Bethesda Exec Defends Elder Scrolls Online's Subscription Model

[Charli]

It's not a better game than WoW dude. You all piss and moan you want, but to be worth a sub, you're going to have to convince every single last player that your game is superior. And it's not... it's really really not. There has to be miles of potential and future content on display to convince people it's worth sticking around and...what I got there was a barebones MMO... I saw nowhere it could go but... increase the level cap, add a new zone/story.

I know this was mostly Zenimax's production but...Bethesda...really? You didn't get 100% behind this project and you're now deciding to throw it a bone? Comaaaan guiz. Give us a break. You know this isn't your best foot forward.

I've beta'd the shit out of this game, I just can't see it holding a niche.

LOTRO has the hardcore Tolkien fans hooked

WoW has the majority fantasy MMO market cornered

EvE scratches the space/fiddly micro management itch

SWTOR has the space in a more hands on approach market


And I just...think Wildstar is a better attempt at digging a hole in WoW's crater of a niche.
I could be wrong. I could be way, way wrong. But... I've seen what happens to Rift, Tera, Aion, ...They're alive but wearing floaties. None of them are swimming. For a fantasy MMO to make a dent, it has to be a tactical nuke of innovation. And this is jut not it.

 

[Zac Jovanovic]

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I get what you're saying, but you misunderstood my point.

By longevity I don't mean that game survived a number of years. I mean longevity relevant to us players, a game that you can keep playing for years without giving up on it.
Sure, GW2 is doing reasonable well a year and some, but virtually all active players are relative newcomers. I've nearly a thousand people in my guilds lists in GW2, there's like 5 that logged in this year. And those are accounts, not characters.

Also, it's not a question of disliking content. It's a question of there not being remotely enough of content.

As fruit of this conversation I'd like to revisit my original and somewhat controversial initial point to correct it.

There are two ways to have an MMO of quality and longevity, one is monthly subscription fees and the second is annual or closer payed expansion packs.
Games that do both, or any combination of those and microtransaction shops and content paywalls should be sent to suck a bag of dicks.

 

[Zac Jovanovic]

I wouldn't count on it going F2P, it's probably gonna focus on console markets who are gonna swallow it whole and ask for more.

I guess it's possible to make it F2P on one platform but I'm not sure they would do it rather than just shut it down if it's not working and focus on the platforms that are bringing in the moneys.

 

[Caliostro]

Having played the beta I felt so utterly underwhelmed I think I'd have to seriously consider playing if it was Free to play, let alone the horrendous B2P+P2P+Premium items (at least one of the races is exclusive to the collector's edition, and I believe there have been mentions of a shop) model...

 

[Karadalis]

-

I get what you're saying, but you misunderstood my point.

By longevity I don't mean that game survived a number of years. I mean longevity relevant to us players, a game that you can keep playing for years without giving up on it.
Sure, GW2 is doing reasonable well a year and some, but virtually all active players are relative newcomers. I've nearly a thousand people in my guilds lists in GW2, there's like 5 that logged in this year. And those are accounts, not characters.

Also, it's not a question of disliking content. It's a question of there not being remotely enough of content.

As fruit of this conversation I'd like to revisit my original and somewhat controversial initial point to correct it.

There are two ways to have an MMO of quality and longevity, one is monthly subscription fees and the second is annual or closer payed expansion packs.
Games that do both, or any combination of those and microtransaction shops and content paywalls should be sent to suck a bag of dicks.

That sounds more reasonable then what you said before about GW2

However your latter point is again simply false. Since there are no "sucessfull" subscription games besides WoW and EvE.. and maybe Final fantasy.. but that one is a topic for itself.

There also does not exist a single MMO that finances itselfe simply through expansion packs besides GW 1... since 2 didnt had a paid expansion yet to my knowledge.

So tell me where does this standard you raise here come from? Name some examples please to back up your point.

All you do here is make a statement and expect people to take it at face value without backing it up.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

So do you get a free month with your full price game or are you being charged straight away day one? Thing is charging you full price for a game that you then have to pay more money again for is stupid. Why not charge $30 for the game and then people might then buy 2 months subs for another $30 - total paid $60 and you can play it for 2 months.

