Bethesda: You'll Get Your Money's Worth in Elder Scrolls Online

[Sakkura]

F2P is the only viable MMO model in this day and age.

Utter nonsense. The most successful MMO in the world currently uses a subscription model. So do a number of other successful MMOs, such as EVE Online.

It's just that not all MMOs have the quality or content to sustain a subscription model.

 

[pezonator]

give players a few days to play it for free, then let them decide if its worth it. just my 2 cents

That's a great idea. Always good to have a trial in a game, 7 days would do nicely. At least then there wouldn't be "I wasted money on this crap" type of comments.I don't think people understand making games is a business. Think about the 50 or 200 developers that make the game, the marketing, the servers, business costs. Yeah let's make a game and make it free so we can't put food on the table!WoW is still $15 a month after 10 years and millions still play it. If TESO is a good game with good support and we want it to last, it needs a monthly sub. Going to the movies here in Australia is $15, that's 2 hours worth. $15 for 20 or more hours fun seems pretty worth it... How can people not see this?

 

[crewton]

From what I've played, it feels like an elder scrolls game. I like that. I go around and all the other people aren't really my concern. I also get the chance to play with my friends when I need help on quests (some quests are fairly difficult which is nice). PvP is really fun and engaging. Crafting system is the one of the best I've seen. Overall, I plan to play it for awhile and see what happens. It has potential to be a really fun game and brings me back to Asheron's Call/early WoW days.

 

[chicofehr]

I want to mod it. But being online, I wont be able to so I'll pas. Waiting for TES 6 and DX11/12 etc. DX9 with all those mods is very slow

 

[Skylarz]

No you won't.

 

[bebangs]

mouse moves the screen;

this... hated this. no im not buying.

 

[cats_Paw]

I think the chances of this working are less than 10%.MMOs with target lock tend to get boring due to lack of skill in game (using a certain pattern of combos is no skill since you can just find them in wikis).If there is no target lock, Ping/Lag will kill this game very fast (It did in WoW for me, even with target lock).With so many free to play games out there, and also the fact that older games seem to have more interest now than AAA titles, Investing into something like this feels like a poor choice.There already was a fallout MMO for free and as far as I know it didnt go too far.

 

[mamasan2000]

give players a few days to play it for free, then let them decide if its worth it. just my 2 cents

That's a great idea. Always good to have a trial in a game, 7 days would do nicely. At least then there wouldn't be "I wasted money on this crap" type of comments.I don't think people understand making games is a business. Think about the 50 or 200 developers that make the game, the marketing, the servers, business costs. Yeah let's make a game and make it free so we can't put food on the table!WoW is still $15 a month after 10 years and millions still play it. If TESO is a good game with good support and we want it to last, it needs a monthly sub. Going to the movies here in Australia is $15, that's 2 hours worth. $15 for 20 or more hours fun seems pretty worth it... How can people not see this?

I can see MMOs like Rift, Tera, GW2 that are free to play. Why would I invest time in TESO?
And theres no guarantee that TESO is fun for 20 hours, could be fun for 1 hour and suddenly it is more expensive than going to the movies (yeah, who goes to movies anymore?).

 

[Sakkura]

I can see MMOs like Rift, Tera, GW2 that are free to play. Why would I invest time in TESO?
And theres no guarantee that TESO is fun for 20 hours, could be fun for 1 hour and suddenly it is more expensive than going to the movies (yeah, who goes to movies anymore?).

For the same reasons that people are paying to play WoW? It's more successful than those three games combined, and runs on a subscription model.

Now, that means ESO would need to be very high quality. I personally doubt it's good enough to sustain a subscription model, but I could be wrong. I'm betting on Wildstar to make it instead.

 

[ubercake]

$240 for the first year and $180 for each subsequent year. This is pretty unreasonable.

I've played the beta. The graphics are great, but only compared to other MMORPGs (which are lousy compared to most other types of games).

The game play is like any other MMORPG; gather 5 x, then go back and get your reward, save person x then get your reward, add one point to this skill or that skill when you level up, etc...It's the modified grind of the modern MMORPG.

