and revisit the topic, summarizing the results of the poll and community discussion.

Today’s Topic: How many subscribers does a subscription model MMO need to be considered successful?

With the recent announcement by Mythic Entertainment that Warhammer Online’s subscription numbers are currently hovering around 300 thousand, and the not-so-recent-anymore announcement that Tabula Rasa would shut down when this high profile MMO failed to live up to subscriber number expectations, a question arises. Just how many players does an MMO need to be successful in today’s market? To investors whose eyes fill up with dollar signs with a near audible cha-ching noise when they hear about subscriber numbers like those of World of Warcraft, games like WAR and Age of Conan seem like dismal failures when at this time last year the hype would have you believe that either one of these games would be a WoW killer.

Check out the poll here.

The MMO market didnt grow much in the last years, so a few 100k's are enoguh. Enough for me is, when the company has the money to push out content, fixes and offer some support.

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

The number it takes is enough that, if investors had known ahead of time that that's how many you'd have, they'd still have wanted to make the investment.  A game that cost $1 million to develop and ends up with 100k subscribers is spectacularly successful.  A game that cost $100 million to develop and ends up with 100k subscribers is a dismal failure. 

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

Successful is technically whatever is profitable, though I would say a game needs to live up to the expectations of those that have developed it as well.

The press hyped AoC and WAR up to be WoW killers, anyone with an ounce of common sense knew that nothing is a WoW killer. But even so, neither title hit any target that the developers mentioned prior to release.

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

I'll think you'll find WoW is in fact a springboard to other MMO's for a lot of people. If it wasn't for WoW I wouldn't have tried games like DDO, AoC, EvE, Vanguard, Guild Wars and LOTRO amongst others. Sadly they weren't as good, but at least it made me want to see what else was out there.

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

very good post, alot of the WoW player base get so involved in the game, were nothing else matters(this also includes life)

The problem comes down to the economics of a game.

You can have a 100k user base game that took $1 Mil to make like was said earlier. But if it does not keep those users past the first year then you made your money back, and might get investors for your next project. Really it comes down to operating expenses.

If I only have a staff of 5 to do office, advertising and programming then I will not have enough time to push out new content and keep my subscribers happy.

Now if you operated close to the red the entire year regardless of how big you are and your subscribers don't return then you are done.

So be large enough to push out content but small enough to afford the subscriber fluctuation.

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.

I think a MMO is succesful when its subscriber base is large enough to recoup the cost of development in 3-5 years as well as cover the cost of operations

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.

Everquest and Everquest 2 are perfect examples of MMOs that can make money with around 300,000 subscribers or less. EQ2 for instance is a high quality game and doesn't have a huge budget to keep going. They actually would be doing better if they advertised more. Wow does well because it's a gaim that does not take much thought or challenge to play. You can get on for 15 minutes and level up 5 times. Plus WOW advertises and that is key and they also had the warcraft,diablo,starcraft,etc fans who probably just migrated to the game when it came out.  Just for the record I usually try new MMOs when they come out and if they don't have plenty of questing,don't have decent graphics, and new content compared to the previous I'll just stick to what I am playing.

It is much easier today to make a MMO than in the past.  As to how much of a suscriber base a MMO needs to survive hard to say, depends how much is invested in to make and maintain it.

I think the biggest factor in making a MMO, you have to differentiate it from Wow.  I think both Conan and War both failed on that account.  Instead of attempting to complete with Wow, I think a MMO needs to first find a niche that does not conflict with Wow.  

As to subs lots of existing games do well with 100k suscribers or less.  New games will need more as they have to pay for the development costs.

Personally if I were an investor today, I would be really reluctant to invest in a MMO right now.  It is a real gamble. 

I believe that the "success" of an MMO is relative to the dollar amount spent on development, marketing and operating costs versus the subscriber base and monthly fee inolved as well as initial sales.  These are all factors that should be considered.  In my opinion, the cases of WAR and AoC were hyped up to a point where the subscriber base needed to support more costs from marketing, devlopment, etc.  I'm uncertain what those costs were so I don't feel I can give my best answer for them based on their current subscriber levels.  I believe any game that has reached a profit and able to maintain a profit should be considered successful.

One other thing, I'm a current WoW player that is involved in all current end-game content and I ALWAYS enjoy trying out new games.  I'm currently playing Lotro while setting aside a couple of nights a week for doing end-game with my guild in WoW.  I've also done the same in the past with AoC until i disagreed with the direction the game was headed.  The same can be said for Eve Online, it's truly a great game... it's just a HUGE time sink for me.  I'm finding an excellent balance as of right now with being able to game in WoW with all my friends while making time to enjoy other games that are out there.  (... and to provide some flame-retardent for myself... I'm 30 with a great wife, 2 kids and an 8-5 job)

I think with MMOs you'll always see numbers declining after the initial launch at first. There are just too many people that are lured in by promises and graphics and don't realize that any recent release is going to be a lot less polished and sophisticated than an MMO that has been running for over a year.  Both devs (or maybe just the investors) and players just have unrealistic expectations on that front, since both seem to assume a steady growth from launch onward is a likely scenario.

