Elder Scrolls Online Using Subscription Fees

[billyro]

US$15 a month seems a bit steep to me. I think I'll hold off for a while - maybe it will come down. If not, oh well. I actually prefer single player anyway.

 

Hey Zenimax - would you rather have 100,000 players at $15/Month or 1,000,000 players at $5/month? You will actually make far more at $5 - it's called law of diminishing returns. Any ecomnomist can explain it to you.

 

$5 a month would definitely be worth it. Most likely I'd only play for about 5 months which is only $25 on top of the initial price ($60?). Still expensive but at least not terribly so.

[lonewolfkai]

I dunno, the $15 per month is pretty common for subscript'ed MMOs.

 

My biggest hope is that it doesn't allow botting, or more precisely, having two accounts, you're actual playing character and then one that buffs your playing character. That's what happened to DAoC and was one of it's biggest downfalls imo. You HAD to have either your own buffbot (as it was called) or had a friend that buffed you or you were simply ran over.

 

I seriously hope ESO doesn't allow that.

Edited August 23, 2013 by lonewolf_kai

[JimboUK]

US$15 a month seems a bit steep to me. I think I'll hold off for a while - maybe it will come down. If not, oh well. I actually prefer single player anyway.

 

Hey Zenimax - would you rather have 100,000 players at $15/Month or 1,000,000 players at $5/month? You will actually make far more at $5 - it's called law of diminishing returns. Any ecomnomist can explain it to you.

 

Give it a year and I bet it'll be free, if the Star Trek and Star Wars franchises can't support a subscription model then the Elder Scrolls certainly won't.

[Rennn]

Guild Wars 2, The Old Republic, Star Trek Online, Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons and Dragons Online...

 

More profitable franchises and more trusted MMO names than ESO are free to play.

Zenimax can't seriously expect The Elder Scrolls Online to compete with a P2P model, can it?

[Thor.]

i will wait a year, until they finally realize ftp is the way to go. Just like Kotor realized their mistake :psyduck:

[DarthFalcon]

I personally like that it's gonna have a subscription model, F2P games generally have terrible quality/actually free content, the only exception I've seen so far being Rift. As for other "more profitable franchises" going F2P, that's because their games weren't anything special to begin with. I didn't play Star Trek, LOTRO, or DDO at launch, but SWTOR was just a glorified single-player game with a few MMO aspects tacked on for good measure, I had that game the week it came out, leveled a character to cap (didn't rush it, took a couple of months), and up until that point it was fun. But after you hit level cap, there just wasn't enough to do, and over a year later there still isn't that much to do.

[brokenergy]

I predict that in 6-12 months, ESO will become free-to-play

[JimboUK]

I personally like that it's gonna have a subscription model, F2P games generally have terrible quality/actually free content, the only exception I've seen so far being Rift. As for other "more profitable franchises" going F2P, that's because their games weren't anything special to begin with. I didn't play Star Trek, LOTRO, or DDO at launch, but SWTOR was just a glorified single-player game with a few MMO aspects tacked on for good measure, I had that game the week it came out, leveled a character to cap (didn't rush it, took a couple of months), and up until that point it was fun. But after you hit level cap, there just wasn't enough to do, and over a year later there still isn't that much to do.

 

What makes you think ESO will be any different? at some point you're going to run out of things to do, players can consume content a lot faster than developers can produce it. Zenimax are assuming people will continue to pay while waiting for new content, experience with other franchises suggests they won't. When players drift away it reduces income which means less to spend on content and the less they spend on content the less reason people have to stick around, these games enter a downward spiral until eventually free to play is the only viable option.

 

It makes sense to use the subscription model to start with, they can maximise profits while the game is new, that period only tends to last a few months though, after that people start to move on and they have to find a way to keep them playing.

[Lisnpuppy]

I would be ok with that as long as you didn't loose things once the sub went out the door. SO if you stated while the sub was in and had 10 bag space you shouldn't lose things and get shafted to 5 when the F2P starts.

 

Some games have done things like this and it made me an unhappy puppy.

[Zewp]

Honestly, I'm glad its subscript based. They seem to be better, more in depth games imo.

 

This. F2P or Buy2Play is a noble idea, but often the developers have to make compromises on the game to ensure they still make money off it if sales start slowing down and these compromises often cheapen and/or make the game a chore to play.