Hello everyone!

Recently i have seen a growing trend amount certain content creator(mainly on YouTube, not sure if it's also prevalent on Twitch), where people make exposé videos about the game monetization practices, and use answers from Rich Lambert's personal stream as a way to rail against the company.

I would like to state right now, to take everything I'm about to write here with a grain of salt. I am long time ESO player, and so I can't 100% accurately put myself in the shoes of new ESO players, and most of what I am about to write is my OPINION.
That being said, I constantly try out new games, especially rpgs and mmos, so I have a pretty good idea about the new player mindset in general.

With that being said I wanted to discuss a few points that have been brought against the crown store and the overall monetization practices of the game.

1. Certain "Pay for convenience" items are too expensive and predatory towards newer players.

a: One of the main concerns seems to be that things like respec scrolls, soul gems and other convenience items are sold at too high a premium, and essentially pray on the lack of information about the game's systems new players may have.
One of the points Rich made on his stream is him showing off how the respective respec shrine locations are available from the help menu after a quick search. I do think this was kind of an ill advised answer, since most people typically look for outside sources for game related information, whether it's friends, guildmates, websites, videos etc. Most people are pretty unlikely to rummage through Help menu for answers on how to respec.
Sadly the contra point to this in one of the YouTube exposé videos was to show off how hard it is to find this information inside the console help menu, since it doesn't actually have a search function.
However just as Rich's answer was ill advised, this video also completely fails to acknowledge the fact that most people wouldn't even be looking at the help menu for this information anyway, so the lack of accessibility on this topic is kinda moot anyway. Also the console help menu not having a search bar is likely an oversight due to consoles not typically coming with a keyboard, whilst PCs do. Still its a valid point so any dev reading please do add a searchbar for the console help menu kthx.

b: Like i already pointed out, most people will usually get there information from sources other than the ingame help menu, but i want to take this a step further.
I have been playing video games, mostly rpgs for over 20 year. I can count on one hand the amount of games, where the only way to respec a character was by spending real money in a cash shop.
This idea that new players coming in somehow believe that the only way to respec or obtain items like soul gems is through real money from the Crown Store, just seems insane to me.
I know there are eastern games out there, that actually do this, but most western developed games don't, and even eastern games adopted in the west usually do away with some of the most blatant P2W practices(or they go bust, almost always).

2. Crown store items, especially the aforementioned convenience items are too expensive.

a: First of all, just as Rich pointed out correctly on his stream, you don't just pay for the items themselves, but for the convenience to have access to those items and services anywhere, any time.
You don't just buy a respec, you buy yourself the time it would take for you to go to a major city, find the respec shrine and do it there. Suddenly the pricing starts to makes more sense.

b: One of the videos stipulated that respec scrolls cost 1 million gold, due to conversion rates. "It's costing them a million gold" .
Sorry but what?? Do you honestly believe that there are players out there, that know about how gold to crown conversion works, have a million gold or more, but don't know how to respec at a Rededication shrine?
You know what, I fully support ZOS "exploiting" this insanely large portion of the player base.

Not to mention, 1:1 comparing crown and gold prices is beyond stupid even without my previous argument, because gold to crown exchange rates change vary widely depending(typically seller side) on the source and channels which we use to convert. It's different per server, per person, per transaction. And yes this includes dedicated discord groups that help make these transactions happen.
I will say this though, I do think that many of these items are too expensive, I base their relative value, on how much time and effort purchasing them would save me, and paying half of a monthly Netflix subscription for a handful of soul gems definitely feels excessive pricing. But that's my point here, most of these items aren't particularly difficult to obtain outside the crown store, and it's likely that ZOS would make more money if they were cheaper(due to higher volume).

3. We already pay so much for the game and ESO+ is mandatory.
This a sentiment I have seen echoed not necessarily just recently, but ever since the game dropped it's original monetization model.
First of all, I want to say that ESO+ is absolutely perfect for I how play the game: When I play the game i play long hours and do a variety of activities, and when I don't, well I cancel my eso+ and the game cost me exactly nothing when I am not actually playing it.
I often hear how the craft bag is predatory, I'd say it absolutely is necessary if you plan on crafting your own items, gather materials for profit etc.
However those activities are all associated with long playtimes, and general dedication to playing the game. A single cinema ticket for a couple of hours of entertainment will cost you more than eso+.
Oh and btw, all those items you store in your super expensive crafting bag actually use data. Data that has to be stored and indexed physically somewhere else, on top of providing you access to said data any time you want to. And that costs money. And yes the company makes a profit off of it. So what? I swear people act like they have never worked for a business or owned one themselves.
In business you have to be profitable, just to justify the existence of the very business you run/work for. If this game wasn't profitable, than this game wouldn't exist.
That's how the real world works. This game provides hundreds, even thousands of hours of entertainment, for a fraction of the cost as most other entertainment media does.
Seriously, look at cinema tickets nowadays, and see how much it would cost you to spend even a hundred hours watching movies at a theatre. Yeah..
There's a reason why video streaming services are so popular nowadays, after all.

4. My last point is using Rich's personal stream and statements to rail against company policies that you don't like.
Rich Lambert is the creative director at ZOS, if you think that he is personally responsible for what's inside the crown store and how much it costs, you need a healthy dose of reality.
Please stop using someone's personal stream, which they do for fun btw, to create outrage against company policy. Rich is not a one man ZOS developer team, and just because you can't find the people personally responsible for the issues you have with the game, that doesn't mean you have the right to pin your anger on the first person you can find.
I see this behavior happen against the community managers on a daily basis, usually on subjects they have no control over, and it's just as bad.
It's basically the equivalent of calling a customer service of a company, and shouting at and degrading the CS agent, because you have and issue with the company itself.
It's called misplaced anger, and yall need look the definition up.


As a final word, if anyone thinks I am trying whiteknight or shill for ZOS: please look at my post history, I have never been afraid to criticize the company or even certain parts of the dev team if I felt like it.
I made this post, because I feel like a lot of the recent outrage about these crown store items were either badly argued, due to lack of information, or seeing the big picture, or in some cases were outright malicious looking to grab those sweet juicy outrage views.(Fact is, these items have been in the crown store for years, but never before I have seen such a concentrated effort from multiple content creators to pile up on the subject matter.)

I hope this post adheres all the community rules, etc etc bla bla.

Have a good one everyone!