Any opinion's on the purchasing model for TES:O?

[VirtualWeasel]

I'd like to buy it once, and never worry about paying again.

[Enodoc]

I didn't realise Cash Shops were a common feature of B2P as well. I thought they were just there to get income from F2P games...
If their Cash Shop only holds trinkets and gimmicks, rather than P2W power-ups, that could work though.

[Yaije]

I really, really don't like the idea of b2p with a cash shop. I've played some games like that and you always have a handful of people who buy everything and are OP without even trying, while most of the rest scramble around getting whatever loot drops normally and not doing nearly as well. Heck, look at Diablo 3's real money auction house. It was unbalanced from the start, and Blizzard is(from what I've read) planning to get rid of it.

That's just one way of implementing a cash shop. If you're looking at cash shop as a store relating to the game to get the company money? It's a feature that even WoW has (the WoW shop only really has pets and mounts for in game use though). Though sometimes they are like DDO or SWtoR where almost everything seems to need some amount of money spent.

But they say they're going to set up RP-focused servers for ES:O and you'll be able to choose if you want to play with powergamers or casuals, or roleplayers, or whatever. I don't know, my entire MMORPG experience is about 10 hours of WoW, so I don't know jack s**t, but it looks to me that if they implement B2P right, we could pay once and then have as much fun as we want, while the people you're decribing will be paying for our customer service two servers away. The point is, if it's B2P they need to figure out a way to separate the RP crowd and the "my daddy's credit card is bigger than your daddy's credit card" crowd. If they manage to do that, we'll have a blast and they can have their d**k measuring contest in another room.

Eh... if it's RP servers, or other types of servers for that matter it really won't matter in the end. It's just a title usually that never gets really enforced. Almost every game has roleplaying servers and they have about as much role playing in them as in the pvp servers too often for my taste. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't they have some weird feature concerning player interactions on a super server? Like you can make it so you only interact with certain individuals somehow?

[Taters]

Well, something like vanity mounts or pets isn't too bad, so long as there are still some available in game. That doesn't really "pay the bills" for the company, though.

[Yaije]

That really depends on a number of factors.

[Skrofler]

With the recent announcement of Rift going F2P, it seems WoW stands alone as the only subscription fee MMORPG on the market at this time. If ES:O goes a subscription fee as I fell it most likely will, I fear it will become another SWOTOR, with a lack of subscribers after a few months. Subscription fees just don't seem to work anymore, with the exception of WoW, with their already established fan base. But even WoW has lost subscribers and it looks like subscription fees are a thing of the past.

WoW does not stand alone. Some games with less than 100k players are still P2P.
F2P is more common these days and it's certainly a product of fierce competition and careful business management. While SOE's John Smedley says they are losing the fight against content churn, other companies, such as Mythic, stick to subscription.

Apparently subscription still works well if the company have long term goals and are serious about making a good product. The question is what time and investment return scope ZOS has.

WoW stands alone as the only MMO that can afford to be P2P and still skimp out on quality.

Content updates, bug fixes and customer service are what signifies a solid P2P MMO.

gotta clarify that update bit somehow. Going a few months and getting nothing new beyond the buff/nerf cycle isn't exactly appealing.

So we agree then, although "a few months" seems pessimistic to me. I'd like a large product like ESO to have content that lasts a year to begin with. It took me 18 months to drop my first WoW sub (2006-2008) to wait for content, while GW2 only lasted 4 months for me.

[Saara The Man]

I woudl prefer B2P, because obliviosly, teens like me cannot afford monthly payments. Besides, as much of a fan as I am, I would not pay about 100 - 300 euros a year just to play one game. But, it's also probably the most sense-making choice of all these. So..

[Yaije]

As to the few months? It's mostly me remembering ICC-Ruby Sanctum in WoW (six month stretch of really no updates).

