The Elder Scrolls Online Will Have Subscription Fees

[wolfyrik]

God dammit Bethesda!

You're competing with GW2, a game which offer more updates and more content every month than any other MMO, doesn't have a sub at all, and is by all accounts is doing pretty well for itself.

If you want to shoot yourself in the foot with a .50 cal, at least do it with a less potentially interesting MMO.

I don't know how you think GW2 could compete with TESO. TESO has professional customer support.

How do you compete with that.

Fnah fnah

+1

On Topic:

I *was* interested in TESO. Not so much now. With dedicated fans making *free* mods like Falskaar and Undeath, I do believe Lawrence Shick can go F*** himself. Besides from what I've seen, TESO is just another cookie cutter mmo with some TES names and monster designs thrown in. Originally they weren't even gonna have FP PoV.

 

[Funyahns]

Glad it is pay to play. If the game is good then 15 dollars a month is a fair price. I don't want ftp stuff it is not enjoyable.

 

[Voulan]

Well, there goes all my hype and happiness. I can't justify subscriptions fees - ever.

I'm actually really depressed. I was so looking forward to this.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

I don't have an opinion about F2P or P2P models, since I've never been invested in a MMO long enough to be affected by them. The last MMO I've ever played for more than a year was Runescape a couple years back, and Runescape didn't turn me off from MMOs. I just kinda grew disinterested in the genre.

As for TES Online going subscription-based, I'm honestly just wondering when this will become F2P. I remember that some of the complaints about TOR was that its model was, more or less, similar to WoW in its gameplay and mechanics, which basically turned some people off. If TES Online goes for such an approach, it's most likely gonna go F2P.

 

[Nickolai77]

So, $180 dollars a year essentially.

I don't know about US prices, but i'd estimate a new game there to be around $60.00, plus maybe $40 worth of DLC.

It's safe to say i'm out of this deal.


If you want better value for money compared to regular Elder Scrolls games you're going to have the not renew your subscription fees on a monthly basis. So, you could play the game regularly say for three months for $45- but what if i want to get back into the game? I'd have to pay another $15 and commit myself to another month of regular gameplay if i want my moneys worth.

Even if these subscription fees were actually cheaper than a one off physical purchase of the game from your local game retailer i'd be put off with the hassle of renewing my subscription every time i feel like playing Elder Scrolls!

 

[themind]

Goodbye Elder Scrolls, looks like I will be skipping one for the first time.

 

[Dascuro]

This is just how I see it, I love the Elder Scrolls, with that been said Im afraid I cant commit to a monthly suscription at this point in my live, I dont have that much free time anymore so if Im to get into ES-OL I'll need to invest that much of my free time to the game cause I'll be paying to play it, but the downtime I wont play it for any given reason is still charged to me, meaning it becomes not a hobby or a passtime but an investment on the long run, I dont wish to have to pay monthly a fee for the priviledge to play a game every other time, Ill be giving my money on the promise of premium content I may not see because of my little time to play the game.

Not to mention if I wish to play something else or I happen to find another game Ill need to keep paying to have ES-OL as an option for my entertainment, again, on the promise of the content that if I dont cash on said promise Im still been charged a fee.

I like the system of GW2 better, they give out to whoever purchase their game, have their cosmetic and extra services on micro transactions without getting into "pay to win" territories and I get the chance to jump into any given event whenever I want without having to worry about been denied access to the content for lack of funds or commitment.

Besides Id preffer to save the money to buy another game which may give me hours of fun without having to buy my way in every other month

 

[Zac Jovanovic]

Good, so there is some chance of it not being shit.

I'm a bit annoyed for continuing the 15$/m fee tradition though, I can't think of any game that justified it. 10$ would be much more reasonable IMO.

There's every chance it's going to be shit. In fact if you look at past releases big-name licensed MMOs with lots of hype that launch with a sub tend to be broken/unfinished if not just plain bad. TOR, Warhammer Online and Age of Conan are probably the most notable of them.

I know. I did say some chance. It's still probably going to be shit, but with proper funding at least there is a small chance it's not.

 

[irok]

Well if anyone deserves to have it work for them its these guys I suppose, there's not much you can put a price tag on without simply ripping feature out akin to making dlcs into it and removing them, that being said I still wouldn't go for it, its not about the cost really there's just a lot of other things I would rather back then this for $14 a month that's potentially a few kick starters or a decent amount of micro transactions on things Im much more interested in, give me a call if it turns out to not a be a casual.

 

[nuttshell]

Subscription fee...hm. Premium experience bla, updates bla, pro-support bla...you also have to buy the game bla- what? Sorry ESO, too bad, we didn't even get to know each other.

 

[eBentl02]

If the game doesn't have a base cost then I might give it a go, not very likely I'll end up paying a subscription fee though, shame I was really looking forward to this

 

[Matthi205]

This, at least to me, seems like a bad situation to be in for them. If they go F2P, they know they're going to fuck it up, if they're going buy-to-play, they can't keep the big-ass servers running, so the only thing that's left is the subscription model. And that, at this point, dooms the game to failure.

