Quote Originally Posted by Levian View Post
I could maybe see that if AoC was a major player on the MMO stage, but their subscription base is equivalent to Ultima Online. Which was released 10 years prior to AoC. In short, they have the same subscription base as a game released in 1997...all things considered, if I were involved in MMO developement/marketing I wouldn't be looking at AoC to see where the trends are being set, nor attempt to follow in their shoes.

It will stay free. Until they fix it. If they manage to fix it, then it will return to subscription base. If it's never fixed hopefully they'll admit defeat and shut the operation down. But with as much as SE has invested in this endeavor, I think failure is not an option.
Thing is AoC was actually set to be a major player on the MMO stage however it had a failure of a launch, much like 14, so you could look at AoC and see what 14 may end up being like. MMOs with poor launches rarely recover to a good point.