Should ESO go back to a subscription only game?

Korah_Eaglecry

CaineCarver wrote: »

AzraelKrieg wrote: »

MilwaukeeScott wrote: »

Back?

ESO on PS4 has never been a sub only game.

Consoles are the reason why it's not a sub only game right now. When it launched on PC in 2014 it was sub only until March because MS and Sony kicked up a fuss.

That is exactly why the sub fee had to go. Sony and Microsoft currently hold the consoles hostage to their fees and do not want to lose any pa5rt of that.

Dont kid yourself. This game was headed towards a mediocre existence 3 years ago. The PC population plummeted over the summer after release and didnt increase all that much in the fall before the announcement that the game was going B2P. Consoles breathed new life into the game and it is in a much better place because of the influx of console players and the B2P model.

The only MMOs that are still successful under the full subscription model are games that were around prior to 2008/2009 when F2P/B2P models began to dominate the market. ESO probably had a few years of life in it before it was going to end up on life support because of the unsustainable subscription model.

Rawkan

Obviously it would've stayed that way if it was profitable, it wasn't. I don't mind whales spending thousands of dollars on costmetics to support the game for the rest of us.

Shadowasrial

Yes it should

Radinyn

Let's kill the game 'coz i don't like cosmetics in crown crates.

Surgee

On consoles no way. I've already paid $100 just for the base game (games on consoles are crazy expensive). No way I'm paying subs for my whole family. It's enough ZOS blocks away from family sharing...the only game on the market that does this. Greedy fks.

Elsonso

wenchmore420b14_ESO wrote: »

ESO STOPPED SUBS FOR CONSOLES! Not because it was dying!! Yes, it had a rocky start.

A lot of things were going on at this time and many things were significant.

No, ESO was not dying at the end of 2014. At least, not in any way that could not be rescued. I don't think the game was meeting subscription expectations, but that could have been addressed by the studio.

The consoles get the blame, specifically Microsoft, because the waiving of the club fees was considered key to the game. It is a lot to ask of the console companies to waive the club fees when the studio is new and unproven. I figure that the consoles saw "Skyrim Online" and, given Bethesda Softworks association with Skyrim, gave ESO the benefit of the doubt. When ESO did not take off like a "Skyrim Online" should have, I think that Microsoft realized that ESO was not strong enough to justify waiving the club fees.

I think that ZOS is positioning themselves as a low development budget MMO developer. (edit: they still spent a LOT on ESO... low development budget means they are careful not to splurge and they pace themselves more) I think their mission is to make MMOs that can be developed and released on a reasonably limited budget and will recover expenses more quickly. They adopted the "MMO is never finished" mentality that allows them to ship unfinished work with the pinky finger promise that they will come back to it. This means that ESO can be cheaper to maintain, but it is also chronically unfinished and lacking in operational support. This leads to the perception of lack of content and a poorly maintained game, and that leads to the weaker subscriptions, and led to what happened next.

The console was late. Console was a year late. I think this is the straw that broke the subscription camel's back. We have a "fiscally responsible" MMO developer suddenly faced with the one of the worst things possible: Having to rewrite a game on two platforms while it is deployed on a third. Nightmare! I don't know if they attempted to get more funding, and this was denied, but I wish they would have gotten the budget to do both console development and PC/Mac maintenance.

All these things come together at the same time. A budget conscious studio is spending resources rewriting the consoles, and this is going to take a year to complete. They don't have the staffing to rewrite the consoles and keep the 6-8 week update schedule in place for PC/Mac. The decision to focus on consoles, rather than PC/Mac, was going to starve PC/Mac.

Starving PC/Mac was only going to make their subscription problem worse. Remember that I believe that their subscription problem was not terminal. They could have recovered, but doing it would have required attention and resources. They did not have that attention and resources because console was sucking it all up. The lack of new content on PC/Mac for months would have tanked what subscriptions that remained. The only way to keep the PC/Mac people around was to let them play the game for free while the studio did consoles.

Enter B2P and the Crown Store. This solved all these problems, neatly, with a bow. The problem with Microsoft and XBox Live vanishes. The problem with PC/Mac players leaving the game is mitigated, and if they do, they can come back and play for free at any time. New players entering the game could play for free, which attracted new players to replace departing players for only the cost of the initial game. The studio did not need extra resources to keep PC/Mac development on schedule.

So, it was not one thing. It was the combination of several things:

• Unfinished game at launch
• Weak subscriptions on PC/Mac going into the end of the year
• Funding for the studio was below critical levels needed to meet challenges
• Studio resources fully devoted for months to the delayed console instead of current subscribers
• Microsoft did not want to waive Live fees

Edit: made a few things more clear, less critical.

starlizard70ub17_ESO

If only it could, but that rat's been out of it's cage for far too long to ever go back now.

Malthorne

Outside of Craglorn grinding, one Cyrodiil campaign, and for the most part faction hubs ESO was almost empty in November 2014 until B2P. It was bare bones to the point that it felt like there was just a small base of hardcore and hanger-on questing/casual type players. My ever dwindling list of friends and I would see callouts and pug pledge dungeons with pretty much the same folks from zone chat almost nightly(group finder didn’t work, and no cross faction PVE.) Starter zones were not active and veteran zones were like playing an offline single player game some evenings. It seems like the population increased drastically with the B2P/Tamriel Unlimited relaunch.

This is the experience my friends and I remember from November 2014 -February 2015 on NA/PC. We still talk about those good ol’ days from time to time lol

wenchmore420b14_ESO

@lordrichter
Thank you. That was very well written. Kudos and a awesome!

I still would like to mention that Steam numbers represent a very small percentage of the player base though.

CapnPhoton

I prefer to just buy the content, extras when they comes out or after in most cases. Back in the day I subbed to one game, then another. But real life is too full to be more than just a casual player, so if it was subbed I would probably not play.

Jpk0012

Sure, if you want the population to plummet. I don't blame anyone for not subbing. IMO, the best part of the game was the original. Every new DLC and expansion is a joke money grab.

Morrowind: they made a zone 10X as big as any other zone, but it has less content than one old school zone, and then they charge 60 dollars? Sure 30 hours worth of content, but 20 hours is running. How many people do you think will buy the next expansion after getting burned?

Clockwork City is even worse. If not for the craft bag and double bank space we all know very few of us would subscribe.

Pwnyridah

No, pop will die if its sub only.

JiKama

Yes... Sadly not all will agree though since it's buy once play forever. These days sub models dont seem to work as well. I'm surprised Wow has lasted as long as it has.