Season of the Worm Cult

BananaBender

I want to start this by saying that I absolutely love ESO as a game and have spent closer to 10k hours playing it, but with U46 and the addition of subclassing, my motivation to play the game has died down almost completely, but that's not what this post is about. This is about the absurd price/contents of the Season of the Worm Cult content pass. To feed my MMO addiction, I gave WoW a shot and it just made me realize how much more you can get for the same money in other games. Of course the value is kinda subjective, because I'm sure someone absolutely loves the Solstice zone and the story lines, and for them the price tag might be worth it. For me it just left me feeling like I got ripped off.

Here are the contents for the Season of the Worm Cult:
New zone
New trial
4 new dungeons*
New mythic items
New furnishing blueprints
The wall event

I'm not going to include subclassing, as it's free for everyone so it shouldn't be taken into consideration when discussing the price of the season pass. The dungeons are already included in ESO+, so I added an asterisk, because if you have ESO+ you are effectively paying for it twice, as having the newest dungeons is included in both their prices. Nor did I include things like houses, which you have to pay extra to get.

Here is what's included in the newest WoW expansion, War Within:
New zone with 6 large subzones
Hero talents (effectively two new skill lines for each class and spec)
New race
Delves (different to ESO delves, effectively single player dungeons, there are 16 different delves with a few different questlines for each)
Expanded how flying mounts work
3 new raids
10 new dungeons
Account-wide progressions system (Warbands)

(These features were implemented over a two year period instead of one like in ESO.)

Okay, so WoW has clearly way more content in it's expansion pass, so let's compare the prices. They cost exactly the same amount, both being 50€.
You might say that WoW can get away with having lower price to content ratio because it's on a subscription model, but ESO+ and WoW play time have the same price. If you have ESO+ and you bought the newest expansion, you are simply just getting ripped off. If they made all features in ESO+ base game, I could understand having a more expensive content pass, but right now it's just absurd how little you get for your money.

I know we still have the other part of the zone and the wall event to experience, but it has the be the most mind blowing gaming experience to make this content pass even remotely worth the money. Another problem the ESO content pass has is that the things you get are very "specialized". Many don't care about the furnishings, some don't care about the group content, sadly all the mythics are horrible in PvE, so nothing new there either.
Not going to comment on the story line for either expansion, as that is completely subjective, but what I will say is that it took me well over 30 hours to finish the story line in WoW, while it took me 2 hours to beat the one in ESO, while not pressing a single button in combat (made a post about it in the Overland Content thread, can post it again here if someone is curious). I know we only have half of the story so far, so let's be very generous and say it's going to take me 6 hours somehow to beat the full expansion, it's still so much less. I know this is very anecdotal, but the difference was way too big to ignore.

I'm not expecting ZoS to suddenly double the content they are releasing in each content pass, in fact I would be pretty happy if we got 4 dungeons, a raid, a zone and a new gameplay mechanic + other smaller stuff in each content pass, but the price has to match the amount we get, and to me this just isn't nearly worth 50€. If they know that we are getting less this year, since it's a new model and all, and subclassing is free for all players, why are we getting charged as if it's a whole new game's worth of content, when it's clearly not?


I would like to hear how others feel about the new content pass, especially when it comes to the price/content ratio, or if you have experiences with other game's expansions as my experiences are only limited to ESO and WoW.
[edited for bashing]

Vonnegut2506

It doesn't matter what gets included with WoW if I don't like playing WoW. If you feel the value over there is better, play it instead. I'm not sure the point of your post to be honest. People should play what they enjoy and spend their money on what they want. I bought The War Within and played it one whole month before realizing that I can't stand WoW anymore, so for me it was a ripoff.

BananaBender

Vonnegut2506 wrote: »

It doesn't matter what gets included with WoW if I don't like playing WoW. If you feel the value over there is better, play it instead. I'm not sure the point of your post to be honest. People should play what they enjoy and spend their money on what they want. I bought The War Within and played it one whole month before realizing that I can't stand WoW anymore, so for me it was a ripoff.

