In these development discussion threads complicated scenarios get distilled down and oversimplified missing points and resulting in erroneous conclusions.
You mean like comparing a voxel game that was basically minecraft when it started to a game that doesn't exist yet that is promising things we have yet to see possible in an MMORPG?
No, that would be hyperbole injection as a red herring.
The thesis of your argument starts with a flawed premise that undermines the veracity of discourse you hope to assuage.
The right sized team for the right job at the right time. Sometimes you need a bigger team when the tasks call for it. Sometimes you don't. A large studio isn't more productive. Notice how those 300 people studios don't pump out MMOs 20 times faster than the 14 people teams? Trove is a good example.
In these development discussion threads complicated scenarios get distilled down and oversimplified missing points and resulting in erroneous conclusions.
Sure efficiency matters, I'm just stating what I view as a realistic downside to a small team where it comes to the amount of content they can realistically put out, even efficient large teams can run into problems with that, especially when a sub service is in place. People expect things to come in a steady flow even without that factor. Wouldn't you agree the majority of any team are folks hired to work on designing things like quests, POIs, models etc? As well as MMOs typically stack the deck with such positions?
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Here is my list. This is MY list. I am sure a few of you (wink) will have different opinions. Also, because it's my nature, I will start with the Cons of course.
Cons:
Inexperienced startup including the CEO having zero industry experience and very light resumes on much of the existing team. Yes, one or two people played some significant, behind the scenes roles at SOE but of the 3 he really details: One is a programmer with experience, One (the Lead Developer) has 3 times more experience in customer service than game design and the actual design credits are stuff like "Primary accomplishments include: successfully evangelizing for new narrative techniques and story hooks" and the 3rd is an artist. Fluffery beside, these may be great guys and hidden geniuses in their craft, but not exactly pulled from the starting lineup.
Strange and "interesting" backstory for the CEO who fairly or unfairly has the stigma of Multi-Level-Marketing attached like a weight to his ankle
Very hard to get straight answers about the actual funding for the game. How much cash is ACTUALLY raised and in the bank
Very hard to get straight answers about what exactly is planned to be included as features of the "core"game, what ones are excluded?
Posted timeframe seems like the typical Kickstarter stretch. Currently they have tossed some store assets together which look pretty but are FAR from being a fully fleshed game. Do not see that happening by next year. Also, the stated planned spend ($30M) vs timeline does not matchup. Even doubling his staff it would be a burn rate of $2.2M a year x 2 years = $4.4M. Pretty far from $30. When in doubt follow the math.
Recruitment strategy pays REAL cash when people go and recruit players. This is NOT a pyramid scheme but IMHO it's roots are in the CEO's MLM background. Yes it is different, but really think long and hard about believing anything that someone says when they are monitarily incentivized to get you to click on the game and play.
A vocal core of the community (undetermined size) is really very difficult to deal with in a rational way.
Kickstarter...
Pros:
Seems to hold true to the non- P2W philosphy. These are the least P2W Kickstarter rewards I think I have ever seen. The biggest is just a small headstart (with some items turned off) and they promise non-headstart servers as well.
Sub based model. Yes this is a GOOD thing.
Refund promised for Kickstarter if the game doesn't launch. This is a GOOD thing... just wish they were upfront with what is to be included in launch as heck, you an simply turn it on at any point and say "it launched".
Full PvP. Yes it has flags, but these seem to be the least restrictive I have seen. You can apparently kill anyone in the game but doing so to non-combatants will have a significant negative affect on you. That's right Mr. Bandwagon PvPer who jumped into the 5 on 1 fight to kill me and laughed last week. You may have your "non-combatant flag" on today, but I'm going to hunt your ass down and gank you a few times anyhow. You too Mr. Cocky PvE player!
Neutral:
No box fee. Not a BAD thing, but I feel the box fee discourages a lot of bad bahavior
UE4... looks pretty but are there any MASSIVELY multiplayer games that have really successfully used it with thousands of players?
Here is my list. This is MY list. I am sure a few of you (wink) will have different opinions. Also, because it's my nature, I will start with the Cons of course.