From what i gather Guildwars 2 is f2p and supposed to be amazing from what i saw from the Angry Joe review.

 

[wildstars]

When you boil it down, its a hotkey based 3rd/1st person MMO, just like all the rest.

You only have 5 attacks/abilities available at any time. And one of those is almost guaranteed to be allocated to the soul steal ability (think battery recharger for your magic weapons).

I was excited for this game, I really liked Oblivion & Sykrim. I am a big believer in 'you get what you pay for.' I have no problem with a subscription model. I ponied up the $$ for the imperial editon. I soon got in a beta, along with a few friends and familiy, and we discovered two deal breakers (for us) with the game.

1) Group questing is broken by design. You have to complete each part individually. Its like down syndrome questing. While this is annoying, its bearable. But when you get to quest dungeons, you are own your own. This totally sucks when you have been playing with a group and each member has tightly defined specific role (tank, healer, dps). The healer is totally screwed, and the tank and dps are mostly screwed.

2) You have 5 action hot keys (4 in reality) and 1 potion hot key. You can hold down the potion hot key and a 'wheel of potions' pops up. Trust me, when you have three three imps handing you your ass, it might as well be a stripper popping out of a cake, for all the good it does you.

Another annoyance: If you have a combat pet (which i think is only an option for mages) its uncontrollable. You can't send it in to attack something, it only attacks things that are attacking you or it. Sometimes it attacks things for no reason for no descernable reason.

There are a lot of pluses to the game: the stories are interesting, its fully voiced, the graphics are great and you have a lot of flexibilty (dual sword weilding plate wearing mage? no problem!). But the group questing and limited hot keys were a deal breaker for me, my wife, and my friends. We got refunds for our pre-orders.

I'm still getting invites to beta weekends, and I read the patch notes each time. If they fix those issues, I'll buy back in. I don't think I'd play it even if it went f2p if those issues still existed.

 

[Karadalis]

So do you get a free month with your full price game or are you being charged straight away day one? Thing is charging you full price for a game that you then have to pay more money again for is stupid. Why not charge $30 for the game and then people might then buy 2 months subs for another $30 - total paid $60 and you can play it for 2 months.

From what i gather Guildwars 2 is f2p and supposed to be amazing from what i saw from the Angry Joe review.

1 month free is industry standard and part of the initial buy price of ESO too.

Guild wars 2 is not free to play but Buy to play. You buy the game and then can log onto their servers whenever you want without having to pay for that "service"

The game finances itselfe through an ingame store that mostly sells stuff like additional character slots (wich you wont need if youre not a compulsive twink maniac that needs over 6 characters) Boost items to level faster, costumes, shiny mounts and vanity pets and some other stuff you dont really NEED to enjoy the game to its fullest.

Did i mention you can buy their premium currency with ingame money? The exchange is expensive as hell but its still possible to access the real money stuff simply by playing the game... if you have the time and patience that is.

 

[Brian Tams]

15$ a month is an absurd asking price, no matter what the level of content is. They're basically asking you to buy the game 3 extra times a year (15x12=180). Plus they have an in game microtransaction shop. Its ludicrous.

I've greatly enjoyed the beta sessions, but not 15 bucks a month enjoyed. Until they redo their subscription model, no sale.

 

[Zac Jovanovic]

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It makes it easier to live on the internet if you add "in my opinion" to the beginning of every sentence as you read it.

My opinions are based on observation of multiplayer games for well over a decade and having a basic understanding of costs of game development and maintaining multiplayer games.

But since you bring up examples let's turn the question around.
Can you name an AAA MMO developed and marketed for F2P that has rolling influx of meaningful content and a steady player base?
Can you name an AAA B2P MMO that gets significant content updates and keeps the players after they burn through the first couple hundred hours of release content?

People work for money and that money has to come from somewhere, a microtransaction store is a scale that can't be leveled in a way that can fund proper development for a high quality game.

Whether a game is financially "Successful" means nothing to players. SWTOR was very financially successful due to initial sales, and then a couple months later after 4/5 of the playerbase dropped their subscriptions they had to grasp the F2P rope.
At the rate they're making money with the current, terrible F2P model they'd get their investment back in a decade, and that's without further development costs.