This isn't a post telling people to move to WoW and of course people can play what they want and everyone has the right to enjoy Season of the Worm Cult. What the post is about is that we as ESO players should demand better for the money we pay. It's not unreasonable to ask for more content in a pass which costs 50€, or to bring the price down to be more reasonable for the hours of playtime we get. Why I included the examples from WoW was to show that expecting more content for the same money is not unreasonable. I know for some 50€ is pocket change, but for me as a student it's not.

If you enjoy Seasons of the Worm Cult now, wouldn't it be just better if there was more content included in the pass or if the price was just lower?

Erickson9610

I was going to buy the new dungeons with the Crowns I get from renewing ESO Plus, so I'm actually getting more Crowns in the end as I don't need to spend any on the dungeons.

Yes, I know it's a waste to buy the dungeons on top of having ESO Plus, but I like owning DLC so there's never a chance of me losing access to it.

spartaxoxo

I agree that they content pass is overpriced but you can't compare a 2 year model to a 1 year one in terms of content to price without accounting for that extra year. We also don't know what we're getting Q4. Houses should be included because there's a house you can buy for gold in almost every chapter.

BananaBender

spartaxoxo wrote: »

I agree that they content pass is overpriced but you can't compare a 2 year model to a 1 year one in terms of content to price without accounting for that extra year. We also don't know what we're getting Q4. Houses should be included because there's a house you can buy for gold in almost every chapter.

I don't think the fact that ESO being a one year model and WoW being a two year model makes this any better for ESO though, if nothing else it makes it worse in my opinion. Having to spend 100€ in two years only to come close to having the same amount of content is not making ESO look any better. But maybe it does for someone, which is why I wanted to mention that these two games follow a different release cycle, so people form their own opinions whether it matters or not.

Q4 might be the most insane content release which will make this whole post obsolete, but if that's the case, ZoS should do a better job about informing the players about future releases and what they should expect when buying the content pass. Right now it just feels like that we have to gamble that the future releases will make this pass worth the money, without any indication that it will be so.
I really hope that it will be the case that Q4 is going to make this feel like a worthwhile purchase, because I really want to love ESO again.

The house is a good point, I'm not into housing which is why I didn't even know of this, so thank you for bringing it up.

spartaxoxo

BananaBender wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

I agree that they content pass is overpriced but you can't compare a 2 year model to a 1 year one in terms of content to price without accounting for that extra year. We also don't know what we're getting Q4. Houses should be included because there's a house you can buy for gold in almost every chapter.

I don't think the fact that ESO being a one year model and WoW being a two year model makes this any better for ESO though, if nothing else it makes it worse in my opinion. Having to spend 100€ in two years only to come close to having the same amount of content is not making ESO look any better. But maybe it does for someone, which is why I wanted to mention that these two games follow a different release cycle, so people form their own opinions whether it matters or not.

The house is a good point, I'm not into housing which is why I didn't even know of this, so thank you for bringing it up.

The problem with comparing a 1 year model to 2 year model is the 2 year model is supposed to have more content to make up for the much longer delay in fresh content. And that doesn't even go into the fact that ESO gives away stuff they could charge for because that is part of their business model that isn't true of WoW's as a P2P game.

WoW is relatively cheap and I'm not disagreeing there. But comparing it that way is a bit apples and oranges. They have very different payment models.

Aylish

The 2025 content pass is indeed overpriced. 50$ (or €) are too much for so little content. It may be worth 25 or 30 but not more.
And the need for paying twice for dungeons if you‘re a subscriber and want the zone content isn‘t good practice at all.

I hope they‘ll reconsider this monetization model for upcoming content.

Al_Ex_Andre

ZOS told us they want to improve the game, at the expense of xpac content. So there we go. If someone can get the source, I forget where and when they did say that, but they did reveal that.

