The Elder Scrolls Online Will Have Subscription Fees

[Yuuki]

Why is it called ToRtanic anyway? I get it's ToR + Titanic, but it didn't exactly "sink" and kill everyone, it's still going, it was merely an F2P switch

I mean we don't hear people saying RIFTtanic

Sorry, guess I'm old-school. Having played WoW since beta, subscription fees are nothing to me.

That's more like it

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

The reason I hate the subscription fee model: It's completely irrespective of how much time you find to play. I have a job, I go to school. If a month goes by that I play one or two hours, or don't get to play at all, well, I'm still out $15 for having had the option to play. Meanwhile for something like GW2, I can plop down some money, and get my money's worth at my own pace.

When I have a job, I have no time to play MMOs.

When I have no job, I have no money to pay subscription fees.

Might look into the game if there's an F2P option.

 

[Maxtro]

Do you think there would be more people in GW2's servers if there was a sub fee?

Obviously not. My point is that TESO isn't competing with GW2, and that not having a sub does not guarantee a large player base.

All MMO's are competing with each other.

Not having a sub does not guarantee a large player base, nor does having a sub guarantee a large player base either.

They key is to have enough regular new content to keep people playing.

For me, the ideal situation would be to have no fee for ESO other than the purchase price, but have regular "DLC" come out every three months or so that keeps things fresh. Heck, charging $45 for each DLC is fine as long as there is enough new content to justify that cost. It's the same exact cost as paying $15 a month but it forces the devs to stay on their toes and keep making quality content. Because if someone doesn't want to buy the DLC, they still get to keep playing what they paid for.

 

[GAunderrated]

This is good news. Most games that have gone to F2P have so many pay gates at different content, be it customization, accessing your in-game cash, respeccing, basic content, or just levelling at a normal rate. Also, many F2P games basically only get new payed content.

Having a subscription allows me to put money down on a monthly basis and not worry about every little feature in the game nickle-and-diming me. I can accomplish stuff in the game without it being completely obscured by a cash shop.

Also, I think I read that the monthly price would not convert to euro and pounds 1:1, but I can't find any confirmation of that. It'd be nice if everyone outside the US wouldn't be price gouged for once.

EDIT: And I found the confirmation about halfway down the page: http://m.gamestar.de/artikel/the-elder-scrolls-online,3026853.html

"Since you've been so forthcoming, could you also reveal the available subscriptions? How much will a month of ESO cost?"

"We'll go into details on this later, but the basic monthly charge will be $14.99/?12.99/£8.99 and expect some discounts if you buy multiple months at a time. We'll also support game time cards as well as a variety of payment methods."

This is NOT good news. Just because one model is being abused and shitting on consumers does not mean an equally shitty practice (subscriptions) is the way to go.

Honestly my cousin got me excited about ESO. I'm a HUGE ES fan but I never play MMO's because I hate the overpriced, repetitive stupidity about them. I was willing to give it a shot but Subscription based purchases is one of the major reasons why I never got into MMO.

The game may have hundreds of hours of content but you know what also does? Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim. I could get all those games on sale for the price of 2-3 months subscription. There goes your perceived value Zenimax.

 

[Ulquiorra4sama]

No way, i'm out.

Do send me a postcard from Tamriel... if you can afford it.

 

[Aeshi]

As much as I'd like to see this succeed, I think F2P games have spoiled us in this regard somewhat. I don't think today's gaming scene has room for a Subscription MMO that isn't WoW or EVE.

 

[Zeren]

I'm not going to pay for any subscription let alone one that adds up to $180 a year. I'll just mod the hell out of skyrim some more and call it good.

 

[Nocturnus]

I don't understand the resistance to a subscription model.

Guild Wars 2 supports itself by putting all that shiny stuff for you to buy on the store, and it's not cheap either. A new armor skin is 10 dollars, and a new weapon can be about as much too. To even change your character's appearance costs 5 bucks, and don't get me started on how they managed to monetize the ever living crud out of dyes.

