'The Elder Scrolls Online' Will Have a Subscription Fee

Drakenfeng said:
F2P MMO's are hardly "free" or "cheap". They end up costing far more than subscription based MMO's by the time you purchase all the content.
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A la carte games like DDO and LOTRO you can buy the current entire game for probably around $150 if you want. That's "only" 10 months of $15 a month. You can get pretty far just putting $25 or $50 into these games. You can look up reviews for each area of land and see if it's worth it to you to pay $6 to have access to the quests in land area X, for instance. If you don't plan on questing there because people say the quests there suck anyway, no reason to buy that land area, and no reason to pay $15 a month to have access to it.

In LOTRO, you can access most every land and get xp for killing mobs. You just can't do quests there unless you buy that area. Seems like a pretty fair deal.

In DDO, since the whole game is instanced, it gives the developers more incentive to make good instances (or good land areas in LOTRO) since otherwise word will get out the instance sucks, and then no one will buy it. When paying $15 a month, they already have your money.

I guess I don't play enough "pay to win" MMOs to see what other people see. Yeah, some of them, particularly the Asian grindfest PVP ones may be like that, but, for various of them, the only things I can think of that make a difference with money is buying more character slots, more auction house slots, more bank slots, and maybe a faster mount. I guess it might be considered an unfair advantage if you can do things like buy a resurrection at the spot where you died, but that's a PVE thing. Most pay-to-win complaints are for PVP.

As far as I'm concerned, if someone else wants to subsidize my free games by paying real money to change the color of their armor or buying a cool-looking mount or whatever, they can be my guest.

Personally, I probably wouldn't play any MMOs anymore if they were $15 a month. It's not like $15 a month is going to break anybody, but I simply don't see the value in them at that price -- at least for the amount of time I play them. Though the subscription models actually benefit my playstyle since usually when I play an MMO I put it off until I can set aside a block of time, and then I play it hardcore during that time.

Due to the free MMOs now, it can help make gameplaying more efficient and a little less of a waste of time since you can keep switching between them and only play them while you have rest XP to level up faster. You're not paying a monthly fee for them, so you can afford to wait.

As for Elder Scrolls having a monthly fee, it makes for a good cashgrab for a while, but I'd be surprised if it lasts more than six or so months. That's probably the smart thing to do on new and popular launches -- tack a monthly fee on it, and then if (when) the population starts to dwindle, change it to F2P.
 
Zomoa said:
Eh, no. Maybe that's how they do it in Asia. Not with North American F2P models.

Most successful of those being League of Legends. Everything can be bought with in-game currency. You can just expand your options (not get more powerful in a verticle sense, just expand your options horizontally) by spending cash. For every person that bitches about this model, there's 4 other people that will play the game because they don't have to play upfront or monthly.

Sure, a company can be retarded an put in golden bullets like World of Tanks, but the smart companies that are focused on long term customer satisfaction are not doing these pay-to-win things with their F2P games. Have some faith, there are companies out there that know we won't tolerate pay2win at all and are designing their F2P games around that.

It's very possible to have a F2P game that isn't pay2win be very successful in the market. As gamers get smarter, pay2win becomes a less and less successful business model.
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League of Legends is not an MMO, and buying currency in LoL will not increase your power on a long-term basis. It gets you access to cosmetics and champions.

Almost every F2P MMO I've ever participated in lets you progress reasonably in the first 10 levels or so and then hits you with a "pay gate" that pretty much requires you to spend 24/7 in-game or spend real cash to progress at a reasonable rate. Either you have to buy XP boosts, crafting materials or time or recipes, or mounts or gear to remain anything resembling "competitive" with the content.

The argument that you can just earn everything through playing in-game is made ridiculous by the massive gates the developers intentionally place in front of players to cause them to resort to microtransactions. It's like saying that if you just keep adding infinitesemal thrust to a rocket, it will eventually go the speed of light. The time scale just doesn't make sense for the average player, and interest really burns out when you can clearly see the gates designed to make you pay or the weeks-long grind ahead of you for no reason.

