DDuke wrote: »

eisberg wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

eisberg wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

eisberg wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

eisberg wrote: »

What keeps you playing ESO for 4 hours/day?

Nothing really

One of the good sides of them holding off content to release as DLC later, instead of actually caring about their subscribers.

eisberg wrote: »

As for the store: To buy Bank tabs (11 tabs max), Bag slots (3 bag slots max), and max out crafting material storage (5 max -each upgrade adds 250 more for each crafting material). Would cost you $150 and 1 character, then add $15 for each additional character you might have.
It wouldn't make much sense to buy inventory space all at once, makes more sense to do it as needed. I play about 15 hours per week since launch and collect material like a mad man, I just barely got to the point that I needed to buy the crafting material upgrade to 500 of each material.

So it'd cost you 150$ if you were a more active player. There you have it. Ten months worth of subscription... for bank space/storage? Such a wonderful model this B2P.

eisberg wrote: »

Every character gets 2 active crafting profession. Now with in the game, you can deactivate profession and activate another one for a small copper or silver fee depending on crafting level, and then when you want to go back to the other one again all your leveling in that crafting is still there. So what the additional Crafting profession item does in the store is make it so you do not have to pay that small fee, and you get your professions active at once instead of switching. This is purely a convenience item, since every character can have every crafting profession maxed out and switch to them without it.

I think you're missing the point in that. The only reason they exist, is because artificial inconveniences are created to lessen your gameplay experience, making you want to use that Cash Shop.

And that is an indirect $$$->in game gold conversion by the way, since those things have value (and you'd want to buy them).


Regardless, you'll just come up with another set of excuses for how "awesome" GW2 is, while most people hate it.

Lets take my brother for instance, be paid that $150 at the beginning, 29 months later he hasn't spent a dime since then. This means over 29 months, he has averaged $5.17 a month, compare that to $435 if subscription game. Even the most hardcore player will not need to spend that $150 all at once. A co-worker of mine plays 30-40 hours per week, he hasn't even maxed out inventory space yet, he stated he bought $100 for inventory so far since the game launched, and another $100 on costumes (so $6.89 average per month spent)
Guild Wars 2 system wins there in saving money

I haven't played an MMO where 1 character can learn and level all the crafting professions in the game and switch between them without losing progression in them. You had to create different characters to do the same thing, you had to log in and out, wait for loading times ect in order to have all the crafting professions. So without that additional crafting profession they already made it more convenient and a better play experience. (Now I know ESO you can possibly have all crafting, but you are sacrificing your power in combat to do that)

I love crafting in games, my character has all the crafting professions maxed out, I still haven't bought additional crafting item, because paying 50 silver is an extremely small fee to switch between them. I average about 4 gold per week switching between them, but I make about 25 gold per week playing the game in the 15 hours I play, and that is low amount to earn, most people I talk to make about 3+ gold per hour.

The point is, when done correctly, a B2P system with a good store will actually save you money over a subscription fee. Paying $150 for inventory space and playing the game for more than 10 months will already start to save you money compared to a subscription MMO. Everything else in the store is pure fluff and is not needed.

As I said, it all depends on what you expect from a MMO.

If you don't need big meaty content updates, if you are not a completionist and if you don't care about things like competitivity, B2P MMO might be the best choice for you.

However, if you are someone who spends a lot more time in game, completes every quest, dungeon & raid & tries to be in the very top when it comes to PvE/PvP, then B2P MMO (none of the other ones in market) is never an option, simply because it doesn't provide enough, and it actually financially punishes you for being more dedicated to the game.

And btw, you can be a master crafter in all ESO professions, without sacrificing an inch of your combat prowess. There's enough skill points to unlock pretty much everything & then some. Just thought you should know.

I have yet seen an subscription MMO that gave more content for the vast majority of its players (from casual, to people with no life) then Guild Wars 2, not even WoW (2005-2006, not sure about now).

