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.

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Originally posted by talismen351

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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.

---

If I were you I wouldnt be so critical. For one its kinda hard to take you serious when you cant spell "business" and "expense".

You need to revise you poll to be more specific. You need to eliminate F2P from this discussion as the games that are F2P never view their activated accounts as being inactive. So, a F2P game like Guild Wars that has 2 million accounts might actually only have 300k accounts that are currently being played but since they view all of the accounts ever made for that game as being an active account, it skews the numbers when comparing with the P2P games.

So, when you take away the F2P games like Guild Wars, Wizard 101, Freerealms, Runes of Magic, etc, then you are pretty much left with WOW that has like 12+ millions active accounts and all the rest of the Western released MMOs are around 600K and lower.

As for a game that is considered a failure, I think that pretty much all of the western MMOs make a good profit when they stay above 200K and a decent amount will make a few bucks at around 100k. I would think that some would break even around 20k subs and that would be keeping a skeleton crew of devs and 2 or 3 updates a year.

Originally posted by DrChicken

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

Like the OP stated, EVE didn't take tens of millions of dollars to develop, where as the 'failures' did.

Sub figures dont tell the whole story. Look at EVE and WAR, both have hovered at the 300k mark, but their circumstances are different.

EVE: Didnt cost millions to make, sub base has grown over years to reach 300,000, no server merges, regular engine/content updates

WARHAMMER: Cost millions, sold 800,000 retail copies, gained a initial sub base of 750,000. Went on to lose over half a million players (and counting) in 1 year, closed down 60 servers and merged the rest, lots of disgruntled players, lead dev fired. Sub par PVE 'expansion' that the players didnt ask for.

One has grown to be successful, the other was a total flop.

What is termed a ‘success’ is framed by greed. Now every MMO company wants its snout in WoW’s trough.

Oink Oink!

I'm not even going to read this thread or the replies due to the probability of ignorance due to lack of understanding or knowledge. From what I skimmed on the first post... the guy thinks no MMO can survive with 100k subs... well unfortunately for him he is one of the ignorant due to lack of knowledge. No MMO closes when they have 100k subs... they close when they have 20k or less maybe even 30k. The only mmo's you see truly close are mainstream MMO's thats because they have a development team (Generally pretty large team) working on content, changes, fixes. So a mainstream title from a big company cannot handle a failing MMO with 30k subs so instead of doing what NC Soft does and remove the dev team and just leave it F2P they close them.  Most sub MMO's have close to or just over 100k subs... EQ2 hit 350 ended up with the dedicated around 100k ... UO hit 250 ended up with the dedicated around 100k prolly closer to 70 now. AoC 700 and WAR 500 both around 100 now...

What i'm saying is other then WoW... every western MMO is only going to have 100-200k subs steady. Get over it.

Secondly in actuality any MMO can survive with 50... they just have to make cuts less production, less staff, and ect.

15.00 x 100,000 = a lot of money every month.

I think around 300k these days is the waterline.  Sink much below that and you could be in trouble.  This is for the big studios though, who sunk a TON of money into development.  It is entirely feasible for a smaller studio with a smaller budget to be able to stay afloat and make a proffit with lower numbers.

You get studios like Mythic or Funcom...under 300k is pretty much the death knell for them.

I think on average, if your studio has a NCsoft or EA floating above them demanding results...500k is a solid subscription base.

Of course, with the movement towards cash shops and alternative billing methods...all of these numbers may be fairly meaningless in a couple of years.

An mmo succeed when it can make profit and can keep updating the game.

Regardless of subnumbers.

Hell Guild Wars keeps on going with no subscription fee

Originally posted by daelnor

I think around 300k these days is the waterline.  Sink much below that and you could be in trouble.  This is for the big studios though, who sunk a TON of money into development.  It is entirely feasible for a smaller studio with a smaller budget to be able to stay afloat and make a proffit with lower numbers.

You get studios like Mythic or Funcom...under 300k is pretty much the death knell for them.

I think on average, if your studio has a NCsoft or EA floating above them demanding results...500k is a solid subscription base.

Of course, with the movement towards cash shops and alternative billing methods...all of these numbers may be fairly meaningless in a couple of years.