The problem, I think, is that all MMO's (and really games in general) are just well-disguised Skinner boxes. They're designed literally to keep you pushing buttons (and paying the devs) to supply yourself with dopamine, and placing long, pointless grinds in front of people really kills that dopamine high pretty quickly. So does hitting the "end" and having no new content so that everything becomes repetitive. I don't really understand WoW's success, but I imagine it has something to do with the iPod effect - bring the first "cool", accessible-to-the-masses product to market in a hot new segment and watch yourself rocket to the top and stay there through sheer name recognition and people's bias towards past success. WoW is/was the best "consumer-grade" MMO to hit the market in its time, and it hit right when gaming was exploding as a hobby for everyday people on a computer the everyday family could afford (No more $3000 Compaq 486s).

I played WoW for over a year during the Burning Crusade era and never finished leveling. Towards the end, I was playing nearly 8 hours a day during the summer between high school and college, and I burned out HARD and quit before I went to college and failed out. I played RIFT for close to a year and a half (stopped just before it went F2P because my guild imploded), but I had hit the same wall of a different type - I had done all the endgame content and was logging in solely for raids twice to three times a week, but I was still spending 6 hours a night when I was raiding, and I finally was getting tired of the same thing over and over again.

Humans are funny; there's a fine line between handing them everything and having them quit in disgust and making things too difficult or long-term and having them quit in disgust. Add in the plentiful, cheap, milquetoast games available today and you have the recipe for a fickle consumer that wants to see the goods before the credit card comes out. They want F2P without gating and without P2W, but that's impossible for a developer to provide on a profitable scale (even Zynga is bleeding money these days), and they are unwilling to pay previously-acceptable sub fees ($15/mo) because there are games out there that don't have them.

How's a dev supposed to win when you combine the above consumer with one who demands a revolution in a field which has no more revolutions remaining because of the limitations of internet interaction and human psychology? Literally the only thing devs can do to their Skinner box games is make them easier to play with your friends (we now have Looking For Group, Looking For Raid, cross-server communication and playing, dumbed-down content your cat can main tank) or paint them a new, shiny color (Rift and ESO are trying that and not impressing much) or fall back on known and loved IP (SWO and FF XIV, SWO tanked and FF remains to be seen).
 
[Tripod]MajorPayne;1040143877 said:
League of Legends is not an MMO, and buying currency in LoL will not increase your power on a long-term basis. It gets you access to cosmetics and champions.

Almost every F2P MMO I've ever participated in lets you progress reasonably in the first 10 levels or so and then hits you with a "pay gate" that pretty much requires you to spend 24/7 in-game or spend real cash to progress at a reasonable rate. Either you have to buy XP boosts, crafting materials or time or recipes, or mounts or gear to remain anything resembling "competitive" with the content.

The argument that you can just earn everything through playing in-game is made ridiculous by the massive gates the developers intentionally place in front of players to cause them to resort to microtransactions. It's like saying that if you just keep adding infinitesemal thrust to a rocket, it will eventually go the speed of light. The time scale just doesn't make sense for the average player, and interest really burns out when you can clearly see the gates designed to make you pay or the weeks-long grind ahead of you for no reason.

The problem, I think, is that all MMO's (and really games in general) are just well-disguised Skinner boxes. They're designed literally to keep you pushing buttons (and paying the devs) to supply yourself with dopamine, and placing long, pointless grinds in front of people really kills that dopamine high pretty quickly. So does hitting the "end" and having no new content so that everything becomes repetitive. I don't really understand WoW's success, but I imagine it has something to do with the iPod effect - bring the first "cool", accessible-to-the-masses product to market in a hot new segment and watch yourself rocket to the top and stay there through sheer name recognition and people's bias towards past success. WoW is/was the best "consumer-grade" MMO to hit the market in its time, and it hit right when gaming was exploding as a hobby for everyday people on a computer the everyday family could afford (No more $3000 Compaq 486s).

I played WoW for over a year during the Burning Crusade era and never finished leveling. Towards the end, I was playing nearly 8 hours a day during the summer between high school and college, and I burned out HARD and quit before I went to college and failed out. I played RIFT for close to a year and a half (stopped just before it went F2P because my guild imploded), but I had hit the same wall of a different type - I had done all the endgame content and was logging in solely for raids twice to three times a week, but I was still spending 6 hours a night when I was raiding, and I finally was getting tired of the same thing over and over again.

