ESO+ never included the most recent chapter (it was only added a year later when a new chapter was released), so that's not a big change yet and there's still a lot of DLC zones and dungeons. If they keep adding DLC zones to the base game that aspect of ESO+ might become irrelevant but it will be years before that happens. But also a lot of people who don't subscribe do buy the DLC they want so zone access was never a benefit for them.

IMO the bigger problem with using free trials to promote ESO+ is that increasingly new features aren't included. Free trials have never given any crowns, which makes sense, but they also don't let you get the free crown store item or the discount on other items, don't give access to the furniture vault, don't let you unlock the free companions, almost certainly won't give tome point caches or premium tokens and the doubled antiquity lead time drops back down when your subscription ends.

I understand why each of those things individually is excluded, but it means the free trial is increasingly not representative of a paid subscription, which makes it less effective advertising and means ZOS are less likely to run them.

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Danikat wrote: »

Free trials have never given any crowns, which makes sense, but they also don't let you get the free crown store item or the discount on other items, don't give access to the furniture vault, don't let you unlock the free companions, almost certainly won't give tome point caches or premium tokens and the doubled antiquity lead time drops back down when your subscription ends.

ZOS aren't relying on those things to turn a free trial into a subscription. It's the craft bag that hooks people.

I think it depends on the person. The craft bag has never been that appealing to me (although if they got rid of it completely they'd need to do something about the huge number of style materials). When I have ESO+, paid or a free trial, I will make sure to dump stuff in there but I've never been tempted to subscribe to use it.

The first time I bought ESO+ it was mainly to check out the DLC zones so I could decide which ones I wanted to buy. Since then it's mainly been to dye costumes and add extra furnishings to houses. I recently paid for a month to get the furniture vault and the two companions as well.

ZOS clearly don't think ESO+ is all about the craft bag, or they wouldn't keep adding other features to it. I assume they want to advertise all the things they're selling, not just the one that's already most often talked about.