Longevity and ESO?

Johnny_NO_skillz

So a few questions continue to linger on the communities mind:

- Will ESO go F2P, and if so when?

- Will the developers be able to fix the current bugs and issues in ESO in a timely manner that would allow ESO to recover from the initial average to mediocre reviews?

- How many will be left after the 1st month culling?

I'm curious to hear some intelligent, and non-biased opinions.

It seems like in every MMO community - there are either those who dance around their subscription and swear by their grave that they hate the game with a burning passion and herald in the next "Big" MMO... as if it will be the VERY ONE to be perfect on launch and have ZERO problems (look at you, Wildstar people...)

Or those who have fallen helplessly in love with the game that will blatantly deny any issue, regardless of how obvious, and shout for dissidents to return to WoW and GW2, regardless if the person has ever even touched those games before.

I am enjoying ESO - I'm not sure if I'll be enjoying it 2 years down the road, but I can reasonably see myself playing it for at least five to six months ahead from now. It's a good game, and I've been burned out on GW2... and haven't touched WoW since Cata - no reason to go back now.

Besides - I'm a sucker for ES Lore.

Let's be constructive.

Madae

You won't get intelligent or non-biased opinions. What you're asking for is something none of us will know the answer to.

Pelerin2014

I think the game will go F2P eventually, it's tough to keep an MMO P2P with so many games on the market - but I don't see it happening for at least a year, hopefully more - I'm a fan of P2P myself.

I don't doubt that ZOS will be able to sort out the bugs in good time.

I also don't doubt the game will lose many players after the first month, but that's normal. I think the game is enjoyable enough and many people are fans of TES lore that there should be a stable playerbase for a good long time.

I think people are too caught up with every new MMO either being the next big thing or the next biggest flop - I don't understand that, ESO doesn't need to be the next big thing to be successful and like I said I'm not worried about population long-term, it should be fine.

For the record, I thoroughly enjoy the game and I think it's a fantastic mix of what makes both TES game and MMOs great.

fougerec99b16_ESO

Will it go F2P? I hope not but honestly only time and the developer know that for sure. I'm not against F2P games in theory, I am against games that seem to shun their subbing customers for F2P things (SW: TOR for example). Right now I enjoy ESO quite a bit. I don't play any game obsessively so I can imagine that I'll be enjoying it for quite some time to come. It's been my experience that with my playstyle I usually hit level cap right around the time they raise it which gives me lots of new content. If I play 8 hours a week or so I consider that a pretty good week

As for bugs, it's been said before that all MMOs are buggy at launch. All of them. Anyone who thinks that this game or that game wasn't is simply viewing with the rose colored glasses of hindsight. I haven't encountered any game breaking bugs but I'm only level 20 in Grahtwood. Not to say they're not there because they obviously are. I have faith that Zenimax is doing everything they can to fix them and one thing having 3 kids has taught me...patience

I'll definitely be here after the month and the one after that and the one after that. I've never been one to let other people's opinions sway me (I stuck with SW: TOR long after my friends and guildmates left) and as long as I'm having fun, that's really all I care about.

Gwarok

Launch isn't even a month old. Why the HELL are you QQ-ing about this F2P crap?

QFT-ing OP

rawne1980b16_ESO

No one knows the actual answer to those.

If current trends continue it may end up going free to play. It all depends on how many subs they need to remain profitable and how many people stay on and subscribe.

Besides the doom and gloom, the game seems to have a healthy population from what I see but i'm no expert.

I've played a hell of a lot of MMO's since 1996 but I have no clue as to the business side of things.

It does have issues. The issues lay somewhere between "rawr this is a broken unplayable mess" and "everything is perfect, nothing is wrong". Somewhere, between those, is where the game is at. It has bugs and it has problems, it's up to Zenimax to show how fast it can rectify those.

Sadly, no game is ever going to be perfect for everyone. Even Wildstar, a game some people seem to hail as the second coming, is going to have problems.

Eternal Crusade will be the only perfect game ... SHUT UP ... after the last disaster of a Warhammer MMO just let me have this moment.

Joking aside, it's a good game with problems. I don't think it "deserves" to go free to play but we don't always get what we deserve.

Only time will tell.

Inversus

- Will ESO go F2P, and if so when?

Nobody knows. Anyone who say they know are either lying or stupid.

Jake71887

Inversus wrote: »

- Will ESO go F2P, and if so when?

Nobody knows. Anyone who say they know are either lying or stupid.

I think he was asking for opinions, not definitive answers.

reignfyre

Only speculation here-- can't really offer any intelligent responses.

Seems like people either love this game or are extremely disappointed. So it seems to me that those that stick will have a game they love, and will get to play with others who love the game. Even if the game is (IMO) disappointing, love is blind so it doesn't matter to those ppl. Myself, I find this game boring as I have found every MMO since my AC2/WoW vanilla days. I was hoping the ES in ESO would change the O, but it did not.

liquid_wolf

As a business decision, allowing a F2P model simply extends the game's footprint to other subscribers.