-can't read, laughing too much-

Thanks for the laugh

You truly are something.

Yeah, I am sure you did when you realized I was right, which is why you had nothing to refute it. Like i said, content for the vast majority. I don't consider 6 hours of content, that can be played 1 time per week, and then repeated for months as content for the vast majority, since the vast majority do not raid.

and I don't consider one 3-hour long quest every 2 weeks "content for majority"

6 hours once a week (assuming you're not doing progression raids) already is more than GW2 has to offer, and you're omitting entirely the group dungeons and the fact that there are multiple raids in games like WoW, making this pretty much a 2-3 hours worth of content doing daily.
If you enjoy PvP also, it's even more.


Just how many MMOs have you played? To praise GW2 updates, one has to be either a huge fanboy, or just ignorant.

I don't know what WoW is like now, which is why I always stated (2005-2006), and during that time there was nearly nothing for the vast majority, just more 6 hour raid content released what seemed like every 3 months, when the vast majority of the players didn't even raid.

And 6 hours of new content every 3 months or so is somehow more than 3 hours of content (actually more if you take into consideration everything else that comes with that living story segment) every 2 weeks? Strange math you have there. But really, for how much money they make, they should be making new content on the level of Guild Wars 2 every 2 weeks for several months per year, instead of the dismal crud they pulled in 2005-2006.

But anyways, I already stated that Guild Wars 2 is not a raiding game, so if you are a raider Guild Wars 2 is not the game for you, even if it had a subscription and no GEM store.

From WoW, the MMOs I have played with a subscription:
1- WoW
2- Warhammer Online
3- Age of Conan
4- Rift
5- Final Fantasy 14
6- Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic
7- Tera Online
8- Lord of the Rings Online
9- Aion
10- Tabula Rasa

None of these games gave the level of frequent content updates as Guild Wars 2, they were lower. Also to note, 2 of them are shut down, 2 are still subscription base, the rest are Free to Play now. I didn't include ESO since I bought this game when I found out about the Buy 2 Play news, and I forgot to read carefully the date it was going Buy 2 Play, not subscribing when my 30 days run out.

Yasha wrote: »

Samadhi wrote: »

eisberg wrote: »

...
I have yet seen an subscription MMO that gave more content for the vast majority of its players (from casual, to people with no life) then Guild Wars 2, not even WoW (2005-2006, not sure about now).
...

It is unfortunate that GW2 is able to do this, but that ESO will not be able to.
The devs have already stated that we will see less frequent content updates under the b2p schedule, and among those updates are things that we had previously been promised for free which were held back in order to charge extra for them.

GW2 may have more content than WoW; WoW may have more content than GW2.
Regardless of how the two compare, the ESO devs have stated that ESO after b2p will have less frequent content updates than ESO had as a sub game.

Suppose it is possible that ESO may increase in update frequency if they find a method of making the cash shop lucrative enough to cover the costs though.

You have to pay extra for the updates in WoW (expansions) on top of your sub, its a complete rip off.

We don't know how ESO will fare in terms of updates yet, but it seems to be going for regular expansions (dlc) which is different from how GW2 is set up.

As for ESO's development to date, has a lot really been added? Seems to me the focus thus far has been on getting everything working properly and polishing some systems (combat etc), and that the biggest "content" type update will be 1.6 and thereafter.

WoW is a complete rip off, but it has also been very successful at maintaining sub numbers to their game regardless of how distasteful the game may seem to me as a non-player.

All we know about Tamriel Unlimited content is that devs have stated we will be receiving it less frequently than we are now.
Whether or not there has been "a lot" or "a little" added to ESO so far does not change that we will be receiving less than before.

eisberg wrote: »

Samadhi wrote: »

Yasha wrote: »

Samadhi wrote: »

eisberg wrote: »

...
I have yet seen an subscription MMO that gave more content for the vast majority of its players (from casual, to people with no life) then Guild Wars 2, not even WoW (2005-2006, not sure about now).
...

