As an avid fan of the sandbox genre, I would love to see Mortal Online evolve from the money-losing machine that it is today to a powerful name in the industry. Who knows, maybe in a few years Star Vault will be powerful enough to make my death look like an accident. Sandboxer.org has posted a chat in which Star Vault CEO Henrik Nystrom talks about his vision for Mortal Online, not just the developer hitting more sales but the game eventually doing well enough to compete and even succeed Eve Online.
Now, Eve Online has an estimated 450,000 subscribers (plus PLEX traders), so the goal may seem a bit off in the distance. Mortal Online’s Awakening expansion will bring with it drugs. What kind of drugs, you ask? The illegal kind, more illegal than a Pepsi machine in a grade school hallway.
We await Mortal Online’s next expansion with anticipation.
(Source: Sandboxer)
MMO Fallout 
What do you mean “plus PLEX traders?” Anybody playing the game has a subscription.
PLEX allows you to pay for 30 days of subscription time with in-game currency, so there is no real differentiation there. You can pay with a credit card, you can pay via PayPal, or you can let somebody else pay for you in exchange for giving them something in-game. CCP gets paid no matter what.
As for that number, that is an great goal. If it were not for WoW, 450K subscribers would seem like a coup, closing in on EverQuest at its peak back in 2004.
Hello,
My only meaning was that the PLEX sales generates additional income, similar to how whenever World of Warcraft notes subscriber numbers, I point out that there is additional income from the cash shop.
On the subject of success, I think I can say without a doubt that Eve Online is one of the industry leaders in terms of subscriptions. My point was that Mortal Online has a lot of hard work ahead of it if Star Vault believes that they can match Eve Online’s numbers.
Personally my standards for success are as long as the servers are running and there is enough income to remain profitable, the game is worth keeping. I would prefer that people play games because they enjoy them and not because of statistics, and that puts me on bad terms with developers because I refuse to post their press releases of “our game just hit ten million registered users!”
And yes, I do talk about World of Warcraft subscriber numbers, but apart from “profits up,” that is usually the only fragment of information Activison/Blizzard offer on their quarterly profit reports and if I’m going to report on Star Vault, NCSoft, and Funcom, I have to try and include everyone.