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AScarlato wrote: »

I have bought a shameful amount of crowns not on sale before due to FOMO but it's not a practice I do anymore.

I think the pricing on most crown store items are so insanely marked-up for what they are that the sales don't even lower the cost on many items for the value I think they should be charging for digital cosmetics, but at least the sales help.

Hopefully the sales return since at this point I think many people only get crowns from subbing or a sale, and will hold off on things they would buy with a crown sale but will pass by at full price

With crowns purchased on sale, an item that is 50% off is still 75% more than it should be.

"Micro" needs to be removed from "microtransactions". When a house in game is 6x the price of the base game, there is a problem.

Still no Crown Sale, but an ESO+ Free Trial just started today and runs for a week.

The last time this happened was during Quakecon, Aug 5, 2025. Perhaps there is some hope for a Crown Sale yet.

FafiQ_xP wrote: »

If not tommorow we are not getting sale this month 😑

Most recently Crown Sales have started on Wednesdays and run to the next Tuesday. Since Quakecon didn't happen, who knows what the future will bring. Perhaps this year we'll get a Labor Day Crown Sale? For that, it could begin on Aug. 26 and run until Sept 1. Of course, that's a complete guess, but finger's crossed!

MidnightDuel wrote: »

For the first time in years, there was no August Crown sale in 2026.At this point players can only speculate on the reasons, with the most likely explanation being that with the delay of U51 content, there was nothing new in-game to promote with a Crown Sale during Quakecon or even later in the month.

Originally U51 was slated for a July PTS cycle and a go-live at the end of August. Of course the revised schedule has U51 deferred to the end of September and brings the new High Seas of Tamriel Event (Sept. 30- Oct. 14), the new Nowhere Vault location, and the new Rumors system. If there is going to be another Crown Sale before the end of the year, it seems mostly likely that the sale everyone expected in August to promote U51 content should instead start on Sept 30th.

While this is still player speculation, the Crown Store Showcase—September 2026, which came out today (08/28/2026), gives perceptive players a glimmer of hope. The showcase announced two new items that will be available for the first time for purchase with Crowns:

• NEW! Sheogorad Chateau: September 30, 2026, to October 15, 2026.
  
• NEW! Sheogorath Shenanigans: September 30, 2026, to October 15, 2026.

Historically, Crown sales have been accompanied by the introduction of a new crown-only house, which retails for 14,000+ crowns. While we won't know the actual cost of Sheogorad Chateau until it goes on sale on Sept. 30th, we should expect that it will be one of the more expensive crown-only, notable homes. It follows that if there are going to be future discounts on crown packs, this would be an ideal time for a sale to offset the higher cost home and furnishing pack and ensure the new player home is a success.

In the absence of any official information from ZOS regarding the lack of an August 2026 Crown sale, one can only hope that the other traditions around ESO promotions that have included discounts on Crown Packs will continue in 2026 and beyond. For players who traditionally buy discounted crown packs during sales, keep an eye out for September 30, 2026 as the most likely start of a 3rd quarter promotion and crown sale.

Edited to update imbedded URL

I do wonder if this is a correlation/causation thing.

New Crown-only houses are included in the major patches. Pretty well every patch has brought at least one new house, and the big one tends to release pretty soon after the patch goes live.

We historically get patches in March, June, August, and November. With the caveat that the June patch has traditionally been the big Chapter patch (and as such the house has generally been also godl-purchaseable), the other three were the smaller things that came with a giant Crown-only house... and that dropped them right before the approximate time of each of the sales.

U51 was delayed though - it was supposed to come out August 31, but was delayed a month to the end of September. As such, the big house that should have been in the August patch is dropping in September... and considering that the month of September as a whole is very light because of the patch delay (notice no events or anything else, and the Crown Crates can't even switch over like they normally do since the data for the crates is in the patch so they need to get the patch to switch to the next season).