So the xpac certainly looks overpriced, it's a matter of who buy it, I decided to buy it, my choice, but I can understand it looks overpriced still. Well I am not going to give up the game just yet.

BananaBender

spartaxoxo wrote: »

BananaBender wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

I agree that they content pass is overpriced but you can't compare a 2 year model to a 1 year one in terms of content to price without accounting for that extra year. We also don't know what we're getting Q4. Houses should be included because there's a house you can buy for gold in almost every chapter.

I don't think the fact that ESO being a one year model and WoW being a two year model makes this any better for ESO though, if nothing else it makes it worse in my opinion. Having to spend 100€ in two years only to come close to having the same amount of content is not making ESO look any better. But maybe it does for someone, which is why I wanted to mention that these two games follow a different release cycle, so people form their own opinions whether it matters or not.

The house is a good point, I'm not into housing which is why I didn't even know of this, so thank you for bringing it up.

The problem with comparing a 1 year model to 2 year model is the 2 year model is supposed to have more content to make up for the much longer delay in fresh content. And that doesn't even go into the fact that ESO gives away stuff they could charge for because that is part of their business model that isn't true of WoW's as a P2P game.

WoW is relatively cheap and I'm not disagreeing there. But comparing it that way is a bit apples and oranges. They have very different payment models.

I don't think the content release is any slower in WoW though. Sure, the expansion changes slower. I didn't mention this in my post, so it's unfair for me to assume people know this, but initially War Within released with 4 zones, 1 raid and 8 dungeons, but in this past year they added two new zones, raids and dungeons + extra stuff. So much like in Seasons of the Worm Cult, the content was released slowly rather than all at once.

I don't really know what is ESO giving for free which is not expected to be free, but maybe I just took it for granted and don't remember it because of that.

I don't think it's fair to completely ignore ESO+ when talking about pricing in ESO. I think it's a great deal and actually worth the money, but because of that playing ESO with and without ESO+ is completely different. I do pretty much exclusively raiding, double bank space, transmute cap and access to all previous dungeons and raids makes ESO+ pretty much a must have. I know there are players who can play without it, but a large number of players do have it, and for a good reason. If we assume people don't have ESO+ but they do raiding, we have to take into consideration the price of all previous expansions as well, not just the newest one. In WoW the previous expansions get added into the base game, much like they get added to ESO+, making a comparison between ESO with + and WoW much more accurate in my opinion.

Nemesis7884

Yeah it does feel over the years and especially with the recent shift the price to content ratio is getting worse and worse because msoft wants more revenues for less effort...

YandereGirlfriend

I forever sort of have the feeling that there aren't enough devs working on ESO in general.

You can see it in the comparatively glacial pace of combat changes vs. basically every other live service game as well as in how long it takes for basic bugs to get fixed, etc. Without knowing much about WoW, your post seems to support that notion as well.

I think that the existing devs do a nice job overall but that there simply do need to be more of them. I also wouldn't mind a subscription to potentially pay for more manpower but that might not be a popular opinion.

TyrTrolas

If they don't add flying mounts or something different next update they ain't winning...

scrappy1342

BananaBender wrote: »

To feed my MMO addiction, I gave WoW a shot and it just made me realize how much more you can get for the same money in other games.

I would like to hear how others feel about the new content pass, especially when it comes to the price/content ratio, or if you have experiences with other game's expansions as my experiences are only limited to ESO and WoW.

i did something similar. when they announced the season pass, i dropped my sub. i have never agreed with their pricing. when you compare to other mmo's, you are getting far less than half the content for double the price. i always waited til they did the holiday events (like the wall one coming up) and if there was something during the event i wanted (like a house), i would buy it for half price. if not, i would wait for it to go to eso+. so upping the price and cutting the content was a deal breaker for me.

i went back to final fantasy and my first reaction was... why did i pay for eso+ for so long...

