Pleased to have played Pacrooti's little game. On both occasions I got what I wanted, and far more than I paid for. And, more importantly, it was a nice little bit of frivolous fun.

I'm a subscriber so I get 1500 Crowns a month.
If there is nothing good in that month's Crown Showcase and there a several things in the crate I want I'll use the 1500 on a 4-pack.

I won't be buying crates it this month or in the foreseeable future because the incoming Sabrecat mount looks good and because the Wild Hunt crate has far too many crappy, lazy, facepaints. I bought the punk hair, Toxin Doctor costume, and the flannel hood (because it goes with everything) with gems and that's pretty much all I wanted out of the Wild Hunt crate besides the mount.

EDIT: That being said if it had the Soul Shriven skin I would probably buy several more, god I want that.

My wife and I finally did buy some this month. We both dislike gambling in these games, but we also both have enough experience by now to know that once the crates were in the game and being purchased they were likely never going to go away. The crates clearly are being purchased as indicated by the amount of people running around on obnoxious mounts. So we decided to see what the experience was like. We both spent what we felt comfortable with and got things we liked. In my case, the value of the items I received was far greater than the cost of the crates I purchased, but that's dumb luck for you. I don't know if I'll ever buy crates again, but from my perspective this system is far more forgiving that the lotto systems in most other games I've experienced. I guess I could say that I don't absolutely hate it even though I wish it didn't exist.

I used my 1500 crowns from ESO from plus to buy 4 crates to try out the whole crate experience. As I opened the second crate the guy said something along the lines of 'congrats an extra card' and placed a fifth card in the middle of the table. I clicked that card straight away and won a storm guar mount. Best day ever.

purchased 4, luckily enough I had an epic mount in the second one opened!

Used some crowns I had from subbing on the first wave. Was very disappointed with what was offered and with my luck. Will not be participating again.

Used my subs this month and last month. Wanted the leopard mount, rather than the atronach and this month I wanted the panther rather than the Spriggans. Got neither from the crates, but the crap I got extracted to 170 gems and I bought the panther with those. My experience is that odds are you won't get what you want from RNG, but my gems seemed to add up quite quickly.

Yes, to see the odds for myself. It took me $140 to obtain the Storm Atronarch Senche mount I wanted, and that was via spending 400 Crown Gems from all the doubles and crap I traded off for more gems.

Never again unless there is at LEAST a 50% sale.

The rate of getting something you actually want in these things is WAY too low. You would have better odds winning at a casino that's rigged.

I thought @ZOS_GinaBruno said they were looking to remove race specific items from future crown crates last season.

Not worth it enough for me to spend the real world money.
Imo, only DLCs are worth it.

I bought two of the 15X crates Storm version. Picked up the Doom Wolf mount using gems in the new Wild Hunt version.

Not interested in this particular offering enough to buy more. Maybe next offering. And yes, I do believe these are gamble-crates and I would much prefer spending cash on exactly what I want. However, as long as I get something amusing out of it that i feel is worth the expenditure, I will continue to buy crates that interest me.

I also support the Crown Store with direct purchases.

Extra character slots are too high! Holy moly, how about $5 a slot? And why limit 12? Zeni is limiting long-term replayability. Neverwinter Online has what? A 24 character limit with purchases? Even more?

No, and never will. I boycott gambling mechanics that use real money in video games.

(Edit: In my opinion, MMOG companies circumvent the laws* that regulate gambling in many western countries by using the excuse that none of the things you can obtain from their gambling systems has any actual value - because they all aren't real objects, just extras to services bound to personal accounts that are non-transferable. The fact that people are willing to pay so much for these extras, however, shows that they do have "value", even if it's just personal value, for the people that spend so much money on them. I think it's unethical for companies to abuse the gambling addiction of those people to make them spend more money than they would/should otherwise so I boycott gambling mechanics in video games.)

(Edit2: The crown crates at least have some kind of fail safe with crown gems - so after spending a lot of money people can buy the item they wanted with gems - but many probably still end up spending more money than they wanted to and regret spending it afterwards.)

(Edit3: And I realize, ESO probably needed something new for long-time subscribers to spend their crowns on, but super-expensive cosmetics hidden behind gambling mechanics aren't the way to do it, in my opinion. At least be honest about the prices and sell a mount for 75k crowns if that's the average amount of crowns someone would have to spend on crown crates to get one. [The root of the problem is that the subscription should never have come with such a high amount of crowns from the beginning.])

*I'm not accusing anyone of breaking any law in any country here. As layperson, I believe that those MMOG companies are legally in the clear. I'm just saying that I find what they are doing unethical to some degree (and yes, there's worse crimes in the world, but still...).