I, personally, don't like that. When I pay a subscription, I know that when I log in, I get all those weapons, all that armor, all the functionality and inventory space, everything for one cost up front. I don't have to play the "Let's roll the dice for the dye I want" at 2 dollars a pop. That dye will drop from a mob, in game, or be accessible to me through a tradeskill.

Subscriptions also give the company more peace of mind in the long run. They're more stable, easier to predict the bottom line of.

15$ a month is NOTHING, also. The cost of going to a movie for two hours of entertainment costs about as much. If the game is good, and has a wealth of content, you're going to spend dozens of hours a month on the thing should you have the time, and hundreds of hours a year, all for a little north of 100$ per year. Hell, a new game at launch costs about as much.

Again, looking for a good reason to rally so hardcore against something like this. If someone tells me that "They just don't get the time worth the subscription", I will ask if they have seen a film in the theater at all during that timeframe... because you just spent more for less overall entertainment.

 

[Nocturnus]

As a complete aside... I have no idea how they're going to manage this on Xbox Live, with MS still insisting that they gate their servers off to the outside world entirely. (IE: Elder Scrolls Xbox Live will only run with Xbox Live, if Microsoft keeps their current policies.)

That means Xbox Live Currencies. Xbox Live payments, and Microsoft taking a nice, big, fat cut of everything that Zenimax does.

I wonder how long it will take them to regret wanting to port the thing to XBOne with that known...

 

[DEAD34345]

Spoiler: Spoilered quote due to length

I don't really get why everyone is so gung-ho against the very idea of subscriptions. Sure, the price for this partiicular subscription might be a bit steep, that's a legitimate concern, but to complain about the entire financial model is weird to me. Subscription services are a legitimate alternative and offer plenty of benefits that other MMO monetization methods do not. As long as companies don't "Mix and match" payment methods and throw in Buy to Play and microtransactions, subscriptions are nice because they guarantee that you can access all of the content available in the game without worrying about being nickel and dimed or subjected to pay walls to access content. It also avoids having the ever floating temptation in "f2p" games of being able to just drop money to win the game for you or buy super rare items for a few dollars. It provides some level of balance because all players are on the same footing.

A common argument is that some people dont have time to play it as much as they'd like and feel like that subscription is wasted on them. If you predict that you won't be able to play much for a certain period in extreme circumstances you could just temporarily drop the subscription until you have more time. And even if you regularly only have a few hours a week to play, $15 a month still isn't THAT expensive. That's less than the price to see two movies (minus any snacks or food), which combined would only amount to at most 5 hours of entertainment, yet I'm sure many people still go to see movies at that price. Even if you only get to play it for 10 hours a month (~2.5 hours a week) I still think that $15 is a reasonable value for your time. I pay more than $15 a week just to buy lunches at work and they don't provide me with a months worth of unlimited enjoyment whenever I feel like it (or have time to)

Is it because a lot of us (especially PC gamers and myself included) have become spoiled with how cheap games are with steam and humble bundles and all of these other platforms of great sales, that we don't appreciate how much value we get for our money anymore? I just don't really get it. Sure, the game is more expensive in the long run (read: more than four months of play) than a new AAA release game unless they give discounts for pre-purchasing longer subscriptions. But this game (if it's good... if it's bad then it'll fail subscription or not) will likely provide tons more content and enjoyment opportunities than most AAA games will over those 4 months.

If you don't like subscription games, then that's fine I guess, nobody is forcing you to play it. I just don't understand why its such a turn-off to so many people and why so many people are already declaring this game dead in the water before it even launches purely because the game is subscription based. If the game is really good, people will pay to play it and it will succeed. If it's not good enough then people won't and they'll either have to adjust their business model or take the game down. I don't think the subscription itself is a death sentence though...

I'd like to hear other peoples' opinions on this matter.

Whether subscriptions are good or bad is pretty irrelevant. ESO had a chance to attract its own fanbase, the people that liked The Elder Scrolls in the first place, and with this move it has pretty much instantly blown it. Every TES fan is used to paying £40 (at most) and getting hundreds upon hundreds of hours of gameplay, which they can play whenever they want, for as long as they want, and which even has an endless supply of both free unofficial and paid official content to go alongside it.

