Depends on the price . If it was around the same price as STO then yes , I would . If it's going to be more like 300-500 dollars then no .

Would not buy life time sub. Probably change the way it works and what you get for it down the line and you'll need to pay more for the same stuff you should have gotten with the life time sub.

zaria wrote: »

As I understand ESO has never had that option?

Yeah, there never was an LTS option, sadly.

Personally, I prefer them to subscribing month by month, because they'll usually become the cheaper option around the 12th to 18th month. Usually with some neat perks.

Well, if I could pay for a lifetime sub, then I wouldn't have to worry about not being able to afford a sub later. And could maybe pay for other things, like food.

On the other hand, it would likely make things like the DLC downloads in the CS redundant, so y'know. It probably won't happen any time soon.

I bought lifetime subs for many games over the years. While they might've had "ecoonomic issues" at some point, all the games I bought a lifetime to are still around. LOTRO, Champions Online, Star Trek Online, and DCUO. I haven't played three of those in a long while, but if I ever get in the mood they are still there. I still pop into LOTRO from time to time though and that's been paying for itself for over 8 years now. (I got the lifetime sub during the mines of moria expansion release in 2008)

If you can afford a lifetime sub on a game, go for it. Though it does depend on the price. Each of those was 200 dollars as I recall, which is why I got them.

Wolfshead wrote: »

menedhyn wrote: »

I'll sub for as long as I think it is worth it. But subbing for the lifetime of a game without knowing whether I will feel the same in the future, or indeed have the time to play in the future, would be a bit naive on my part.

You do know that lifetime sub mean that just pay big amount of money just 1 time but you still your crown each month anyway right

I would pay for lifetime but then we should alot more and better benefit then we have today i mean come on what we get get today just joke as ESO+ member

• Access to DLC game packs.
• 1500 Crowns per 30 day membership, all Crowns given at time of payment.(which we get clump sum)
• 10% bonus to experience points gain
• 10% bonus to crafting inspiration gain
• 10% bonus to trait research time
• 10% bonus to gold acquisition
• 2x bonus to allowable furnishings and collectibles in player housing.
• Expanded crafting inventory
• Access to Costume Dyeing at Dye Stations

To be total honest all this so call "benefit" is joke i have to say ZoS should start to put in some more effort to add better benefit over all to ESO+ i mean you can to get better bonus from add thing to gear for the are exp and gold trait that gave you good bonus + you buy in crown store exp boost with 50% and you can get 100% exp boost from Crate

Well, here's some thoughts:

• A crown and gem stipend: recieve a small, but non-trivial supply of gems ever month. (20-50, maybe.)
• Access to crown store items that have been removed, and have not been featured in crown crates.
• Access to previous crown crate seasons. (Both the crates, and the gem conversion.)
• Increased Crown Gem conversion rate.
• Unique Mount, Pet, Costume, Dye(?), Skin (?).
• Increased drop rate for Runeboxes.
• A permanent crown store discount. (10%)
• Unique versions of the Trader and Banker assistant.
• Access to learned motifs as costumes.
• And, of course, all the normal benefits of ESO+ with none of those pesky recurring fees.

I've had a sub since the start so as long as it wasn't an insane amount I would sign up for a lifetime sub.

menedhyn wrote: »

Wolfshead wrote: »

You do know that lifetime sub mean that just pay big amount of money just 1 time but you still your crown each month anyway right

It does sound attractive, and perhaps if things were different I would jump at the chance! Let's just say that a recent health scare has made me a bit more cautious / careful about such long-term financial commitments. That's why I didn't dismiss the idea outright, but tried to provide a more personal response. Perhaps I should have said, "But buying a lifetime subscription...", rather than "But subbing for the lifetime of the game..."

Long-term financial commitment? It's a one-time payment and once it's done, you can forget about it, it doesn't affect your monthly budget anymore. The only risk is if you use your savings to buy the lifetime sub and something unexpected happens in your life immediately after.

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

Depends on the price . If it was around the same price as STO then yes , I would . If it's going to be more like 300-500 dollars then no .

STO's was 300 normally, as I recall. I think I paid 240, before launch. Then rolled up a hilarious number of Liberated Borg.

For sure, why not?