It is unfortunate that GW2 is able to do this, but that ESO will not be able to.
The devs have already stated that we will see less frequent content updates under the b2p schedule, and among those updates are things that we had previously been promised for free which were held back in order to charge extra for them.

GW2 may have more content than WoW; WoW may have more content than GW2.
Regardless of how the two compare, the ESO devs have stated that ESO after b2p will have less frequent content updates than ESO had as a sub game.

Suppose it is possible that ESO may increase in update frequency if they find a method of making the cash shop lucrative enough to cover the costs though.

You have to pay extra for the updates in WoW (expansions) on top of your sub, its a complete rip off.

We don't know how ESO will fare in terms of updates yet, but it seems to be going for regular expansions (dlc) which is different from how GW2 is set up.

As for ESO's development to date, has a lot really been added? Seems to me the focus thus far has been on getting everything working properly and polishing some systems (combat etc), and that the biggest "content" type update will be 1.6 and thereafter.

WoW is a complete rip off, but it has also been very successful at maintaining sub numbers to their game regardless of how distasteful the game may seem to me as a non-player.

All we know about Tamriel Unlimited content is that devs have stated we will be receiving it less frequently than we are now.
Whether or not there has been "a lot" or "a little" added to ESO so far does not change that we will be receiving less than before.

I thought the Dev stated there were going to be less frequent game system updates, and they were going to concentrate on content updates once they are done with the Tamriel Unlimited and console role out.

Focus on content updates, or focus on cash shop content once the shop rolls out when console goes live?
Will have to go back to the reddit.

*Edit* found it:

ZOS_MattF:
...
1) We are not going to keep up our 2014 pace of updates in 2015 - and our future update pace will focus more on new adventures and game experiences than system changes. ...

2) yes, 1.6 is going to be the last major update before console launch, for obvious reasons. ... We're committed to having content hit all the platforms at roughly the same time, so it will necessarily slow things down a bit.
...

So more focus on game content rather than game systems, but introducing content less frequently.
This makes sense, considering they held back content for a year and worked on game systems -- perhaps they were planning to go f2p from the start and just wanted to work out the kinks in the system before charging people extra for real content.
On the other hand though, they seem to be leaning towards cutting out the PvP aspect of the Justice System which was the content that was most appealing to me...so even in terms of previously announced content they appear to be planning to cut back on production.

Only time will tell, my sub will remain active until the cash shop transitions to p2w anyway.

DDuke wrote: »

If you want a good example, you need to look no further than vanilla WoW.

Updates every 2-3 months that brought hundreds of hours of gameplay for every type of player, not 3-hour long quests.

This is what real updates look like, if you need examples:
http://www.wowwiki.com/Patch_1.5.0
http://www.wowwiki.com/Patch_1.6.0

Seriously, I have no idea how you can defend GW2's update schedule. There is not one gamer worth his salt who'd cite GW2 as a good example, unless you're one of those folks who play 2 hours a week (enough to do that one "content update" you get).

They change some bushes around & add a quest, calling it an update while ripping off customers in the Cash Shop, ridiculous.

Did you not see my long post breaking down how Vanilla WoW slowed down after the initial few months of releasing content that was supposed to be in launch?

They went to 6 months between content updates before TBC.

Gidorick wrote: »

and compare ESOs character creation to Black Desert:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TP4L1vHfpk

These two games don't seem to be separated by 1...2 years. They are separated by 5 or 6 (in terms of technology).

Black Desert's character creation looks like you're designing a model for a 3D anime prono.

Hilarious DDuke, it seems you completely missed my post where I showed that most of the content in the first 6 months of WoW's life was not "new" it was stuff intended for launch that was not ready yet. You'd have known that if you were in WoW's beta.