Humans are funny; there's a fine line between handing them everything and having them quit in disgust and making things too difficult or long-term and having them quit in disgust. Add in the plentiful, cheap, milquetoast games available today and you have the recipe for a fickle consumer that wants to see the goods before the credit card comes out. They want F2P without gating and without P2W, but that's impossible for a developer to provide on a profitable scale (even Zynga is bleeding money these days), and they are unwilling to pay previously-acceptable sub fees ($15/mo) because there are games out there that don't have them.

How's a dev supposed to win when you combine the above consumer with one who demands a revolution in a field which has no more revolutions remaining because of the limitations of internet interaction and human psychology? Literally the only thing devs can do to their Skinner box games is make them easier to play with your friends (we now have Looking For Group, Looking For Raid, cross-server communication and playing, dumbed-down content your cat can main tank) or paint them a new, shiny color (Rift and ESO are trying that and not impressing much) or fall back on known and loved IP (SWO and FF XIV, SWO tanked and FF remains to be seen).
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The F2P MMOs I've played do not grant a long-term power increase for paying customers. They may have tools to turn a 2 month grind into a 1 month grind. When the grind is over those two players are the same. And a hardcore free player will gain access to whatever they want faster than a casual with money. Seems good to me. If you're that interested in a game that you are playing it every day, you should be giving the devs money.

Putting in gates that you eventually hit while playing naturally is how these companies get money. Without any gates, no money and no more MMO.

Path of Exile - yes it's not an MMO but it's a great example of how NOT to do F2P. It's a great game but you can do everything 100% for free. They failed at proper monetization, and their game is going to fail because of it. You have to compel people to give you money or the F2P model doesn't work.

And again, the good F2P MMOs that i've played allow you to bypass the gates completely through simply playing the game. EQ2 effectively lets you buy a subscription with in-game currency via the Krono system. So if you truly love the game and play it every day you won't have to pay a sub. But another player, one with less patience and guile, is going to be footing the bill for your sub. So SOE gets their money and people can play how they want. EVE has the same system. Don't want to pay? Fine. Another player gets some your in-game currency and you get a subscription.

F2P does not have to sell power in order to work. Period. Leveling faster via exp potions is selling time, not power. Do you really expect to play a game that costs millions of dollars to make for absolutely free, forever? No, there needs to be some things that you feel like you "need" in order for this whole process to work. If the game is cool enough, it will keep your attention after you drop the money.

I see why you're burned though. A lot of these F2P MMOs ARE a simple cash-grab. It's pretty easy to spot if you did your research though. These quality MMOs have huge dev teams and take tons of money to make. Also they have tons of advertising. I have little faith in a small studio making a F2P MMO that isn't a cash grab - they simply do not have the resources to do the F2P model effectively. I also do not trust asian game development studios to make a F2P game that I will accept - they have a very different culture regarding F2P (full acceptance/people dropping life savings into games/etc).

That being said, I think hybrid models have a greater chance of staying pure-to-purpose than pure F2P. Incentivize the subscription enough and people will still buy it, yet they still get to try the game for free. Sounds good.

How is an MMO dev supposed to survive? Make an actual new game. It's possible. Not all ideas are expended as you suggest. We understand less than 1% of 1% of our reality. There is far more to human psychology than we will ever fully realize. Always room to make these games better and definitely always room to create new ideas. You just need to be willing to change the dynamic completely and bring in fresh ideas for the core of the game. EQN is an example.

I hated F2P initially as well. Before i realized it didn't have to be pay2win. Being able to get your friends to play a game with you with 0 monetary investment is awesome. This accessibility factor is why F2P isn't going anywhere. Exposure goes through the roof with a F2P model. Retaining the players after they start playing your game, that is where you make your money. And that is why all devs are still incentivized to make a quality game under the F2P model. Yes, some devs will cut corners and will saturate the market with shit games. The good devs will still make good games, like usual. The business model has no effect on the actual "end game" gameplay if the dev team doesn't suck.

This is why certain F2P MMOs are tanking hard and other F2P MMOs are doing fine. Not all games of a certain business model are created equal. You just need to find the one that's worth your money.
 
This is a great oppritunity to remind the forum of Star Citizen. Seriously google it. It will be an MMO that is completely crowd funded (I hope).
 