I think @Maxtro had the best idea. By abandoning the monthly subscription and replacing it with paid "DLC" you could get pretty much the same profits for the same amount of work without alienating the TES audience. Now it seems like they want to compete with World of Warcraft instead, and that only ever ends one way.

 

[Ishal]

Why is it called ToRtanic anyway? I get it's ToR + Titanic, but it didn't exactly "sink" and kill everyone, it's still going, it was merely an F2P switch

I mean we don't hear people saying RIFTtanic

Sorry, guess I'm old-school. Having played WoW since beta, subscription fees are nothing to me.

That's more like it

It's because of the massive hype and direct opposition it's own community had with WoW. While playing the game, the most common insult for detractors was "Go back to WoW."

Also, Bioware... nuff said. The name alone causes drama.

They promised a lot of stuff and never delivered. Rift had endgame content, ToR had basically none at the very start, and what was there was bugged to all hell. They had to completely remove the end game open world PvP area since it was so broken.

Not to mention all the other areas where other MMO's outclassed it. It really seemed like Bioware didn't know what they were doing. I've heard that Disney gave EA a set amount of time to either clean up the mess, or their going to shut it down and remake the entire thing. Don't know if its true, but its what I heard and I can see Disney saying that.

 

[kenu12345]

I don't understand the resistance to a subscription model.

Guild Wars 2 supports itself by putting all that shiny stuff for you to buy on the store, and it's not cheap either. A new armor skin is 10 dollars, and a new weapon can be about as much too. To even change your character's appearance costs 5 bucks, and don't get me started on how they managed to monetize the ever living crud out of dyes.

I, personally, don't like that. When I pay a subscription, I know that when I log in, I get all those weapons, all that armor, all the functionality and inventory space, everything for one cost up front. I don't have to play the "Let's roll the dice for the dye I want" at 2 dollars a pop. That dye will drop from a mob, in game, or be accessible to me through a tradeskill.

Subscriptions also give the company more peace of mind in the long run. They're more stable, easier to predict the bottom line of.

15$ a month is NOTHING, also. The cost of going to a movie for two hours of entertainment costs about as much. If the game is good, and has a wealth of content, you're going to spend dozens of hours a month on the thing should you have the time, and hundreds of hours a year, all for a little north of 100$ per year. Hell, a new game at launch costs about as much.

Again, looking for a good reason to rally so hardcore against something like this. If someone tells me that "They just don't get the time worth the subscription", I will ask if they have seen a film in the theater at all during that timeframe... because you just spent more for less overall entertainment.

You do realize you will also be paying that initial 60 on top of the subscription cost right

 

[I.Muir]

Subscriptions do not phase me in the least. It generally shows in terms of server maintenance, support staff, bug fixing and all the rest of it. It also keeps the kids out, you know the twelvies. It may also discourage the excessive use of a cash shop.

Ive played a lot of mmos and free to play mmos and none of them have ever been half as good as ones that are subscription based. That being said all the wind was taken out of the ss ESO hype ship when that leaked beta footage got out and Zenimax failed to respond with any more favorable video. Full damage control sure worked well for bioware. It feels like it's going to be rushed and unfinished and may not get that initial sub rush that the financiers are looking for.

I really hope that the elder scrolls is not affected when this becomes yet another of a long line of mmo that failed to take off.

Wildstar is doing an interesting thing and is currently where my hopes lie of scratching that mmo itch Ive got going.

 

[Pandaman1911]

I can see what he is saying, The Nerevarine & Dovakhiin along with the Champion of Cyrodiil and Unknown Champion where extraordinary Heroes. They are legendary figures whose actions shattered empires, killed Gods and became Gods and took part in the key moments of history.

In the Elder Scrolls online the characters are more mundane, more day to day. That's why he described the previous stories as "more fanciful.

Ehh, I guess. Maybe I did overreact a bit. Still, it's rather worrying. It might still be good, I guess, but it's troubling news.

 

[Nemu]

I don't mind paying a sub for a quality game. I'm a big Final Fantasy fan, tested all of their online games and am looking forward to ARR this weekend. That being said, and despite my gf LOVING the beta, I wont be getting ESO, sadly. I'll (most likely) still be paying to play FF:ARR and will be playing my PS4 as well. No time nor interest nor money to pay for two games.