BananaBender wrote: »

I don't think the fact that ESO being a one year model and WoW being a two year model makes this any better for ESO though, if nothing else it makes it worse in my opinion. Having to spend 100€ in two years only to come close to having the same amount of content is not making ESO look any better.

makes it far worse in my opinion. in other mmo's, yeah there might only be an expac every other year, but every month or two they are adding new things. we only ever got one update with new zones in eso and they cut that out the last few years. plus it was never included unless you were paying for it ON TOP of the chapter/expac. plus... these other games do different holiday things every year. they will have a new quest to do with new items. yeah, eso gives new items, but it's the same quests year after year. they added a few new things to jester's over the years, which was great. but other games do it every year. also not a fan of the event tickets. other games, i can just go and do the event and get my items. i don't have to do it every day unless i just really really want to (sometimes this happens because IT'S FUN)

Rohamad_Ali

Modern MMO's are profit driven. Even if they do not start that way, most end up that way. This package was expensive but I admit purchasing it because it gave access to old zones. It's good to give pushback on extreme pricing and the discomfort of having to buy stuff all the time while limiting good in game rewards. When's the last time they gave out a great mount as a in game reward? We need game play incentives not just pony up your wallet for a pony.

metheglyn

While I do think the season pass is overpriced and cuts into the worth of ESO+, it's not a scam. It's clear what you'll get for your money; whether that is worth the price or not is up to the individual.

Aylish

metheglyn wrote: »

While I do think the season pass is overpriced and cuts into the worth of ESO+, it's not a scam. It's clear what you'll get for your money; whether that is worth the price or not is up to the individual.

That‘s the problem: We don‘t know what we get when we purchase the pass. We always had the chance to test everything we’re getting on the PTS. But with the Content Pass we can only test the first part before buying it. Nobody knows about part 2 of Seasons of the Worm Cult yet. And yet we already payed for it several months ago not knowing if it will be worth it!

metheglyn

Aylish wrote: »

metheglyn wrote: »

While I do think the season pass is overpriced and cuts into the worth of ESO+, it's not a scam. It's clear what you'll get for your money; whether that is worth the price or not is up to the individual.

That‘s the problem: We don‘t know what we get when we purchase the pass. We always had the chance to test everything we’re getting on the PTS. But with the Content Pass we can only test the first part before buying it. Nobody knows about part 2 of Seasons of the Worm Cult yet. And yet we already payed for it several months ago.

It's true we don't know the details of the story, but we know we are getting a story. As someone who doesn't ever try out content on the PTS, I've never made my decision on whether or not to buy the chapters based on the ability to play it first. If someone prefers to have played through/tested all the content before purchasing, then not being able to do that right away is a drawback for them, but still not a scam. People could still wait to test all the content before buying it if they so choose.

Gabriel_H

You are conflating quantity with quality. WoW is not available to buy on commercial platforms like Steam or Gog so gaging comparable reviews is not easy; but looking at user review sites like Metacritic, War Within is not looking promising. ESO recent reviews on Steam have it at mostly postive. So, WoW might have pushed more content, but the players don't exactly seem thrilled with what they got.

Versalium

OP forgot to mention that with all that content in WoW, you also get a 2004 game, visually, mentally, and gameplay-wise.

Besides, as a single-player gamer, I would never play WoW or any other MMO. But I play ESO daily.

ZOS should double down on ESO for single-player gamers, because single-player experience is what makes ESO special. A lot of TES fans are still avoiding ESO like it's a plague. I was one of them until May this year. They're missing out.

But prices..yeah. I do not like the prices.

Renato90085

i dont know ,in steam 2025 Content Pass is first eso big dlc got Mixed and negative ....U46(? 30% real buyer think this Season of the Worm Cult is good 70-55% feel bad,guild member hard found group farm new trial set,Forums here have someone feel new zone is dead zone new event have many bug in pts server
Does this answer you?

Dagoth_Rac

Did people complain about Necrom and Gold Road like this? The "season" thing just splits the Chapter model into 2, so we get playable zone content in Q4 instead of nothing in Q4 like in recent years. Probably to limit population loss during the fallow period between Chapters. I am guessing WoW was releasing expansions larger than Necrom and Gold Road during those years.