[Tripod]MajorPayne;1040143877 said:
I played WoW for over a year during the Burning Crusade era and never finished leveling. Towards the end, I was playing nearly 8 hours a day during the summer between high school and college, and I burned out HARD and quit before I went to college and failed out.
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If you played that much for a year and never reached the end, you probably spent too much time doing random crap. If that's your style of gameplay, you'd probably like the stand alone TES games better than TESO.
 
First Person view is a gimmick.
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It's not a gimmick if you can't lock a target and spam you skills. You know, aiming, it kind of goes hand in hand with a First Person View system.
 
Zomoa said:
Path of Exile - yes it's not an MMO but it's a great example of how NOT to do F2P. It's a great game but you can do everything 100% for free. They failed at proper monetization, and their game is going to fail because of it. You have to compel people to give you money or the F2P model doesn't work.
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f2p more often than not make more money than a subscription model.
its seemingly funny how people can put a lot of money into something they play.
POE is a great game with one major flaw called desync.
cant stand it so for me its good that I didnt bought the game.

there is no reason for any MMO to use a subscription model, they make money better with f2p nowadays.
wouldnt make sense as they are business driven and they wouldnt do it unless they made money from it.
 
WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot said:
The Old Republic might not be the best comparison though, because as much as there was a huge built in audience for the game, that same fan base had been previously burned BADLY by Star War Galaxies and I know many SW fans who weren't even willing to give it a chance.

As fas as Elder Scrolls Online goes, I was thinking of trying this but I dunno... it's been a long time since any MMO really seemed all that enticing to me.

On the plus side a subscription vs. a pay-to-play model might be more fun if they avoid letting people use their credit cards to buy their way to the top and force them to actually, you know, play the damn game instead...
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This.

I think there'll always be a problem (in varying degrees) with RMT. I put a lot of time and effort into my EQ/EQ2 characters and it bugged me to no end to have someone send me a tell asking what their attack/spells do because they just bought their toon and never played a Dirge or Necro or Ranger or "insert class here" before...

Or, when partying with the newly-purchased assassin who lead off with his biggest attack and "always" drew aggro from the tank because he didn't know how to manage his place on the hate list...

As for micro-transactions...I've only seen one game where micro-transactions were done "right". Path of Exile has the best system I've ever seen. Not a single thing you purchase in game can help you get ahead of anyone else...That's how it should be done.

Path of Exile nailed it solidly with their version of micro transactions. I love knowing that joe-bob standing next to me at the vendor didn't buy that armor he's wearing. He crafted it, earned it as a drop, or used the orbs economy to buy it.
 
$15 is a bit much, honestly.

I tested the Alpha, and the gameplay is nothing on the level of previous Elder Scroll games. The questing is too eerily like World of Warcraft and its copy-cats. The combat was real-time active combat but nothing like TERA and more clumsy than the Elder Scroll series. It also has an injection of "hit that button on the toolbar" that's been tired and overused in every MMO. The graphics pales in comparison to other MMOs currently on the market and coming out in the future-- FFXIV, TERA, ArcheAge, Blade & Soul, Everquest Next. (And, EVE Online if you consider the ships as characters more than your avatars.)

There isn't a whole lot about Elder Scrolls Online that screams "new" other than that it is an Elder Scrolls MMO with Elder Scrolls lore, locations, and races.

If this was released around the time of FFXI and World of Warcraft, I wouldn't be making this comparison and it would have been a successful competitor against WoW.

But, now? I don't think so.

With the amount of MMOs I've tested and played, and subscribed to, Elder Scrolls Online doesn't compel me to play it as long as I have played FFXI and EVE Online.

It needs more... variety.

It needs something that separates itself from other MMOs on the market than being another SWToR where an established franchise is just slapped onto old, over-used MMO mechanics. We've all done the Point A-to-Point B and kill X-amount of rats/other for questing. We've all done the read-lengthy-text boxes instanced boss fights for storyline missions and watch a brief cutscene in the end. We've all done the raids to get that 0.0005% chance at winning something valuable in the treasure pool for your character. We've all done the create a character and lock yourself into one job/class for the remainder of the game.

We've all done the... [insert here].

