Summerset Isles pre-order and Morrowind becoming Crown Store purchasable

Curulhach

Dear Zenimax,

In some ways, I quite like this new thing of things being purchasable via Crown store. It makes it easier to manage purchases, I can choose to either purchase things at once, or I can subscribe over a period of time and acquire something I want, spreading the costs. I can even halt my subscription for a time if I face financial difficulties, and then come back later when I'm in a better financial position and be able to acquire things I wasn't able to acquire at the time, like pre-order goods, or collectors editions, and so on.

The main issue I have with this change is the timing of its announcement. I recently pre-ordered Summerset Isles because I thought it and its pre-order bonuses would only be accessible via pre-order purchase. Had I known that they were going to become available for ESO+ subscribers and through the Crown Store, I would have simply saved my Crown Coins for these. What I find particularly distasteful is this announcement coming moments after releasing something for pre-order, allowing people to pre-order it, and then announcing that your whole mechanic for purchasing things may be about to change. (Admittedly in the context of Morrowind, but it's not hard to extrapolate the idea this may be something that occurs in the future for expansions like Summerset Isles)

As such, I will be watching very carefully to see what happens with Summerset Isles before considering pre-ordering any future expansions. Had I known this mechanic was coming, I would probably have chosen to save my money and wait a year. Instead, I feel that you have somewhat cynically decided to make this announcement after people like myself have already pre-ordered, knowing full well what our response would be.

I suspect I'm not the only person that feels this way, and all I ask is that in future, you consider the timing of such announcements so your players can make more informed financial decisions. I enjoy your game, and I enjoy the content you create, and compared to other MMOs I have played, the pace of content release is far better than others, but I don't appreciate what feel like such cynical moves on your part.

As I stated at the start, I can see many considerable positives from a personal stand-point to you making these changes, so I hope they remain this way for future expansions. I would just like to know whether this is going to become a thing for future expansions, so I can in future decide whether to spend my money up front, or save it for later, knowing that I won't be missing out.

Anyway, that's my thoughts, feel free to chip in with your own thoughts.

VaranisArano

ZOS doesn't allow open letters on the forums, so you might change your wording there.

However, I agree that consistency, transparency, and openness about future changes to payment models for content would be a good change.

To be clear, I dont object to changing prices. I do object to bundling Morrowind/Warden/Battlegrounds together as a bigger and better piece of content, then turning around a year later and going "oh, well, guess Morrowind(zone) was a DLC after all." Sucks to be subscribers who should have gotten the DLC for free.

What ZOS has done now is the right choice for the future of the game. ZOS should have done this from the beginning.

Dominoid

The main issue I have with this change is the timing of its announcement. I recently pre-ordered Summerset Isles because I thought it and its pre-order bonuses would only be accessible via pre-order purchase. Had I known that they were going to become available for ESO+ subscribers and through the Crown Store, I would have simply saved my Crown Coins for these.

I don’t get this. If you preorder Summerset you OWN Morrowind and the Warden for free forever. If you don’t, you either rent Morrowind with ESO plus or purchase it with crowns AND purchase the Warden with crowns. Your preorder value is still intact and nothing has changed from this announcement. If you don’t take advantage of the pre-order bonus, you end up paying more money later.

Rosveen

Dominoid wrote: »

The main issue I have with this change is the timing of its announcement. I recently pre-ordered Summerset Isles because I thought it and its pre-order bonuses would only be accessible via pre-order purchase. Had I known that they were going to become available for ESO+ subscribers and through the Crown Store, I would have simply saved my Crown Coins for these.

I don’t get this. If you preorder Summerset you OWN Morrowind and the Warden for free forever. If you don’t, you either rent Morrowind with ESO plus or purchase it with crowns AND purchase the Warden with crowns. Your preorder value is still intact and nothing has changed from this announcement.

The OP explained it in the next paragraph: "Had I known this mechanic was coming, I would probably have chosen to save my money and wait a year."

Chapters are an additional purchase on top of ESO+, which previously didn't matter because it was the only way to get access to them, so you had to buy them sooner or later anyway (assuming you wanted them, of course). But now we can make a different choice: wait a year and get them with our sub (or crowns from our sub) without spending any extra money at all.

