What will happen to Bioware in case of failure?

No it wasn't. It was the 2nd feb, meaning long after most peoples first free month ended. There will always be some people on a free month, but not as many as you are implying.

................. its not 1.7 million on the first free month. If they sold over 2 million, I would be wrongly saying that they have over 2 million subs.

So I basically just proved you have 0 concept of facts. It's okay to have opinions and to raise questions about things. "Does this game have the capacity to beat WoW". "Will this game gain or lose subs 6 months out". "How could Bioware fix population imbalance?" Those are all logical questions. "What happens if Bioware fails" is an outdated and senseless question. If Bioware only kept 800,000 subs AFTER the first free month (Remember: they kept over 1.7 million) then they might be on a bad path. But the game recieved positive ratings and got a very large initial player base that paid for at least 1 month. In terms of MMO's that is extremely important and shows great promise, like the game or not.

If you can't accept these simple, logical, fact-based statements, then thats unfortunate for you.


TL;DR Opinions are okay, but debating this is just stupid.

If they were not making any profit, they wouldn't still be online, they DO have business expenses to cover, and salaries to pay, so they must be staying afloat somehow.

Lord of the Rings Online is F2P as well, and they have a strong customer base still, and have recorded more profits since F2P monthly than they were getting with subscriptions.

Arrogance can't hide fanboysm, my dear. On this forum there's a few trying to act like Bioware's Paladins, while Bioware isn't acting as a nice King.
You're really sad, as all the fanboys that let SH piss into their mouth, and making games worst during the year.
Once was really different, games were miliar stones..now they say "HYPE HYPE 200 MILIONS DOLLARS PEW PEW" and gives you a beta version game.
And all the doggies barfing.
Nice.

So you're saying that if SWTOR becomes F2P isn't a failure ye?

People need to stop thinking that all mmos are wow. MMOs can survive and turn a profit with RELATIVELY few subscribers, no game needs a million subs to be profitable, it's not failure if it doesn't start with the whole Asian continent playing it. Most of the "failures" mentioned here are bigger, way bigger in fact than mmos were in the past before wow. Some of those games are actually good but because they're so different from wow they didn't gather large followings. It's funny how people give so much **** to Bioware for having the mmo stuff based on wow when everyone who tried to change it radically has "****ed up" according to most of them.


All those f2p games turn a nice profit in their in-game markets, some blizzard guy was talking the other day that they intend to eventually turn wow into f2p(likely when they run out of **** to put into expansions everyone already bought of course.) because it will become the ideal model in the future, not so near future mind you but still rather close.

"Warhammer = Endless trial"

The "endless" trial is the same thing as wow, you can play tier 1, in wow you can play til level 20 I think... So, *** where you trying to say there? WAR's problems were somewhat similar to the server pop problem on tor actually they refused to merge low pop servers til it was too late... Not to mention mmo players nowadays need to have grind and shiny items and don't really like to pvp which the game was all about at release, it still survives rather healthily.


If we're all fanboys because we enjoy the game are you a hateboy?

1. You are talking to a guy who a few hours ago cancelled his subscription to this game.

2. How in the world do I make the game worse? That doesn't even make any sense.

3. I didn't talk about 200,000,000 dollars anywhere.

4. You are an ignorant troll whos ignoring commonly accepted facts. I have the sense you are in the age 12-15 range, due to your extreme bias towards anything positive about this game and your inability to comprehend basic facts. Your resort to saying I am "really sad", and talking about "SH piss into.. mouths" furthers my argument that you are a typical immature 12-15 year old.


LOTRO went FTP and tripled there revanues

As a whole, bioware is still a very successful developer. Even if this game failed, they'd just cut their losses and go back to what they've been doing, cranking out single player games.

Team Fortress 2 = F2P. It must be a failure as well.

Did these games fail to achieve the level of success attained by WoW? Definitely.
Did they fail to live up to the expectations of their developers/publishers? Most likely.

Did they fail to make any money and achieve some level of success? I doubt it .

People who think a game "fails" when it goes F2P are really fooling themselves. The F2P model has been a round for a long time in Asia and is slowly making its way over here. As a matter of fact in 2006 (If I remember correctly) EA was a major proponent of F2P at the 06 Game Developers Conference.

Gaming is shifting to a more casual model of game play. Just look at the IPO of Zynga as an example of what to expect more of in the future. The introduction of apps for smartphones and the like are promoting more and more casual gaming styles. MMOs are starting to follow this type of model.

It doesn't mean that the game fails when it goes F2P it means that the developers are looking at ways to make more for their investment dollar. I suggest people do more research into the F2P model and understand why developers are looking at it overall.