Elder Scrolls Online Director Explains Opting For Subscriptions

[Sabrestar]

It's going to be a difficult move to make it work and I hope they're aware of that. Still, I wish them luck. Good MMOs are hard to come by.

I'd like to know whether they intend to take any sort of stance on user modding, as that has long been an essential part of the Elder Scrolls experience. I've not played Skyrim (PC's too old), but I've left months of my life in Morrowind and Oblivion, and in both cases I found them almost unplayable without heavy community modding. (I've heard some similar complaints about Skyrim at least insofar as the menu system is concerned.) In particular I hope they've finally started to put serious effort into character modelling. Vanilla Morrowind and Oblivion character models and textures are just plain ugly.

 

[theuprising]

Meh at first I was surprised that the game isn't B2P, but I see why they did it, since they don't plan to be like GW2, and have a base game, and then add more stuff funded by the cash shop which sells cosmetics and "convenience".

Here its more like TES, you aren't thinking about money, you bought the game, and you have access to everything out. I don't think its a particularly smart move unless this is an absolutely phenomenal game with lots of lasting appeal in RvR, in the business sense, but for the gamer this is a smart move. If they wanted the most money they would have went the GW2 route, everyone would have bought it, and, like GW2, if you feel let down, too bad, you already bought it!

EDIT: Nvm there's a cash shop too, f*** these guys. I think it will last longer than a year without a sub, but it will go F2P eventually.

 

[Dularaki]

All this has happened before. All this will happen again.

 

[Doom972]

Guild Wars 2 seems to be doing well with the P2P model, why couldn't TESO?

...Are there pay gates or pay worlds? I was under the understanding that the F2P model had things you can purchase but didn't restrict access to areas/portions of the game.

My thought exactly. Why not make money from purely cosmetic items like TF2 does? Though personally, I would prefer to just buy the game in a single purchase and play it.

 

[Me55enger]

I'm sorry, but I'm not buying this as a legitimate justification. There are methods of sustaining revenue that aren't simply "pay 50 credits to access dungeon."

Star Citizen intends to sustain itself based on cosmetics and non-gameplay impacting microtransactions.

APB: Reloaded has managed to balance its microtransaction shop so that ingame items and weapons are effectively side-grades more relative to player preference over Pay 2 Win. It is obnoxiously expensive, however.

Firefall was- last time I was on there- undertaking a similar process.

Star citizen is rapidly approaching the $16million mark, APB is going from strength to strength and Firefall doesn't appear to be suffering. None of them (at present) appear to intentionally deny access to the game (Firefall may have changed).

This guy is clutching at straws and got a very short one indeed.

 

[saxman234]

So will the game still be 60 bucks when it comes out on top of this? I'm assuming you will get at least a month free when pay. I wasn't expecting free to play, but free after you buy the game like guild wars 2. And the game will only have the mages guild and fighting guild to start? That's less than skyrim and oblivion. They underestimate how quickly people will fly through those guild questlines if there are only 15 hours of content each. So many meh statements in this article.

 

[userwhoquitthesite]

The subscription model also keeps out quite a lot of trolls and griefers. People tend to be less of a dick when they have a monetary investment in a game.

Of course, EVE Online would be the exception to that... ;P

EVE players are paying for the RIGHT to be dicks to eachother. And I frankly salute that business decision



what I want to know is, will they still charge for the game at launch, if its subscription based, as that was always my biggest issue with the subscription model

 

[Nurb]

A sub means everyone's on equal ground and the devs don't put time, effort, and resources into making the game frustrating enough to get you to pay cash... and someon just can't drop a wad of cash on OPing themselves and just stomp all over everyone who's invested time just playing the game.

I might give it a shot if I can get in on a trial.

 

[AngelBlackChaos]

Unless you your WoW or Eve, you can't survive on subscriptions anymore.

Or FF11, it's been chugging along nice and quiet like with a subscription model in the background of all the MMO hullabaloo. Its successor, FF14:ARR, will be following the same model.

The FF MMOs are a bad example of surviving on subscriptions considering they almost destroyed Square Enix. Especially FF14. Even so, WoW, EVE, and FF are the only games to have any success with a subscriber system. Everyone else either went F2P or went bankrupt.

"Square Enix president Yoichi Wada announced in June 2012 that Final Fantasy XI had become the most profitable title in the Final Fantasy series."

I kind of doubt it ruined square. Though XIV 1.0 almost did, XI subscriptions helped it survive to even attempt ARR.

A GOOD game that votes for Subscriptions, can help hold a company well. A bad game, however, can cripple it.