Curulhach

VaranisArano wrote: »

ZOS doesn't allow open letters on the forums, so you might change your wording there.

Thanks for the heads up, wording duly changed.

jedtb16_ESO

so what?

Juju_beans

Rosveen wrote: »

Dominoid wrote: »

The main issue I have with this change is the timing of its announcement. I recently pre-ordered Summerset Isles because I thought it and its pre-order bonuses would only be accessible via pre-order purchase. Had I known that they were going to become available for ESO+ subscribers and through the Crown Store, I would have simply saved my Crown Coins for these.

I don’t get this. If you preorder Summerset you OWN Morrowind and the Warden for free forever. If you don’t, you either rent Morrowind with ESO plus or purchase it with crowns AND purchase the Warden with crowns. Your preorder value is still intact and nothing has changed from this announcement.

The OP explained it in the next paragraph: "Had I known this mechanic was coming, I would probably have chosen to save my money and wait a year."

Chapters are an additional purchase on top of ESO+, which previously didn't matter because it was the only way to get access to them, so you had to buy them sooner or later anyway (assuming you wanted them, of course). But now we can make a different choice: wait a year and get them with our sub (or crowns from our sub) without spending any extra money at all.

if you want to play one expansion behind what's current then do it. Many who have played other MMO's know that expansions usually get rolled into the base when the next expansion comes out.

ADarklore

I guess if people want to wait a year for Jewelry Crafting, that's on them. Personally, I like to have new content from the start, PLUS, I want to help support the game.

Yamenstein

Dominoid wrote: »

The main issue I have with this change is the timing of its announcement. I recently pre-ordered Summerset Isles because I thought it and its pre-order bonuses would only be accessible via pre-order purchase. Had I known that they were going to become available for ESO+ subscribers and through the Crown Store, I would have simply saved my Crown Coins for these.

I don’t get this. If you preorder Summerset you OWN Morrowind and the Warden for free forever. If you don’t, you either rent Morrowind with ESO plus or purchase it with crowns AND purchase the Warden with crowns. Your preorder value is still intact and nothing has changed from this announcement. If you don’t take advantage of the pre-order bonus, you end up paying more money later.

But but but...OP rant thread...

In all seriousness though. I agree with you. ESO plus is a renting service for anything unless you buy it with crowns, and you'll most likely end up spending more buying it from the crown store than the bundled one that comes with the new chapter.

PlagueSD

SO let me get this straight. You pre-order Summerset and get Morrowind for FREE and you're complaining?? You'd rather pay for morrowind separately, or am I missing something?

Curulhach

PlagueSD wrote: »

SO let me get this straight. You pre-order Summerset and get Morrowind for FREE and you're complaining?? You'd rather pay for morrowind separately, or am I missing something?

You're missing something I've already got Morrowind, which I purchased because I believed that was my only option of acquiring it, and I'm fairly sure at the time it was stated that this would be the only option of acquiring it. I can't find any direct evidence, but I can find plenty of forum posts from the time complaining about that.

Aside from going back on a stated decision, which lets face it, MMO devs tend to do from time to time and at times I'm okay with this, for example if it's because they realise their original decision was a bad one, then you know, fair play to them. But if you're going to change your mind, and you're going to change the way things are done, maybe announce it before you release pre-orders for a new expansion rather than after, unless you're feeling supercynical and want to upset your playerbase.

My point is, which a lot of people have got, and others not so much is that it's the timing of this announcement coming after pre-orders have been released and not before. It's a decision what would affect a lot of people's financial planning, and I consider it to be somewhat poor form for them to have done it this way around.

ADarklore wrote: »

I guess if people want to wait a year for Jewelry Crafting, that's on them. Personally, I like to have new content from the start, PLUS, I want to help support the game.

I agree with you there, and when I have the financial opportunity to do so, I like to support the game when I can because for the most part, I love it. It's not often I get grumpy, but this decision which has just lowered my respect for them and has bumped ESO further up my list of first things I will drop when finances get tight. It's also made me considerably less likely to want to buy expansions at the time if I know I can save up Crowns to buy them later from a subscription, as I hardly use my Crowns for anything else.

As I've stated before, it's not that I think what they've done is a bad idea as it helps with my financial planning and management, it's the way they did it.