What is the game competing with? Here's a list of the biggest probable competitors:

• WoW.....................Subscription-based, lower subscription fees [footnote]As far as I know.[/footnote], very sucessful
  EQNext..................Probably F2P, might attract people due to destruction physics
  FFXIV:ARR............Subscription-based[footnote]As far as I know.[/footnote]
  GW2......................Buy-to-play, very sucessful
  TERA.....................F2P, similar combat system

Now. Let's take a look at who is going to want to play this game:

• 
  Elder Scrolls Fans
  MMORPG fans looking for something slightly different
  Action-MMORPG fans (like, say, me)
  MMORPG and TES fans (arguably the demographic they make this MMO for)

So, if somebody is already playing WoW/Rift/TSW/SWTOR/GW and looking for something that uses slightly different mechanics, they're going to be turned off primarily by the action-focused combat that can't be macroed. These people are likely to either continue playing their game or start playing Guild Wars or FF14.

If somebody is a TES fan, they're going to hate the inability to mod the game and the subscription fee.

If somebody is an Action-MMORPG fan, they're probably going to be better served playing TERA or EQNext (from what I've seen at least).

The only demographic this game is still for, is the demographic that has no problem with paying 15 bucks a month, loves the Elder Scrolls series, isn't concerned with modding, and has friends who belong to the same demographic. I'd say this narrows the potential playerbase down somewhat. Well, at least they won't need more servers than they have now when the game launches.

 

[DarkhoIlow]

I am very saddened by their decision.

I am already an active subscriber to WoW since it's release and this news really made me kinda give up on this game. Because of this the only games i am interest in are games similar to Guild Wars 2 payment models (Buy once to play) and F2P.

That's quite a risky business model for them. I will try the game once it goes open beta but after that I will just wait until they eventually goes F2P, just like the sub games before it (Tera, Swtor, Rift etc).

 

[LordNerevar]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand I'm out.


It's 2013, the only MMO that can even get away with charging a subscription fee is WoW.

And EVE.

Nobody wants to do that any more, nobody wants to fork out X amount of money per month.

Don't forget about us EVE players

On a more related note, I will probably try the game out when it is first released. But it will need to bring A LOT to the table to keep me paying/playing.

*sigh*Why Zenimax Online? Y U NO one time purchase!?

 

[thewatergamer]

*Gleep*

Well thats a game killer for me, too bad was kind of looking for it...

Oh well always have GW2

 

[lancar]

I had very low expecations of this game before. Now, they're even lower.
I paid the monthly fee in WoW for over 6 years, and the only reason I continued to do so for half of that time was due to my guild, which I loved (kinda still do, as they still exist. Both in WoW, and now in swtor as well).

That they made TES into an MMO annoys me greatly. I really liked the last 3 singleplayer games in the series, and I really do NOT want them to take it in the mmo direction, as it's simply not conducive to the gameplay I want from it.

My point being, for me to even look at TESO, it'd either have to be a good quality F2P title, or the best friggin' game ever made this side of the millenium.

 

[XX Y XY]

Sweet. I actually prefer this pay model. I've been playing MMOs since they were MUDs and in all of my experience, I'm yet to find an F2P MMO that is worth playing... GW and GW2 are the only possible exceptions. They all have terrible communities populated mostly by young children and trolls, no customer support, little if any content updates, unfinished broken gameplay and mechanics, P2W, and ridiculous paywalls. Maybe there's a good way to do a F2P model but I'm yet to see it. And to me not having to deal with all the kiddies is worth the $15 a month alone. As long as the content is there to justify the fee, I'm in. We'll just have to see what Zenimax delivers.

 

[Feylynn]

Subscription is dead to me.
I'm rather confident they'll convert to F2P within a few years anyways. If that doesn't happen? I'm not hurt because offline ElderScrolls has mods if I want to play something new.

I dare them to make me a liar by developing a game so good I am forced to pay for it because that would mean I'd have a better game to play than I expect them to release by many many magnitudes.

 

[immortalfrieza]

Subscription fees for playing a game you've already bought is B.S. and always has been. It's like buying a bicycle from a bike shop and then having the manufacturer being allowed come by and take it away if you don't pay them more money every month. Even the car analogy works, at least when you buy a car but don't buy more gas you can still sit in it, sleep in it, and/or listen to music instead of driving it.

ESO is even worse, since there are already an entire series of Elder Scrolls games that don't cost any more than the initial purchase price, why would anyone get this MMO that does cost more than that when we already have that?

 

[viranimus]

I had zero interest in this before but now I am pleasantly intrigued.

What is beyond bizarre is the people complaining about not liking f2p model mixed in with the chorus of "ITS THE FUTUR!" Such a defeatist mentality to see something people wish did not even exist but accept it with such zeal as if it can be no other way as if people are somehow powerless to dictate the will of commerce.

It actually astounds me that anyone would be interested in anything Free to Play. Sure no one likes paying money for anything, but the experience one has with subscriptions is unquestionably superior vs free to play. F2P is a horrible model for the individual, any game it is in, MMORPGs as a genre, and the industry as a whole. ......BUT ITS THE FUTUR!!!

So, I guess this is another game giving players another undeserved chance to pull the genre back away from the lamprey pulling its strings before its future is realized for what it is. Perpetually futile pay to win simulators. Of course that will fail as there will be so many pumping their fists screaming "We want the chance for you to leverage inequality against us. We want omnipresent reminders of fiscal properties before any sort of pesky immersion has a chance to creep in. If the model is good enough for strippers and street walkers, then it is good enough for us! Give us our F2P with an extra side of genre herpes for everyone!!!!"