What Will Be The Biggest Flops of 2014?

[eFKac]

shikamaru317 said:

eFKac said:

Yeeeah not really. The game was absolutely panned after the beta, often compared to the famous Matrix MMO.

And I'm sure TOR was such an amazing success story but they decided to go F2P just to let more people play their game, cause the are so kind-hearted.

And to answer your previous argument. Developers still release those few big budget MMOs, cause the development usually started soon after the WOW craze and everyone wanted a chunk of that money making pie. Thing is, the model from 10 years ago just doesn't work anymore unless you are WOW, but even that has a declining interest, which is obvious. TOR was caught pants down, FFXIV was a huge failure before it became ARR, and we're yet to see how well will it hold, it's time for TESO.

Which beta test are you talking about, the very first one? That early leaked beta footage was panned, but from what I've heard TESO has greatly improved in beta since then, it supposedly plays alot like Skyrim now instead of like the WoW clone it was playing like in early beta. I've heard mostly praise from those I know who were in the beta more recently. 

SWTOR went F2P because the subs were dropping off, from 1.7m at the highest point in February to below 1 million in July. That doesn't mean that they didn't make back their budget from subscriptions long before it went F2P though. They still had a considerable number of people paying $15 a month up until it went F2P in November. That's 10 months of people paying $15 a month, and over 1 million people paying $15 a month for 7 months. Do the math, it should have made back it's $150-$200 million budget before it ever went F2P, and it's sure to have made EA quite a bit of money since it went F2P, as the nickel and diming F2P cash store model is quite profitable. I remember Cryptic Studios announced that they were making more money after STO went F2P than when it was P2P.

You're not considering the costs to keep the servers up and still a team constantly on the title to keep content going, voice actors, etc. etc., certainly bigger costs than your normal game with a multi component.

And we don't really know big the budget was, rumoured between 150-250 million bucks. Sure all in all it will probably turn profitable, since F2P still makes money to the studios, but it's not big success story. And I don't expect TESO to even have numbers as big as TOR which had a really promising start. Depending how much end game content they have they may not lose subs so sharply. Still I'm expecting it to go F2P within a year.