... No western market games provide 300k subs other than WoW... steadily anyways... They all pan in the 100's The asian market and EU market provides the base of sub numbers for every game...

Originally posted by Tailz2k7

I'm not even going to read this thread or the replies due to the probability of ignorance due to lack of understanding or knowledge. From what I skimmed on the first post... the guy thinks no MMO can survive with 100k subs... well unfortunately for him he is one of the ignorant due to lack of knowledge. No MMO closes when they have 100k subs... they close when they have 20k or less maybe even 30k. The only mmo's you see truly close are mainstream MMO's thats because they have a development team (Generally pretty large team) working on content, changes, fixes. So a mainstream title from a big company cannot handle a failing MMO with 30k subs so instead of doing what NC Soft does and remove the dev team and just leave it F2P they close them.  Most sub MMO's have close to or just over 100k subs... EQ2 hit 350 ended up with the dedicated around 100k ... UO hit 250 ended up with the dedicated around 100k prolly closer to 70 now. AoC 700 and WAR 500 both around 100 now...

What i'm saying is other then WoW... every western MMO is only going to have 100-200k subs steady. Get over it.

Secondly in actuality any MMO can survive with 50... they just have to make cuts less production, less staff, and ect.

15.00 x 100,000 = a lot of money every month.

Sadly, you are just as ignorant and lacking of knowledge as those who you are looking down your nose at.  Grow up. Yes, people have misconceptions...but making up numbers and throwing them around as if you have some secret inside knowledge isn't any better.  It is laughable at best.
 

I don't have any secret numbers or omnipotent knowledge.  In my opinion though, I agree with you that not every MMO needs 300k plus subs to succeed. However, take into account that the development budgets are waaay higher than they were 10 years ago.  Sure, some small indie companies may be able to throw something out there at a lower development cost, in which case they won't need as large of numbers to survive as would a large studio that spent insane amounts to create their game. But most of the ones that people are paying attention to are coming from big name studios with big time budgets.  If they don't maintain a fairly large subcription base...they are losing money.

Mark Jacobs said at one time that Mythic needed about 300k subs to make money.  Less than that and they were losing money.  On the flipside, I'm sure that a studio like Aventurine can subsist on much smaller numbers. (though I find it amazing that they have more than a handful of subs to begin with.)

edit: p.s. A game surviving on life support with a couple of devs left and little forward progress on the game...i.e. vanguard and SWG don't really count.  They are sad shadows of what they once were, and what they could have been.

I thought this post was going to have some proof, some financial statistics why 300k subscribers is a failure for a mmorpg. It doesn't, so this is a failure of a thread.

Originally posted by daelnor

Originally posted by Tailz2k7

I'm not even going to read this thread or the replies due to the probability of ignorance due to lack of understanding or knowledge. From what I skimmed on the first post... the guy thinks no MMO can survive with 100k subs... well unfortunately for him he is one of the ignorant due to lack of knowledge. No MMO closes when they have 100k subs... they close when they have 20k or less maybe even 30k. The only mmo's you see truly close are mainstream MMO's thats because they have a development team (Generally pretty large team) working on content, changes, fixes. So a mainstream title from a big company cannot handle a failing MMO with 30k subs so instead of doing what NC Soft does and remove the dev team and just leave it F2P they close them.  Most sub MMO's have close to or just over 100k subs... EQ2 hit 350 ended up with the dedicated around 100k ... UO hit 250 ended up with the dedicated around 100k prolly closer to 70 now. AoC 700 and WAR 500 both around 100 now...

What i'm saying is other then WoW... every western MMO is only going to have 100-200k subs steady. Get over it.

Secondly in actuality any MMO can survive with 50... they just have to make cuts less production, less staff, and ect.

15.00 x 100,000 = a lot of money every month.

Sadly, you are just as ignorant and lacking of knowledge as those who you are looking down your nose at.  Grow up. Yes, people have misconceptions...but making up numbers and throwing them around as if you have some secret inside knowledge isn't any better.  It is laughable at best.
 

