It's Official: The Elder Scrolls Online is Going Buy-to-Play

[Starke]

TESO is not free 2 play. It just has no subscription left. Please change the OT or someone mention that. It gives a false impression.

You still have to buy a full price game and there's a ingame-shop. Just the subscription fee is gone.

The sub isn't even gone. It's just optional now. It looks like they're doing the DCUO thing with subscriptions, where you get all of the DLC packs for free, automatically, as a subscriber. Along with the 1500 crowns a month... whatever that ends up being.

I beta'd this game and it was...ugh frustrating to say the least. I liked aspects of it, while some just screamed at me "THIS IS NOT RIGHT FOR AN MMO AND FEELS SO WONKY AND BROKEN"

Plus that economy debacle at it's launch did not help matters.

Yeah, the beta was wonky as hell. It's gotten a lot better since then, though.

Honestly the rampant botting was a bigger issue at launch than duplicated items screwing with the economy.

Whoa.
I kinda want to play it now. Honestly? The fact that it is a paid MMO turned me off completely I don't even known that much about it. I wonder if it is worth my time.

Grab it in a Steam sale. It's actually surprisingly enjoyable.

 

[Crazy Zaul]

Wow no one saw this coming. Oh wait everyone did.

 

[cthulhuspawn82]

I wouldn't even call it "Buy to play". I would use Jim Sterling's term of "Fee to Pay". You can buy the game, which will allow you to buy more via micro-transactions

 

[Pink Apocalypse]

Send me any questions you may have in a pm and I'd be happy to answer as best I can I have a fair amount of experience with the game (~400 hours) so I should be able to answer a lot of questions, though I haven't actually gotten to endgame yet.

*Please* answer is you see this:

My boyfriend and I pre-ordered two of the Idiot Editions ($100 each I think) way back in the day. After the launch, I followed news of the game for a while until it became obvious that no actual release date for PS4s was coming.

Something that greatly troubled us was word that player instances weren't partitioned in dungeons, leading to horrible stories of hordes of players occupying the same dungeon, with massive groups of them sitting around and slaughtering re-spawning end-bosses. This was an absolute deal-breaker for us. But rather than cancel our orders, we thought we would just wait it out and see if Zenimax corrected that.

Now that we have a due date, I have to ask - has our concern been fixed?

(Not interested in drive-by commenters telling me 'that's how MMOs are, get used to it casual, herp derp...it's just our unalterable opinion. I don't care if you disagree).

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I'm more interested in the fact that it has a release date (finally) for the PS4. I said I wanted to try this game, if only for about a month, because I wanted to see what it was like. But the console port just sort of disappeared. Now I'm even more curious though because I can keep playing it past the first month or so, because I had no plans of paying for it constantly.

 

[shintakie10]

Is it weird that the only thing that I got out of this was wonderin how long Wildstar was goin to last as a sub model?

Either way, dependin on price I could be tempted to try this out once it launches its new model.

 

[Sight Unseen]

Send me any questions you may have in a pm and I'd be happy to answer as best I can I have a fair amount of experience with the game (~400 hours) so I should be able to answer a lot of questions, though I haven't actually gotten to endgame yet.

*Please* answer is you see this:

My boyfriend and I pre-ordered two of the Idiot Editions ($100 each I think) way back in the day. After the launch, I followed news of the game for a while until it became obvious that no actual release date for PS4s was coming.

Something that greatly troubled us was word that player instances weren't partitioned in dungeons, leading to horrible stories of hordes of players occupying the same dungeon, with massive groups of them sitting around and slaughtering re-spawning end-bosses. This was an absolute deal-breaker for us. But rather than cancel our orders, we thought we would just wait it out and see if Zenimax corrected that.

Now that we have a due date, I have to ask - has our concern been fixed?

(Not interested in drive-by commenters telling me 'that's how MMOs are, get used to it casual, herp derp...it's just our unalterable opinion. I don't care if you disagree).

Well I can tell you that since about May, the bots have been culled completely and the overall population is also a bit lower. The phasing may also have improved but it's really hard to tell since the megaserver makes it impossible to know if you really are alone or if everyone is just on other shards.

But yes, as of right now, all of the delves are very playable. I'll see at most 2-3 other people in a dungeon at any given time. Whether that will get worse when it goes f2p and there's a surge of new players and probably bots, I don't know.

They also nerfed bosses in delves so that if you kill them repeatedly you'll get worse drops so that pretty much got rid of all of the campers.

 

[Sheo_Dagana]

Not at all surprised - like many others I felt like the game just didn't have enough there, not to mention being bogged down for months by all the bugs that were present in the beta. The game felt sort of half-finished to me. It's too bad that Bethesda is just going to slap the 'F2P' sticker on it and move along. It makes me appreciate Square Enix (odd thing to say, I know) and how they went out of their way to salvage Final Fantasy XIV. Now it's around 3 million subscribers, which may seem like a paltry amount of players when compared to the MMO-Juggernaut that is World of Warcraft, but that's a ton of players investing their time in a game that tanked quite spectacularly when it was first released.

F2P can still be successful - DC Universe Online saw a wild amount of success once it made the switch... of course, you didn't need to buy the base game, like TES:O is doing. And I'm sure the F2P model will be a hollowed out joke of the benefits made to subscribers, like SW:TOR. I'd probably still be playing SW:TOR and giving them random money for Cartel Coins if they hadn't fucked that one up so bad.