In other words, the alpha already screams at me that Elder Scrolls Online will be no different than the other WoW and Everquest clones out there.

The only MMO I can think of with any semblance of variety is FFXI (pre-Seekers of Adoulin) and EVE Online. I play FFXIV and at least my character gets to be other jobs/classes at a whim. It's just unfortunate the gameplay is no different than a mash-up of Rift (FATE) and World of Warcraft (questing, missions, difficulty).

Worth $15/month? No.

Worth $10 to $12 a month? Most likely.

Worth Free-to-Play? Definitely not, I have a distaste for F2P MMOs that nickel-and-dime players outside of cosmetic items, and ensure pay-to-win mentalities. I'd rather eat a Vaseline-covered-durian and endure that than play an F2P MMO that offers EXP boosts, better gear, and bonuses in a microtransaction store.
 
notarat said:
This.

I think there'll always be a problem (in varying degrees) with RMT. I put a lot of time and effort into my EQ/EQ2 characters and it bugged me to no end to have someone send me a tell asking what their attack/spells do because they just bought their toon and never played a Dirge or Necro or Ranger or "insert class here" before...

Or, when partying with the newly-purchased assassin who lead off with his biggest attack and "always" drew aggro from the tank because he didn't know how to manage his place on the hate list...

As for micro-transactions...I've only seen one game where micro-transactions were done "right". Path of Exile has the best system I've ever seen. Not a single thing you purchase in game can help you get ahead of anyone else...That's how it should be done.

Path of Exile nailed it solidly with their version of micro transactions. I love knowing that joe-bob standing next to me at the vendor didn't buy that armor he's wearing. He crafted it, earned it as a drop, or used the orbs economy to buy it.
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This, I agree with.

Path of Exile did it right. There isn't anything game-breaking in the Cash Shop, unless you consider extra character and stash slots game-breaking.

Mabinogi, to me, is the worst offender and I was playing that since closed beta. Almost anything you purchase in the cash shop expires after a month. There's no permanent option provided. At least with TERA Online, the costumes, pets and mounts come with a permanent option. Allods Online comes second place as worse cash shop.

Probably second best cash shop would be League of Legends. At least you can use in-game points to purchase new characters. Worse than League in terms of obtaining characters? Marvel Heroes. $199 for a collection of characters.
 
From what my friend has told me of the Beta, it's trying to be WoW, and failing at that, oh you want me to pay for this as well, HA!!!
 
The fundamental problem with ALL these idiot companies is the cost structure. Why is it that their are only 2 extremes? Pay $15 / month or $180 / year, more than any other game that I know of... Or Free? lol why can't they come to some reasonable middle ground like $50 / year, and maybe a limited $10 / year subscription where you can play for a certain number of hours?

If they are going to charge $15/ month they need to have a whole library of games you can access. Maybe they need to get together with other creators and collaborate on a single payment system. Sort of like ski hills do where you can buy one membership card that gets you into multiple hills for a whole year.

The reason MMOs are falling apart is because for the masses they only are going to take one naive stab at it. What ever game like WOW is lucky enough to have masses of people will seem very successful, but it will not be sustainable. After that when people want to branch out they aren't going to be paying $15/ month for 5-10 different games.
 
Hornet said:
Looks like Skyrim with multiplayer from what I've seen in the gameplay stream some weeks ago.
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Feels like it, too. Voice acting, quests, backstory, even the books. Cooperating with other players was genuinely fun. Combat feels a lot like it did in Skyrim. Of course, you're missing the "I'm a thief who steals EVERYTHING! Leave no broom behind!" bit, but from the couple of hours I played, I think it will be worth it. I'll likely pick it up when it comes out.

The downside is that it's as buggy as any Bethesda game ever was. Perfect in every way until you enter a certain dungeon. All of a sudden, crash to desktop. Your game crashes every time you log in from that point on. Whole models occasionally don't load. Vertices get "stuck", and you have an arm that drags all the way back to the last town you were in. Typical beta bugs.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
That turned out to be a hoax, btw. It's still likely in full development, but the recent rumors and countdown site were completely fabricated.
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Where did you read that? I've seen Kotaku doubting it but the site is still registered to ZeniMax, and people have been decrypting the morse code messages and it appears to tell quite a story.
 
