Massively.com: Report: SWTOR fourth biggest sub MMO, Elder Scrolls has over 770k subscribers

News from: Massively.com

Filed under: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Business Models, MMO Industry, News Items, Free-to-Play, Star Wars: The Old Republic, The Elder Scrolls Online, Subscription

Market intelligence firm Superdata says that Star Wars: The Old Republic earned $165 million in worldwide revenue last year. This would make SWTOR the fourth biggest sub MMO in the world (behind World of Warcraft, Lineage, and TERA).

Superdata's report also says that the pay-to-play MMO market has been in a constant decline since 2010, with monthly active worldwide subscribers bottoming out at 23.4 million. "Despite the overall decline, this category has so far managed to maximize their ability to monetize a shrinking yet loyal player base," the firm says.

Finally, Superdata says that Elder Scrolls Online has a subscriber base of 772,374 while WildStar is seeing "four to five times" as many concurrent users as it saw during open beta. Superdata's information is purportedly "pulled directly from publishers and developers."

Report: SWTOR fourth biggest sub MMO, Elder Scrolls has over 770k subscribers originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 18 Jul 2014 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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/sigh

That's a shame, it makes me sad to see that number.  I may be very opinionated and critical at times, but I really do want to see every MMO release do well.  I know that as a developer, its very easy to become to isolated from your product and user base, so sometimes they need that slap in the face to wake up.  Unfortunately, if the decision makers aren't making an effort to stay in touch with their user base, instead relying on email reports and word of mouth, then sometimes its just too late before they find out that something was wrong.

There's supposed to be a live feed today from Quakecon, regarding the future of ESO, so I guess we'll have to see if they've woken up over there and if so, what they have planned to turn this "backsliding-into-a-D-title" back into a AAA title.

On the plus side, YAY SWTOR!  (I'm back to playing that part-time right now, they have Housing coming next month!)  As a HUGE Star Wars fan and a homeless Galaxies refugee, that makes me very happy that they turned that title around.  It gives me a lot of hope that Zenimax can do the same with Elder Scrolls, despite the fact that EA had to convert SWTOR into a F2P business model.  (but it works when its done right)

It's a shame to see such low numbers for ESO, truly.  I realize that I am very biased, as I am a big fan of the Elder Scrolls lore and of the other Elder Scrolls games; however, after playing for a few months, I can say genuinely that I do love the game.  I have my concerns about various aspects of the game, but I am not unhappy with the way that it comes together.

I can't push my play style on others and I understand that others have different interests and end goals, but it bothers me when people click through all of the content, smash through all of the quests, reach the end of the line, and turn around and say, "huh, I have no idea what was going on, now I'm bored."  That kind of MMO mentality doesn't work with ESO.

As an example, I was playing through Stonefalls with my fiance.  We were reaching the end of the zone's main storyline when I noticed he was getting bored and antsy.  I asked him what was wrong and he said, "I have no idea what's going on.  All of these quests are too easy."  I asked him if he wanted me to recap for him, and he said yes - so I pulled up the map, retold all of the events that had happened thus far, and do you know what he said?  "Wow.  That was actually a pretty cool story."  He was interested again.  He wanted to play more and find out the end of the story.  The same thing happened as he watched me play through parts of Deshaan with a different character.  "I can't wait to do that quest and see how it ends."

Zenimax hasn't gotten it all right, but I think that they do care about their player base.  I guess we will just have to wait and see what happens.  In the meantime, I'm glad to have found an active, family-oriented community, and I hope that there are more adventures to come.

Just remember - that to be a successful MMO you don't have to have huge numbers.  Would the developers like really huge numbers - sure they would, but to be successful you just need a dedicated and loyal fan base - don't compare any MMO out there to the numbers WOW racked in.

If you delve further into the article they go on to say,

"When Bethesda Softworks released Elder Scrolls Online, the industry took notice as the publisher fearlessly announced a subscription model, rather than going free-to-play like its direct competitor Guild Wars 2 (NCsoft). So far, a subscriber base of 772,374 (June) indicates that its strategy is working."

ESO isn't included in the rankings where SWTOR was 4th place since the stats are from 2013 and do not include any titles released in 2014 such as Wildstar and ESO.

If you want to judge the success of a Subscription MMO just look at EVE OL - it is ranked for 2013 in 6th place taking in $93 mil that year... it has been out for over a decade and has a loyal fan base that ranges from 250 - to 500 thousand subs a year depending on the source you read.   The point is - you don't need 7 mil subscribers to be successful - you do need  loyal fans that will play you for years.  At this moment - by the stats given - ESO would be well within the top 10 and more towards the middle of the pack as would Wildstar.

This article isn't condemning ESO - it is praising it - atm.

I was abig fan of SWTOR thought the game was really fun,  but there was such a lack of story.  you got  to the end and well that was it...  you had raiding... if you couldn't find a good guild to raid with well then you had dailies, woohoo (not really)..  glad to see it is still going,  but seeing it rake in big numbers only reminds me of the fact that if you wanted to get anything done end game you needed to buy something... haven't been in there in a while so not sure how it works now..  but I didn't like it when they went F2P

Yes you are right, you don't need a large player base to be successful. But you do need to make enough to keep making content and fixing bugs along with other upkeep. If they don't make enough it hurts content or bug fixing first and foremost. You saw this with SWG. After they killed the game with the NGE very little content was produced for the game or even bug fixes. A little bit in balancing and such, but stuff that can be done with a skeleton crew over a few years. Which was exactly how long it took for any major changes to that game after NGE.

