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5 million registered beta users! 10 million users by end of year.
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I know i'm going to sound like a troll or hater, but, is it possible they don't even have 1 million pre-orders? I'm thinking about it after a comment i read on another thread.
When TOR and GW2 reached them, BW and Anet announced it to brag about it and give positive news about their games. Understandable, since marketing is important. Wouldn't Zenimax have announced 1 million po's if ESO had reached them by now, since the game has been getting quite some negative to mixed impressions?
Again, not trolling, just saying that if they did, it'd be a good way to release more positive PR. Maybe they're keeping it to themeselves, of course.
Its up to 7.8 million... not sure where you got 10 million. better luck next time!
http://wow.joystiq.com/2014/02/06/world-of-warcraft-up-to-7-8-million-subscribers/
We plan to surpass the highest grossing, most played MMO of all time in less than 1/8 its lifetime.
...
Seems legit. Carry on. LOL!
"10 Million" top lol.
Ok thanks for correcting my number. It is 7.8, but that wasn't the point i was trying to make.
Christ, I have a beta account and can't even be arsed to TRY it. And I'm actually a Skyrim fan.
Sorry. You're completely, utterly delusional.
the fact that millions of people buy mmo's that they know have a sub tells you everything you need to know.
its not that subs are not viable, its that there is too much competition in the genre now and people hop from game to game as if it was a single player game.
if an mmo want to keep their player base intact they need to have a game with a strong community.
because community is the main thing that keeps people playing the same game for so long.
this is why ESO will likely not be a game that holds a lot of subs for a long time.
it has little to do with the sub model tho. going F2P only brings in the players that want to play games for free.
sure when you have a free game more players are going to play it, does that make it more viable than a sub model?
only if the company makes more money it is. the most viable model is the one that makes the most money, period.
I don't think what you are saying is trolling at all. I think you are on to something because it's true how pretty much every every AAA game has announced pre-order sales as a form to perpetuate more hype. That being said, I actually have no doubt ESO initial sales will be good. The longevity though? Well, that's another animal.
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
They could PAY people to play and I'm dubious they'd get 10 million.
ESO is the first game in some time to try and make guilds matter even a little bit. Connecting the auction halls to guilds and letting everyone be in 5 different guilds is an attempt to at least try and make guilds matter. It seems like features like guild ownership of keeps, guild stores, large guild banks and multi guild membership really are designed to build social interactions and break the SPG mentality a lot of players seem to have these days. You can play ESO as a single player game if you want but you will get more out of it if you socialize at least in some small measure. It's not the forced socialization of MMO's from years gone by but does anyone really think there is more than a niche market for those kinds of games these days? Modern MMO's need to use the carrot to encourage social group building instead of the stick.
And I would argue that long term the most viable model is the one that keeps your customers satisfied and coming back. You might be able to design a cash shop that milks lots of money out of players short term but if they don't stick around your just shooting yourself in the foot long term unless short term gains are all you really care about which seems to be the goal of most F2P games to me.
you are in fact correct, if there was then ZOS etc, would have been fairly proactive at advertising the fact. It would be interesting to see just how many there are, and for what platform, or at least a ratio by platform. In all honesty, i don't think the numbers are going to be more in the region of 'thousands' rather than 'hundreds of thousands' but the real test will be when the game goes live and people are able to buy the 'finished' version, that is where the numbers will either climb into the 'millions' or it will remain at best, in the region of hundreds of thousands.
ESO is a niche game, regardless of claims to the contrary, it does not have the same kind of gameplay you find in games like Oblivion or Skyrim, and its not a single player game where you buy once only, it requires continous purchases in order to play, it will be competing, on the consoles at least, with single player/multiplayer games that do not require a subscription, even on the Xb1 it will be competing with the likes of titanfall, does ESO really have much to offer the average console player, i am honestly not sure it does, although some creative advertising might help improve sales even with the average console owner.
Part of the problem for Zenimax, is the hype, while there is a fair amount of it out there, it would be fair to say that neither the positive hype nor the negative 'hype' has any real sway over the other, for Zenimax this will mean improving the games 'reputation' both through advertising and viral marketing, and even then, the whole launch thing will be a huge gamble, and at the moment i am guessing it could easily go either way, success or failure. Only Zenimax know how close to either they really are.
It's not irrelevant, but it does deserve to have it's own category, rather than simply being ignored entirely as some would advocate. It is inherently deceptive to report the Asian players as "subs" when what they have is not in any way comparable to the western subscription. And you can't tell me that Blizzard doesn't have that data, if they wanted to be honest it would be easy for them to distinguish between the two types of player.
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.
1 million is already a big number, and if Zenimax did sell that amount, they would already be shouting it everywhere.