Cons:
Inexperienced startup including the CEO having zero industry experience and very light resumes on much of the existing team. Yes, one or two people played some significant, behind the scenes roles at SOE but of the 3 he really details: One is a programmer with experience, One (the Lead Developer) has 3 times more experience in customer service than game design and the actual design credits are stuff like "Primary accomplishments include: successfully evangelizing for new narrative techniques and story hooks" and the 3rd is an artist. Fluffery beside, these may be great guys and hidden geniuses in their craft, but not exactly pulled from the starting lineup.
Strange and "interesting" backstory for the CEO who fairly or unfairly has the stigma of Multi-Level-Marketing attached like a weight to his ankle
Very hard to get straight answers about the actual funding for the game. How much cash is ACTUALLY raised and in the bank
Very hard to get straight answers about what exactly is planned to be included as features of the "core"game, what ones are excluded?
Posted timeframe seems like the typical Kickstarter stretch. Currently they have tossed some store assets together which look pretty but are FAR from being a fully fleshed game. Do not see that happening by next year. Also, the stated planned spend ($30M) vs timeline does not matchup. Even doubling his staff it would be a burn rate of $2.2M a year x 2 years = $4.4M. Pretty far from $30. When in doubt follow the math.
Recruitment strategy pays REAL cash when people go and recruit players. This is NOT a pyramid scheme but IMHO it's roots are in the CEO's MLM background. Yes it is different, but really think long and hard about believing anything that someone says when they are monitarily incentivized to get you to click on the game and play.
A vocal core of the community (undetermined size) is really very difficult to deal with in a rational way.
Kickstarter...
Pros:
Seems to hold true to the non- P2W philosphy. These are the least P2W Kickstarter rewards I think I have ever seen. The biggest is just a small headstart (with some items turned off) and they promise non-headstart servers as well.
Sub based model. Yes this is a GOOD thing.
Refund promised for Kickstarter if the game doesn't launch. This is a GOOD thing... just wish they were upfront with what is to be included in launch as heck, you an simply turn it on at any point and say "it launched".
Full PvP. Yes it has flags, but these seem to be the least restrictive I have seen. You can apparently kill anyone in the game but doing so to non-combatants will have a significant negative affect on you. That's right Mr. Bandwagon PvPer who jumped into the 5 on 1 fight to kill me and laughed last week. You may have your "non-combatant flag" on today, but I'm going to hunt your ass down and gank you a few times anyhow. You too Mr. Cocky PvE player!
Neutral:
No box fee. Not a BAD thing, but I feel the box fee discourages a lot of bad bahavior
UE4... looks pretty but are there any MASSIVELY multiplayer games that have really successfully used it with thousands of players?
What a waste of my time...
Think of the seconds you could have saved by not responding at all.
Recruitment is huge, that is why experience matters. Will top talent decide to leave good companies to work for Steven Sharif? Or will they be more leftovers from dead studios who are just looking for the next paycheck?
Con (as with all MMO KS projects) we actually know too much about it too far ahead of time. I would rather not even hear about an upcoming MMO until 3 months before open beta at the earliest so I can get hyped and sustain that hype for a reasonable amount of time.
I just don't have the attention span to give much of shit about an MMO 4 years before I can play it
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
MMO's as this, have this pitch to be better than the mainstream MMO's currently available, games that cost dozens of millions to +100m in budget, hundreds of developers through timeframes per norm between 3 to 5 years of development.
If they want to go big, if their pitch is to change the MMO genre, then they need to be compared with the big players in the room instead.
Torval said: Sometimes you need a bigger team when the tasks call for it. Sometimes you don't. A large studio isn't more productive. Notice how those 300 people studios don't pump out MMOs 20 times faster than the 14 people teams? Trove is a good example.
This point is so flawed.
For some reason, the Indie teams that tried to develop one MMO can NEVER reach the game and/or content quality than the ones supported by the big publishers with the money and big studios to produce the game. The quality shows itself sub-par, there's no team of 14 wizard developers that will overcome that, especially not in just 2 years!
One can't expect this small company developing its first game, one MMO, with such a budget is going to pull off something of game and content quality of games like Guild Wars 2, ESO and SWTOR... It ain't going to happen =/
Reminding that they want to be the next-generation MMO, they want to revolutionize the genre, I'm firmly against being Indies trying to pull that off, it's one level of ambition big publishers and studios have much more capability to handle.
Anyway, maybe they'll staff up to 300 when they start selling the starship jpegs to support the 300 team staff needed to create the starship jpegs they're selling. That's a fast track to a high quality release.