I don't have any secret numbers or omnipotent knowledge.  In my opinion though, I agree with you that not every MMO needs 300k plus subs to succeed. However, take into account that the development budgets are waaay higher than they were 10 years ago.  Sure, some small indie companies may be able to throw something out there at a lower development cost, in which case they won't need as large of numbers to survive as would a large studio that spent insane amounts to create their game. But most of the ones that people are paying attention to are coming from big name studios with big time budgets.  If they don't maintain a fairly large subcription base...they are losing money.

Mark Jacobs said at one time that Mythic needed about 300k subs to make money.  Less than that and they were losing money.  On the flipside, I'm sure that a studio like Aventurine can subsist on much smaller numbers. (though I find it amazing that they have more than a handful of subs to begin with.)

edit: p.s. A game surviving on life support with a couple of devs left and little forward progress on the game...i.e. vanguard and SWG don't really count.  They are sad shadows of what they once were, and what they could have been.

Everything I say is true... I say it from experience... if you want the proof go view each companies quartly messages... end of story and GG. Thanks for wasting my time.

Secondly yes if you want to keep a huge dev team focused on a single project... with mass ad campaign then you might need over 300k... If you are WAR though and are never going to see those numbers again you stfu ... lay people off, send devs to other departments and move on to the next project.

Originally posted by spades07

I thought this post was going to have some proof, some financial statistics why 300k subscribers is a failure for a mmorpg. It doesn't, so this is a failure of a thread.

They cant show proof because the only games with over 300k are WoW, Aion (Released in asia already), FFXI, and Lineage 2. I feel like i'm missing one... but none the less all the rest have been running on far less for many years EQ2 hasnt broke 200k in 3 years... just saying google it.

Concerning mainstream western titles.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

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.

Funny that this comes out of your mouth. in all games asian market dusnt mean shit in your opinion but when you

post about WoW you just cant stop putting the asian market into it as in 11.6 million instead of 5 to 6.

Heh, 300k is more than enough for any mmo. A game can even survive with alot less than that. Just look at Anarchy Online. Fantasy numbers, like WoW got, is an anomoly. Sure a mmo can get upto a million, million and a half but I guess that's around the max it can do. People forget that the WoW crowd aint your typical mmo player. When WoW fold they wont go to another mmo, most of them will go back to whatever console they where into before WoW, some will not even game at all anymore or atmost game extreme casual games. The real, and I use that term loosely, mmocrowd is a few million players. MMO's where afterall a niche in the gaming world before WoW and will be so again when that game is gone.

Remove WoW and the players will be gone with it too. Then we will get what mmo's where about before WoW, both the good and the bad I think, allthough the stamp WoW put on the mmo's will be there forever.

Now, before any angry flames at this post I will state that this is my personal opinion based on my own experience and world view. There is no reason anyone should go apeshit at me and call me a clueless noob/go back to wow idiot and so on. - knowing the mmorpg.com crowd...

Actually I should put that in my siggy...hmmm

Originally posted by talismen351

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?

are you serious? Do you think really think box artists gets any real money from box sales? Delivery is cheap as hell too, especially because of the smaller packaging new games uses. But it is true that box sales probably have an 50% marginal if not less, although Im not really sure but to put it into perspective you just told us that no game without montly fee is economicly viable as for dropping in price, after awhile box sales gives less, whod figuer... its not like it happens to every game on the market...

And offa your sub fees, there is more than just money in the pocket. Say 100mill is spent on an mmo(how many companies have a project budget of 100$mil now thats not serious). I am guessing since an MMO life can be rather short, people want their money back.(uhm ok?)  If a company is only making a couple million a month...that is just scraping by(and whats wrong with running your buisness if it makes profit?). 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. 

This is hardly unique for any video game developer and most projects never see the kind off box sales nor have a monthly fee system to rely on

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.

Thank you very much although I could point out that you probably should learn proper english before you whine on somebody else, maybe what you also should do is read the tax legaslations to see how much some of these giants make in a year. But of course since I no absolutly nothing about economics and buisnesses then thats just makes my arguments looks bad. Oh failed to mention that Ive studied both of those subjects for 3 years... well Im still the fool right?

Thank you talismen351 but you fail. Next time try getting some facts before spouting out things you believe to be true, thank you.