Elder Scrolls Online Has Five Years of Content Planned

[Steven Bogos]

Elder Scrolls Online Has Five Years of Content Planned

Elder Scrolls Online dev Zenimax Online Studios says additional content is already in development.

Zenimax Online Studios is taking The Elder Scrolls Online very seriously, and plans for it to stick around for a long time, promising up to five years worth of continued content updates. General Manager Matt Firor told VG24/7 [http://www.vg247.com/2013/08/23/elder-scrolls-online-dev-planning-5-year-roadmap-first-add-on-content-being-worked-on-now/] that additional content for the game's five-year-plan is already in development.

"At five hours the art needs to be good, it needs to feel good when you sit down. Five days is the levelling needs to be good, five months is the end-game needs to be good and the five years is the one you're talking about. That's the magic one, the one that's really 'community'. You're going back because you like the people you're playing with, it's also the hardest to achieve obviously."

"You need to make sure there's something for those players to do that's new and refreshing on an ongoing basis." Firor explained, "So the other side of that is we're planning regular content updates and pretty substantial ones like every month to six weeks - we're working on the actual cadence just now - but we're already working on post-launch content now."

Firor also explained how The Elder Scrolls Online can take the "massively multiplayer" out of MMORPG if players wish to do so, telling us that the core quest line - in which you try to reclaim your soul after it's been stolen by Molag Bal - can be completed alone. It's basically a new, full Elder Scrolls title with online aspects should you wish to use them.

Recently, Firor justified The Elder Scrolls Online's subscription model [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/127107-Elder-Scrolls-Online-Director-Explains-Opting-For-Subscriptions], claiming that it wouldn't be a true "Elder Scrolls experience" if it was free-to-play.

Source: VG24/7 [http://www.vg247.com/2013/08/23/elder-scrolls-online-dev-planning-5-year-roadmap-first-add-on-content-being-worked-on-now/]

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[EightGaugeHippo]

That's ambitious, I like it.
But I'm still unsure about whether or not this makes the fee worth it.

I mean, if you look at it as the fee means your paying for 5 years worth of content.
People who jump in 5 years later (providing the fee still exists then) will have spent less and got more, than say if I buy it at launch and spent 5 years playing.
I'll being drained of cash and essentially punished for loyalty and dedication to a franchise I love.

I did a quick calculation. (correct if wrong)
After 5 years of extra content, with a fee of $14.99 a month, I've spent $899.40 (£577.54)

TES is one of my favorite games, but is it worth a thousand dollars?
Not to me unfortunately.

 

[BernardoOne]

Sucks that the game will be dead after 1 year.

 

[weirdee]

well, at least they're trying to avoid SWTOR syndrome

 

[Tarkand]

That's ambitious, I like it.
But I'm still unsure about whether or not this makes the fee worth it.

I mean, if you look at it as the fee means your paying for 5 years worth of content.
People who jump in 5 years later (providing the fee still exists then) will have spent less and got more, than say if I buy it at launch and spent 5 years playing.
I'll being drained of cash and essentially punished for loyalty and dedication to a franchise I love.

I did a quick calculation. (correct if wrong)
After 5 years of extra content, with a fee of $14.99 a month, I've spent $899.40 (£577.54)

TES is one of my favorite games, but is it worth a thousand dollars?
Not to me unfortunately.

I'm always startled when I see comments like this. It reminds me of back when I played WoW and people who told me they couldn't afford to play it because it was 'too expensive' and then would go on thursday night (While I was raiding) and would blow several time the wow monthly fee in one evening... an exercise they repeated every week.

It made no sense to me then, it makes no sense to now.

To use your figures... this means you'd be spending .50$ a day on this game.

Let's assume here that you spend 15 hours a week on this game (And that is not heavy usage for a MMO player...)... you'd be spending less than a quarter (.23$) per hour on the game.

Now take a moment to think how many form of entertainment cost less than that. The average 60$ triple AAA game that you finish in 20 hours (And I'm being generous here) cost you more than that (Either 60$ a month if you buy one a month or .33$ an hour if you want to break it down that way).