If there is a F2P option that isn't stifling, maybe I'll give it a shot.

 

[Nocturnus]

I don't understand the resistance to a subscription model.

Guild Wars 2 supports itself by putting all that shiny stuff for you to buy on the store, and it's not cheap either. A new armor skin is 10 dollars, and a new weapon can be about as much too. To even change your character's appearance costs 5 bucks, and don't get me started on how they managed to monetize the ever living crud out of dyes.

I, personally, don't like that. When I pay a subscription, I know that when I log in, I get all those weapons, all that armor, all the functionality and inventory space, everything for one cost up front. I don't have to play the "Let's roll the dice for the dye I want" at 2 dollars a pop. That dye will drop from a mob, in game, or be accessible to me through a tradeskill.

Subscriptions also give the company more peace of mind in the long run. They're more stable, easier to predict the bottom line of.

15$ a month is NOTHING, also. The cost of going to a movie for two hours of entertainment costs about as much. If the game is good, and has a wealth of content, you're going to spend dozens of hours a month on the thing should you have the time, and hundreds of hours a year, all for a little north of 100$ per year. Hell, a new game at launch costs about as much.

Again, looking for a good reason to rally so hardcore against something like this. If someone tells me that "They just don't get the time worth the subscription", I will ask if they have seen a film in the theater at all during that timeframe... because you just spent more for less overall entertainment.

You do realize you will also be paying that initial 60 on top of the subscription cost right

And I've done it for years.

Here's how it works. MMO's are not like any console game. Console games are a hole in the pocket of a company until they ship it, at which point they hope to god that it makes enough money to compensate the cost. If the game is good, it usually does, and then they continue the cycle using the extra as a buffer to make a new game.

MMO's? They are living, breathing, growing worlds. MMO's are supposed to grow in a linear fashion after the launch of a game. New content, new dungeons, new zones that add to the scope and scale of the game. You pay the 60 dollars to justify the cost of making the game at the start, and then the subscription fee is there to pay for that growth; to keep the development staff that built the game on to continue building the game, and adding in that linear growth. Most sub based MMO's that I've played have had a steady stream of new content, often upwards of several dungeons and progression paths, stories, etc, patched in at no cost to me aside from that subscription fee. It ends up working out nicely.

And before Guild Wars 2 is referenced as an example, I want you to stop and consider just how much the game as actually -grown- since it was launched. Most of their instanced and dungeoned content is not only using existing art assets (IE: Scaled down versions of a zone that was already made), all of it has been TEMPORARY. The game hasn't grown at all since its release, because nothing has been permanent. I returned to the game now a year after I left it, and guess how much linear growth that formula has produced. None whatsoever. No new, permanent dungeons for me to explore. No new starting areas or races. No new quest paths. It's all been this temporary stuff that lasts two weeks and then is taken out.

That has never been my experience with a subscription MMO. Even WoW, for all its feet dragging in terms of development time, has released a steady stream of content with their updates so long as you paid the subs. That content has stayed with the game, and has increased the size and scope of that game. EverQuest II, the same way. EverQuest, the same way.

 

[vun]

One word; nope.

Although I have to admit that it's not all that bad of an idea when the alternative is excessive monetization, as much as I like GW2 the microtransactions being shoved in my face is still annoying. I still prefer that, though; I can choose when to spend, how much to spend and convert in-game currency to microtransaction currency, and if I were to spend the equivalent of 1 year sub to this on GW2 stuff I'd probably be set for years to come in regards to bank space and character slots.

 

[endtherapture]

15$ a month is NOTHING, also. The cost of going to a movie for two hours of entertainment costs about as much. If the game is good, and has a wealth of content, you're going to spend dozens of hours a month on the thing should you have the time, and hundreds of hours a year, all for a little north of 100$ per year. Hell, a new game at launch costs about as much.

Again, looking for a good reason to rally so hardcore against something like this. If someone tells me that "They just don't get the time worth the subscription", I will ask if they have seen a film in the theater at all during that timeframe... because you just spent more for less overall entertainment.

