I know Skill is trying? to put a more positive spin on this, but he's doing so by comparing A:FTE to other AAA "boondoggles" which are games that he considers failures / wastes of time? And he saying at least A:FTE didn't cost as much as those boondoggles and has more players currently then those boondoggles (even though the boondoggle games he's comparing to are older?)
The problem is AFTE hasn't even reached two months yet, and it really started dipping badly only 5 weeks after release.
What's really weird for me is I'm not a game developer but I saw right out of the gate that this game had a major flaw in sustainability. So if I could see it, the peeps at Cold Iron had to easily see it. That's why this game feels like a scenario (to me) where they ran out of cash, time or both... stopped where they were, polished up what they could, and released what they had. The original planned MMO announcement rings so true to me here.
Very fun game, but (to me) Cold Iron should have just made it an awesome single player experience and focused on doubling or trippling the levels and add a few cut scenes, and cut away all the extra classes, and gun skins resulting in a fun but half-assed online service game.
This game has my love, but deserves the tough love!