Stiletto said:
Read it. What exactly did he prove? He proved that the site is set up in a way that he doesn't think would be set up by Bethesda. I find it unwise to give game developers too much credit.
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I guess we will find out this weekend (VGX is on the 7th). But, if sites like that one and No Mutants Allowed thinks it is a hoax, it probably is.
 
chockomonkey said:
New engine perhaps? Naw who am i kidding. They're using whatever Skyrim was made on huh?
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Possibly idTech 5. More likely it will be using the same engine Skyrim used, though. It's an OK engine, but I think a tweaked idTech 5 engine would work better.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
Possibly idTech 5. More likely it will be using the same engine Skyrim used, though. It's an OK engine, but I think a tweaked idTech 5 engine would work better.
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Considering how well Skyrim has worked with Steamworks, especially for mods from the Workshop, I hope they use the exact same engine.
 
Flopper said:
f2p more often than not make more money than a subscription model.
its seemingly funny how people can put a lot of money into something they play.
POE is a great game with one major flaw called desync.
cant stand it so for me its good that I didnt bought the game.

there is no reason for any MMO to use a subscription model, they make money better with f2p nowadays.
wouldnt make sense as they are business driven and they wouldnt do it unless they made money from it.
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Depends whether their F2P model results in a game that annoys people so much that they just don't play at all.

PvZ2 for me is a good example. I loved the first one and would have easily paid 10 or 15 dollars for the second one. Instead I got to play it for free, realized how much it sucked compared to the first one, realized that their over the top cash grabs were obnoxious and ridiculous, and never paid them a cent.

I'll happily pay 15 bucks a month for a great MMO with a decent community. I will pay absolutely nothing for a F2P MMO that annoys the crap out of me with microtransactions and has a terrible community.
 
Stiletto said:
Considering how well Skyrim has worked with Steamworks, especially for mods from the Workshop, I hope they use the exact same engine.
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Good point. I'm not sure how mod friendly the current version of idTech 5 is.
 
Subscription MMOs in my opinion, are the most fair and equitable deal for players. You basically pay for admission to the sandbox/themepark, and then you can do whatever you want without having to pay for additional content. Now, if someone does like The Secret World did at launch and added subscription PLUS item shoppe, I consider that insulting. However, I absolutely HATE the "free to play" model. Nearly every game I've ever seen that converted from subscription to "F2P" meant a decrease in quality and an increase in expense - when most of those games retained a subscription option, for those who chose it they didn't get everything they had access to previously - there would always be something, cosmetic or otherwise, that cost extra.

"F2P" in my opinion is the downfall of MMOs. Developers greed expanded hundred-fold with the idea they could make $50/month from people instead of $15 if they "boiled the frog slowly" by nickle and diming them. Disgusting. More sickening is that so called "micro"transactions were never very micro - it may cost $5 to expand your bank or rent a mount for a week or two! Oh and worse, most players wouldn't revolt so long as you sold cosmetic content separate, because somehow it didn't "count" as content to those that could be convinced. However, if you were to say... charge extra for some other facet of the game, like PVE or PVP content, people would hit the roof. Now, there are a few who have done a "buy once, hybrid system" well, from Firefall to Guild Wars...where the player payed for the client and then had no subscription fee. The minutia of the item shoppe itself, including the pricing etc... made all the difference in the world however.

Oh, and SWTOR failed because of a lack of attention to detail and general crappy design. They had the keys to the kingdom, a huge subscriber base, who left when EA ran it into the ground.

I still believe subscription MMOs (with the sub the sole source of income, aside from one-offs like expansions) to be the best possible model and the best value for most MMO players. I praise WildStar and Elder Scrolls Online for making the right decision.
 
Stiletto said:
Considering how well Skyrim has worked with Steamworks, especially for mods from the Workshop, I hope they use the exact same engine.
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I don't, well, If they fix the shadows yeah then that would be ok. I got sick and tired of putting in .ini tweaks to fix those flickering & stripping shadow bugs.


I recently played the Beta and thought that it looked really good as a whole, granted most of the textures were low resolution. It certainly looked better than vanilla Skyrim, and the character textures were amazing, and imo some of the best I've seen.