The only F2P MMO of any relevance I can think of from the top of my head is Neverwinter, and damn that one sucked so bad.

1 month free is industry standard and part of the initial buy price of ESO too.

Did i mention you can buy their premium currency with ingame money? The exchange is expensive as hell but its still possible to access the real money stuff simply by playing the game... if you have the time and patience that is.

It's also worth noting most MMOs offer a 7-14 days trial you can use right away, making the initial play time after buying the game up to 44 days.

Buying premium currency for gold can also be turned the other way, meaning buying gold for real money. So farming gold to buy in game currency is essentially work, only at <10% of minimum wage.

15$ a month is an absurd asking price, no matter what the level of content is. They're basically asking you to buy the game 3 extra times a year (15x12=180). Plus they have an in game microtransaction shop. Its ludicrous.

I've greatly enjoyed the beta sessions, but not 15 bucks a month enjoyed. Until they redo their subscription model, no sale.

That's because they're supposed to add 3 times worth of initial content during that year. It's not supposed to be a way to keep game content hostage, but a way keep building the game.
The alternative is what applies to any one time payment MMO:
- "Wow, this game is awesome! Best money spent ever!"
2 months later
- "Wow, this game sucks! There's nothing to do!"

 

[Lightknight]

Eh, even if they fully planned to go free to play, it still makes sense to start off with a subscription. Not starting off that way would be throwing away money.

However, if it actually gets popular enough for subscriptions to sustain it then they'll stay that way and happily so. Having played the Beta I can say that this is actually possible. I loved the beta and have purchased the game already. But we'll see if I continue to subscribe.

 

[Mister Chippy]

They're asking for my money for this game in every single possible way they can and they expect me to buy into any bullshit about how they think it's worth it? No game is fucking worth that much money. I might play it if it just had the flat fee or the subscription fee. I would still probably play it with both. Having to deal with the collectors addition would be a definite turn off, since that proves that they don't give a fuck that I'm already paying them loads of money, if they can hold something back in order to get me to pay even more they'll fucking do it. Finally, adding in microtransactions is the last straw.

If I pay $60 and an additional $15 a month I expect to be able to get every fucking thing available in the game. Saying "You should pay that much because it'll mean we'll keep adding shit." doesn't make me feel much better when they keep on proving that I'll probably have to pay for that shit again! Mark my words, most of the 'updates' they'll release for this game will be in the form of new stuff you have to buy from the in game store or in the form of paid expansions. Nothing "free" for the people already paying $15 a month to keep playing.

 

[bug_of_war]

1) You have to pay 60$ to buy it
2) You pay 15$ a month to play it
3) It has a real money shop in game
4) Some content is locked behind a paywall (aka collectors edition)

It's pretty obvious they are milking it for more than its worth. After playing beta for 4 hours, I was so bored, I don't think I would be picking it up after it goes f2p 6 months from now.

5) 30 gig base download
6) more content means more space required
7) more space (may) means more money needed

I played the beta for a couple of hours and afterwards I said to my mate, "So how long you think this'll take to become free to play?". The game looks as good as DC Universe Online, and plays about as well as it.

That Dragonskin power was fucking metal though, kept me entertained for a bit.

 

[shintakie10]

While I've played ESO a few beta weekends so far and have absolutely no love for it (go Wildstar!), I don't think I understand the hate for sub fees.

I've played a sub fee for WoW since pretty much day 1. That's a ton of money I've put into the game. Lookin at the total amount of money I've spent on sub fees is pretty staggerin, plus expansions and whatnot. Think its about 1700 dollars total. Yet I'll never say that was money wasted because I've gotten so much playtime out of that money. Every 15 dollars I spend per month gave me anywhere from 10 hours of enjoyment (really slow times where I only raided) to anywhere up to 5 full days of entertainment (real time, I spend a lot of time on WoW sometimes). I can't think of many games I've played that can match that kind of money to enjoyment ratio as WoW does. Even games I've sunk 100+ hours into don't match that because at the end of the day they have a shelf life where there's just no new content unless I pay for some horribly overpriced dlc.