 

[Saulkar]

A sub means everyone's on equal ground and the devs don't put time, effort, and resources into making the game frustrating enough to get you to pay cash... and someon just can't drop a wad of cash on OPing themselves and just stomp all over everyone who's invested time just playing the game.

I might give it a shot if I can get in on a trial.

That is one thing checked off my list of points to make.

The second is that I am sick and tired of F2P and wish an mmo (other than WoW) would finally come out with all of it's content available from the start. I just need to wait and see if the game is worth it or finally decide to pick up GW2.

 

[Caiphus]

I dunno. I'm not a fan of the argument "That's not an Elder Scrolls Experience" when he talks about building a free to play model. It's also not an Elder Scrolls Experience(tm) to lose all of your access to your progress if you don't pay $15 per month, which is the subscription model. So yeah.

 

[klaynexas3]

Why not a free to play with subscription model? Like how Everquest or Runescape does it. Or buy to play.

 

[immortalfrieza]

These MMO developers can throw in any excuse to justify putting in subscriptions they want to, but all of it is B.S. regardless. The real reason for it is they just want be able to just sit back have their customers keep throwing them money just to play a game they have already paid for in full while they do next to nothing, and definitely not anything to actually justify the cost. Subscription MMOs are all about greed and nothing more, always have been.

 

[The_Echo]

There are other games out there I want to play. There are things that take up my free time.

I would very likely not be able to play Elder Scrolls Online enough to justify a monthly subscription. In fact, I can see myself not playing the game for months at a time, so why should I pay for that?

Guild Wars 2 made a flat price work, didn't it? Surely Elder Scrolls could do the same.

 

[Whytewulf]

I am happy, whether I am in the minority or not, that it's a subscription model. F2P is too scattered. Why does everyone think and compare it to GW2? GW2 is successful, maybe but it has only been out for a year and I know tons of people stopped playing, due to content. With that said, subscription worked fine for a while and if they actually intend to take some WOW players, those people are used to a subscription.

It seems everyone wants their stuff for free these days. These companies have to stay in business and want to make money. If you feel you are getting your money's worth buy it. No I am not telling you how to think or that you can't express your opinion, but ripping into a company for a business model just seems silly to me. I am surprised these f2P games can really survive for long, it's not a big money making venture.

I also hope EverQuestNext is subscription...

 

[thewatergamer]

I guess I see your point but its still no excuse bethesda, why not take the GW2 route and have 60$ up front again?
Also not all F2P MMO's have area restrictions...

This is not so much your "vision" but more "We want more money and here is our BS Justification"

 

[Dragonbums]

Here is the thing with payment and consumers.

You can justify it with 30 legitimate reasons as to why this is necessary for your MMO.

At the end of the day, it isn't going to get the majority of the people who don't want a subscription based MMO, to pay for your subscription based MMO.

My opinion? I don't care.
Especially when your ads for the game didn't show the diversity in the races of these factions sans white elves, dwarves, and humans, and for the most part it just felt like a generic conquer the kingdom MMO with the Elder Scrolls slapped on the top.
Showing some of the more defined races like the Khajiit, Dunmer, Orcs, and Argonians would of helped people immensely on identifying which faction belongs to who. This could also of been an opportunity to show case the tension going within the factions as well.
Seeing as how a lot of these alliances are formed by races that don't exactly have a pretty past together. Especially with the Argonians and Dunmer. Adds more depth and "Elder Scrolls" feel to the whole thing.

But they didn't.
They copped out, and did the same old same old with the MMO.

 

[Dastardly]

Firor said The Elder Scrolls Online is a "world," ...

This is only true if, as with early MMOs, there is more to do in the game than combat. And, to be clear, I mean non-combat gameplay as a viable playstyle. Look at games like Star Wars Galaxies, where early on in that game's life, you could be a full-time crafter and never find yourself without something engaging to do.

Then WoW-like games came along that reduced all non-combat gameplay to combat-adjacent -- crafting was just to make combat gear, and you'd have to play the combat side of things to get the most important ingredients, and the crafting process was "put ingredient in box and click and get exact copy of item everyone else has." This, along with the removal or heavy instancing of player housing, took away any claims that MMOs had to being "worlds."

They're lobbies. Visual lobbies in which you wander and putter about while waiting for a group to fill up to go to Instance X or Battleground Y. There's no life to them, and there's no opportunity for players to leave a footprint in the world when they're not logged in. Early MMOs provided value-for-dollar by creating the feeling that players were buying real estate in a virtual world, not just paying admission to a theme park.

 

[funksobeefy]

I thought single player games were the true Elder Scrolls experiance

 

[Jamous]

Still won't be buying it, but that -is- a good reasoning. You could still just use a Buy To Play model, like Guild Wars, instead. That seems to work just fine.