I will gladly pay the subscription cost for this game. The story already has me engaged and i am happy to go back to some of the doings that Oblivion had. I hope I get another Beta invite.
 
octoberasian said:
$15 is a bit much, honestly.

I tested the Alpha, and the gameplay is nothing on the level of previous Elder Scroll games. The questing is too eerily like World of Warcraft and its copy-cats. The combat was real-time active combat but nothing like TERA and more clumsy than the Elder Scroll series. It also has an injection of "hit that button on the toolbar" that's been tired and overused in every MMO. The graphics pales in comparison to other MMOs currently on the market and coming out in the future-- FFXIV, TERA, ArcheAge, Blade & Soul, Everquest Next. (And, EVE Online if you consider the ships as characters more than your avatars.)

There isn't a whole lot about Elder Scrolls Online that screams "new" other than that it is an Elder Scrolls MMO with Elder Scrolls lore, locations, and races.

If this was released around the time of FFXI and World of Warcraft, I wouldn't be making this comparison and it would have been a successful competitor against WoW.

But, now? I don't think so.

With the amount of MMOs I've tested and played, and subscribed to, Elder Scrolls Online doesn't compel me to play it as long as I have played FFXI and EVE Online.

It needs more... variety.

It needs something that separates itself from other MMOs on the market than being another SWToR where an established franchise is just slapped onto old, over-used MMO mechanics. We've all done the Point A-to-Point B and kill X-amount of rats/other for questing. We've all done the read-lengthy-text boxes instanced boss fights for storyline missions and watch a brief cutscene in the end. We've all done the raids to get that 0.0005% chance at winning something valuable in the treasure pool for your character. We've all done the create a character and lock yourself into one job/class for the remainder of the game.

We've all done the... [insert here].

In other words, the alpha already screams at me that Elder Scrolls Online will be no different than the other WoW and Everquest clones out there.

The only MMO I can think of with any semblance of variety is FFXI (pre-Seekers of Adoulin) and EVE Online. I play FFXIV and at least my character gets to be other jobs/classes at a whim. It's just unfortunate the gameplay is no different than a mash-up of Rift (FATE) and World of Warcraft (questing, missions, difficulty).

Worth $15/month? No.

Worth $10 to $12 a month? Most likely.

Worth Free-to-Play? Definitely not, I have a distaste for F2P MMOs that nickel-and-dime players outside of cosmetic items, and ensure pay-to-win mentalities. I'd rather eat a Vaseline-covered-durian and endure that than play an F2P MMO that offers EXP boosts, better gear, and bonuses in a microtransaction store.
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I so enjoy fairtytale fables!
 
I was actually interested in this game being a fan of Elder Scrolls and all until I heard about the $15/month subscription fee. I do understand why this game shouldn't be made "free-to-play", but why exactly can't they just charge you $60 straight up and free to play afterwards? This monthly subscription model only seems to apply to MMORPGs, pretty much every other type of online multiplayer experience I have ever played was also free once I bought the game, (XBL non-withstanding). Then again, I don't really play MMORPGs so I am just curious.
 
It depends how long you want the game servers to be available.
For the single fee model to work, there will need to be continuous sales at a high enough level to pay for the network, server upkeep, game patching and admin/support etc. staff levels.
To keep the servers alive a large enough trickle of money is needed otherwise there is little incentive or it may not be feasible.
 
Well, that rules me out. I've long since given up on the crazy-expensive MMOs. They just aren't worth the investment.

worm
 
Man you guys act like a bunch of diva's on here. 15 bucks a month is too much waaaaaaah. :eek:

I bet that is a fraction of what most of you pay for your monthy Starbucks fix.
 
SGA76 said:
And that ladies and gentlemen would be the final nail in the casket.
$15 a month for a game I'd be lucky to play once a week?
No thanks.
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Playing a game once a week sounds like you have bigger fish to fry and shouldn't be gaming at all.
 
Charging $15/month will not work they won't get enough users to sustain that price. Price will drop or it will go FTP within 6 months.
 
bullet-worm said:
Well, that rules me out. I've long since given up on the crazy-expensive MMOs. They just aren't worth the investment.

worm
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Well, lucky for you this one blows so... here's to hoping WildStar will be good!
 
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