Once they got to 1.6, which was 8 months after their launch, that was the first bit of actual post launch content. Then ZG 2 months after that... after that.. it took 4 months for AQ, then 6 months after AQ for Naxx, then 6 months after Naxx for TBC. The content updates slowed down a LOT.

The "World PVP" "update" and Tier 0.5 "update" were nothing. It wasn't content really.

Arato wrote: »

Samadhi wrote: »

eisberg wrote: »

...
I have yet seen an subscription MMO that gave more content for the vast majority of its players (from casual, to people with no life) then Guild Wars 2, not even WoW (2005-2006, not sure about now).
...

It is unfortunate that GW2 is able to do this, but that ESO will not be able to.
The devs have already stated that we will see less frequent content updates under the b2p schedule, and among those updates are things that we had previously been promised for free which were held back in order to charge extra for them.

GW2 may have more content than WoW; WoW may have more content than GW2.
Regardless of how the two compare, the ESO devs have stated that ESO after b2p will have less frequent content updates than ESO had as a sub game.

Suppose it is possible that ESO may increase in update frequency if they find a method of making the cash shop lucrative enough to cover the costs though.

You didn't pay attention to the stream very well.

They said that FEATURE AND BALANCE updates will be less frequent. They did not say CONTENT updates will be less frequent. Basically after they roll out the champion system and justice system, the other major system they want to push is spellcrafting. After that? The core gameplay they feel will be where they want it, so they won't want to constantly rebalance things unless they find that things are severely imbalanced in some way.

They can then release DLC content packs fairly often because they can devote their time to making new zones, new dungeons, new trials, rather than tweaking the balance of classes and progression system overhauls.

Yes, it appears that at first glance my reading of Matt's statements was partially incorrect; though they are planning to slow down content updates anyway, due to the console development, they are also planning to focus less on game systems in favour of content development.

To repeat my statement of correcting myself in an earlier comment:

ZOS_MattF:
...
1) We are not going to keep up our 2014 pace of updates in 2015 - and our future update pace will focus more on new adventures and game experiences than system changes. ...

2) yes, 1.6 is going to be the last major update before console launch, for obvious reasons. ... We're committed to having content hit all the platforms at roughly the same time, so it will necessarily slow things down a bit.
...

So more focus on game content rather than game systems, but introducing content less frequently.
This makes sense, considering they held back content for a year and worked on game systems -- perhaps they were planning to go f2p from the start and just wanted to work out the kinks in the system before charging people extra for real content.
On the other hand though, they seem to be leaning towards cutting out the PvP aspect of the Justice System which was the content that was most appealing to me from the Quakecon announcements...so even in terms of previously announced content they appear to be planning to cut back on production.

Only time will tell, my sub will remain active until the cash shop transitions to p2w anyway.

It is unfortunate that they have stated that content updates will be slowing down due to console development though.

eisberg wrote: »

ESO was already in competition to all other MMOs (with or without subscriptions) The subscription model is dying, the subscription model is in competition to the B2P/F2P model. To put it short, they were not getting the expected income based in part because of the B2P/F2P competition.

This change will most likely make them more money than the subscription model is doing for them.

DeLindsay wrote: »

ALL MMO's will be B2P/F2P + P2P option or some mix thereof probably within 2 years. It simply makes game companies FAR more money. Sorry to disappoint all the P2P fanbois but Micro transactions and DLC is here to stay and will grow considerably over the coming years.

Decimus_Rex wrote: »

I will save you much time and anguish wondering how this will go

ESO did this because they lost revenue and were forced to do so

Wow can you guys be any more wrong.

F2P and B2P are exactly the same thing, except you pay the right to acces the shop. It forces the devs to adapt the game to sustain the business model, and to do so, they need to break it to sell ways of fixing it. And yes, creating content only to release as DLC is part of breaking the game. You either pay or can't play with those that did.
Also, they are NOT making more revenue and the players are losing a game to the cash shop fever.

The subscription model is just fine. It's the best medium to long term revenue option for the devs and the only one that shelters the game from the damages of a cash shop.