They might, SC was exactly this issue, wildly ambitious but without a team scaled to make it possible at the start, it took years of building up their studios and teams of developers to fit the scale of this development project from what originally was taking a big bite at something they couldn't chew. And that's how I see AoC attm.
Honestly why do you care what other people think? What is your goal of sitting here and in a negative person against this game?
You dont see me going to ArcheAge and bitching how the game is P2W every day. No if here is a post with news that Trion wants players back in ArcheAge I go to it read it and say basically it is not going to have a P2P server I am not interested. I leave it at that and I do not sit in the forum harassing people that like that game like you are.
So what is your deal? Do you have to be a complainer? Cant you just post your feelings once and move on like an Adult?
Honestly why do you care what other people think? What is your goal of sitting here and in a negative person against this game?
You dont see me going to ArcheAge and bitching how the game is P2W every day. No if here is a post with news that Trion wants players back in ArcheAge I go to it read it and say basically it is not going to have a P2P server I am not interested. I leave it at that and I do not sit in the forum harassing people that like that game like you are.
So what is your deal? Do you have to be a complainer? Cant you just post your feelings once and move on like an Adult?
First, this isn't my thread. Second, you don't have to read it.
You're taking this game too serious and seeing people questioning the funding and experience to make what they are claiming to create too personally. If you are connected to the development of the project, then I could understand this reaction. But as a backer or fan of the game? Well I just think that's not a very adult thing to do.
There are legitimate questions about this project and plenty of other people not just on this site have raised them and I assure you they have said MUCH worse about the game than I have.
I was actually going to back this myself before I found out all this information. I refuse to back something seeded with MLM funds (yeah I know he says investments to fund this - he made a lot of money with MLM.) It's a question for me of ethics and the character of the person running it.
I also thought this looked promising when I head about the anti-P2W.
Then it becomes apparent that the guy running this was himself a whale and is basically just a fan with no IT management experience. Then add in that the money is coming originally from MLM and alarm bells start going off.
This sounds like a whale with a huge ego + no scruples (MLM) who got tired of paying Koreans and now wants his very own kingdom. He found some leftover devs from a failed studio (SOE) and here we are with a KS even through he claims to have 'friends' who are desperate to invest in him (LOL).
This whole thing screams Pathfinder 2.0. People are imagining a game with the same or better quality than GW2 / AA / BDO when what they will get is a barely playable mess that will take years to complete.
Are people really backing the idea that a small, inexperienced team of people, lead by a man with nothing other than "I'm a rich gamer" credentials, is going to make a groundbreaking MMO? Every time I hear of something like this, I hate Kickstarter more. The MMORPG genre would be better off having a dignified death.
Are people really backing the idea that a small, inexperienced team of people, lead by a man with nothing other than "I'm a rich gamer" credentials, is going to make a groundbreaking MMO? Every time I hear of something like this, I hate Kickstarter more. The MMORPG genre would be better off having a dignified death.
Haven't you ever dreamt of winning the lottery and making your dream MMO? We all have had that dream, god knows I have.
Are people really backing the idea that a small, inexperienced team of people, lead by a man with nothing other than "I'm a rich gamer" credentials, is going to make a groundbreaking MMO? Every time I hear of something like this, I hate Kickstarter more. The MMORPG genre would be better off having a dignified death.
Inexperienced compared to what? There are plenty of games out there with people who have less experience in the industry and on MMOs than this team, including Pantheon. Yet take a look at where Pantheon is today.
Honestly, this is just people projecting a problem onto a project. If you actually took the time to compare with other teams on similar projects I think you'd find that this team is actually more experienced out of the gates than MANY of them.
Nobody is saying a game cannot be created without experience. The problem is inexperience and asking for community money on your very first project in a new and difficult industry.
The risk calculation just doesn't add up for a lot of people who look beyond the base surface level video and feature list. At the very least Intrepid should do what most other new studios do - self fund until the game is playable then release in early access if you need more money to finish it.
Clearly 8300 people have been convinced, so it will be interesting to see if their imaginary dreams measure up to the very real dollars that are going into Steven Sharif's pocket.
Nobody is saying a game cannot be created without experience. The problem is inexperience and asking for community money on your very first project in a new and difficult industry.
The risk calculation just doesn't add up for a lot of people who look beyond the base surface level video and feature list. At the very least Intrepid should do what most other new studios do - self fund until the game is playable then release in early access if you need more money to finish it.
