When I first started ESO earlier this year, the idea of owning and decorating houses was a big draw for me. That dream quickly faded as I watched house after house get released at roughly a $100 crown value.

Some background: I started playing in February of this year. I was introduced to it by a new coworker who had played religiously in the early days but quit when Morrowind was released. I told him how much I loved Skyrim but that I had never played ESO because I was an MMO virgin and I didn't want to be some little dude running around a weird map. "No, no," he insisted, "It's nothing like that. You should check it out." But in the same breath he warned me that the game was becoming a cash grab. He explained in vague terms about how he had to buy a new "chapter" that didn't count as a DLC included in his ESO+ subscription and ultimately just quit playing the game instead of buying more content. He could see the writing on the wall. I didn't care, I jumped in anyways.

The more time goes on as I play this game, the more I realize his tale was truly a cautionary one. We don't work together anymore but I could only imagine what he would think about, say, the Welkynar motif being split into fragments obtained through vet trials but released same day in the crown store. Or the Pyandonean motif being split into pages in their crown crates (originally the only way to obtain them, until a huge uproar on the Summerset PTS forced ZOS to add them to fishing).

Housing has been the most obvious sign of this for me. The houses that have been released in the last ~year (crown prices are for unfurnished):

• Exorcised Witch Coven - 250,000 gold or 3,500 crowns
• Coldharbour Surreal Estate - 1,000,000 gold or 5,600 crowns
• Alinor Crest Townhouse - 1,025,000 gold or 6,000 crowns
• Hunter's Glade - 8,000 crowns
• The Erstwhile Sanctuary - 13,000 crowns
• Pariah's Pinnacle - 13,000 crowns
• Linchal Grand Manor - 14,000 crowns
• Princely Dawnlight Palace - 14,000 crowns
• Colossal Aldmeri Grotto - 15,000 crowns

(I'm not including the Villa in this list because I'm referring specifically to homes made available for purchase.)

Every single time a new house becomes available I end up feeling like ZOS is not designing this game for me and their vision of the future of this game does not include people like me (who won't spend $100 on crowns to buy a mansion). Yes this is a BUSINESS and yes I expect them to seek out a profit. I would pay money to buy a couple thousand crowns for a cool new small/medium house, but they continually choose not to develop this type of product.

Does anyone feel my pain? Should I be looking at this from a different perspective? I genuinely feel worn out, discouraged, and unheard.