Michael Pachter Says Sub MMO Market Is "As Big As It's Ever Going To Be"

I wouldn’t say SWTOR has failed

But I certainly wouldn’t pay a $15 sub fee these days. Not with games like GW2 and PS2 around the corner….why would I.

In truth I’ll probably end up dropping more on these games then any sub based MMO I’ve played, just b/c I control what I’m spending the money on

It might look like this, that there is pool of people who play sub games, and the other that dont.. 
If you look at them, they probably wont suddenly go into sub based games .
BUT IMO the amount of people who are leaveing games sub games might be equal or even less than younglings who starts they adventure with MMOs.
Those below around 16 might preffer free to play games and might be lured to games like GW2.. but when they grow up they might find they got some spare $, they might preffer to stop jumping from game to game .. commit for longer time to developing character in stable game as WoW is.

The new direction of WoW might be in some degree aimed to lure those young players to WoW.. to stop spending 20$ for new games every month or two and just relax with stable subscription to single, but evolving with time game.

Typical Pachter BS. If anything, people don’t give a shit anymore. I know a LOT of people who “forget to unsub” and don’t care about it. People buy games on steam left and right just because it’s at 15% off. People throw more their money at games without really thinking about it too much. 15$ a month is comparable to a lot of things in the industry. Like DLC. 

When you really play an MMO and you’re not one of those people whining because they don’t have time to play and don’t want to pay, the hours/$ spent is INSANE. It’s a much better average than, say, someone who buys “the new hot console game” at 60$ (often once a month or more) and finishes the game in 7 hours. Even if there’s Multiplayer, you will “neverrrrr” get the same average.

CCP knows how to do it properly. Offer a way to buy subscription time with in-game money. That way, once you played a really long time and found a way to get a lot of money, you’re rewarded. Not just with the money, but with the possibility to never have to pay for your game again. The upside? It’s not a F2P game grabbing you by the balls that will eventually limit you. It’s a full game, everything unlocked.

it’s just very frustrating to see ya know? the whole fucking “if EA, Bioware and STAR WARS couldn’t do it, nothing will” line of thought is so god damn retarded. SWTOR was not any fucking good…don’t matter WHO made the fucking thing or the IP. but as far as the IP carrying the shit, Mike O’Brien put that into perspective in 2007 in his GDC speech.

the only people who are surprised at this turn of events are fucking morons to begin with.

He’s wrong. Turn call of duty or halo into a great mmofps and millions will pay subs if you could do it on consoles. The current mmo model especially mmorpg’s have peaked for games that charge subs. There will not be another WoW. Many haves tried to catch that lightening in a bottle but it was a one time phenomenon. not even WoW 2 could repeat that kind of success.

I can’t help but think that even with some discounts, 7 years of subs comes to over 1000$, about what i paid for my used car.  And that’s before adding in the cost of the box and the cash shops.  But on the other hand I know that many can afford a cabin at a ski lodge, chains for their car and lift tickets and ski rentals and blow that much on a weekend.  So it obviously is determined by your tax bracket.  When the economy improves sub games will could get a resurgence, but don’t count me in.

I don’t think MMO’s are dead at all… I just think that companies have gotten very lazy. Every new MMO that seems to come out dies as soon as people reach endgame because oops! They forgot to add decent amounts of content for endgame. That seems to be the trend with every single new MMO that comes out and it takes a year or two before they get things together! Also, games like TERA and SWTOR add something “new” and “innovative” but leave everything else out. What MMO makers need to do is add those cool innovations, but remember to add tons of other things to do besides just level and endgame. MMO makers need to understand that they need to start adding EVERYTHING if they want to keep players around and get them to try it. They need to put in player housing, unique classes, big explorable worlds, good crafting, fun pvp, non linear leveling experience, etc etc… MMO makers today just pick a few of those to implement and think they will be good because hey, they have action combat. NO! I could care less how fun the combat is. If the game is empty I am simply not gunna play it.

The subscription based model for the MMOs hasn’t peaked, WoW has and will go down, but that is because there are more subscription based game coming out that are good games Rift, SWTOR, Tera, TSW and still Eve. These games are taking away from the WoW player base, and more good games could continue to do that.  I think in the future we will see more buy to play models like GW and GW2, and alway some free to play games.  FTP still seems to be the way that games go if they can’t pull of the subscription based and the only big FTP game that have done really well are the LotRO and D&D by Turbine.  I know that all the SOE MMOs are now FTP and APB, AoC and some others but none of these games seem to be doing great I mean I really don’t hear anything at all about them most of the time and if I do it is nothing that would bring me back.  I think there needs to be more verity in the MMOs market because like 90% of the games are fantasy,  I would like to see more Scfi, Steampunk, Horror, and present day games come out.  And if the sub model is dead then why are Tera and TSW selling games?
I think we will alway see subscription games, but in the future we will be seeing more buy to play then http://FTP. 

Oh and SWTOR still has over a million subs, and SWTOR was mismanaged by BioWare and EA it  should never of cost 300 million to make that game.  WOW GWs, Rift, Tera, TSW, LotRO, and EQ all good games and I’ll bet that not one of them cost even half of that to make them.  BioWare and EA got carried away.

Wasn’t Mr Pacther the one who said Call of Duty games might go subscription based? In mmo’s yes we might have peaked, but in general subscription will continue to be around, specially if you have normal game with perks like “elite” system they already have. 
If an mmo can do all this we might have a normal f2p or b2p game with a subscription for the extra stuff.

certainly does seem like there is a static pool of mmor players, a portion of which that sort of floats about between games.

Patcher is just trying to save face because his forecast  pitch to investors for SWTOR was so wrong.He has to find excuses since it was he who talked investors into throwing more money at SWTOR after it had already used up its $80 million budget in January 2011. These are the guys(investors) right now, who haven’t seen a nickle of their money returned from his pitch, and he is scrambling to explain why it was not his fault.

With so many great F2P game out there and coming out (GW2) I doubt I will ever subscribe again to any monthly fee game. I may eat my words but nothing that has come out yet (The Secret World) or anything of that nature has really attracted me to subscribe… the quality is just not there! and I can’t wait till August to cancel my WOW account.

Great conversation. I think we can mostly agree the MMO market has reached a point of saturation. This is supported by developers changing focus to ease of access (F2P) instead of pay for promises that may never come true (SWTOR). Ease of access is the only way to increase the player base at this point.

(Don’t count out innovation, Revan.)

havoc is right, for all we know an incredibly innovative game could be released blurring the lines between social networks, gaming, and virtual reality.

My final thought is ths: the era of the sub-based MMO is coming to an end, however the era of the MMO has only just begun.