Clearly 8300 people have been convinced, so it will be interesting to see if their imaginary dreams measure up to the very real dollars that are going into Steven Sharif's pocket.
Yeah, I know that crowdfunding isn't for everyone. It's mostly for those who can somehow find value in backing something early over waiting until later on.
I was just making the point that there are plenty of teams, Pantheon being one, which do not have a team AS experienced with MMOs as this team is. As far as MMOs go, they actually have a team with relatively good experience in developing MMOs, compared to other crowdfunded MMOs that we've seen.
All I'm saying is that people see to hang their hat solely on the experience of Steven Sharif, but he doesn't require that technical know-how. Also, if these forums were an indicator of anything, it's that an MMO fan would be much better at designing an MMO, lol.
I wish this one luck and want it to do good so I will want to play it.
The AoC team do seem to be night and day from the Sota team though. AoC team seems to have it all together with some talent and a game already built so I salute them on that before asking for money from a Kickstarter. They got my vote of confidence from that already.
I like that AoC have a subscription and I don't
mind their microtransaction shop as long as it isn't coin based like
Shroud is where you can basically buy coto's and items in their store
then resell it in the game for game gold. As long as AoC is just armor
skins and pets and mounts that can't be traded in game so it's pay to win, I am all for it.
The
refund if not launched is something that could be abused. Look at Shroud
of the Avatar, they changed thier way on how alpha/beta/launch/early
access is so much you'll never know when it's truly released, even
though it was really launched when the game became persistent and no more wipes in July
2016. It's a broken, clunky mess of a game and they can't admit it so
they keep milking the remaining backers left. Course the Sota team didn't offer a refund cause they aren't making a quality game that could stand that test. They'd like to keep their game in early access forever so they never have to say it's released and
face the music on Sota being a flop already, it's a sinking ship
riddled with holes that will sink completely soon enough though.
Hopefully the AoC team have a bit more integrity and are more
trustworthy to stick to their word on the real definition of launched than the Sota team.
Seems to hold true to
the non- P2W philosphy. These are the least P2W Kickstarter rewards I
think I have ever seen. The biggest is just a small headstart (with
some items turned off) and they promise non-headstart servers as well.
Sub based model. Yes this is a GOOD thing.
Refund
promised for Kickstarter if the game doesn't launch. This is a GOOD
thing... just wish they were upfront with what is to be included in
launch as heck, you an simply turn it on at any point and say "it
launched".
Neutral:
No box fee. Not a BAD thing, but I feel the box fee discourages a lot of bad bahavior
UE4...
looks pretty but are there any MASSIVELY multiplayer games that have
really successfully used it with thousands of players?
I'm wondering, how many successfully launched crowdfunded MMO's have there been in the industry to date? What's the track record?
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
I'm wondering, how many successfully launched crowdfunded MMO's have there been in the industry to date? What's the track record?
Game success is a moving target here depending on who defines it. Is just launching a success? Is keeping the doors open for a year success? Is surpassing non-indie or non-crowdfunded revenue post launch the measure?
How many crowdfunded mmos have launched? Are they a crowdfunded project if they didn't use KS, IndieGoGo, Fig, etc and just sold those prerelease packages on their site.
ARK is pretty successful by most accounts but it's still in EA. It's made a ton of money. People can play a version of it. It runs like ass and has bugs up the wazoo, so does that factor in? What happens when the mmo ends up more like a persistent shared world experience. Is that a failure even if the core fans like it?
You ask a good question that is hard to even try and answer.
No damn agree button....so I agree.
Not sure we'll ever really know when any of these games are actually released, or what that term even should mean these days.
Time to start a MMO International Standards Association. (TM)
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Are people really backing the idea that a small, inexperienced team of people, lead by a man with nothing other than "I'm a rich gamer" credentials, is going to make a groundbreaking MMO? Every time I hear of something like this, I hate Kickstarter more. The MMORPG genre would be better off having a dignified death.
You're entitled to feel how you want about it, that said, one person's experience really isn't something I'd be concerned with, more so how that person operates. IF he values the input of those on the team that do have experience, his experience isn't much of an issue at all. If he's a tyrannical psycho on a power trip that's something else entirely.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Depends on the reception of the whole cosmetic model they're implementing. It sounds like it's quite deep and it could be implemented in such a way that your armor doesn't actually affect your appearance, but your cosmetics do, in which case it could end up being more of a con.