The trend you are witnessing isn't because the subscription model doesn't work, it's because publishers are not interested in the long term anymore.
They all use the same underhand strategy:
- bank on early adopters with colector editions ans sub for a year
- switch to b2p to bank on those willing to pay $60 to try a game(optional)
- switch to f2p in order to bank on those willing to pay a couple stuff but not a box
- change the game to p2w to compensate for the loss of players

All games follow this pattern because it provides a faster ROI to investors which can then move on to investing into another cash grab.
Smarter companies keep the subscription model, work on their games and improve on them non stop to create a cash cow. Examples are early WoW, Eve Online, FFXIV, Lineage 1, Ultima Online, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_cow

Lineage 1 being an interesting example as it is also published by NCSoft, it is a 16 years old game that to this day produces far more revenue than GW2. And at the same time GW2 has been losing revenue yearly by an average of 20-30%.
This is not the sign of an healthy game.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-02-14-guild-wars-2-in-steep-decline-in-weak-q4-for-ncsoft

For comparison, Eve Online has been increasing its subscriber base yearly for over a decade now (700K subscribers) and has the revenue to show it.

Another B2P example is TSW. We don't have specifics for individual games, but Funcom has been also losing revenue continuously and barely pulls in $1.43M revenue a month. That's barely what a subscription MMO with 95k subscribers pulls in revenue. They do have positive cash flow though, so good for them.
http://gamepolitics.com/2014/03/05/funcom-q4-revenues-down-thanks-poor-secret-world-performance

For a comparison, Ultima Online in 2008, after 10 years of being released, had 100k subscribers. More revenue than AoC, TSW and AO combined.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Online

Examples are everywhere, SOE has layoffs and is doing fairly badly, yet they focus only on f2p games.
DCUO which is their best game revenue wise thanks to being on ps3+ps4 makes ridiculously low revenue for its advertised "18M registered users". (a useless marketing number anyway)
We don't have specific numbers, but even Smedly says that Warframe does better than them. And Warframe does only 9M per months, the equivalent of 600k subscribers.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-10-16-digital-extremes-sells-61-per-cent-of-shares-for-usd73-million

For reference, and numbers to take with a grain of salt, ESO may have sold 1.2M copies on PC and had allegedly 772k subscribers last July.
It's probably much lower now, perhaps 300K, 400k at best, but that would still be $54M-$72M per year without counting box sales nor the increase of the console market.

If Funcom and their 288 employees can have positive cashflow with the equivalent 95k subscribers, so can ESO with its 250 employee.
If Eve Online and other games can continually improve and acquire more players continualy for years, even decades, so can ESO. It managed to do it up till now.
Heck, Eve is a freaking hardcore spaceship game with embeded excel simulator, and it has 700k players. ESO is a great themepark with sandboxish sprinkles, a fantasy game set in the TES universe, fairly good combat and will be one of the first to get a launch on consoles.
I have no doubt it can breach the 1M subscribers, but it just threw that potential away with this b2p/f2p switch.

In conclusion:
- Susbcription model is the king and never was at risk
- B2P doesn't work, just like f2p
- The switch was not motivated by survival
- The switch is a shortsighted cash grab that will end poorly

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO wrote: »

eisberg wrote: »

ESO was already in competition to all other MMOs (with or without subscriptions) The subscription model is dying, the subscription model is in competition to the B2P/F2P model. To put it short, they were not getting the expected income based in part because of the B2P/F2P competition.

This change will most likely make them more money than the subscription model is doing for them.

DeLindsay wrote: »

ALL MMO's will be B2P/F2P + P2P option or some mix thereof probably within 2 years. It simply makes game companies FAR more money. Sorry to disappoint all the P2P fanbois but Micro transactions and DLC is here to stay and will grow considerably over the coming years.

