By going B2P ESO has REALLY increased their competition

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO · January 2015

@Nihil‌
The issue is that this is not Skyrim. it's not even Skyrim with friends.

It has too many MMO aspects and the Skyrim crowd has made that clear from the begining. Just the concept of hotbar and abilities and classes is disgusting to the most hardcore TES fan, and the first person support is still shaky.
For many, it doesn't even follow the same graphical aesthetics.

I doubt the 20M players that bought skyrim will be even interested in ESO, b2p or not.
And a majority that will be are those that are both TES fans and can be MMO players.
It's patronizing them to think they wouldn't understand the concept of the subscription fee to pay for the service of ongoing development.

@rawne1980b16_ESO‌
I must not be clear enough.

Yes, those people know what they are doing.
But what they are doing is not what is best for the game, the playerbase nor the long term revenue of the studio.

They are focusing on a strategy that handles MMO games like single player games, with a progressive decrease of the cost to sell the game to as much people as possible. You know, like normal games start out at $60 and every year lower a bit and have steam sales here and there.
It's a great model of you want to have a return of investment as soon as possible.

However, it is a bad model if you are focusing on making the most money possible. All f2p/b2p mmos are losing between 20 and 30% revenue per year. And that's for those that are doing good like TSW or GW2.
A susbcription model that is doing good is characterised by an increase of revenue every year.

I may not have ZOS exact inside information, but we have a wealth of information online about many other games and there are some principles that remain true for all games.

Of what we "know" of zos is that in 2012 they had 250 employees and they had layoffs after launch to reduce their QA department.
We have some estimates by superdata, alegedly in contact with publishers and retail outlets, that state the game had 772k subscribers in July and has sold 1.2M copies. A released number was also that ZOS made $111M in the first 6 months. What we also know is the average cost of an employee in an MMO studio. ($5000, including office rent and all)

From all of these, we can deduce that with 100k subscribers, ZOS is doing profit. We also have access to the steam charts numbers which show that active numbers have been falling since July. From which we can also make an estimate that ESO was at 300k subscribers in December. That's the rumored numbers anyway.
However those activity chart have also more than doubled for the 30 days that followed that livestream with the 1.6 info dump. It's safe to assume that 1.6 hype has brought back many players and would have brought even more once released.

Most MMOs lose 3/4 of their player base after the few months and then, if the game improves, they start growing again. ESO seemed to be at that turning point with 1.6.

It is also important to note that i ZOS had access to any valid excuses, such as financial dificulties, they would have used it. Most other games that do such a switch in models explain that otherwise, they'd have to shut down the game entirely. What ZOS said was: "The community asked for it, we're doing you a favor, youre welcome"

For all those reason, it easy to say that this move is just a quick cash grab to move on to something else. Subcription revenue was not an issue.

Gidorick · January 2015

Korah_Eaglecry wrote: »

Gidorick wrote: »

Korah_Eaglecry wrote: »

Arato wrote: »

Samadhi wrote: »

eisberg wrote: »

...
I have yet seen an subscription MMO that gave more content for the vast majority of its players (from casual, to people with no life) then Guild Wars 2, not even WoW (2005-2006, not sure about now).
...

It is unfortunate that GW2 is able to do this, but that ESO will not be able to.
The devs have already stated that we will see less frequent content updates under the b2p schedule, and among those updates are things that we had previously been promised for free which were held back in order to charge extra for them.

GW2 may have more content than WoW; WoW may have more content than GW2.
Regardless of how the two compare, the ESO devs have stated that ESO after b2p will have less frequent content updates than ESO had as a sub game.

Suppose it is possible that ESO may increase in update frequency if they find a method of making the cash shop lucrative enough to cover the costs though.

You didn't pay attention to the stream very well.

They said that FEATURE AND BALANCE updates will be less frequent. They did not say CONTENT updates will be less frequent. Basically after they roll out the champion system and justice system, the other major system they want to push is spellcrafting. After that? The core gameplay they feel will be where they want it, so they won't want to constantly rebalance things unless they find that things are severely imbalanced in some way.

They can then release DLC content packs fairly often because they can devote their time to making new zones, new dungeons, new trials, rather than tweaking the balance of classes and progression system overhauls.

I expect their first year under the B2P method to be slow content wise..Theyll be spending this time adjusting to having a Cash Shop competing for attention from the Artistic Devs. After that I think theyll find their groove and start pushing out content more regularly. I think what we will see content wise is Wrothgar, The Imperial City and Murkmire. I expect Imperial City will launch at the same time as Wrothgar or Murkmire, whichever is done first.

So that's TWO years we will have to support a "promise"? Bummer.

You know...You dont get to pick and choose what counts as content right? ZOS has pushed plenty to the Live Servers over this last year. You should be glad they spent any time at all balancing the game since many companies give up on balance and leave it as the mess it launched in.

The Champion System might not be 'content' as in quests but its going to actually give players something to do with their time besides trying to beat a timer.

Same with the Justice System. Its not content per say. But its definitely going to affect how you play this game. No longer are you going to be able to run up and just grab things. And you arent going to be able to turn it around and sell it to any old vendor either.

You can call your monthly sub whatever you like. But you got what you paid for. The Box told you exactly what you were getting, the ads didnt mislead you as to what was waiting for you in game, and your sub was YOUR choice. You didnt have to stick around for another year. Now its not like they arent trying to say thank you. From Loyalty Rewards to adding a stipend with boosts. You can be unhappy with it if you like. But its coming one way or another....And if you dont get off the train while you can. Then you arent that damn upset after all.

We got 5 updates. We were told updates at a 4-6 week interval. At 6 week intervals we could be approaching update 7 right now. So.... 2 less updates than we should have gotten.

I'd call that "not getting what we paid for."

rawne1980b16_ESO · January 2015

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO wrote: »

It is also important to note that i ZOS had access to any valid excuses, such as financial dificulties, they would have used it.

No company admits to financial trouble.

BioWare never stated that for SWOTR, they said they were opening it up for new players even though everyone knew the sub model had failed.

If the sub model here was working, they would keep it.

You can say they are making the wrong choices but they are the ones who's jobs are on the line. If subscriptions were going to bring in the most money then they would keep them.

They know better than you.

Nothing you say will change what happens.

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO · January 2015

rawne1980b16_ESO wrote: »

Nothing you say will change what happens.

That's the most accurate thing you said in your post.

But I'm not doing it to change ZOS's mind, even though I secretly hope they will, I'm doing it so that people learn from this change and know what to expect from the cash shop change.

For many people coming from the TES solo serie, this is their first MMO.
They are genuinely believing it is fair to "wait and see" when we've waited and seen every other game follow the same patterns.

ZOS aren't going to be the chosen ones, and people should not get their hopes up about this change.