 

[Master467]

I always pronounce it Bethseeda.Anyway, I do like the Elder of Scrolls series, it seems very fun. Too bad I could never get into it, maybe it's just not my type of game. Tried Morrowind for a while, was nice traveling, but the encounters were way too hard, and enemies scaled with you, which is an awful design. Tried Oblivion briefly, but by then I had a job and little time, so dropped quickly. Skyrim I discovered cheats and enjoyed flying around for a while at high speed; also dropped quickly because: It's about 1:30 in the morning, everyone in this village is sleeping. I kill a wolf in the village. Suddenly I have two guys (which are 10x stronger than me) trying to kill them because I killed their pet wolf (apparently a "dog"). So what were they doing awake at 1:30? Would people try to commit murder IRL if someone kills their dog? If that happened, society would break down. Completely unrealistic, hence dropped.

I'd kill someone if they smashed my dogs head in with a mace... and I caught them doing it.
"If that happened, society would break down"
Or people would learn not to mess with a mans god damn dog, or they will get shot in the face with an arrow.

 

[airborne11b]

F2P is the only viable MMO model in this day and age.

Utter nonsense. The most successful MMO in the world currently uses a subscription model. So do a number of other successful MMOs, such as EVE Online.

It's just that not all MMOs have the quality or content to sustain a subscription model.

It's not nonsense. The reason those 2 games work with sub is because they have the benefit of being extremely popular doing the time when F2P was in it's infancy or not even considered as a model yet. It's a different time now. There are tons of high quality F2P and B2P games out there so it's hard to justify the P2P model.

WoW is bleeding subs as well and it's going to end up F2P probably within the next couple years. This is simply a new time and P2P isn't a viable model. You can't point to 1 or 2 extremely old success stories and make a blanket statement that P2P is viable. You have to look at the whole picture.

The fact is that P2P is a dead model and it has nothing to do with "quality".

 

[Sakkura]

It's not nonsense. The reason those 2 games work with sub is because they have the benefit of being extremely popular doing the time when F2P was in it's infancy or not even considered as a model yet. It's a different time now. There are tons of high quality F2P and B2P games out there so it's hard to justify the P2P model.

WoW is bleeding subs as well and it's going to end up F2P probably within the next couple years. This is simply a new time and P2P isn't a viable model. You can't point to 1 or 2 extremely old success stories and make a blanket statement that P2P is viable. You have to look at the whole picture.

The fact is that P2P is a dead model and it has nothing to do with "quality".

WoW subscriber numbers are currently increasing. EVE Online subscriber numbers are also doing well. Your claim about subscription models being unsustainable today is quite obviously incorrect. Just because Rift, SWTOR, Age of Conan etc. weren't good enough to sustain a subscription model doesn't mean no future MMOs will. If the game is good enough, people will pay.

 

[gm0n3y]

If they offer the game for free with a short free play period (say 1 week), then I'd be willing to give it a go and possibly pay a monthly fee. I'm not going to buy a game that I've never played AND have to pay $15/month on top of that. I think it would be more palatable if they lowered it to $5/month. How much can the servers really cost per player per month? Certainly a lot less than $15, probably less than $5.

 

[random stalker]

WoW subscriber numbers are currently increasing. EVE Online subscriber numbers are also doing well. Your claim about subscription models being unsustainable today is quite obviously incorrect. Just because Rift, SWTOR, Age of Conan etc. weren't good enough to sustain a subscription model doesn't mean no future MMOs will. If the game is good enough, people will pay.

But WOW and EVE are dinosaurs, having launched back in the early 2000s - the golden age of all MMOs.

As you surely remember, back in the time there were only few online games /apart from good old MUDs/ worth playing - Everquest, Ultima Online and Asheron's Call... Everquest has now gone mixed mode - f2p /limited/ and sub /for all access/. UO has many shards around the globe, AC and Lineage... dunno really...

It was in the early 2000s when many of the best mmo games saw the light of the world - WoW, Lineage II, Ragnarok, Second Life, Eve... Back then was a subscriber model pretty much acceptable. Till Maple Story tore it down and showed that a game can be f2p and still generate revenues...