The thing is a movie is 2 hours, you can just go out when you've got the time and see that movie. With Guild Wars 2 depending on how much spare time I've got I can just decide to boot up and play when I'm feeling like it. I can leave the game untouched through busy periods of work and exams. I can decide to not play for a while because I'm having more fun with another game, maybe a new one that comes out.

With a subscription model I have to plan my periods of gaming in advance. I can't just decide to boot up and play because there's an extra financial obligation involved - I have to spend £9, and for a student, £9 for the chance to play a game is a lot of money especially for such a non-social activity, compared to going out for a meal or seeing a movie.

You have to base your life around this game you're continually paying for rather than the other way around, which just puts me off paying for such a hassle.

 

[kenu12345]

I don't understand the resistance to a subscription model.

Guild Wars 2 supports itself by putting all that shiny stuff for you to buy on the store, and it's not cheap either. A new armor skin is 10 dollars, and a new weapon can be about as much too. To even change your character's appearance costs 5 bucks, and don't get me started on how they managed to monetize the ever living crud out of dyes.

I, personally, don't like that. When I pay a subscription, I know that when I log in, I get all those weapons, all that armor, all the functionality and inventory space, everything for one cost up front. I don't have to play the "Let's roll the dice for the dye I want" at 2 dollars a pop. That dye will drop from a mob, in game, or be accessible to me through a tradeskill.

Subscriptions also give the company more peace of mind in the long run. They're more stable, easier to predict the bottom line of.

15$ a month is NOTHING, also. The cost of going to a movie for two hours of entertainment costs about as much. If the game is good, and has a wealth of content, you're going to spend dozens of hours a month on the thing should you have the time, and hundreds of hours a year, all for a little north of 100$ per year. Hell, a new game at launch costs about as much.

Again, looking for a good reason to rally so hardcore against something like this. If someone tells me that "They just don't get the time worth the subscription", I will ask if they have seen a film in the theater at all during that timeframe... because you just spent more for less overall entertainment.

You do realize you will also be paying that initial 60 on top of the subscription cost right

And I've done it for years.

Here's how it works. MMO's are not like any console game. Console games are a hole in the pocket of a company until they ship it, at which point they hope to god that it makes enough money to compensate the cost. If the game is good, it usually does, and then they continue the cycle using the extra as a buffer to make a new game.

MMO's? They are living, breathing, growing worlds. MMO's are supposed to grow in a linear fashion after the launch of a game. New content, new dungeons, new zones that add to the scope and scale of the game. You pay the 60 dollars to justify the cost of making the game at the start, and then the subscription fee is there to pay for that growth; to keep the development staff that built the game on to continue building the game, and adding in that linear growth. Most sub based MMO's that I've played have had a steady stream of new content, often upwards of several dungeons and progression paths, stories, etc, patched in at no cost to me aside from that subscription fee. It ends up working out nicely.

And before Guild Wars 2 is referenced as an example, I want you to stop and consider just how much the game as actually -grown- since it was launched. Most of their instanced and dungeoned content is not only using existing art assets (IE: Scaled down versions of a zone that was already made), all of it has been TEMPORARY. The game hasn't grown at all since its release, because nothing has been permanent. I returned to the game now a year after I left it, and guess how much linear growth that formula has produced. None whatsoever. No new, permanent dungeons for me to explore. No new starting areas or races. No new quest paths. It's all been this temporary stuff that lasts two weeks and then is taken out.

That has never been my experience with a subscription MMO. Even WoW, for all its feet dragging in terms of development time, has released a steady stream of content with their updates so long as you paid the subs. That content has stayed with the game, and has increased the size and scope of that game. EverQuest II, the same way. EverQuest, the same way.

Isn't that also what dlc are for. Its not like console games don't offer alot of stuff for that 60 dollar cost man

 

[Something Amyss]

Bad experiences I take it?

Nah, sarcasm, but it doesn't necessarily read like that on the interwebs.

I was actually blown away that TESO is using "professional customer service" as a selling point.

It's sort of like "Come to McDonalds, where our service people wash their hands after using the bathroom."