SydneyGrey wrote: »

Look at it this way, if 5 million people all had lifetime subscriptions, then the developers wouldn't feel the need to constantly improve the game any longer. Having subscriptions that expire after a half year keeps them on their toes, so they'll really, really care about putting out the best game possible so they can get you to re-subscribe.

I am reminded of special attention given to customers in the midst of negotiating renewals of multi-million dollar contracts. If you want to be heard, it is typically more helpful to be viewed as a risk to leave than as a loyal customer.

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

LTS is only valuable to lower end games. It is a poor decision for a decent game to use as it is most likely to end the recurring revenue from the most loyal to the game. We are talking about game by companies like Arc. Not exactly the greatest of MMOs.

So, like, ESO?

Okay, let's step back a bit, we're not talking about "companies like Arc," because we should be talking about ones that actually exist (In this case, Perfect World Entertainment), rather than their random products.

Second, we're talking about, games like Age of Conan, DCUO, and LOTR. While Age of Conan did tank horrifically on launch, it was intended as a AAA MMO. DCUO on the other hand was intended to be an anchor for the PS3

It would be more accurate to say that LTSs are a method of hedging your bets. A normal MMO will expect to lose between 80% and 90% of their launch numbers within the first month. People buy the game, and then decide it's not for them, or that it's a mess (because launches are always pretty messy).

At that point, just rolling the dice should explain why you'd want one of these on offer at launch. Even if you figure that 2 out of every 5 LTS purchases are people who would have otherwise left the game, then that is money you would never have seen otherwise.

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

It would also remove the incentive for Zos to keep looking at ways to take care of subs if such a large portion of the player based subscribed are no longer adding to the recurring revenue.

This assumes that most players who hang around will buy an LTS. They won't. Even in games like STO, where you can find other LTS players pretty easily, they're far from the majority. Asking more than $150 for a single video game purchase is a huge barrier for entry for most players. It doesn't matter that it's a better deal for them in the long run, they'll see the price tag and balk. This is even more true with something like STO's $300 LTS.

Combine this with the fact that most games with LTSs offer them before launch, so you're being asked to pay that much up front before you've seen the game? And yeah, LTS players are the extreme minority... but, they stick around. And that's what makes them valuable to the developers.

You see, people don't (generally) continue to play MMOs because they enjoy the content, or because of the game itself. They stick around for the social contact with friends. You can dispute this if you want, or you can look up actual articles from various developers. There is a massive peer component to MMO retention. Arguably ESO's biggest mistake on this front is that it doesn't allow for custom global channels except via the guild system. Put this in contrast to STO, where if I log in right now, I'll see people chattering away in DOFFjobs and TTS (including people I knew and still consider friends), even though I haven't been active in years.

That time you spend BSing with friends goes much further towards keeping you in a game than anything else an MMO can offer.

With LTSs, those handful of people have far less incentive to go elsewhere. You need to seriously screw up the game or mistreat them to get them to go. So they act as an anchor for a much larger portion of the non-LTS community.

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

Just overall a bad business decision for a company to make for a game like this.

More, I'd say it's a moot decision at this point. The major incentive for a developer to implement an LTS would have been back when the subscription was mandatory. At that point, keeping people around means keeping them paying their $15 a month. Once a game goes to a F2P setup (or a B2P setup like GW, GW2, and ESO), then the value of keeping an LTS setup drops massively, since your dedicated players will stick around, if they're paying or not (again, unless you seriously screw with them, like TOR or STO has done), and your need for community anchor points diminishes massively.

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

BTW, Arc offered LTS on sale for STO and another game just before they went F2P. The sale price was $239

BTW, Arc isn't a company. It didn't even exist when PWE bought Cryptic. And, yes, Cryptic offered the LTS for 240 before launch, then removed it for a couple months, and brought it back at 300. Then, they discounted it a couple times after that, including immediately before they announced the game would be going F2P (not immediately before the F2P transition kicked over). (You can add this to the litany of scummy things Cryptic has done with the game.) Since PWE's picked up the game, the LTSs have gone on sale (for 240) about every six months. (I think this may have also included immediately after Arc was introduced, but I don't remember.)

I'd buy it.

Who knows what in the next 10 years gaming would be like? Also, ESO is still very unstable, now it's in a playable stage, but two months ago and end of last year it was unstable and crashes and errors non stop, so not really. Love the game, but don't really trust it's technical side of things.