So yeah, we tended to get Crown Sales soon after each patch... but I'm not buying that the release of the patch is the thing that made them trigger a sale. It's more likely that the sales were based on big real-world events like the winter holiday season and the game's anniversary... but the August one was always there for Quakecon because that kinda became a celebration of Bethesda in the first place. If the suits are telling ZOS that they need to stop offerring so many sales, that would likely be the first one to cut.
(but I can imagine now some suit questioning why Crown sales are down. I'm expecting that the winter sale will still happen, and then that extremely intelligent marketing genius won't connect the dots that they get loads of sales when they discount things)

MidnightDuel wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

So yeah, we tended to get Crown Sales soon after each patch... but I'm not buying that the release of the patch is the thing that made them trigger a sale. It's more likely that the sales were based on big real-world events like the winter holiday season and the game's anniversary... but the August one was always there for Quakecon because that kinda became a celebration of Bethesda in the first place. If the suits are telling ZOS that they need to stop offering so many sales, that would likely be the first one to cut.

Historically, we've seen three (3) crown sales a year: Spring (mid to late April coinciding with the Jubilee festival and the game's anniversary), Summer (early to mid August during Quakecon when the previous chapters were highlighted and new content was being teased at the con) and Winter (typically the week before Christmas and running until just a couple days after the New Year).

The only crown sale that regularly occurred near a patch was the August/Quakecon sale, and that was typically two or three weeks before the update, not after.

Q1 patch: generally early-mid March
First Crown Houses from Q1 available afterwards, around late March/early April
Crown Sale: generally during the anniversary event, which is early April

Q2 patch: generally beginning of June

Crown Sale: generally early August, with QuakeCon
Q3 patch: generally end of August/beginning of September
First Crown Houses from Q1 available afterwards, around mid September

Q4 patch: generally end of October/beginning of November
First Crown Houses from Q4 available afterwards, around mid November/early December
Crown Sale: generally mid December

Again, "omg new unreleased house!" may not be the deciding factor since we have had new houses drop outside of those times. See for example:

• Colossal Aldmeri Grotto, first available in July 2018
• Dancing Waters Wellspring, first available June 2026
• Druidspring Conservatory, first available February 2026
• Earthtear Cavern, first available March 2017
• Forgemaster Falls, first available March 2020
• Hunter's Glade, first available October 2018
• Jode's Embrace, first available November 2019
• Kushalit Sanctuary, first available May 2021
• Lakemire Xanmeer Manor, first available January 2019
• Linchal Grand Manor, first available September 2017
• Ossa Accentium, first available March 2022
• Princely Dawnlight Palace, first available May 2019
• Shadow Queen's Labyrinth, first available October 2023
• Shattered Mirror Isle, first available July 2025
• Stone Eagle Aerie, first available March 2021
• Sweetwater Cascades, first available September 2021
• Tel Galen, first available June 2017
• The Erstwhile Sanctuary, first available March 2018
• Tower of Unutterable Truths, first available February 2024
• Wraithhome, first available October 2019

So that's about half of the Crown only houses that have not popped during or immediately after a sale

But the Crown Sales have always been associated with three real-world events: ESO anniversary, Quakecon, and the winter holidays. It's much more likely that those events are the trigger, not the houses. After all, there have been loads of houses without a sale, but no Crown Sales outside of big events.

Note though that that doesn't change the fact that we didn't get the Quakecon sale this year, or the fact that the third house that should have dropped after U50 still hasn't (Star Gazer's Vigil). I'm guessing the proof will be whether they have a sale over the holidays.

Crown Sales don't happen in isolation; they are always part of a larger marketing promotion, whether supporting an in-game event or an external advertising campaign, often associated with Quakecon before this year.

ZOS also doesn't announce crown sales ahead of time. Nonetheless, discounts on Crown Packs have consistently occured three times a year, with some high-level of predicatbility until now.

Between spring 2020 and spring 2026, discounts on crown packs have coincided with the introduction of a new crown-only in-game house, with only one exception. In December 2022, a previously released Pantherfang Chapel returned during the crown sale.

That's not to say that other, crown-only properties haven't been introduced at other times. They have.

