The Elder Scrolls Online Relaunches on PC/Mac Today

[Xeorm]

I would refer you to guild wars 2. Games been going strong for 2 and a half years and i know people who have played the entire time without spending anything beyond the initial 60 bucks. I personally have spent quite a bit on it, just because i want to support the game. But b/c you can exchange in game currency for the real money currency its entirely possible to get everything that i've bought off the cash shop without spending a dime. Granted you'd have to play a lot more than i do, i only play on average 5-10 hours a month.

To say nothing of the fact that for the longest time they were releasing new large content updates every 2 weeks, with new fully voice acted quests, rewards sometimes new pvp battlegrounds and even whole new zones for PvE. Major content updates are on hiatus right now while they work on the expansion but the games still a ridiculous value. The industry could learn a lot from Anet.

My impression of the model has been that it's fundamentally akin to a traditional movie theater. You buy a ticket which pays for the movie and a little for the theater, but most of their money comes from all this conveniently placed and heavily overpriced goodies nearby. It's a good format and I'd like to see more of it, but I wouldn't call it a traditional pay once and play with free upgrades.

 

[The White Hunter]

EDIT: Question to the Escapist staff if youre reading this- Will you be doing another review or revisiting your coverage of this game? Because a lot of things have changed since its initial launch and it is now a MUCH MUCH better and more polished game than it was. I think it's in your reader's best interests to do a revisit review if you weren't already planning to. Thanks!

I actually quite like ongoing reviews for MMO's as it can give you a feel of the progression of the game and diversification of the world. Destructoid reviews each and every FFXIV patch of note for example, which is quite nice.

OT: May actually try this now, the whole pay for a horse thing felt scummy so I was put off.

 

[Someone Depressing]

Good, I guess. I've only seen videos of it and friends playing it, so unless it can stand on its own two legs as a single player game, I don't see it getting very far.

I also think that the very idea of having more than one idiot running around and killing every NPC in sight ruins the whole prospect of an Elder Scrolls game, but whatever.

 

[bug_of_war]

Isn't this because: (1) on consoles, Sony and Microsoft foot the bill for hosting servers for multiplayer for every game they certify, using the PSN and Xbox Live subscriptions you described to cover it, and (2) on PC, the multiplayer is always either shitty peer-to-peer or hosted on fan-run servers that usually have all kinds of stupid mods or ads or both? I don't play a lot of multiplayer games and I've never owned a console, but that's what I've heard.

(1) - Probably, but my point is I pay 60 odd bucks a year to be able to play a multitude of games online versus $10 - $15 dollars a month to play 1 game.

(2) - I'm not a huge pc gamer, but very rarely (as in maybe once a year) do I actually find the online multiplayer un-playable. Most the time it all works fine, and this is coming from Australian internet speeds which apparently pale in comparison to almost everywhere else. As for the mods, yeah there are servers like that, but they're very clear about being modded servers.

So yeah, I still don't see how Subscription based games are still even a thing. It's archaic, out of date, stingy, *add more here*.