Santie Claws 2 by wenxue2222, on Flickr

LonePirate wrote: »

I was wondering if people think ZOS might have a surprise Christmas gift for players/subscribers in the next week or so. Perhaps a new costume or something else that can be mailed to everyone?

Ha! ZOS care about subscribers? You are clearly confused. That is simply not the ZOS way.

ZOS has been seduced by the "lure of short." The theory is that there's more short term cash in the quick sell to the short attention span, ADD market in which kids/parents buy a game, play for a very short time then drop the subscription and move on to something else. It's based on short term statistics, and it's super short on logic and common sense, which is in short supply everywhere. Meanwhile, long term customers get the short end of the stick.

In short: ZOS does not give a fig about maintaining happy subscribers because they follow the current trend dictating that gaming "should be" geared toward the relatively larger number of extremely short-term players (spoiled children and ever-children) who become bored incredibly quickly and have zero concept of what it is to delay gratification.

With ZOS thus catering to the shorts, the longer-term players (mature, adult, intelligent young people) who have the aptitude and mental acuity to appreciate the immersion, lore and artistry of ESO are seen as expendable, even though they were originally the intended audience. They will stay, play and pay for as long as the game is worthy of playing and fires their substantial imaginations, and are the customers who keep games like ESO going long after the initial "Ohh Mommy, Mommy get me THAT new game!" wave has crested and been long forgotten, yet somehow, against all possible logic or reason, ZOS utterly fails to be cognizant of this fact and continues to work on what they (wrongly) feel to be dazzling effects *yawn* like moving lips on NPCs rather than the real meat of the game.

Consider: we still have no acceptable character creation/modification system, certainly nothing approaching what should be expected for this level of game, nor do we have a timeline set for one, and we are approaching a year into the game! Yes, it's a time sink that probably does keep those precious "tweeners" (who are not supposed to be playing the game at all) interested for a little bit longer, but how many other people does it drive away? "If the rest of the game is this sub-par, forget it!" ...and the game is understandably returned.

Honestly, character creation is the intro to the game. One would think ZOS would have the good sense to make improving the first thing people encounter, which is the vehicle through which we all experience the entirety of the game, the number one priority!

So no, we certainly aren't going to see the holiday gifts and events EVERY OTHER "MAJOR" MMORPG ON THE PLANET provides, at least in some token form. They don't impress the target tots at shows or increase short term sales and apparently they are no one's pet ego project...so, no, not going to happen. Face it, lovely as it is (when it works) the "lure of short" has prevented this from becoming the the truly exceptional break-out game we had all hoped for and I am rapidly losing hope that it ever will be.

Someone, somewhere made a "business decision" and it was dead wrong and we, the players, are going to be left hanging because of it. ESO is already devolving into just another game making a quick grab for cash from the lowest end of the age and attention-span scale at the expense of "real" gamers, who will, at least for a time, have nowhere at all to go, until the spoiled children get tired of their hand held games and want the real thing back, even if they do have to sit still to play. I hope a good new company is there to fill the void. It's a shame all this wonderful effort and lore seems to be going to waste due to poor management.

But, hey, we did get a present of sorts: exponentially increasing lag and load times, error messages and black screens of death caused by the beloved "megaservers" straining under the morbid weight of all the darling little young child players logging on to this, their "rated M" game of the month over holiday break from school. As an added bonus we even got a no maintenance Monday when we actually could have used the maintenance (even more than usual). So don't say they didn't give us anything!

To anyone checking in from ZOS, please pass along my most heartfelt thanks to the powers that be, and many happy returns...bunch of Scrooges. May their short-sighted plans pay off precisely as richly as deserved.

Queen Textwall

Thanks for the coal in my stocking ZOS! That was awesome!

@AureateRN‌

I was following along on all of that, mostly in agreement, until I got to the holiday part

So no, we certainly aren't going to see the holiday gifts and events EVERY OTHER "MAJOR" MMORPG ON THE PLANET provides, at least in some token form. They don't impress the target tots at shows or increase short term sales and apparently they are no one's pet ego project...so, no, not going to happen. Face it, lovely as it is (when it works) the "lure of short" has prevented this from becoming the the truly exceptional break-out game we had all hoped for and I am rapidly losing hope that it ever will be.

I feel that this is not an example that follows what you wrote leading up to it. The game world filled with holiday events and gifts is exactly what gets the short term people all giggly inside. They will ignore a game all year and check in just for these holidays. I think that this is a large part of the reason why every other MMO on the planet does it.

They are standing on "principle" right now with the "no non-Tamrielic holidays" thing, but I keep feeling like they would have done it anyway were it not for things like the Champion System, Justice System, and Dungeon Scaling getting in the way.

Other than that, yeah, I think Zenimax Media wants a broadly appealing game that will attract casual gamers. Not the ones that play Facebook games, but the ones that caused Skyrim to really take off.