What is interesting to note is that Dancing Waters Wellspring, Druidspring Conservatory and Shattered Mirror Isle, were all originally introduced for 8,000 crowns during a period when there was no sale on Crown Packs. That price is significantly close to the cost of a 14,000 crown-only house purchased with discounted Crown Packs, marked down 40%.

Either they want to see how much they can squeeze ppl and how many will buy despite no sales or they want to go to more irregular sales to spread engagement more (imo horrible idea as ppl will then miss sales, get frustrated and tune out completely)...

Much better idea would have been to do the sales to give people an incentive to stay despite the neews (maybe make it even bigger one time - ppl that load up now on crowns wiĺl certainly stick around to spend them) and to gauge how many are still willing to support long time.

But what do i know, im not run by an ai mind...

.

MidnightDuel wrote: »

<snip> I still expect that players will see a Crown sale, just later than originally expected.

Keeping my fingers crossed on this one. I am patiently waiting to throw money in ZOS' direction, so it's not like the wallet has been sealed, but only that a good motivator to open it has not yet materialized.

DragonRacer wrote: »

Ohhhh, this is so ironic and tone-deaf. Skip the usual August Crown sale, then at the end of August send out a marketing email that is literally asking you to spend your Crowns and buy more.

Bruh.

That's extremely tacky, not gonna lie.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

DragonRacer wrote: »

Ohhhh, this is so ironic and tone-deaf. Skip the usual August Crown sale, then at the end of August send out a marketing email that is literally asking you to spend your Crowns and buy more.

Bruh.

This makes sense for an inactive user who may have forgotten they have them because some people have posted in the past about forgetting to turn off Plus and have like thousands of crowns for a game they forgot about. In those cases, it can encourage people to play or pause their sub.

But this really shouldn't be sent to active users.

Maybe it's because ESO+ is worth 2 pack of god quality cigs in Poland, or because I keep an eye on my spending, but I cannot imagine how someone can just not notice $10 going somewhere or whatever the cost of ESO+ is

Never seen a marketing message like that before. Wonder what actually triggers a reminder about crowns. Obviously, I have no problem spending crowns and don't need a reminder. I just need a sale sometime soon.

MidnightDuel wrote: »

Never seen a marketing message like that before. Wonder what actually triggers a reminder about crowns. Obviously, I have no problem spending crowns and don't need a reminder. I just need a sale sometime soon.

That's a very good question. Because I am already a very active player. Have had a recurring every 6 months ESO+ subscription for years. Have bought every chapter, and now premium plus passes or whatever the highest tier is. Used to buy Crowns when they were on sale. Log in every day. Actively in 5 guilds, one of which is a trading guild that I'm the GM of.

I spent Crowns as recently as a few weeks ago and still have about 4,500 left from my last subscription renewal.

The only thing different is I did not spend my usual Crown sale amount this month because there was no Crown sale.

It's like trust me, ESO, I am aware I have Crowns. But I am stretching them until you have a sale or my next subscription renewal, whichever comes first.

Usually the marketing emails promote new seasonal stuff or their blog articles, like the monthly "survival guide" listing out events/updates or the Crown Store showcase. Never had one just straight remind me that Crowns exist and if I run out, I can totes buy some more at full flipping price.

I only buy crowns during sales.This month I spent my crown sale budget money on The Blood of Dawnwalker.🩸You snooze you lose, ZOS!

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

Oceanchanter wrote: »

DragonRacer wrote: »

Ohhhh, this is so ironic and tone-deaf. Skip the usual August Crown sale, then at the end of August send out a marketing email that is literally asking you to spend your Crowns and buy more.

Bruh.

That's extremely tacky, not gonna lie.

That screams run by ai to me...

It does scream something, but not AI IMO
Living flesh constructs are perfectly capable of making bad marketing decisions - like whoever sat there, wrote, proposed, approved, made, and released that Grubhub's ad all those years ago.

MidnightDuel wrote: »

I received a different marketing email on Friday from Bethesda, which included information about ESO and other Bethesda games and which mentioned Quakecon. Nothing about crowns though.

I did also receive that one as well.