And there was Age Of Conan - probably the most bugged game since the release of Daggerfall. Missing zones, missing quests, no endgame... Extremely frustrating... And it took whole 3 years to fix those issues. But the trust in the game is even now in the pits. And this is the proof you can not build a MMO on lore alone - the gameplay is important.

And here is ESO - the game in which I wasn't able to play for more than an hour without discovering another bugged quest, inaccessible area or got the "unexpected error" message. The game which zone messages were flooded with: "Is the <quest name> bugged?", "How can I retrieve the staff?" or "I'm stuck in <quest name>, what now?"
People will pay, people will get angry and the game will be forced to go mixed /like AoC or EQ/ or B2P /as many others/ with an in-game real currency shop.

 

[fredarteau]

i wanted to like this game and i try on the first Beta weekend and after 2 hours i was oh yeah i think im going to buy this... and then after a day i was already bored and found myself in the same grinding i felt in most mmo. I didn't even play on the second Beta weekend. Paying or not for it it's not what matter to me, the game have some good improvement but too many step back in a competitive mmo world

 

[pezonator]

I can see MMOs like Rift, Tera, GW2 that are free to play. Why would I invest time in TESO?
And theres no guarantee that TESO is fun for 20 hours, could be fun for 1 hour and suddenly it is more expensive than going to the movies (yeah, who goes to movies anymore?).

I researched into Rift, not for me. GW2 is not for me. Neverwinter, pay to win. Tera I played and got 3 level 60's. Yes, I subbed to Tera for $15 a month to get the extra features for 6 months. Tera is a great game minus some key things. Enchanting is completely random and wastes time and gold and it's not exactly lore friendly with ppl running around in snow suits and bikinis which you buy from the cash shop. EME are obviously not making enough money because there's no new content and it's gone to the crappers, all new content is stuff for the cash shop.

Most free games are pay to win. I want a fully unlocked game with no restrictions. I have played WoW, EvE, Warhammer and AoC. Hell, I even had premium on Runescape back in the day. All great games in MY opinion, all with subs. Do people actually understand that if 20 developers are maintaining a game at 50k a year, that's $1 Million just in wages (hopefully they get more). Building rent, electricity, phones, internet, computers and servers and whatever else.

Anyway, I'll wait for a review of the game before making up my mind. If this game was free to play but you could buy armor and fancy outfits and faster horses etc, then it's pay to win and not worth my time.

 

[verma1891]

 

[verma1891]

 

[Sakkura]

But WOW and EVE are dinosaurs, having launched back in the early 2000s - the golden age of all MMOs.

As you surely remember, back in the time there were only few online games /apart from good old MUDs/ worth playing - Everquest, Ultima Online and Asheron's Call... Everquest has now gone mixed mode - f2p /limited/ and sub /for all access/. UO has many shards around the globe, AC and Lineage... dunno really...

It was in the early 2000s when many of the best mmo games saw the light of the world - WoW, Lineage II, Ragnarok, Second Life, Eve... Back then was a subscriber model pretty much acceptable. Till Maple Story tore it down and showed that a game can be f2p and still generate revenues...

And there was Age Of Conan - probably the most bugged game since the release of Daggerfall. Missing zones, missing quests, no endgame... Extremely frustrating... And it took whole 3 years to fix those issues. But the trust in the game is even now in the pits. And this is the proof you can not build a MMO on lore alone - the gameplay is important.

And here is ESO - the game in which I wasn't able to play for more than an hour without discovering another bugged quest, inaccessible area or got the "unexpected error" message. The game which zone messages were flooded with: "Is the <quest name> bugged?", "How can I retrieve the staff?" or "I'm stuck in <quest name>, what now?"
People will pay, people will get angry and the game will be forced to go mixed /like AoC or EQ/ or B2P /as many others/ with an in-game real currency shop.

This is still the golden age of the MMOs. WoW still, today, has more paying subscribers than any MMO before it. All the old MMOs have been swept aside by the success of WoW, so it's no surprise they have been forced to switch to different business models - apart from EVE Online, which has managed to carve out its own very special niche and dedicated fanbase.

