What if ESO had an offline mode?

[Ironman5000]

Oh well, the waiting game begins. Perhaps after 6 months the price will drop...

Well i've got my fingers crossed for a 'preferred status' membership like SWTOR offer - I purchased cartel coins worth £6 which elevated me from F2P giving me more in-game perks, then later the DLC costing £12. Now I have pretty much a full game with all the features I want, and have the possibility to unlock further features by using the cartel coins OR even saving up and using in-game currency (credits) by purchasing cartel market items through the Galactic Trade Network. That's £18 for a full game I can keep forever, plus I enjoy the challenge of earning credits to unlock further features just like how unlocks work for adventure/action games :D

 

I have no doubt it will at least 6-12 months before they even think of doing something like this, (I don't know how long it took SWTOR to introduce this option, assuming about that area) but it's a great option for people like me who can't afford over £100 a year for a game, but re willing to pay at least something to get the full game minus a few perks.

[JimboUK]

I have a feeling that ESO's subscription fee will get reduced over time anyway. If they're so adamant that the $15 is worth it, I'll just wait until they change their minds.

 

It's a little disheartening that it's impossible to run the game offline. All I really wanted to do was to roam Morrowind with nice graphics - no subscription fee, no other members distracting me, just myself and the giant mushrooms.

 

Oh well, the waiting game begins. Perhaps after 6 months the price will drop...

I honestly think it'll be F2P within a year, if franchises like Star Wars, Star Trek and Lord of the Rings can't make the pay model work then what chance does TES have?

[hoofhearted4]

I have no doubt it will at least 6-12 months before they even think of doing something like this, (I don't know how long it took SWTOR to introduce this option, assuming about that area)

Pretty darn close. game came out on December 20, 2011 and went full F2P on November 15, 2012. but i think the game was moving towards that before that.

 

quoted from Wikipedia:

 

 

"By July 2012, the subscriber base fell below 1 million, prompting EA to convert the game to free to play ... On November 15, 2012, the free-to-play option went live on all servers"

 

so there might have been F2P servers as early as July/August. idr when exactly i hopped into the game, but it was before they were F2P, but after that point were the game felt pretty empty. at least on my server (which was a crap server cause my friend was on it when i joined, but stopped playing as soon as i got the game lol. so i was left on a Low server lol)

[billyro]

Empty is a good word to associate TES with, though. I personally wouldn't mind if ESO is full of empty servers - that would actually be better, IMO.

[hoofhearted4]

Empty is a good word to associate TES with, though. I personally wouldn't mind if ESO is full of empty servers - that would actually be better, IMO.

except empty servers turn the game into a micro transaction game, or Devs have to rip out entire contents and make that cost a sub fee. empty servers in an MMO is not good, no matter how much you wanna play solo

[Vagrant0]

 

Empty is a good word to associate TES with, though. I personally wouldn't mind if ESO is full of empty servers - that would actually be better, IMO.

except empty servers turn the game into a micro transaction game, or Devs have to rip out entire contents and make that cost a sub fee. empty servers in an MMO is not good, no matter how much you wanna play solo

 

Also reasons why you don't want to see it go F2P, regardless of the reasons.

 

The horrible truth of F2P is that in the majority of cases it simply kills those games. Sure, it may bring more players to the game who might not have played otherwise, or actually earn the company more money than the game would earn from subscriptions, but therein lies the part that generally leads these games down a long and ugly road.

 

With f2p accounts, it means that anyone and everyone can download the game, make a few dozen accounts, and do little more than harass other players (for fun) or spam obscenities in whatever channels they have access to. With f2p, the average age of players drops significantly as you start having more and more of that group of players age 10+ playing, making no attempt to actually learn the game, then begging or throwing a fit when they hit some point where they have to pay real money to get something. Meaning that the community as a whole generally goes to crap making it harder to find capable and mature players to group with for endgame content. All of this before you even start to include those player accounts related to hacking, scamming or gold selling, made infinitely easier by virtue of being able to create an account, pass around equipment or money, then delete that account so that the game's staff can't trace the transaction or ban the group of accounts fast enough.