Internet connection? Computer you're playing on? You'd have that even if you didn't play the mmorpg - so that can't be factored in.

And it gets even 'better' when you consider that a good mmo usually take over a lot of aspect of your life... you won't be buying as many new games because of the mmo. You won't go out as much. All of this will mean you'll usually spend less.

There's a lot of problem with mmos... but them being expensive isn't one of them.

Now, for sure, the guy who buys skyrim for 60$ and logs in over 300 hours on it is getting his money's worth much more than the mmo player... but objectively speaking a MMO at 14.99$ a month is one of the cheapest hobby around.

 

[Makabriel]

I would thumb up your comment if such a thing were possible, Tarkland. I agree with your sentiment and your assessment. People see the 15$ as expensive, when they may spend just as much if not more on in game content that a publisher will shovel you.

I mean look at Plants Vs Zombies 2. People are SCREAMING at them to make it a one time purchase. The concept of having to buy pieces of the game (which I haven't even done and am progressing just fine) enrages them, and yet on this side, people are screaming at them to put IN pay to win content. It baffles me...

 

[Maxtro]

I don't care about "community"

I just want more Elder Scrolls.

Anybody else wish Elder Scrolls VI was coming out next year instead of ESO?

 

[Ishal]

So did ToR... and we all know how that ended up. This thing just has flashing red warning sides all over it. Time will tell, but I'm not seeing it.

The MMO community are content locusts by and large. They'll play it for a few months, then they'll leave. When exactly the exodus occurs is dependent on a few things. The speed at which bugs are fixed, the rate at which new content is added. etc etc.

 

[Ishal]

I don't care about "community"

I just want more Elder Scrolls.

Anybody else wish Elder Scrolls VI was coming out next year instead of ESO?

I get what you are saying, but I don't really care when VI comes out. I just want it to be damn awesome when it does. If that takes a few more years then so be it. I'm just glad they are actually working on it. Which will let me ignore this MMO pretender like it never happened.

 

[Elvaril]

five months is [sic] the end-game needs to be good

I may be wrong on this since it has been a while, but was not one of the problems that ToR had was that people hit the end game content way earlier than they were expecting? As in within a week or so of launch? Five months seems an excessive amount of time for them to expect people to sit around waiting to see the end-game content.

 

[Roxas1359]

I would normally be excited about this, but I seem to remember that Bethesda made this claim about Skyrim:

"We would like to do DLC; we don't have any specific plans yet, but they've been really successful and we like making them. Right now I can say that we'd like to do less DLC but bigger ones - you know, more substantial. The Fallout 3 pace that we did was very chaotic. We did a lot of them - we had two overlapping groups. We don't know what we're going to make yet, but we'd like them to be closer to an expansion pack feel."

Or one of my favorites when asked about Skyrim's DLC before the game launch:

"Pointing to Rockstar as an example of a developer whose DLC "feels more like an expansion pack," the company's Todd Howard discussed how big Skyrim?s DLC will be. The answer? "Between `Point Lookout for Fallout 3 and `Shivering Isles' for Oblivion" in size, he said.

While it is true that the DLC for Skyrim was less frequent, it was also not really as substantial seeing as Dragonborn and Dawnguard were shorter than Shivering Isles, and the fact that they made Hearthfire which just added something that PC gamers had already made mods for.

Source
Source 2

While I don't doubt that they can make content that can last 5 years, it's more of a matter if they will do so. Then again I'm one of those weird Elder Scrolls people who encountered every game breaking bug ever in Skyrim and thus it killed my love for it so I'm probably just being pessimistic. Well the other reason is because I know that they could have done better really (played all their other Scrolls games before Skyrim), especially when it comes to how they treated PS3 gamers, and PC gamers for a while. Oh and before people claim that I was playing the PS3 version, I was playing the 360 version because I knew that Bethesda would do that timed exclusive BS again like they did for New Vegas on the PS3 (plus playing Bethesda games on a PS3 is like playing Sonic 06 only 100 times worse).

