Not just me, most of the MMO playerbase. So I hope they weren't planning to be bigger than niche and are budgeting accordingly.
uh not sure how you define 'niche' but if you just mean anything less than "10mil WoW at its prime" as niche then yeah, it'll be niche.
I think you are perhaps underestimating the appeal of these types of games. The market has continuously proven that there's at least 1mil active subs for a game like this. That's sustained players after selling 3-4 million boxes. Even Eve, the most successful PVP game to date, sustained 500-600k subs for well over a decade, despite it literally being microsoft excel in space with the worst learning curve ever conceived by man.
My worry isn't that they are overestimating the appeal of this type of game, my worry is about catch up mechanics and "starting late" issues that are rampant throughout PVP games.
A lot of mechanics in this game really cater to first come first serve or "established defenders" vs up start late comers. If day one players have an unassailable advantage over later additions then this game is in trouble.
Despite the meme about blizzard "small indie company" every time they fuck something away, this actually is a small indie company. Self built and self marketed. They won't have New World, Arch Age, Warhammer box sales day one, they'll follow a trajectory more like Eve.
idk their internal metrics or anything but just because you got, for example, 10million people who press the like button on a facebook post doesn't mean you have 10mil people going to buy your shit day one. Maybe 20% of the people who signup for your site, forum, newletter, etc will buy the box and half of those will end up staying subbed past the first month.
I figure they'll sell probably 800k-1mil boxes in the first 3 months and keep about half of them as subs. If the game is good then it'll grow organically up to about a million subscribers after a few million box sales within the first year. If the game is half finished tech demo like New World then it'll crash and burn like New World did.
But if all the world is "owned" by the groups that started day one and none of the later comers can overcome the advantages held by the "established" defenders then this game is also fucked.
