I was talking to a friend when a terrible thought came up. With the console edition still missing a release date and ESO offering free 'pets' for people who keep their subscription going (possibly responding to the lack of subsriptions but I don't know how it's fairing so).

What are the odds that when Zenimax flips the switch to F2P it will coincide with the console release.

While I think it's unlikely, stranger and even more suspecious things have happened before and it wouldn't surprise me.

I think it will be a little while after it goes F2P if it generates a sufficient amount of money to fund a port.

Totally forgot about this game. Is it already released on PC? If yes, how is it doing?

I played the beta on my laptop, but I was not getting a good performance. It was looking OK, gameplay wise I thought it was quite .. boring.

I think the odds are pretty good. While I don't think the console versions will straight up bomb, I can't imagine them having a that long of a lifespan if they're both quarantined off into their own separate servers (I mean, that's been confirmed, right?) and have a subscription fee. I feel like going f2p or b2p would instantly broaden the appeal of this game on console. I know I'd probably jump in at the point.

@dussck: I think about a month ago they were sitting on about 700k subs or something which is pretty good. It's by no means great, but assuming the game didn't cost a gazillion dollars to make, I think they can safely avoid it being labelled a disaster.

@babychoochoo: That's not bad at all. Kind of surprising they did not release on the consoles then. Especially since there are not alot of RPG's to play on the current gen consoles at the moment and the longer they wait the closer they'll get to Dragon Age and The Witcher 3.

It did cost a ton of money to make, and considering the size of the world that's not nearly enough to populate it.

@corruptedevil: Dayum, how big is the game world?

The thing to realize is that 700k subs isn't 700k players all the time, it's like 70k on at any time and maybe 150k during peak (and that's being optimistic.). The world is 27 kilometers across and takes about 8.3 hours to go from one side to the other.

@babychoochoo: if I were to guess, i'd expect PS4 to connect to PC, but maybe not Xbox One, MS is pretty stubborn about not letting Xbox Live talk to other platforms. DCUO and FFXIV work this way, and the only MMO to ever function cross platform between Xbox and Playstation was FFXI on 360.

My WoW server has about 200k on it, and this is one server out of many. (I believe this is based on regular scans of unique character names, not accounts). WoW may be in decline, but it's still an absolute monster compared to the other games out there.

Though aside from the development costs, overhead scales with active subscribers, so a game can have 100k and still be successful. EVE Online has prospered for years with only 20-30k online at any given time. The real trick is getting enough dedicated players to cover your dev costs and overhead, everything else just lets you grow. A successful MMO is the holy grail of development, because it's a positive and consistent cash flow you can rely on to cover payroll instead of the rather risky cycle of huge infusions of cash following a release. It means not having to lay off a chunk of a team between games.

That didn't stop Bioware Austin from laying off a bunch of people shortly after The Old Republic shipped.

EVE was always built with the right size of team and resources while other games like The Old Republic were clearly not. Really the trick to MMOs is sizing the team for building and maintenance and keeping things very very very tight and on budget.

Oh, trust me, I know. I just felt like other MMOs that you see hovering around that number and even those with much less can seem very active due to the size of the world (and, I imagine, the number of servers too). For instance, when I was deep into Champions Online, I highly doubt they had more than 250k players, but the world always felt alive. If a 700k base isn't quite enough to populate the world of ESO, I think that makes the game world sound pretty impressive in a way. It's obviously not great for the people playing, but still, that's quite impressive.

After reading all that I kinda really want to play it even more, I have never actually played an MMO for more then 10 minuites and after Skyrim the chance to spend more time with the lore and setting of the Elder Scrolls universe is appealing.

And by the sounds of it ( for the moment) it has plenty of subs. It just feels like not alot of people are talking about it though, but you could say the same thing about Titanfall.

*Really I should just hurry up and build my gaming rig but thats another conversartion*

Thats exactly what stopped me putting money down for the game, i really wanted it on PS4 and assumed that it would connect to the same servers as PC and the only one on their own private one would be X1. You kind of need to have the expanded community when you do these kinds of games, both Final Fantasy XI and XIV benefit from having cross platforms playing together.