People can still get access to everything with a $15 a month sub, while people who want the Free to Play model can pay for particular features, content, and services directly.

However... every F2P model inevitably puts in "extras" that the subscription members don't automatically get. Costumes, potions, pets, etc...

Maybe the $15 subscribers get points/currency to buy those things with, but it is usually never enough to get EVERYTHING. Forcing them to pay more money, or grind outrageously simply to get those holiday/special items.

Or XP potions which would simply become a MUST for VR content.

On top of the $15 a month, I do not like these types of systems. No matter how many points/currency they give me.

The game changes... the people change. It becomes something else.

Using SWtOR as an example, they still had close to 1 Million subscribers at the time they went F2P. That is $15 Million dollars a month... I can't imagine an MMORPG costs THAT much to develop and maintain.

It was the GUARANTEED extra cash flow from subscribers and F2P members that encouraged them to do it.

Zenimax WILL MAKE more money going F2P, but the game itself will turn into something different. It won't be the same.

As a business decision, F2P is a smart move. But I don't believe it is the BEST move for the future of this game.

To keep it an Elder Scrolls game that helps build on the franchise. That type of attention to detail, consideration of the community, and development of ideas and content only comes from a subscription based model. That understanding of what you have, how it works, and what you can do to improve it with the resources you have available to you.

In a way, an MMORPG is much like a garden. While many would say it is better to simply buy the plants and save yourself the time and energy... working on it yourself creates a deeper understanding of the garden and the resources you have at your disposal to make it what you want. You'll figure out what grows best, and what your garden wants and needs to flourish.

Maybe you'll be able to make it a big garden... or maybe you can only make it a small one... but you'll be able to make it YOUR garden.

With the F2P model... it stops being a garden. You've tapped into some external resource and rather than try to develop around what you have, you start to develop around that external resource. Whatever causes more of those resources to come in.

That becomes the only thing that matters. You've stopped developing a garden, and simply opened up a flower shop. Providing whatever happens to be popular at the time.

There are a lot of flower shops around, but people always admire a well-tended garden. Even if it doesn't contain the flowers they prefer.

Which is what Zenimax needs to ask itself... Do they want to have a garden, or do they simply want to have a flower shop?

Audigy

TESO is in a better shape than most MMO´s of the past 10 years. Content wise you are busy for months, it is very similar to Vanilla wow.

It will take a dedicated player several weeks to reach the end of the story and then he will also be able to discover other stories. Multiply this with 7 and you have a rough estimation of how long someone will play until there is nothing else to do.

When World of Warcraft hit, it took a player about 2-3 months to reach max level. Then you had raids and one of the best pvp systems I saw which isn't based RvR.

While I don't think that raiding has a future in MMO´s, back then it was a wonderful system that kept you going every week. You wanted to get the full set, you wanted to hang out with your buddies... But what many designers forget is, that people also grow up. If you have a family, kids, job then you cant commit to a raid schedule anymore so raiding becomes less important and you want to do other things in a game. Gamers get older and older, the young ones all hang out with their consoles - so as a game designer you must give older horses something too.

That transition from the young gamer to the old, Blizzard never got along with. If you check how many people raid today, then we are in single digit´s and they keep hammering out raid after raid, that hardly anyone visits.

Without the Asian market, wow would be F2P already.

If the developers of TESO are smart, then they keep working with what they have now, as this is different to other MMO´s on the market. Its the same situation that started the major success for wow "Be Different & Unique".

The biggest mistake ZO could do is giving in to the whine, turning this game into a dungeon crawler MMO where everything happens at raids. This doesn't has much fans anymore, its boring and repetitive and it wont be able to compete with the raiding system of wow, which is just much better balanced and runs on a fridge from the late 90s.


TESO has just like SWTOR had, a wonderful story background and millions of fans. Those want to play a TESO game and this ZO has to deliver. Give people housing, their crime system, random world events where everyone can contribute, maybe a follower skill line and new zones to discover.

Yes this might not be for everyone and those who like to grind raids might feel left out, but as wow and other MMO´s have proven, the days are numbered where raiding was a selling point. The majority wants back to the MMO roots, where you play together based on a free will in a large world and not in a 10x10m² raid dungeon.

Mortelus

Johnny_NO_skillz wrote: »

So a few questions continue to linger on the communities mind:

- Will ESO go F2P, and if so when?

- Will the developers be able to fix the current bugs and issues in ESO in a timely manner that would allow ESO to recover from the initial average to mediocre reviews?

- How many will be left after the 1st month culling?

I'm curious to hear some intelligent, and non-biased opinions.

