Why pay a subscription?

[Rikudou-Sennin]

Ah, alright. I agree. F11 is not tanking SE. 1.0 put them back by MILLIONS. It hurt them bad. Spirits within probably cost them quite a bit as well. Also they released certain games that also didn't pan out to their expectations either (for the cost to make them.) I doubt Square Enix will go under. My main point is that FF11 got easier over time and then they decided to make it even easier for 14. There's a reason for that and people claiming "This will kill the game." I don't think so.

Yeah I never claimed FF11 tanked SE. The subs for FF11 didn't touch that of WoW's because many people felt FF11 was for hardcore people only. Even if FF11 had 200,000 subs that's not alot.. I know what costs are involved in running a large scale computing environment as I do it for a living as a Sr Systems Engineer. It could easily break a company if they aren't pulling in enough money to cover the costs with a data center that size.

[Reslin]

Yeah I never claimed FF11 tanked SE. The subs for FF11 didn't touch that of WoW's because many people felt FF11 was for hardcore people only. Even if FF11 had 200,000 subs that's not alot.. I know what costs are involved in running a large scale computing environment as I do it for a living as a Sr Systems Engineer. It could easily break a company if they aren't pulling in enough money to cover the costs with a data center that size.

Remember that back then everquest was considered a juggernaut at 500,000. 200,000 is not as bad as it looks. Especially since Square Enix is a self publisher which also helps. If 200,000 was too low then until wow Everquest was the only mmo to actually make money. I doubt this.

[Alcyon_Densetsu]

Yeah I never claimed FF11 tanked SE. The subs for FF11 didn't touch that of WoW's because many people felt FF11 was for hardcore people only. Even if FF11 had 200,000 subs that's not alot.. I know what costs are involved in running a large scale computing environment as I do it for a living as a Sr Systems Engineer. It could easily break a company if they aren't pulling in enough money to cover the costs with a data center that size.

FF XI had in the ~500k subs. (mmodata.net)

[Rikudou-Sennin]

FF XI had in the ~500k subs. (mmodata.net)

So they were pulling in only $6.4 mil a month on subs at $12.99/mo. I just stood up a new data center and it's very small, the base cost without going into the building/rent and cooling/power was half a million just for software and hardware. That's not covering on going costs or bandwidth either. An operation like WoW would need several OC lines (optical carrier) and those cost big. That's not even covering the salaries of the IT people involved. I make good money...

[Reslin]

So they were pulling in only $6.4 mil a month on subs at $12.99/mo.

Note that the base cost is manageable in that they already have an income based on other games. Their datacenter is nowhere near the size of WoW's. It doesn't have to be because their player base is much smaller. (500,000 as opposed to over 10,000,000.) Note that many mmo companies outright state there goal is to have 150,000-250,000 people. How are all these mmo's staying afloat? Why is there goal so low for something that, according to you, would be impossible to maintain? Most mmo's don't even breach the 250,000 mark let alone the 300,000 mark. Most mmo's lower than 500k subs ARE FREE TO PLAY even. Everquest before WoW was considered the biggest mmo in the world at 500,000. DAOC, Ultima Online, etc also had subs but much less players than EQ. How did they survive?