F2P rumours gathering pace in the media.

Iselin · January 2015

fromtesonlineb16_ESO wrote: »

Having played LoTRO, Rift and SW:TOR before, during and after they went F2P I have a huge sense of deja vu here .. anyone who did so has read all this before, the rumours, the silence, then the announcement, the only thing ZOS haven't done is the denial few would believe given the lessons those three games gave us.

It's undeniable the playerbase has dropped hugely, all cities and places the posers camp out in are massively empty compared to what they were 4 months ago.

Maybe ESO won't go F2P in the timescale the article the OP is quoting but all the parallels with Rift and SW:TOR are there, LoTRO was somewhat different in that the pre-warning to the players came from Turbine's other MMO, DDO, the denials were even less believable from them than they were from Trion or Bioware.

Except it makes 0 sense for ESO to go F2P. Buy to play with paid DLC or "season pass" is the norm in the console world. No way ZOS would pass on the initial $69 sales regardless of what happens after that.

If the model changes at all it will happen when the console version is released and will be driven by what they feel is best for that market.

And what happened in PC-only MMOs is not all that relevant for ESO if you remember that 82% of Skyrim sales were PS and Xbox.

If it's done properly, ESO on consoles could dwarf the PC/Mac ESO.

ZOS_ShannonM · January 2015

Greetings! We are closing this thread and ask that everyone please read the announcement we just published, which addresses upcoming changes to ESO's business model and the plans for the game's release on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One: http://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/2015/01/21/eso-heads-to-consoles-june-9th. Thank you!