If you're looking for an MMO with fleshed out leveling all the way to the cap, plenty of endgame options, solid class balance, with few bugs or server issues, that'll be one that's at least 1-2 years old already. Even expansion packs seem to mess up a game for a month or two - hell, despite all it's (undue) praise LotrO's expansion has left the game rather a mess when it comes to most of those factors, even now ~4 months after it's release.

How long it takes an MMO to become any good would be a better indicator of it's successfulness than how good it is at launch or how many subscribers it has, from a player's perspective. If I enjoy a game, it's achieved the goal I set for it, regardless of how many people still play the game. Target demographic will always play a big a role in number of subs anyway, but as long as it's enough to populate a few servers, the absolute number makes no difference for my gameplay whatsoever. 

What the devs consider successful or not is anyone's guess for most games, no smart developer will be pessimistic in front of his subscribers.

Originally posted by Loophole

I think with MMOs you'll always see numbers declining after the initial launch at first. There are just too many people that are lured in by promises and graphics and don't realize that any recent release is going to be a lot less polished and sophisticated than an MMO that has been running for over a year.  Both devs (or maybe just the investors) and players just have unrealistic expectations on that front, since both seem to assume a steady growth from launch onward is a likely scenario.

I think that the initial decline only exist because the publishers overhype their product. A product that lives up to its expectation would not see a drop and might even see a steady increase. The blame rest solely on the developers/publishers who provide information which is often too hopeful and unrealistic of their capacities. Almost every single MMO released in the past few years have been overhyped and a failure, as a result we saw their user base decline shortly after launch. Eve and WoW, which are both success, have both seen an increase of subs after launch with no actual drop. The MMO market has very few exemple like this as companies and investors often underestimate the complexity of making such a game.

It carries such a high risk for very little chance of profit that I'm not certain if there is much of future for it, seeing failure after failure like this is not encouraging. We can only hope that Bioware/Cryptic/Blizzard can reverse the trend with their upcoming games. Although Bioware already has trouble polishing their single player games, Cryptic seems way too ambitious with Star Trek. Blizzard seems to be the best bet for determining the future of this market. I'm guessing some people will frown at that thought :)

It's a toss up between:

If the game makes enough money to continue operating, then it is a success.

and

There are too many other factors influencing an MMO''s success to accurately choose numbers.

Sadly because of the monumental success of WoW too many people are basing a games success on numbers. This poll even seems to perpetrate that mindset.

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

I do not agree with you. A lot of people became to know the mmo market because of wow (me for example) I would never have tried to start with EVE and LOTRO if I didn't knew wow. If i didn't knew wow i would still play fps games by now^^

Originally posted by Kilmar

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

Yes they do its just they expect new mmo's to be as polished and have as much content as WoW which is unrealistic. When it doesn't you get all these stupid DOOM posts. Thou AoC brought much of it on itself while WAR was fun for a couple of months lacked focus and depth for me long-term.

I think mmo companies sometimes shoot themselves in the foot. Take TR. 2 years into the project the game underwent a major revamp and they rewrote most of the code. So thats 2 years where you wasted investors money and development time. Is it any wonder people were saying it felt unfinished with regards to the crafting system or it launched without an auction house.

Look at Sigil and Vanguard. Brad McQuaid may have some good ideas but from the looks of things there is no way he should have been running a company. He didnt even have the decency to tell his staff they were fired getting someone else to do it in a parking lot. Microsoft bailed mid-way through development, maybe they saw what was coming and didnt want to be associated. They admitted they released the game only 60% complete and if SOE hadnt picked it up it would have collapsed as well.

Rather than ask how many subs why not ask why there seems to be a lack of professionalism in the industry.

I am a WoW player, but I started with EQ and after that I played EQOA, EVE, EQ2, GW (1, 2, and 3), and many many other non-multi-player rpg's on consoles dating back to Atari days (I even have tried many of these titles after I began playing WoW). There are great variances in the game world and even more in the mmorpg world that make a game a hit or a dud. It is easier to fail in the mmorpg world due to relying on subscriptions to pay the bills, so to solve the "Day after launch failure" means that they must have investors with endurance (deep pockets), great content (from the start), and great mechanics (need to be very, very reliable). But pricing can and is a big factor, most of these games come out and are priced just about the same as a console game (too high) like they're trying to pay back the investors right then and there. That in itself is one reason why many of these games fail, with the economy around the world the way it is right now maybe they should drop the price to a great hook instead of a great deterant and tell investors the truth (not instant hit but more like 2-3 years for payback and 5 years for big profit). the console game industry is instant hit or miss, the mmorpg industry shouldn't be and can't be that way. I say without any variables involved 500,000 to 1,000,000 suscribers at $25.00US to buy the game and $15.00US a month subscription should be profitable numbers after 3 years and big profit after 5 years. Most of all though, we gamers will jump ship a.s.a.p. when the mechanics are so bad we can't enjoy the game like AOC (yes I tried it too).