Decimus_Rex wrote: »

I will save you much time and anguish wondering how this will go

ESO did this because they lost revenue and were forced to do so

Wow can you guys be any more wrong.

F2P and B2P are exactly the same thing, except you pay the right to acces the shop. It forces the devs to adapt the game to sustain the business model, and to do so, they need to break it to sell ways of fixing it. And yes, creating content only to release as DLC is part of breaking the game. You either pay or can't play with those that did.
Also, they are NOT making more revenue and the players are losing a game to the cash shop fever.

The subscription model is just fine. It's the best medium to long term revenue option for the devs and the only one that shelters the game from the damages of a cash shop.

The trend you are witnessing isn't because the subscription model doesn't work, it's because publishers are not interested in the long term anymore.
They all use the same underhand strategy:
- bank on early adopters with colector editions ans sub for a year
- switch to b2p to bank on those willing to pay $60 to try a game(optional)
- switch to f2p in order to bank on those willing to pay a couple stuff but not a box
- change the game to p2w to compensate for the loss of players

All games follow this pattern because it provides a faster ROI to investors which can then move on to investing into another cash grab.
Smarter companies keep the subscription model, work on their games and improve on them non stop to create a cash cow. Examples are early WoW, Eve Online, FFXIV, Lineage 1, Ultima Online, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_cow

Lineage 1 being an interesting example as it is also published by NCSoft, it is a 16 years old game that to this day produces far more revenue than GW2. And at the same time GW2 has been losing revenue yearly by an average of 20-30%.
This is not the sign of an healthy game.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-02-14-guild-wars-2-in-steep-decline-in-weak-q4-for-ncsoft

For comparison, Eve Online has been increasing its subscriber base yearly for over a decade now (700K subscribers) and has the revenue to show it.

Another B2P example is TSW. We don't have specifics for individual games, but Funcom has been also losing revenue continuously and barely pulls in $1.43M revenue a month. That's barely what a subscription MMO with 95k subscribers pulls in revenue. They do have positive cash flow though, so good for them.
http://gamepolitics.com/2014/03/05/funcom-q4-revenues-down-thanks-poor-secret-world-performance

For a comparison, Ultima Online in 2008, after 10 years of being released, had 100k subscribers. More revenue than AoC, TSW and AO combined.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Online

Examples are everywhere, SOE has layoffs and is doing fairly badly, yet they focus only on f2p games.
DCUO which is their best game revenue wise thanks to being on ps3+ps4 makes ridiculously low revenue for its advertised "18M registered users". (a useless marketing number anyway)
We don't have specific numbers, but even Smedly says that Warframe does better than them. And Warframe does only 9M per months, the equivalent of 600k subscribers.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-10-16-digital-extremes-sells-61-per-cent-of-shares-for-usd73-million

For reference, and numbers to take with a grain of salt, ESO may have sold 1.2M copies on PC and had allegedly 772k subscribers last July.
It's probably much lower now, perhaps 300K, 400k at best, but that would still be $54M-$72M per year without counting box sales nor the increase of the console market.

If Funcom and their 288 employees can have positive cashflow with the equivalent 95k subscribers, so can ESO with its 250 employee.
If Eve Online and other games can continually improve and acquire more players continualy for years, even decades, so can ESO. It managed to do it up till now.
Heck, Eve is a freaking hardcore spaceship game with embeded excel simulator, and it has 700k players. ESO is a great themepark with sandboxish sprinkles, a fantasy game set in the TES universe, fairly good combat and will be one of the first to get a launch on consoles.
I have no doubt it can breach the 1M subscribers, but it just threw that potential away with this b2p/f2p switch.

In conclusion:
- Susbcription model is the king and never was at risk
- B2P doesn't work, just like f2p
- The switch was not motivated by survival
- The switch is a shortsighted cash grab that will end poorly

Yes, Guild Wars 2 made less money after the initial sales of the game of selling 2 or 3 million in the first months. So that makes sense. it is still very much a healthy game, and they announced the first expansion. Plus they have been making content since the game launched and giving it for free. If it wasn't a healthy game, i doubt NC Soft would allow them to sink so much money into the game like they do. Also, the revenue for Guild Wars 2 China is hidden under royalties, but reports state they have 3+ Million players there.