 

with a F2P world, generally development tends to follow one of two plans. Either the base game and lower areas are made free, with expansions (endgame areas) requiring some form of payment, or the game never really sees any large content updates and instead rolls out minor ones every month to try and suck money from players. In the first case, what you usually end up with is essentially a game with portions of it cut out and put behind a payment barrier, often feeling isolated even to those players who are paying for it. One of the reasons for this feeling of isolation is because it disrupts the flow of play since these areas usually have to be locked behind some sort of loading screen or area transition, or simply make you have to continually check with guild/party members to make sure they can even access these areas every time you want to do something (nevermind the sudden drop of population inside these areas making it harder to find groups). In the second case, it usually means that the game enters into an endless cycle of pricing out cosmetic items, RNG boxes, or minor powerups in order to generate money, diverting talent away from making actual game content. While the game may start to look more interesting after a few years of this, that interest tends to be very shallow since about the only thing ever being added is just a new coat of paint on existing assets that players are shelling out $10-30 a month on with the occasional %50 more exp for 2 hour item that cannot be traded/sold and ends up being entirely useless at level cap. And it becomes impossible to break out of this constant cycle since this cycle ultimately becomes the most reliable way of generating enough money to keep the game running.

 

With few exceptions, once a game has gone F2P, noteworthy additions to that game world become non-existent. There is a reason why there is SO much content in WoW compared to almost every other MMO... They've never gone F2P, so have always had a reasonably consistent budget to invest in development of the game and creation of new content.

[Alyzabeth]

It'll be a F2P like SWTOR within a year after release

 

Edit: And looks like others said the same thing before me. lol

Edited January 9, 2014 by Alyzabeth

[alantor]

This weekend ESO went Beta for their stress test.

 

I've played it for a few hours and i've seen/explored some things, and i cannot talk about the content

of ESO or the way it looks due to their NDA (non-disclosure agreement), but i can say this :

 

Take skyrim vanilla, add a mod that enhances character creation, remove all vibrant colors from skyrim,

add a mod that allows skyrim to be played as an mmo. Ask €60 for that and a monthly fee to play it.

Are you willing to pay/play it ?

 

Second, making a game like ESO go F2P is heading downhill no matter how you look at it. I seriously doubt

that their intended playerbase will stay the same after 3 to 6 months.

 

 

I honestly think it'll be F2P within a year, if franchises like Star Wars, Star Trek and Lord of the Rings can't make the pay model work then what chance does TES have?

 

 

I'm with you on that one. The pay model only works if you have a very strong and big playerbase, and imo i highly doubt that

will become the case for ESO. Mind you, i've only seen the beta, and it's a far from finished product, but one can see in what

direction it will be heading.

 

For now, i keep my hopes up but my expectations very low in comparison to what is already out there. But if you really want to play an offline game, stick to skyrim with all it's wonderful mods and graphic additions. Trust me, there is nothing comparable out there(in the same genre). Not now, and not for quite some time i suspect.

[hector530]

 

I honestly think it'll be F2P within a year, if franchises like Star Wars, Star Trek and Lord of the Rings can't make the pay model work then what chance does TES have?

 

 

when it comes to gaming TES is a much more successful and much larger franchise then any of those.

 

also TES:O wont have empty servers, its "single" server system. the zones are shared like what WoW does by making an empty server's zones cross server

[hoofhearted4]

 

 

I honestly think it'll be F2P within a year, if franchises like Star Wars, Star Trek and Lord of the Rings can't make the pay model work then what chance does TES have?

 

when it comes to gaming TES is a much more successful and much larger franchise then any of those.

 

Um no. TES is no where near the giant in gaming Star Wars is. Star Wars has an MMO, Several Lego Games, Force Unleased, Battle Front, games based on the animated clone wars show. Games on all consoles including handheld and Wii and more. And has been around much longer. TES is popular, but even in gaming it couldn't touch Star Wars.

 

And Jims point was is if MMOs with fan bases like Star Wars, LotR and Star Trek can't take off, then TES doesn't stand much of a chance either.

Edited January 12, 2014 by hoofhearted4