Now I shall put up my flame shield as this is more than likely to rustle a few people's jimmies on this site.

Spoiler: My Flame Shield

 

[EightGaugeHippo]

Snip

Epic Snip

Thing is, I am the kinda guy who buys Skyrim and gets 300+ hours.
After the game came out I spent a further £30 (From UK so I'm using pounds now) for DLC.
But that's it, I'm done spending money on Skyrim. I've bought it, all the DLC.
I'm set, all of it belongs to me and I can play it when I choose.
Overall it set me back £58 as apposed to £500.
When Skyrim is 5 years old, still only spent £58.

I'm not saying this game is not worth it to you, I'm saying that in my opinion no single game is worth £500+ to me.

And while I like the idea of one game actually saving me money, because I'm not going out, or buying any new games, in fact i'd just be sat here paying ESO to take away my life because if I don't I'll be wasting money because it's not worth it. (actually kinda don't like that idea now that I think about it)

Damn I really hate money, especially metaphorical money that my brain spends on useless stuff.

(Right I'm tired, sort of struggling to stay sane here, g'night)

[Edit]

Forgot my most important point:

Bare with me here this is a hypothetical & rhetorical question: an experiment of thought.

Which would seems more appealing to you if you where a person who only buys 1 game every 5 years?

Game A
-$960 game
-5 years free content
-no subscription fee for those 5 years.

Or Game B
-$60 game
-5 years free content
-$900 worth of subscription fees over 5 years.

Neither (hint: they're the same), You'd buy Skyrim or TESVI and mod the shit out of it for the next half a decade.
I just can't look at ESO with sub fees and not see a game that just costs more than it should.

(by this point, I've well and truely lost my mind and it's time to go to bed)

 

[Bat Vader]

I don't care about "community"

I just want more Elder Scrolls.

Anybody else wish Elder Scrolls VI was coming out next year instead of ESO?

Yes but at the same time no. I feel that a three year development period for an Elder Scrolls game is short and that the game may feel rushed. I would prefer if the game was in development for four or more years.

Plus, I want in the latest ESO stress test and I quite enjoyed it.

On Topic: That's good. I am happy to see they have a schedule planned out to support their game.

 

[Dascuro]

Recently, Firor justified The Elder Scrolls Online's subscription model, claiming that it wouldn't be a true "Elder Scrolls experience" if it was free-to-play.

Yeah... why does that sounds a lot like Maxxis earlier this year claiming that Simcity would not work unless it was always online?

Having TESO people thinking to 5 years into the future is all fine and good, but the question is not if there will be plans for the future, the question is would there be people or a community to see it through? at this point there is quite high number of people, myself included that are not longer looking up to this game because their choices, not only on how their payment model is, but their claims, threatment of the lore and their almost stubborn ignorance of other games' mistakes from the past. The Elder Scrolls is a quite well rooted franchise yes, but even the best franchises can crash and burn because of poor descitions and to be fair, they can promise the heavens, the moon and the stars from now to the next 5 years all them want but is only that right now, promises, promises that doesnt reasure us that the game would be any good, promises that doesnt tell us if we are going to be engaged to the game, promises that doesnt tell, us, the consumers if buying the game and paying a monthly fee is a good idea, all we get are "true elder scrolls experience" and to do that right now all you got to do is get to Steam for a fraction of the monthly fee get any game of the series (except Skyrim cause that one still $50+ right now) and play it, more true Elder Scrolls cannot be achieved yet.

Unless, of course, they feel arrogant enough to look down on this great games and their creators due a lack of respect and be so full of themselves, having a very sad superiority complex instead of been humble respectful and on the level or just not bring up the past at all, because if they did that would be most depressing. (I am well aware they did so please dont try to lecture me on the matter)

 

[Xeorm]

I would thumb up your comment if such a thing were possible, Tarkland. I agree with your sentiment and your assessment. People see the 15$ as expensive, when they may spend just as much if not more on in game content that a publisher will shovel you.