Calling Second Life one of the best MMOs is ridiculous. The MMOs coming out in the coming months are much better. Even ESO, which I think will ultimately fail, is far superior to it.

And yes, people will probably get annoyed with the issues in ESO. I think it will fail to sustain itself on the subscription model, but NOT because that model is somehow outdated - simply because the game is not good enough, especially compared to the competition. Not only WoW, but soon Wildstar as well.

 

[mamasan2000]

I consider Eve a special case because you can keep your sub going by buying PLEX (30 days sub) with in-game money. I have done that since 2009. On my two accounts. Someone buys a PLEX for real money, transfers it to the game and sells it for Eve currency called isk. Isk is fairly easy to gain once you get into the game. I wonder how many russian/polish etc would play Eve if they actually had to PAY for it with dollars. I would argue that Eve is one of the first MMOs to introduce the F2P model. Pay with money or pay with time spent in-game. A plex is getting more and more expensive. It was around 300 mil when I started, it is now 650 mil isk. So the question is at which point will it hurt devs of Eve to have a Plex costing that much? In terms of dollars, price is the same. I would NEVER pay 15 dollars per month for Eve, the content just isn't there and the expansions...puh-lease...I wouldn't pay for em if they tried that route.

Some players have many accounts. I would say the norm is 2 accounts but people with 5-8 accounts isn't that rare. You see the numbers like 750k subscribers. The real number is way lower than that, closer to 200-300k (according to devs statistics). But how do they count? I dont use same e-mail for both my accounts. The devs have no way of knowing which accounts are mine and which aren't.
SO I would argue that the number of real subscribers are even lower. But as long as the game pretty much demands multiple accounts (only 1 skill in training at any one time, realtime skilltraining, only 1 char active per account in essence, unless you buy a plex for that other character. Which, in essence is no different to having two accounts), it doesn't hurt the devs wallet.

Imagine if you could only have 1 character in WoW. If you wanted another, you would have to get a new account. How big would WoW be? I'm thinking 'not very big'. And WoW has been bleeding subs for years, theres even talk about a F2P model coming this year or the next.

 

[bystander]

Frankly, I think MMO's have shot themselves in the foot with trying to get as many players as possible, but they can't retain them with the model they use. MMO's are all about social interaction, but in order to get as many people to sign up, they've all be eliminated social interaction. You no longer have to group, solo is just as good. If you decide to group, you don't have to talk to anyone to get grouped up, just join a queue to automatically join up. They create all these queues cross server in many games, so even if you like the people in that group, you cannot communicate with them once the instance is over.

Social interaction is all but dead, and probably why WoW is losing subs, as people do not get attached to the people around them nearly as easily. MMO's in the past, kept people around, not because the games were great, but because the people they knew and met in game. These games are more interesting the more you interact with people.

I doubt I'll ever get attached to another MMO unless all these new anti-social techniques disappear. MMO's as a game, are not as good as any single player game. It is the people that make them fun.

 

[Sakkura]

I consider Eve a special case because you can keep your sub going by buying PLEX (30 days sub) with in-game money.

Wildstar's going to offer the same thing. It's still a subscription model, just that you can get someone else to pay your subscription for you (or you can pay someone else's subscription for them) in exchange for in-game currency.

 

[Ragtatter]

I played a few of the beta releases, and I noticed a lot of players griping that it was "too much like WoW", "not enough like WoW", "not enough like Skyrim", "Exactly like (insert other game here)"I think people are too focused on comparing it to other games, and not enough on whether the experience is enjoyable or not. I personally found it to be quite enjoyable, so I will be subscribing. If I stop enjoying myself, then I'll stop playing.

 

[pezonator]

I think people are too focused on comparing it to other games, and not enough on whether the experience is enjoyable or not. I personally found it to be quite enjoyable, so I will be subscribing. If I stop enjoying myself, then I'll stop playing.

You sir, said it perfectly. If you enjoy the game, pay for it, otherwise you can stop playing and paying.

I was going to wait for a review of the game, but I found the digital Imperial edition for $67 and after watching Angry Joe's PVP review, I had to pick up my jaw off the ground. It looks incredible.