I feel like if ZOS had it to do over again, they would just release Solstice/Worm Cult all at once in June instead of splitting it in two. They probably felt that spreading the PvE story/zone content over the year would keep players engaged with game more. And maybe it has from a pure numbers metric. But whoo boy has a year that will probably end up with more content than last year or the year before been met with endless howls of rage that Necrom and Gold Road did not receive.

scrappy1342

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

Did people complain about Necrom and Gold Road like this?

there will be complaints about anything and everything no matter what. i don't personally remember seeing complaints on this scale with necrom, but we were getting about the same amount of content as always. the only difference was that the second zone was put in from the start with the release of the chapter instead of as a dlc halfway through the year, so you are probably right in that there would have been less complaints if they had just done it all at once.

gold road on the other hand... that was the first one that i personally saw massive complaints about lack of content and regrets about buying. but the general consensus at the time was "well this is just this year so they can get caught back up and go back to giving more content." but here we are at the next one and it appears to be even less >.>

Nemesis7884

scrappy1342 wrote: »

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

Did people complain about Necrom and Gold Road like this?

there will be complaints about anything and everything no matter what. i don't personally remember seeing complaints on this scale with necrom, but we were getting about the same amount of content as always. the only difference was that the second zone was put in from the start with the release of the chapter instead of as a dlc halfway through the year, so you are probably right in that there would have been less complaints if they had just done it all at once.

gold road on the other hand... that was the first one that i personally saw massive complaints about lack of content and regrets about buying. but the general consensus at the time was "well this is just this year so they can get caught back up and go back to giving more content." but here we are at the next one and it appears to be even less >.>

the downward spiral in content started when they switched one of the 4 updates to only quality of life and from their it has been a continuous downtrend

duagloth

And performance continues too suffer for one of these games.

Seaviy

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

scrappy1342 wrote: »

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

Did people complain about Necrom and Gold Road like this?

there will be complaints about anything and everything no matter what. i don't personally remember seeing complaints on this scale with necrom, but we were getting about the same amount of content as always. the only difference was that the second zone was put in from the start with the release of the chapter instead of as a dlc halfway through the year, so you are probably right in that there would have been less complaints if they had just done it all at once.

gold road on the other hand... that was the first one that i personally saw massive complaints about lack of content and regrets about buying. but the general consensus at the time was "well this is just this year so they can get caught back up and go back to giving more content." but here we are at the next one and it appears to be even less >.>

the downward spiral in content started when they switched one of the 4 updates to only quality of life and from their it has been a continuous downtrend

I like the QOL updates. Clearly, this didn't come at the expense of new content. Considering that this has been a trend in recent years, it seems ZOS need to expand the development team. And prioritize the content that players really want to see in the game.

AzuraFan

BananaBender wrote: »

I'm not expecting ZoS to suddenly double the content they are releasing in each content pass, in fact I would be pretty happy if we got 4 dungeons, a raid, a zone and a new gameplay mechanic + other smaller stuff in each content pass, but the price has to match the amount we get, and to me this just isn't nearly worth 50€. If they know that we are getting less this year, since it's a new model and all, and subclassing is free for all players, why are we getting charged as if it's a whole new game's worth of content, when it's clearly not?

This is the crux of the matter. It's not about what we got (though of course, people are allowed to voice their opinions on it) in terms of the quality of the zone, etc. It's that the pass is overpriced, especially for ESO+ subscribers. And especially since the new feature (subclassing) was base game, so free.

If the price matched the content, there'd be a lot fewer complains. We might be disappointed that we didn't get more content, but nobody would be feeling ripped off.

It wasn't okay to milk players because it's a transitional year. We don't even need to compare what we got in the content pass to another game. We just need to compare it to what we got in previous chapters in ESO to see that the content pass was overpriced.