This is more business-wise. The sub will drive away a slice of the people who would be interested in play, and that is very well proven by many of the titles that came with Subs that failed because of small player pops.
We've seen this way too often, from ESO to SWTOR, Wildstar, Rift, Aion, and so forth.
With that said, I have great doubts Ashes of Creation would manage to be the exception.
All the games you mentioned did not fail because they had subs, they failed because of issues they had at the time of release.
ESO, was not a good game at release, there were major issues with gameplay such as instancing problems where you couldn't group with friends and the game failed to appeal to both MMO players and ES series fans. It was basically a mediocre MMO with a vague elder scrolls feel.
SWTOR, did very well at release but the biggest issue there was after you finished the main storyline the game got old fast. It was a themepark with no decent endgame.
Wildstar was another game that could have done very well but they targeted an audience that was so small that it couldn't sustain itself. They made a game for a playerbase that no longer exists and didn't have anything else to offer. Not to mention that the art style was a huge gamble.
Rift, did really well for a few years after release and is still going today. The biggest issue with rift was Trion. Trion is a company that can take any amazing game and ruin it with their F2P, P2W models. Archeage is arguably the best MMO out there but they ruined that because they made everything in the game P2W.
I could keep going here but my point is that the two largest MMOs right now FFXIV and WoW are both sub models and they do well. Mainly because they are subs done right as there are no P2W items in the cash shops.
In my opinion the big pro here is that they are letting us being part of the development by being very transparent about what they are doing. Everything else is speculation.
Comments
The thesis of your argument starts with a flawed premise that undermines the veracity of discourse you hope to assuage.
Sure efficiency matters, I'm just stating what I view as a realistic downside to a small team where it comes to the amount of content they can realistically put out, even efficient large teams can run into problems with that, especially when a sub service is in place. People expect things to come in a steady flow even without that factor. Wouldn't you agree the majority of any team are folks hired to work on designing things like quests, POIs, models etc? As well as MMOs typically stack the deck with such positions?
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
What a waste of my time...
Think of the seconds you could have saved by not responding at all.
I just don't have the attention span to give much of shit about an MMO 4 years before I can play it
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
MMO's as this, have this pitch to be better than the mainstream MMO's currently available, games that cost dozens of millions to +100m in budget, hundreds of developers through timeframes per norm between 3 to 5 years of development.
If they want to go big, if their pitch is to change the MMO genre, then they need to be compared with the big players in the room instead.
For some reason, the Indie teams that tried to develop one MMO can NEVER reach the game and/or content quality than the ones supported by the big publishers with the money and big studios to produce the game. The quality shows itself sub-par, there's no team of 14 wizard developers that will overcome that, especially not in just 2 years!
One can't expect this small company developing its first game, one MMO, with such a budget is going to pull off something of game and content quality of games like Guild Wars 2, ESO and SWTOR... It ain't going to happen =/
Reminding that they want to be the next-generation MMO, they want to revolutionize the genre, I'm firmly against being Indies trying to pull that off, it's one level of ambition big publishers and studios have much more capability to handle.
Honestly why do you care what other people think? What is your goal of sitting here and in a negative person against this game?
You dont see me going to ArcheAge and bitching how the game is P2W every day. No if here is a post with news that Trion wants players back in ArcheAge I go to it read it and say basically it is not going to have a P2P server I am not interested. I leave it at that and I do not sit in the forum harassing people that like that game like you are.
So what is your deal? Do you have to be a complainer? Cant you just post your feelings once and move on like an Adult?
First, this isn't my thread.
Second, you don't have to read it.
You're taking this game too serious and seeing people questioning the funding and experience to make what they are claiming to create too personally. If you are connected to the development of the project, then I could understand this reaction. But as a backer or fan of the game? Well I just think that's not a very adult thing to do.
There are legitimate questions about this project and plenty of other people not just on this site have raised them and I assure you they have said MUCH worse about the game than I have.
I was actually going to back this myself before I found out all this information. I refuse to back something seeded with MLM funds (yeah I know he says investments to fund this - he made a lot of money with MLM.)
It's a question for me of ethics and the character of the person running it.
Then it becomes apparent that the guy running this was himself a whale and is basically just a fan with no IT management experience. Then add in that the money is coming originally from MLM and alarm bells start going off.