Seriously, given the job they have done so far you think it is reasonable to assume ZOS has a PR team smart enough to brag about large pre-order numbers? One thing we do know is that the only limited edition version of the game (the PC version anyway) appears to be sold out everywhere, and has been for weeks. According to vgchartz.com, across all three platforms there are a quarter million pre-orders as of last week. And that is just physical copies. Going by the anecdotal evidence of forums like this, most of the people who are getting the game are ordering digital.
EDIT: None of which should be taken as me defending the ridiculous premise of this thread.
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.
Not in any way comparable? Seriously? A subscription is just paying for game time, pretty sure they are doing the same thing in Asia. Just because the cost and time duration is in different measurements does not mean its not the same basic thing, paying for access.
Subscription numbers are used to estimate revenue and measure success. Lumping Asian "subs" in with western subs renders the numbers Blizzard releases completely useless.
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.
Completely useless?? Dramatic much? Technically, they are subscribers, that is the definition of "subscribe." Different structure, yes, completely useless? ROFL
They are useless. If a player pays to play 1 hr and that is it, just to try the game, and he is considered a subscriber, that is the definition of useless. OR, the person who pays to play 1 hr a month, is he/she considered 12 subscribers since he/she did it once a month? Unless you know HOW they count - the numbers are just that numbers without meaning.
If a company offering a game with standard pricing tells us they have 1 million US subscribers that tells us they are receiving subscription revenue (depending on how many months at a time people pay for) between 13 and 15 million a month. If a company tells us they have 1 million Asian subscribers, it tells us basically nothing. They could be making a million a month, they could be making a hundred million, the number of subscribers by itself is, in that case, useless. If a company gives us the total subscribers, without differentiating between western and eastern, the number is again, useless.
And remember, this thread is about what ESO can/should expect. It's not being sold in Asia. So the only relevant numbers from any other game are the numbers from countries where ESO will actually be sold. With that in mind, it is highly doubtful that the entire (western) MMO market has ever had a *total* of 10 million active subscriptions, let alone that many in a single game.
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.
umm..i pay 15 bucks a month for a MMO and only play a week or maybe two in a month does that mean they shouldn't count my sub in the total number?
How is that any different than someone paying per hour (infact paying more than me) over the period of a month?
just 1 hour? have you any idea how manic those guys can get over Online gaming, its more likely they spend more than the average western player for game-time on a monthly basis than a western player does for their monthly sub. Last time i checked Blizzard wasn't a charity, if their in the Asian market, its because it's a profitable one, which it wouldn't be if they were only playing for an hour a month
That is certainly not the definition of useless. With this flawed logic, I could argue that western sub numbers are useless because they don't account for possible micro-transactions or cash shop revenue.
VGChartz are actually not the best way to compared in this situation actually (funny, because i was just checking them out after making my comment out of curiosity
). SWTOR had 600k before launch, and GW2 250k. ESO has 150k PC plus 100k on consoles, like you say, but, GW2 sold 2 million copies in 2 weeks, while TOR took 2-3 months.
What i'm simply saying is that if ESO had an enourmous amount of pre-orders, they'd announced it. Yes, their PR team makes some really, really stupid moves, but you're going to tell me a professional team wouldn't announced 2M or more po's? It'd be the biggest pre-orderded mmorpg ever (maybe besides WOW, but i'm not sure).
The reason i use 1M is because it's a sort off "barrier" to break. Don't get me wrong. I fully expect ESO to sell 1M+ eventually, but if they haven't even reched that amount of pre-orders, the OP's simply wrong. Not that that wasn't hard to figure out.
However, i myself don't know how studios get their pre-order data. Can they access the info from other retailers and sites, besides their own whenever they want? If so, they should have the data by now and make the announcement.
That and the fact you have to have PS Plus and Xbox Live to play multiplayer anything with a few exceptions I doubt ESO on console will be an exception so there another cost on top of sub for console gamers
Ya, go figure, people paying a company for game time is a source of revenue for that company. Just because you are having trouble understanding different pay structures for different amounts of time does not somehow mean it is not a subscription. Paying money for game time = subscription, end of story.
And please, don't point out what the thread is about when you were the one wanting to break-down the difference between Asian and Western subs with WoW's model. If you didn't want it discussed, you shouldn't have discussed it......
Your sub is relevant, because we know what it is worth. There is no point in releasing numbers with no context that allows for those numbers to be judged. We know that any given US subscriber provides sub revenue of 13-15 dollars a month. That is a tight enough range for us to be able to use western sub numbers to reach useful conclusions. Pay by the hour players? Releasing just the sub numbers, without any other context, tells us nothing. Releasing only total subscriber numbers, without an east/west breakdown, tells us nothing.
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.