Next year won't be a transitional year, so that feeble excuse won't work. Hopefully the new people managing the game are hearing loud and clear that we won't be so easily fooled next year, or so easily parted from our money. And hopefully subscribers won't be treated like cash cows.

Alinhbo_Tyaka

Versalium wrote: »

OP forgot to mention that with all that content in WoW, you also get a 2004 game, visually, mentally, and gameplay-wise.

Besides, as a single-player gamer, I would never play WoW or any other MMO. But I play ESO daily.

ZOS should double down on ESO for single-player gamers, because single-player experience is what makes ESO special. A lot of TES fans are still avoiding ESO like it's a plague. I was one of them until May this year. They're missing out.

But prices..yeah. I do not like the prices.

WoW has become pretty friendly to single players. Their version of delves is designed for single players and individual progression that at the hardest levels rewards high level gear. The game has introduced what they call follower dungeons where you run the dungeon with a group of NPCs and story mode for the final raid boss so you can see the climax without having to do group content. You don't get great rewards but that isn't the intent of individual content which is to allow solo players to see all of the story and content. I think this has been driven somewhat by the realization that more players rather play alone but also by their main competition FFXIV which introduced many of these features into their game first.

I'm not suggesting anyone switch over as there is more to a game than how it handles solo and group players but to say it is stuck in 2004 is being disingenuous.

Nemesis7884

Seaviy wrote: »

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

scrappy1342 wrote: »

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

Did people complain about Necrom and Gold Road like this?

there will be complaints about anything and everything no matter what. i don't personally remember seeing complaints on this scale with necrom, but we were getting about the same amount of content as always. the only difference was that the second zone was put in from the start with the release of the chapter instead of as a dlc halfway through the year, so you are probably right in that there would have been less complaints if they had just done it all at once.

gold road on the other hand... that was the first one that i personally saw massive complaints about lack of content and regrets about buying. but the general consensus at the time was "well this is just this year so they can get caught back up and go back to giving more content." but here we are at the next one and it appears to be even less >.>

the downward spiral in content started when they switched one of the 4 updates to only quality of life and from their it has been a continuous downtrend

I like the QOL updates. Clearly, this didn't come at the expense of new content. Considering that this has been a trend in recent years, it seems ZOS need to expand the development team. And prioritize the content that players really want to see in the game.

We had 4 dungeons before and afterwards 2 so...

Renalds

I see so many players complaining about the season pass and honestly.
I get it, it doesn't feel great this year content wise, and it feels really lacking compared to a year where we receive a entire chapter.

I'm not trying to defend ZOS by any means, but I do think we need to give them some time to transition into whatever they're planning and show us what they can deliver with a team that got butchered.

You all do realise that them stepping off the whole ''chapter'' thing hasn't been ''beneficial'' to them either right, a new chapter create much hype and got players back into the game. I can almost be certain that this season did not have that effect on players returning or new ones joining.

Imo, It's too soon to speak.

They have clearly mentioned that this is a year of transitioning, and the year hasn't ended.
I want to see what is next before I can really form a definitive opinion. Where are they taking this ''season'' theme.

If the same thing of this year repeats into next year then I'm definetly going to be very dissapointed.

Also, imo; it's not that fair to compare WoW to ESO when it comes to the amount of content.
Ofcourse they're able to drop way more content in a year.
There are about 600+ developers working on World of Warcraft of the 13k that work at Blizzard, versus the 300 of Zenimax. (As for 300 of Zenimax, that's including all non-developers; it's the entire company)

scrappy1342

Renalds wrote: »

Imo, It's too soon to speak.

never. the point of speaking out is so that they can see how their changes and decisions are affecting us so that they can try to save it before it's too late.

Renalds wrote: »

Also, imo; it's not that fair to compare WoW to ESO when it comes to the amount of content.

totally fair. i don't just magically have twice the subscription money per month to spend simply because they are different companies or have different situations. just because zos has less to work with does not make the content more fun or last longer. whatever their differences, my money is going somewhere else for the time being (not to wow, but another game).