It seems like in every MMO community - there are either those who dance around their subscription and swear by their grave that they hate the game with a burning passion and herald in the next "Big" MMO... as if it will be the VERY ONE to be perfect on launch and have ZERO problems (look at you, Wildstar people...)

Or those who have fallen helplessly in love with the game that will blatantly deny any issue, regardless of how obvious, and shout for dissidents to return to WoW and GW2, regardless if the person has ever even touched those games before.

I am enjoying ESO - I'm not sure if I'll be enjoying it 2 years down the road, but I can reasonably see myself playing it for at least five to six months ahead from now. It's a good game, and I've been burned out on GW2... and haven't touched WoW since Cata - no reason to go back now.

Besides - I'm a sucker for ES Lore.

Let's be constructive.

Wait let me get my Magic-8-Ball....

- I cannot see through the fog
- Probably
- Yes

Seems my Magi-8-Ball isn't working properly...

I don't think it will go F2P for at least late 2015, if indeed it does at all.

I think we will have at least one player staying (me) after the first month...

As we don't have any information from Zeni about player numbers now, how can we possibly discern how many will be left?

But I think if Zeni keeps 500k here and gets another 2 million from consoles the game is going to be around for a while.

Both are easily doable IMO

Johnny_NO_skillz

Just to be clear, I never asked for anyone to "peer into the future" - not sure why a discussion attempting to illicit community discussion has to be under such scrutiny.

Gwarok wrote: »

Launch isn't even a month old. Why the HELL are you QQ-ing about this F2P crap?

QFT-ing OP

I'm asking for opinions not answers. I thought the syntax of the original post was clear and simple enough.

Thanks to all who contributed interesting reads.

knightblaster

Odds are good that it will be F2P. The issue is when. That depends on how many people are here at 30, 60, 90, 120 days, and none of us knows the answer to that question.

The subscription model only works long term for games that offer something that players can't get in another game. WoW works because people have so much invested there in terms of time and money, and because people have close guild/friend connections there, and because it offers the most mechanics-oriented endgame multiplayer experience -- people are willing to pay for it for those reasons. EVE works, because no other game offers the internet space ships PvP sandbox MMO niche game -- it's a niche of one game. So people who are into that will pay for it because there is no competition.

I see this game as being primarily appealing to TES fans -- much moreso than the broad MMO market. I think it does appeal, for the time being at least, to some of the old skool MMO market, but that's also pretty small, and smaller than the TES fans market. I think that the TES fans market will probably be able to sustain a subscription model for the game for several months, especially with the small, but incremental, old skool MMO player market. I doubt that these, taken together, will be enough to sustain the subscription model long term, however -- by which I mean longer than year-end or so. That would be my guess at least.

neocomab16_ESO

It will go f2p. It is first and foremoest an MMO, or wants to be. It is sub based which is an mmo thing.
Furthermore it does not deliver a solid or even better mmo experience. Times have changed during the last decade of mmos. People are less patient with the games. If the game glitches, bugs, if dupes are apparent, if the game is full of bots, hacks, exploits, if combat feels unresponsive and if endgame isnt there, the game will have its pitfall after the first 30 days. Happend to SWTOR which probably none of the press would have seen coming. But the players did. Especially those who played beta extensively. Those guys wont sub.

WoW as THE mmo has the luxury of the fact that most of its playerbase have build a connection to the game. Every other big title failed to deliver an awesome experience in order to build such a connection. therefore, people dont feel like home if one would call it that way. thus, they leave and never look back.

I looked back once at SWTOR after f2p and was disgusted by the buisness model. Never again. Even DCUO offers a better f2p experience. But TESO? Well, I call f2p, we will see how long it'll take. maybe anouncement in april 2015. or they simply shut down the servers but I fail to see them fixing all of the major issues in due time.

If I were to be an ass I'd say they've seen it coming and by offering the imperial edition they tried to cover a bit of the upcoming sub losses. But I'm probably not that of an ass or I simply dont care.

Korusus

Right now ZOS is sitting on their haunches. Whether that's because they are gearing up for the console launch or not is debatable, but they don't seem to have the fire under them that they should. I think the suits at Zenimax think the console ports will save them and are depending on that for long-term subscriptions and avoiding F2P. That may be a successful tactic, the game could fail miserably on PCs and MACs and still be a success. This is the first mainstream AAA MMO to launch on multiple next-gen consoles so it's hard to read the future there.

Greydog

A non-biased opinion is an oxymoron. People form opinion based on their own interpretations of their experiences.

ESO's longevity depends on Zen's ability to recognize and address this games many frustrating hurdles.

liquid_wolf

http://youtu.be/NzthXKu8lJw

Here is a good review on the problems with the game industry today.

They want all the money. Every last bit of it.

Lets hope Zenimax doesn't follow this approach.

Mie87

It might go ftp but not soon.
If they focus on keeping people busy at end lvl, people might keep on subbing.