I came across this article today on Tamriel Foundry (http://nullsignifier.blogspot.jp/2014/03/letters-from-tamriel-part-i-prophets.html), and I've been looking for something like this for a while. My personal opinion is that we see at least 4 million subscribers at one point (possibly in June/July), for all consoles combined. Whether or not that base holds will depend on how well ZOS follows through on content delivery every 4-6 weeks.

I'm curious, what do you all think?

If they keep delivering content that's fun, people will stay subscribed, if they don't then people will unsubscribe, it's that simple.

This is true. It's the mainstay of MMO's demand right now. If they were to ever go f2p I'll pretty quickly quit and move on.

As much as i like the game it won't get more then a million subs, most will leave after the free month.

No offense, but duh (read OP). The question was how many subscribers you think ESO will have and what is maintainable.

Beta has at least 2 million players right now. Count on at least a million subs dude.

I would suspect between 3-4 million subs.

Cant see it maintaining anything over 2 million. Many do not like the sub fee model anymore so I can see it suffering due to that, plus there are some very good games out this year which will also draw players away. I think there are a lot of people with too high expectations of this mmo, it won't pull up any trees. But it will be steady, and that's fine with me.

Over 9000

+1

Plain and simple

All TESO needs to do is maintain EvE like numbers and they're good to go . Should the Devs try and copy WoW then they're definitely gonna fail , ( 500, 000 + subs ) will keep this game afloat .

WoW isn't giving content for 12 months and people are still subbed

One does not simply quit WoW.

My prediction is that I wont care. I don't care about WoWs subscriber base and in EsO there is less player interaction so I think I'll care less.

I predict it will be between the two extremes. I doubt it will actually get to the 4 or 5 million predicted above (even including consoles, which I honestly doubt will account for more than 10% of ongoing subs), but I definitely feel it will be more than 1 million 6 months from now -on PC alone. Probably even 1 year from now.

People are part of long term communities, loyal to the game and addicted, many have been like that for a while in WoW, the numbers are high because it entered the MMO market when it was small. It's a little more unforgiving these days, sure some MMO's have a lot of loyalty and commitment, there's a pretty loyal Swtor community who'll stay there until the servers shut down, as there will be for TESO, just these days there's more MMO's out there.

To answer the question, I expect 2-4 million subs for the first few months, then that'll decrease a little, pretty difficult to give a firm answer right now.

5010321 subscribers at launch, and 3210438 sustained 3 months after.

Don't understand why it's so impossible for people to just wait and see.

Doesn't mean anything. I was a part of the most recent beta because a friend sent me a beta invite. I am not going to play the game, and the friend that invited me is unsure as well. Although I thought it was ok, I don't like it enough for its fee and business model... which says much since I am a hard-core Elder Scrolls fan (though not a hard-core MMO fan) Many of the other invitees like myself might also opt not to play the game for similar or different reasons.

So in other words, although statistically you are probably right, I wouldn't see it as a certain bet.

And I don't understand why people care at all. Has anyone stopped themselves and thought "I was having fun, but now that I've learned only 999,999 other people are having fun with me I can no longer enjoy myself!"?

See you at launch

Well, there a few different ways to answer this. Primarily, I want the game I'm invested in to have success, which equals more content, longevity, and a better game overall. A nice little side effect is that it would be oh so fun to rub it in a few bloggers/friends faces.

I have to wonder if these people who are predicting millions of subs for ESO are new to the mmo genre. Number of beta registrations means nothing. There have been multiple mmo's released that have seen that many beta signups. If you've followed MMO's over the past 10 years, you'd understand that WoW and it's millions of subs is an anomaly to the genre. Even now, when more and more games are going the f2p route with in game shop, it becomes that much harder for a monthly sub MMO to maintain a high subscriber base. I'd be shocked if this game has a million subs 6 months from release it would be impressive, but there is simply no way it you'll see this game sitting with millions of subs. You're not living in reality if you believe it will.

We can't login to play right now, have to talk about something.

It'll sell millions of copies easily.

in terms of actual sustained subscriber base, easily under a million. I'd even say under half a million.