Now, will ESO's sub fee be justified like WoW's? Probably not if the game is anythin like it was before when I played, but that doesn't mean the sub fee is a bad idea. It just means ESO isn't worth its sub fee in the long term. Especially since the end game is next to nonexistent in that game.

Though that does bring up a point I've been wonderin. Whats the point of a sub fee if there's nothin to do at max level? SWTOR had this same issue where you get to max and you just sorta twiddle your thumbs wonderin what to do. I know ESO isn't meant to have any sort of end game while TOR was supposed to but didnt, but that feels like it makes it worse.

 

[Gorrath]

Come on.

You said, "the $14.99 subscription will be pricier than other MMORPGs,"

All MMORPGs that do have a sub fee, charge that, and they have been for 10+ years.
That's zero inflation in a decade. Try finding that on any other commodity in the marketplace today.

You say a subscription fee is fool-hardy, but I say it is foolhardy to ignore the elephant in the room: Blizzard's MMORPG behemoth - World of Warcraft (WoW)- which has continually boasted (for ten years in November 2014) high PAID subscription levels ($2.3 billion in subscription revenue reported in 2013.)

Seems like Bethesda and Zenimax are market savvy, taking a page from Blizzard's book. And I bet they will do quite well as a result of this smart business move.

The people who qq (cry) about it not being free to play can go satisfy themselves with lesser quality games...

Just saying.

You think taking a page from Blizzards big book of MMOS is a smart move? Do you not know of the army of MMOS that have done exactly that and, one after another, failed horribly? The people who "qq" as you put it, about the monetization scheme will indeed satisfy themselves with "lesser quality games" (those pleabs!). And when they do, and TES:Online has a meager subscription base left after hemorrhaging players to these games, they will do what nearly everyone not named Blizzard has done.

If Bethesda are actually market savvy, what they have done is built in a backbone for transition between the subscription model and the F2P model, and based on the fact that they already have an in game real money shop (or so I hear) I'm willing to bet that's precisely what they have in mind. If history is any lesson to us, they will milk the subscription model as far as they can, and then introduce a dual F2P and sub. monetization scheme, ala TOR.

 

[Dragonbums]

He can say whatever he wants, but in this day and age- not many people- especially the college to young adult demographic is or has the money to spend $60.00 on a game, only to pay a $15.00 a month subscription fee, to play an MMO that has microtransactions in it. Especially when the parent company Bethesda only charges $60.00 for a game that can provide me with a fuck ton of content and fun for hundreds upon hundreds of hours.

 

[Dragonbums]

I have no problems paying for a worthwhile subscription game. I actually prefer it over ftp item shop and paywalled games.

This game has FTP item shop and it has a paywall with pre-orders and unlocking all the classes. It's not the fact that this game is a subscription that's a problem but the fact that it abuses all 3 categories at the same time

The only major thing in the collectors edition is the Imperial RACE, not CLASS.

It doesn't matter. If I'm not mistaken you could play that race for free in every other elder scrolls game that existed. There is no reason to put a race behind a paywall. Granted that doesn't matter to me since I like to play as the Khajitt anyway.

 

[Lightknight]

Seems like the gist of this is "Give us money, and I'll give you these questionable promises!"

Huh? It's a monthly subscription. It's the epitome if "If we don't keep up our end of the bargain you can stop paying us". Giving large amounts of money up front like requiring a year-long subscription would be an example of what you're saying but this isn't that.

 

[Lightknight]

They're asking for my money for this game in every single possible way they can and they expect me to buy into any bullshit about how they think it's worth it? No game is fucking worth that much money.

What has changed between WoW and now?

 

[VaporWare]

Getting killed by a Greater Bonewalker or dragon is one thing, but I'd rather not have an Elder Scrolls experience where I'm ganked by someone named "XxxGangtsavenom420xxX."

With the much touted fight-for-the-throne PvP thing, I'm personally waiting for the first time the game informs everyone in giant raid text that Emperor Butts has taken command of the Empire. All hail Emperor Butts.

With regards to the subscription model...eh. I'm going to re-state some of what I've said before. I don't think ZeniMax Online quite knows what they're doing here. About all I'm sure of is that it'll be a game. It might even be one whose collective fanbase will support an MMO despite it's flaws.

I don't think they're greedy though. Just blind and overconfident.