Please Let Players Buy and Progress Old Tamriel Tomes

FelisCatus · August 19

I think players should be able to purchase and progress old Tamriel Tomes after their original season ends.

At the moment, if someone misses a season, joins ESO late, takes a break, or simply has real-life issues that prevent them from playing, they permanently lose access to the Tome and its Premium rewards. That feels unnecessarily restrictive, especially when some players would still be willing to pay for the content afterward.

Allowing old Tomes to return as archived passes would benefit both players and ZeniMax:

Players would not feel punished for taking breaks or joining late.
Returning players would have more goals to work toward.
New players would not be permanently locked out of cosmetics they never had a realistic chance to earn.
ZeniMax could continue making money from older content instead of relying entirely on FOMO.
Current-season Tomes could still remain more efficient or offer limited-time bonuses, preserving an incentive to participate while they are active.

An archived system could simply let players select one old Tome to progress at a time. Current Tome activities could continue awarding points, while old Tomes might progress more slowly or cost slightly more to unlock.

This would not remove the value of completing a Tome during its original season. Players who participate on time would still receive the rewards earlier and could potentially benefit from faster progression, exclusive titles, bonus currency, or discounted pricing.

The content already exists. Permanently locking it away does not improve the game. It mainly creates frustration and makes returning players feel that they have already missed too much.

Please consider allowing players to purchase and complete old Tamriel Tomes.

Danikat · August 19

I agree.

I assume the plan is that eventually the exclusive rewards from each tome will be purchasable for trade bars, like how past event and login rewards are now, but I think having the option to buy old tomes would be nice too, and like you said it would make more money for ZOS by having more stuff available to buy.

I've seen other games do this, where previous season passes are still available but the items cost more points to unlock so you're incentivised to get them when they're first available if you can, but not significantly penalised if you can't.

FelisCatus · August 19

Danikat wrote: »

I agree.

I assume the plan is that eventually the exclusive rewards from each tome will be purchasable for trade bars, like how past event and login rewards are now, but I think having the option to buy old tomes would be nice too, and like you said it would make more money for ZOS by having more stuff available to buy.

I've seen other games do this, where previous season passes are still available but the items cost more points to unlock so you're incentivised to get them when they're first available if you can, but not significantly penalised if you can't.

I think one of the Halo games does this right? Which is owned by Microsoft.

LunaFlora · August 19

i am not against it, but the items in Tamriel Tomes will undoubtedly return via the Gold Coast Bazaar

Fischblut · August 19

If premium-tier Tome rewards ever appear in Bazaar (which means for free, basically), I stop buying Premium upgardes for real money

I like free items too, and I absolutely don't want to pay for something I would get for free later.

There is now collector's content starvation without chapters and extra cosmetics (which were rewards from pre-ordering them)

Currently Premium Tome upgrades serve as the only replacement for such cosmetics

AzuraFan · August 19

Danikat wrote: »

I assume the plan is that eventually the exclusive rewards from each tome will be purchasable for trade bars, like how past event and login rewards are now,

If they do that, why would anyone ever buy a tome? Login and event rewards are earnable in-game, but the tomes are bought with real money. If they start adding the exclusive premium reward items into the store, I'll never buy a tome again. Not unless a loooong time has passed from that tome being available and the item being added to the store. At least 5 years.

I'd be fine with allowing players to purchase tomes at any time. You want the items, you buy the tome. That way nobody has to miss out.

FelisCatus · 2:32AM

AzuraFan wrote: »

Danikat wrote: »

I assume the plan is that eventually the exclusive rewards from each tome will be purchasable for trade bars, like how past event and login rewards are now,

If they do that, why would anyone ever buy a tome? Login and event rewards are earnable in-game, but the tomes are bought with real money. If they start adding the exclusive premium reward items into the store, I'll never buy a tome again. Not unless a loooong time has passed from that tome being available and the item being added to the store. At least 5 years.

I'd be fine with allowing players to purchase tomes at any time. You want the items, you buy the tome. That way nobody has to miss out.

So do you have the same issue with DLC that you paid for years ago eventually becoming apart of the base game?

DenverRalphy · 3:24AM

FelisCatus wrote: »

AzuraFan wrote: »

Danikat wrote: »

I assume the plan is that eventually the exclusive rewards from each tome will be purchasable for trade bars, like how past event and login rewards are now,

If they do that, why would anyone ever buy a tome? Login and event rewards are earnable in-game, but the tomes are bought with real money. If they start adding the exclusive premium reward items into the store, I'll never buy a tome again. Not unless a loooong time has passed from that tome being available and the item being added to the store. At least 5 years.

I'd be fine with allowing players to purchase tomes at any time. You want the items, you buy the tome. That way nobody has to miss out.

So do you have the same issue with DLC that you paid for years ago eventually becoming apart of the base game?

As long as the bonus cosmetic content from purchasing them aren't included. Yup.

SeaGtGruff · 3:26AM

The tomes themselves are free, as far as the playable content associated with the tome-- Night Market, Glenumbra Thieves Guild, Sheogorath's Vacation, etc. So the comparison to past DLCs which eventually become part of the base game isn't really applicable, or at least not entirely equivalent.

And the free earnable rewards in the tome are roughly comparable to the old daily login rewards, which we were never able to claim after the fact if we had missed them, so I don't really see why we should be able to buy an old tome after the fact and be able to earn the free rewards that were in it, other than the fact that some of those rewards may have been unique styles or things like that. If those things were eventually made available through the Gold Coast Bazaar, it wouldn't hurt anyone, since we"re talking about things which were earnable in the free version of the tome.

As for the special rewards which were earnable only with a paid version of the tome, those seem roughly comparable to the special collectibles which could be obtained only by buying a DLC or chapter. Those could still be obtained later by buying the DLC, so it might be nice if there were some way to buy the special rewards from the paid versions of old tomes after the fact.

The tricky ones would be the special rewards which were only obtainable by buying the Premium Plus version of a tome. They might be likened to the special collectibles which used to be available only by prepurchasing a chapter or DLC before it was actually released. I don't think those things were ever given away in the past, although they might come back as Crown Store purchases or, in some cases, as Crown Crate items or possibly as special RNG drops from event coffers. (In particular, I'm thinking of the mount and pet from dungeon DLCs which I think were potential drops from Undaunted event coffers.)

virtus753 · 3:55AM

The Collector’s bundles in the crown store already include many of the pre-order items, despite the title.

Morrowind’s CE bundle seems to include all pre-purchase rewards, whereas those for Summerset, Elsweyr, Greymoor, High Isle, etc., appear to include all pre-purchase bonuses except the respective mount in each case.

AzuraFan · 1:22PM

FelisCatus wrote: »

So do you have the same issue with DLC that you paid for years ago eventually becoming apart of the base game?

No, because years have passed. Though I do think it would have been a nice goodwill gesture to throw a token to the accounts that already owned the DLC. Nothing major, maybe a few trade bars or something.

And as I said in my post, if a number of years have passed since the tome was sold, I'd be fine with it. I wouldn't be fine with it if the items appeared in the bazaar next year.

While I understand people like free stuff (I do too!), to keep the game going we need to pay for things. ZOS doesn't want to cultivate a playerbase that never pays for anything, and it needs to be careful not to do that. It's not smart to create an environment where players think, "Oh, I'm sure the exclusive items will be available in the bazaar anyway, so I'm never going to buy a tome." Or to make players who do open their wallets feel devalued. That's bad for business.

Constantly giving away stuff for free that others had to pay for might not be the smartest way to go at this point, especially with MS keeping its eye on the bottom line. It's okay to keep some items exclusive to those who forked over real money for them.