 

[GabeZhul]

"a monthly allotment of crowns (premium currency)"
I REALLLLLY hope that did not exist before it went "F2P"!

Anyway, now it's up to the "whales"; how long will they throw enough wads of cash at it before it's no longer profitable enough?!

That sounds exactly like TOR's Cartel Coins. If you are a subscriber, you get 500+ of them every month. It is really nothing more than a sneaky little incentive to make people buy more premium currency, since the amount they give out for free is generally just enough to let you buy some of the most essential premium upgrades but far from enough to buy the less essential but still useful stuff... It's just one more tactic designed to skin said whales, and while I understand that they need to make money to run the servers and pay the people working on the game, it's still manipulative asshattery.

F2P can still be successful - DC Universe Online saw a wild amount of success once it made the switch... of course, you didn't need to buy the base game, like TES:O is doing. And I'm sure the F2P model will be a hollowed out joke of the benefits made to subscribers, like SW:TOR. I'd probably still be playing SW:TOR and giving them random money for Cartel Coins if they hadn't fucked that one up so bad.

Does anyone even play SW:TOR in the F2P model? On my latest Sith Juggernaut, after I left the starting planets I could count the number of non-subscribers I saw in the singe digits. As far as I can see people either drop the game early or switch to subscription pretty early if they plan to stay, so I am would say the F2P is more like a sneaky demo mode than a legitimate alternative.
Doesn't make the micro-transactions any less scummy though, but still...

 

[Starke]

Wow no one saw this coming. Oh wait everyone did.

No, everyone said free to play. Almost literally no one called this. Including The Escapist's "crack" reporters after the fact.

 

[zumbledum]

So if the base game still needs to be purchased I don't understand why EB Games were taking it off their shelves.

it probably had more to do with no one buying it than any knowledge of this coming change.

 

[Kyber]

From a lore respective, what the fuck are crowns? Are septims not good enough? I'm going to buy this game and nitpick the fuck out of everything lore related, I'm not even interested in the combat, I just want to explore and see everything they got wrong.

 

[The White Hunter]

Wildstar is the sole mmo to still require subs, aside from wow. They should be going f2p themselves soon. Subscription models for mmo's need to go. Back when wow first launched the tech was new and servers maybe justified the monthly sub, but these days it feels like a rip-off.

A no sub model, with optional expacs is the best value imo

Final Fantasy XIV is subscription based and growing at a steady rate.

That said it gives a lot of new content very frequently for a reasonable sub and doesn't pad the hell out of your time unless you let it (relic weapon quest, but bugger that when I can get better stuff from raids and dungeons.)

TESO's subt o me was a slap in the face on top of all the other fees, for a mount, for playable races, etc.

 

[happyninja42]

I did not want this! I liked the community that had built up around this game. It was robust enough to always feel full, while simultaneously creating a barrier for the more disruptive influences that have ruined so many other MMOs. Now that barrier is gone and I have not an umbrella big enough for the shitstorm that is to come.

Captcha: boiled cabbage. Yes indeed, Captcha, yes indeed.

I'm sorry but if you think that only people who play for free are assholes in online video games, then you are gravely mistaken.

Back in the bygone days, when all games were subscription, every game and every server were loaded with assholes. Going F2P doesn't change that at all.

The only difference it did, was filter the assholes to those with disposable income, and trust me, there are plenty of those in the world.

OT: Meh, don't care. Didn't like the game during beta, didn't feel any different from any number of other games. Didn't hold my interest. I'll pass.

 

[Sixcess]

P.S. The last paragraph reads from a snobbish person that knows NOTHING of the genre at all. An added quip of idiocy that shows a lack of knowledge and disrespect for all the other products out there.

Welcome to The Escapist!

As much as I like this site, the coverage of MMOs is... a bit lacking. ESO, like SWTOR before it, gets a bit of coverage mostly on the strength of its single player game roots.

Anyway... oh damn, now I'm going to get dragged into this game by the same friend who dragged me into GW2.

 

[Norix596]

Hey they fixed the article. - rather absurd to call a game you buy to play "Free-to-Play" just because it doesn't ALSO require a subscription.

 

[redmoretrout]

Well if it was released like that i probably would have bought it. Now I've lost interest. Too little too late.

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

I'm more interested in knowing if the game is going to become Not Shit yet...

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

This is a step backwards in the "getting me to play this" spectrum. I outright refuse to pay monthly for any game whatsoever, regardless of the actual price.

I vehemently abhor any game that makes you pay full price, then locks expansions away behind a pay wall, AND has the audacity to toss on a mtx shop with all the quality of life/fun/interesting items (not necessarily endgame elite gear like PWI).

Bottom line their game was failing to return a profit that they desired, so they let the poor people pay slightly less and the hopelessly addicted few pay as much as they fucking can just like any FTP game ever. Only, the poor people will still avoid it due to being poor. The middling crowd will still avoid it due to still not giving a fuck about the game, and the people that actually love and can afford it will have to deal with everything they love about it getting turned upside down.

It does impress me that they think they can salvage this game. Especially considering that things like BLESS and Black Desert and so on are on the horizon. You know, mmos that actually have good word of mouth and positive press?

Two things that ESO has had a major lack of since they announced it.