Also they did nothing in Guild Wars 2 to "break it", to get more sales.

Where are you getting your numbers for Eve Online? The last number I can find stated 500,000 in 2013, with the next news in 2014 stating they have been declining.

I highly doubt Elder Scrolls could have ever breached the 1M subscriber mark, it is very rare for MMOs released after WoW to actually increase in subcribers, they start off strong and then dwindle down from there.

Subscription is no longer king, it has been dying for years now, even professionals with in the gaming industry have been stating this for years now.
http://www.superdataresearch.com/market-data/mmo-market/
Shown here that Pay to Play is extremely lower than that of Free to Play model in revenue. Plus we have evidence of MMO after MMO after MMO going from Pay to Play to Free to Play. It is the consumer preference that has changed. F2P/B2P does work, and the numbers are there to prove it. The switch is more then likely motivated by survival, having some profit is not always enough. If a company feels that the money invested in one project can be better spent somewhere else for a higher return, they'll close down the lower profit project to do that. For all we know, despite making some profit, parent company Zenimax was willing to shut down the whole game and this may be the last ditch effort to not let that happen. This game didn't get all that great of reviews, the chances of it getting enough subscribers was probably next to nil.

Maybe if this game wasn't own by a large corporation that is also owned by a large corporation, and instead owned by a small developer this game might have stayed as subscription like the guys who run Darkfall. But large corporations expect more, and yes is the money is the bottom line, and they expect a certain amount of % in return for the investment, again having some profit is often not enough to keep a project going with large corporations.

They should have made this game with Buy to Play in mind to begin with, and released it as such. No doubt they would had much greater success.

@eisberg‌

GW2 numbers I've shown were two years after the initial launch, the percentages I quoted are comparing two quarters unrelated to the launch sales but based mainly on cash shop.

Having anounced an expansion to me is more of a sign of "defeat". They are trying to go back to GW1 style success to compensate for their shop deficiencies.

And the updates are, arguably, small and consequenceless. I know some find them suffiscient (a couple of friends of mine still play actively the game) but when I see the updates from when I was playing and what they have now, it's actually sad.
I also went back to try out GW2 with said friends, and I found that I got spoiled by ESO. The combat hasn't aged well.

I do not know either what is happenning in China, probably great things for GW2, because the Chinese are pretty epic when they game.
And while GW2 is falling iremediably, it still is falling from very high and brings in a very decent revenue for a b2p/f2p. The money spent on those updates are part of keeping up the illusion. it is well spent to not lose that revenue even faster than what it is droping already. And the expansion will probably pay for itself and more.

GW2 didn't really have to break itself, it was designed with B2P in mind so it got released already broken in just the right ways so that players don't feel the change. I remember keeping all the boosters I could find at first. There were so many of them, everywhere, and the store is so full of "convenience", it's just a great f2p strategy to hide so much p2w behind seemingly innocent "boosts". The gameplay would be much better without all that, but the game has to earn money somewhere.

To finish on GW2, even if it were to be growing and making revenue, it would be the only one of its kind. unfortunately, it isn't. It may be the big kid in the kiddie pool, but it's still drowning.


Now on to the rest: Eve Online numbers are of both servers, including the chinese one. Maybe I should stop using those as they are indeed hard to find and it's probably unfair to compare Eve to GW2 without both having chinese numbers. But it does contribute to CCP's revenue and it is subscription only too.

ESO sold, alegedly, around 1.2M copies, and may have had 772k susbcriber in July. Those are numbers from a semi reliable source. The same one you linked to.
As others said, the console market for TES games is much larger than the PC market, I don't think it would be hard to quickly get 1M players with all platforms.
Aside from that, ESO has more pull than Eve Online. Even on PC I think it can , if it truly improves, surpass and double its numbers.