I mean look at Plants Vs Zombies 2. People are SCREAMING at them to make it a one time purchase. The concept of having to buy pieces of the game (which I haven't even done and am progressing just fine) enrages them, and yet on this side, people are screaming at them to put IN pay to win content. It baffles me...

From what I've seen with MMO's, the hard part isn't convincing one person to play. He'll likely see it and want to play, and not mind paying the cash and fee.

The difficult part comes in when the developers have to rope in all his friends, or else he'll grow bored of it pretty quickly and leave. Getting them to join when it's F2P is pretty easy. The main barrier to entry would be time spent, without an upfront monetary cost. Keep them going with some monetization schemes, preferably time savers and cosmetic items, and you'll make money.

Plants vs zombies 2 doesn't really have the same dynamic. People are looking to play a single-player game, and their friends playing or not playing won't have nearly the same effect as it would for an MMO.

 

[josemlopes]

There's a lot of problem with mmos... but them being expensive isn't one of them.

Now, for sure, the guy who buys skyrim for 60$ and logs in over 300 hours on it is getting his money's worth much more than the mmo player... but objectively speaking a MMO at 14.99$ a month is one of the cheapest hobby around.

After only 4 months you already paid the same as a new retail game (and that is if you buy it at release). Imagine if those games were a 4 month rental. And the fact that there are MMO's that work like rental games just shows how it can actually be done (back then if may have been justified but now its just taking over the fact that people are used to it).

Its the same thing as people complaining about Killer Instinct, Microsoft called it Free to Play so people either expect not to pay a single cent (you can only play as 1 character but you can still do everything with that one) or complain that it should have been a 60 retail game while there is a content pack to unlock everything that is a lot cheaper then a retail game, and in case you only care about the fight and not bonus costumes then its even cheaper.

People can complain that the "Free to Play" is somewhat of a glorified demo (although you can fight against anyone online and you get all the stats and shit) but to ask for the game to be more expensive in favor of a more traditional game description? Thats just nuts that show that buzzwords like "F2P" and "retail" still work.

 

[Pigeon_Grenade]

i dont like some of the Other Choices made, and having a Framework For 5 years of stuff sounds impressive, But it all Depends hoe much Content is there on Release, and how Frequent the Updates For more stuff will be, if they do a pretty big update a month, Before People have managed to Burn off the Starting Stuff- may Work..

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

so i'm gonna have to buy the game as well as pay a subscription. hmmmm, gonna have to think about this before i make a purchase

 

[Captain Anon]

by the power of Talos and The Last Dragonborn, that's a lot of DLC and Exploration to be done, oh well I'm a sucker for The Elder Scroll Series

 

[Karadalis]

So did ToR... and we all know how that ended up. This thing just has flashing red warning sides all over it. Time will tell, but I'm not seeing it.

The MMO community are content locusts by and large. They'll play it for a few months, then they'll leave. When exactly the exodus occurs is dependent on a few things. The speed at which bugs are fixed, the rate at which new content is added. etc etc.

Content locusts...

Well heres an interesting idea:

MMO players have the attention span for a mmo game a "normal" gamer has for a single player game... or rather they have a longer attention span because i honestly dont know anyone playing a singleplayer game for a couple of months in a row.

I think its a bit unfair calling them content locusts when all MMOs have been in the last couple of years is "rush to the endgame because then the real game starts" kinda BS.

With straight up leveling system everyone knows that the real diferientiation between you and other peoples chars only begins at max level. Max level is the border where you cant simply outlevel a situation anymore and have to use your brains and show some concentration for the game.

And as soon as people reach the end of the endgame, aka the moment they cant improve their char anymore further, be it though itemisation or otherwise they simply stop playing... because they have the feeling they "finished the game"

Also the theme park structure of most mmos doesnt really help either because most of the areas you have used for leveling dont give you any reason to come back to them... making them totaly worthless to anyone who outleveled the area and in the end turns them into ghost towns.

That leaves new players who come onto the game with the feeling that the game is anything but a Mmo. A downward circle you might say.

Anyways plans are fine and all but they are just that... plans.

And a plan never survives enemy contact... the enemy here being sub fees and time.