This sounds like a whale with a huge ego + no scruples (MLM) who got tired of paying Koreans and now wants his very own kingdom. He found some leftover devs from a failed studio (SOE) and here we are with a KS even through he claims to have 'friends' who are desperate to invest in him (LOL).
This whole thing screams Pathfinder 2.0. People are imagining a game with the same or better quality than GW2 / AA / BDO when what they will get is a barely playable mess that will take years to complete.
Haven't you ever dreamt of winning the lottery and making your dream MMO?
We all have had that dream, god knows I have.
Inexperienced compared to what? There are plenty of games out there with people who have less experience in the industry and on MMOs than this team, including Pantheon. Yet take a look at where Pantheon is today.
Honestly, this is just people projecting a problem onto a project. If you actually took the time to compare with other teams on similar projects I think you'd find that this team is actually more experienced out of the gates than MANY of them.
Crazkanuk
----------------
Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
----------------
The risk calculation just doesn't add up for a lot of people who look beyond the base surface level video and feature list. At the very least Intrepid should do what most other new studios do - self fund until the game is playable then release in early access if you need more money to finish it.
Clearly 8300 people have been convinced, so it will be interesting to see if their imaginary dreams measure up to the very real dollars that are going into Steven Sharif's pocket.
Yeah, I know that crowdfunding isn't for everyone. It's mostly for those who can somehow find value in backing something early over waiting until later on.
I was just making the point that there are plenty of teams, Pantheon being one, which do not have a team AS experienced with MMOs as this team is. As far as MMOs go, they actually have a team with relatively good experience in developing MMOs, compared to other crowdfunded MMOs that we've seen.
All I'm saying is that people see to hang their hat solely on the experience of Steven Sharif, but he doesn't require that technical know-how. Also, if these forums were an indicator of anything, it's that an MMO fan would be much better at designing an MMO, lol.
Crazkanuk
----------------
Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
----------------
The AoC team do seem to be night and day from the Sota team though. AoC team seems to have it all together with some talent and a game already built so I salute them on that before asking for money from a Kickstarter. They got my vote of confidence from that already.
I like that AoC have a subscription and I don't mind their microtransaction shop as long as it isn't coin based like Shroud is where you can basically buy coto's and items in their store then resell it in the game for game gold. As long as AoC is just armor skins and pets and mounts that can't be traded in game so it's pay to win, I am all for it.
The refund if not launched is something that could be abused. Look at Shroud of the Avatar, they changed thier way on how alpha/beta/launch/early access is so much you'll never know when it's truly released, even though it was really launched when the game became persistent and no more wipes in July 2016. It's a broken, clunky mess of a game and they can't admit it so they keep milking the remaining backers left. Course the Sota team didn't offer a refund cause they aren't making a quality game that could stand that test. They'd like to keep their game in early access forever so they never have to say it's released and face the music on Sota being a flop already, it's a sinking ship riddled with holes that will sink completely soon enough though.
Hopefully the AoC team have a bit more integrity and are more trustworthy to stick to their word on the real definition of launched than the Sota team.
Pros:
Neutral:
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Not sure we'll ever really know when any of these games are actually released, or what that term even should mean these days.
Time to start a MMO International Standards Association. (TM)
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
All the games you mentioned did not fail because they had subs, they failed because of issues they had at the time of release.
ESO, was not a good game at release, there were major issues with gameplay such as instancing problems where you couldn't group with friends and the game failed to appeal to both MMO players and ES series fans. It was basically a mediocre MMO with a vague elder scrolls feel.
SWTOR, did very well at release but the biggest issue there was after you finished the main storyline the game got old fast. It was a themepark with no decent endgame.
Wildstar was another game that could have done very well but they targeted an audience that was so small that it couldn't sustain itself. They made a game for a playerbase that no longer exists and didn't have anything else to offer. Not to mention that the art style was a huge gamble.
Rift, did really well for a few years after release and is still going today. The biggest issue with rift was Trion. Trion is a company that can take any amazing game and ruin it with their F2P, P2W models. Archeage is arguably the best MMO out there but they ruined that because they made everything in the game P2W.
I could keep going here but my point is that the two largest MMOs right now FFXIV and WoW are both sub models and they do well. Mainly because they are subs done right as there are no P2W items in the cash shops.
Ashes of Creation: https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Archangelus/