While what you say about the market post WoW is true, it isn't because of WoW itself nor it is because a change of consumers' tastes.
It's because of an evolution in business practices, handling MMOs like one off games with bonus revenue.

But it isn't necesarily a fatality. Losing 80% of your playerbase after the first 3 months isn't a sign of failure. It's just that your game got rid of all the locust and is left only with the most tolerant part of its core audience. That's where the real climb starts.
Going b2p/f2p is not going to increase your revenue for more than another locust period. You always see posts 3 or 4 months after the switch with all rainbows and unicorns about how online players were multiplied by X, and how revenue increased and all , but then they shut up forever because the final decline starts there and then and they end up worse off than before the switch in a very short time.

The truth is: bad games die, and good games claw their way up the ladder. And that's no matter the model.

Since b2p/f2p breed worse games, they can't climb. And not every sub MMO can climb either.
However, ESO was climbing in its own way. With 1.6 it would have finally stoped choking on the mud. With the content that was held back to become DLC released when they were done instead of waiting, it would have been doing much better too.
Just the hype of 1.6 changed the trend of online players for the past 30 days on Steam, it went from constant lowering to growing by more than the double as soon as that livestream with the champion point and abilities revamp description got released.
Reddit was full of posts of people coming back, and being impressed with the game. The common trend was "i don't get why people hate this game". That was amazing to hear, because it would have snowballed.

Long story short, ESO had true improvements despite limiting itself content wise, and in only 8 months had people coming back and being happy about the changes.
Had they not planned this switch, and gone full steam ahead, it would have grown in 2015. Not to mention all those console players.
To get back to Eve, they had a worse launch than ESO and no IP to bring them early adopters, yet look at them now. And they very much have progressed despite WoW.

Subscription based is not a dead breed nor an impossible feat.
The issue with superdata is tha they lump all free to play games against subscription mmorpgs. Mobas are not MMOS, they will never be deserving of a subscription and they have a much wider audience. Same for shooters and other comonly f2p multiplayer games. It doesn't make sense to compare apple and oranges.

My point in my previous post was that if you compare subscription apples to free to play apples, you get a specific picture. f2p/b2p may work for many style of games, but it does not for mmorpgs.
Not all subscription game are going to become big, for instance Darkfall, but the only ones that end up getting out of the hole are subscription based.

All those switches we see game after game aren't motivated by survival.
They are motivated by short term greed.
While I agree a company is supposed to make money, it's fair enough, but those practices are underhanded and stupid. They just milk every layer of potential player before moving on to other projects, leaving the game a dead husk in maintenance mode. This nets them much less money on the medium to long term and I consider it bad management to discard a cash cow.
Also, this isn't a sustainable strategy as consumers will wise up and mmos won't be able to launch anymore and everybody will lose. Players, studios, publishers and investors.

This is why ESO being promised to be subscription only was such a big deal. They advertised the will to break the trend, yet repeated it only 8 months after release.

This really is shortsighted as they had a niche to fill and a lot of goodwill from their consumers. ESO's community is one of the most supportive of their game I've seen. They could have made this game a cash cow on multiple platforms. Raising in a couple of years to 1m on PCs and potentially a LOT more on consoles.
Buuuuut they screwed us over.

So no, they should not have gone b2p at launch, because it served neither the short term cash grab strategy, nor the long term strategy approach.
They would have had perhaps a bit more sales, but not much more players and definitely not as much financial success.

For reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_cow

There is a lot of competition no matter what the pay model, there will still be people that will not touch ESO because they have to buy the client, had ESO went f2p then they would have really thrown themselves to the wolves of freeloader players that do nothing but take up bandwidth and never spend a dime.
I am pretty sure this is all about consoles anyway the whole change to a standardized payment model for all platforms.