Subs are here to stay

Some may argue that 2014 was last year that business executives in MMO industry thought they can launch successful game with subscription. We had two high profile releases: ESO and Wildstar. Both games launched with sub and after few months fizzled. There have been rumors about Elder Scrolls going F2P/B2P for quite some time. Many expect this to happen when game launches on consoles. Wildstar with huge layoffs and population under million is not doing better than ESO. Suits at NCsoft are certainly analyzing pros and cons of conversion. What about other publishers? Do they look at these two games and draw conclusions? Of course they do. However lesson they learn here is different from what you may think.

2015 Predictions

If you're fan of MMOs like me chances are good that 2014 was for you a year of disappointment. Every big game that launched had either serious design flaws (Wildstar) or was released without proper testing (ArcheAge) or both (The Elder Scrolls Online). In 2015 we will get no major release and maybe alpha access to 2 MMOs, see below for details. There are few expansions worth checking out. Some already announced and some expected - I'm looking at you Guild Wars 2. To summarize 2015 will not be as interesting as 2014 but there are still few things to watch out for.