ICC = 3.3 Dec 2009
Ruby Sanctum = 3.3.5 June 2010


Oh man that stretch just damn near killed the genre for me

Spoiler:

coupled with how the players I was interacting with on a regular basis handled loot. but that's a different topic altogether

[OblivionDuruza]

Buy-to-play, just so that there is absolutely no chance of a free-to-play grind, but also so that we can purchase the game once and be done with it. I probably wont fork out a subscription, and I don't want a TES game that turns into a grind similar to free MOBA titles and the like. The F2P grind is acceptable for games without real storylines, but is a more difficult balance for plot driven MMOs, in my view anyway.

[Dirty Spaceman]

Buy-to-play would be the way I'm hoping for them to go - I would buy the game almost certainly if they used that method. Subscriptions obviously is what they'll probably do, and is probably the most efficient economic plan for ZeniMax too. I'd be fine with that as well, although I'd need to wait and see if the game gets good reviews and turns out to be worth that commitment.

[Jun Satou]

Buy to play, I really wouldn't like F2P and the other option of monthly payments.

I buy game, I play online. I hope this is the method of purchase

[Mr.Argonian]

They are obviously not going full free to play, but I believe they will make more money on subscriptions at the beginning, but then they will be forced into something like SWOTOR is doing.

[Flex Buffchest]

They are obviously not going full free to play, but I believe they will make more money on subscriptions at the beginning, but then they will be forced into something like SWOTOR is doing.

I for one have always been for the subscription-based model for MMOs. Although it tends to drastically reduce the number of casual gamers, though those that do tend to fiercely loyal to the title.

As long as it's not free-to-play, or have some VIP system where you have to pay to win I'll be perfectly happy.

[Yaije]

I think everyone wants a "play to win" type of game.

[julystork]

Something I agree with, from another mmorpg-based forum talking about WOW the sub based mmo

...subs means doesn't mean "better game".
The community has got worse, because blizzard gives everyone what they want.
The game is slowly losing its epicness like it use to have back in the day.

How it went in vanilla and tbc was like this.
Get to max level. dungeons/heroics>first tier raiding>second tier>third tier>end game

Now it's like this, hit max level>grind a few dungeons>hop into raider finder>end game which gets nerfed way to fast.

It's really easy to understand why wow has so many subs. It's been out for damn long, it's still a good game, the only problem is there is no more epic feeling like there used to be. Everyone is generally in the same gear an on the same level of raiding.
If blizzard kept it was like in vanilla and tbc, the subs would be much lower because the majority of the population don't want to spend constant hours on end to play a "video game".

Blizzard essentially sold out

[Kerr]

I want to just buy it once and be done with it. Don't like subscriptions one bit.

[coolkid]

I always choose B2P. P2P I really dislike because you don't own the game. Sure you buy it at the store but you don't really own it, you're more of renting it with a fee every month and if you decide not to pay for the month you longer get to play. I'm the type of person who enjoys playing a wide variety of video games, and so I don't always play one video game a lot.

As well P2P is always undesirable to a mass-majority of the population, and by that I mean if little Tommy went into a store to buy a game he would be more likely to pick p a B2P right away rather tan a P2P as well if you had some random parent going to the store to pick up a game for their kid's birthday they'll probably pick up a B2P rather than P2P as well. So If ESO is B2P I do feel they would make a lot of money of their initial sales. Say there are 10,000 people who are going to buy the game but only 2,000 are willing to P2P that's already a 400,000$ loss in profit if the game would sell for 50$. Now of course P2P get's revenue every month, but with those 2,00 people who did by the game i would take around 20 or so months to make up the profit they could have made if they went B2P of course overtime more people would buy the game, but still even more would be willing to buy if the the game is B2P giving them even more profit

Finally my problem with P2P if you look at WoW for example it has a 15$ a month subscription fee so in one year you spend 180$ just to keep playing this game and if you want to keep playing every year the price just keeps going up.

So yeah B2P over P2P any day.