Is 770k current subscribers a bad number?  That is roughly $46 million just for the game and lets say 1 month of subscription for those users would be $11.5 million.  So not counting the amount of people who have bought the game and cancelled and not counting the people who have paid multiple months of subscriptions they have brought in $57 million in 3 months.  I wouldn't say those are great numbers, but I would not consider them bad numbers either.  If these numbers hold steady for the rest of the year they would line up at #4 on the list linked in the article.

 nope those numbers are not bad anything north of 300k is good . and should be fine for bugs, and content etc .

Those numbers are not good for a AAA rated title, just 3 months post-launch.  We're also talking about the Elder Scrolls IP, here.  People can try to spin the numbers however they want, but it is what it is and putting lipstick on a pig doesn't change a thing, well except make it look ridiculous.

So, what do these numbers mean to us as players?  Nothing, really, other than validation for those of us who are frustrated with the bugs and feet-dragging to get them fixed.  It means that we're not in the minority and probably the more patient of the player base.  Mostly though, its just useless data.

To be honest, none of us know what these numbers mean lol.  For one thing, we're not even sure if these numbers are factually accurate since many of those figures quoted are provided by the publishers themselves.  We also have no idea about other factors that may go into calculating whether a game is a 'success' or a 'bust'.  Things like how much the game cost to make, how much it costs to run, what the publisher deems as acceptable profit margins, and whole lot of other things that we will never know or really care about either.

And whether we like it or not, ESO is likely looking at the upcoming release on the consoles as a bigger cash cow than the PC release was.  Granted, console players are not the traditional MMO target group and they might not be interested.  But when Bethesda started releasing Elder Scroll games on the consoles, people said that about RPGs and consoles too.  Looking at the Skyrim sales on the consoles vs PC game sales, it looked like that worked out for them pretty good lol. 

I do think that things were/are implemented to the game that negatively affected PC gameplay to benefit console gameplay, especially where the UI was concerned.  But if a huge influx of console users infuses this game with a lot of cash, then we will all benefit from the new content and changes.

I do agree with Sekkerhund that at the end of the day, none of these numbers matters to the majority of us.  More than likely, the majority of us will no longer be playing the game whenever in the future they decide to pull the plug on this game.

edit... for positive change.

I find something I enjoy doing and do that - I make myself happy.  

"...anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering." Yoda

Not often spoken have been truer words.   Happiness lies within each of us, but only we can find it.  I hope each of us finds our happiness.

Those numbers are not good for a AAA rated title, just 3 months post-launch.  We're also talking about the Elder Scrolls IP, here.

Those numbers are fine for a triple AAA MMO. Really any MMO now days. If you are trying to go off of what WoW has in subs you are using the wrong bench mark. WoW is not the example that needs to be set for successful numbers of a MMO, it's the exception to the rule. No game will ever reach those numbers and that type of success ever. WoW came out at the most opportune time and that was right at the cusp of MMO's being for nerds and geeks only and when they where accepted and played by a large portion of the gamer community. Not to mention that the amount of people in the world that are gamers now compared to then is massive on top of the amount of MMOs you had a choice of playing was also limited. UO, EQ, SWG, DAoC..... I think there was a couple more but can't remember. Compare that number to now.... I couldn't even list 50% of the MMO's that are out now where as that short list I put here was about 50% or more.

  I think the consle players will like it . seeing how all the elder scrolls games were single player games and everyone thought it`d be fun to play  if you could bring your friends into the game with you .

 ESO for the most part by design is a single player game , all the quests are mostly single player, the storyline , and guild quests are single player ,  so it plays and feels like a single player game , with co-op elements tacked on  .

which is what most console players always wanted a single player version of elder scrolls that had co-op so ya friends could play with you too .

Dungons are simplistic in design i was hopeing wed have stuff like old EQ dungeons  like Lower guk. Black burrow, castle mistmoore , complete with illusion walls secert passages, etc but alas of the 134 in game 75 of them have the exact layout map .

But overall i think consel players will be happy and boost their numbers .

. I tried to find my happiness last night but the fish weren`t biting  caught 3 hard head  one soooo  small i didn`t know he was on the line till i reeled it in  haha .

when I log and look around it's hard to believe ESO has over 720k current subscribers. Maybe they are talking about total Subscriptions for the year (many of which wouldn't have renewed). Population in-game just seems really down.

As for SWTOR.. +1 for them! I also started gaming that one again (part time anyways). 

SWTOR is still one of the best MMOs on the market in my opinion, next to WoW. They have a really good model for their F2P and subscriptions and have been able to capitalize on both groups really well. I know those gamble packs make them a fortune... SWTOR also has a much better story than ESO every day of the week. ESO has one story for everybody and it kills replayability. SWTOR has a unique story for each of the eight classes. Neither has an endgame story, I don't think go play as the other races counts, sorry ESO. SWTOR also has viable leveling options for PvP and PvE, and it has had them since beta... ESO does not have a real viable option for AvA leveling, unless you count the exploits they left in from beta.... the few daily quests you can do won't get you to level anywhere near the same pace as pve. SWTOR gives you as much EXP from a good battleground as you would get doing one or two quests at level. 

I am definitely giving SWTOR a pat on the back, but only because it truly is a better game at this point. IF ZOS can implement the features and changes they demoed at QuakeCon, ESO might be as good as SWTOR, or any slew of other games on the market. Right now I think TES is a really bad implementation of Skyrim Co-op.

I wasn't originally thinking of these numbers as a positive thing, but after reading some of the other things said here, I think I've changed my mind. 

I don't know how many people the average MMO retains during the first few months, but the MMO environment has certainly changed with time and it seems unfair to expect ESO to be the next big MMO (despite the legacy of the name).  There are lots of competing MMOs, each appealing to different audiences within the sphere of gamers.  At any given time, there are many possible games that could be vying for precious free time.  I don't know what threshold would be considered to be a "strong" showing for ESO, but if there are enough players to keep it going, great!