Even SOE is returning to it's roots now with TOR losing all those subs, that quickly. Read somewhere where Smedley took EQnext back to the drawing board (due to existing development being nothing more than a next gen WoW clone), scraqed existing development, and promised the "largest sandbox ever created" when it does come out. So the AAA studios are starting to get that they have to be different than WoW now, or people will just go back to WoW. No new-launch MMO can compete with WoW and it's 8 years of post launch content/additions/systems and even Jackalope (head developer at Cryptic) said after STO that people will not give years anylonger for a newly launched themepark MMO to catch up to the competition. That, I would imagine is due to the competition and the newly launched are priced at the exact same amount. Easy economics, when you get more for the same money, the consumer gravitates to more.

I'm actualy looking forward to the shift in the MMO industry away from WoW style copy themparks. Hopefully, we'll get some more creativity again. And creativity and quality will be rewarded by subscriptions which was Bliz's original gameplan in the 1st place.

TESO could very well fit that bill. Skyrim includes enough sandbox via housing, exploration, crafting, stat increases to everything, limitless toon building, and immersion to be that "next gen" themepark/sandbox mix that I would hope would take care of everyone's wants and wishes. The only concern I have, is that Zmax is starting to limit some of that for developmental time restraints. (such as no housing in at launch) My wife picked up Skyrim just after I did and she has already stated that without housing, she doubts she'll play TESO until it's got it. Some in my old SWG guild (that are now playing Skyrim and getting the social aspects from my vent server while ev1 plays a single player game) have said the same.

Housing = terrible idea.

Why is that? I played SWG for way too many years and everyone in that game had at least 1 house. There were many that didn't go into the deco aspects and just used the house for storage purposes. Some that included very elaborate deco into their houses. There was even an in-game economy aspect that players who were good at deco would charge other player to come in and deco their houses. I know in Skyrim, I bought the Hearfire DLC and everyone I know has it as well. I know that now at level 50, I have WAY more crafting mats (all seperated into containers by the crafting stations) than ANY MMO banking system would ever let you have via available slots. SO far, as much as I have read, TESO includes the availability of crafting mats that is included in Skyrim. ("all over the world" as they have said) I have even used the deco slots as trophys included in the "Manors". I have also used the very limited deco placement included in Skyrim. So housing, even if you do not use or want the deco aspects, can be used for other aspects of gameplay.

Not all MMORPGS are all about combat and the ones that include other aspects of gameplay tend to the longterm subscription model. I subed to SWG for almost 8 years due to the fact that that game let me "live in my world instead of playing in theirs". I also subed to TOR for 2 months, got a 50, and had nothing else to do. I had 4 accounts, over in SWG, with 9 toons included and only 1 of them I used for any amount of combat/PVP. (elder jedi) I started 4 in TOR but found out that I basicly did the same world combat quests again and again with the alts and that was simply boring and not enough to keep my interest. With a single server, housing would almost HAVE to be instanced in TESO so you may never see another player house. So really, why is that such a "terrible idea" for those that want it?

Cmon, game like Teso is not good for housing. Instanced houses will ruin this game. Some people might think its a good thing but it will just turn game into random game like Advanture quest , Splash fighter or Runescape. Just big MMORPG and housing doesnt fit well

Sorry, but I still haven't heard "why"? Never played the games you mentioned so I have no comparison.

I ran guilds in several games now. I tend to take part in more PVP content than mostly others but MANY in my guilds chose to take part in the other aspects of an MMORPG. Some ran mainly PVE, some ran just crafters, some did RP, some liked the /duel aspects of PVP and hated the large battles. The RP was never my playstyle but I don't believe I ever said that part of the game shouldn't exist for them? Our guilds had our PVP "pre-mades", raiders, PVP and PVE spacers, the RP community, the crafting community, etc and the one thing that offset our guild from the specialty ones (strickly PVP or raiding) was that our guild lasted the entire lenght of the game, there was always some1 else on, and something (via the guild) was always happening. However SWG seemed to encouraged diversity in gameplay. The guild in TOR died off in less than a month.

Appears I'm not the only one........
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raU3a1F4vOQ

I also don't understand at all why houses are a bad idea. Just have a few houses for sale in towns. The towns are uninstanced but the houses themselves are instanced. So 10000 players could all buy the same house but when they walk into it, its only their house.


Its still a valid argument. Its simple economics.

I can get the same amount of entertainment for way less money. MMO's and SP RPGs are pretty much substitute goods. They aren't different enough for such a huge price discrepancy.

Personally, I don't think any subscription based MMO will ever again achieve the success of WoW. The industry needs to go B2P in order to survive.


Not sure if you were talking about TESO but 6 years is not rushed. They have no excuse if this is an unfinished game.

I agree with the OP, paying to play is just totally fail when you're paying the same amount for your monthly cell phone bill as you are to play a freakin game. It's like renting a car instead of actually owning something. Guild wars 2 did the right thing but they also totally failed by using RNG mechanics in order to try to tempt the player into buying gold from them. For example getting the precursor to legendary is 100% totally lottery luck, and it's quite obvious they added such RNG mechanics like this in order to get the player to buy in-game gems and then sell them for gold. It's really quite sad but it really is obvious that it was intentional. Plus all their other cash shop annoyances.

There's a fine line when making an MMO between pay 2 win, pay 2 play, and simply maintaining the servers for the games without losing a steady stream of money. Then there's blizzard who milks 10 year olds. (how that's still happening is beyond my thought comprehension as I stopped playing that way back in BC after I had a reality check).

All I've seen lately is the free 2 play ideology (basically pay 2 win with added very annoying cash shops), use guild wars 2 for reference on this one.

Or WoW's pay 2 play, which milks players WAY more than they should be able to get away with.

I haven't seen a genuine basic reasonable sustainable MMO that doesn't try to screw you over in one way or the other, probably because nobody has EVER DONE IT, lol.

If you go free-2-play model then its basically impossible to NOT make it a pay-2-win method cuz people have to spend money on something they WANT which is usually in-game currency or upgrades.

If you go pay-2-play 10 times out of 10 its the company just trying to make a profit off the players, NOT trying to simply sustain server maintenance and paying those peoples wages.


In the end I think I'd like to see a very simple 5 bucks a month system. I honestly do not think a free-2-play system is going to work when there isn't a pay-2-win cash shop going with it, cuz nobody will spend money in it at all. The same exact thing I'm talking about happened to APB. They tried to be genuine and make a system in which you truly did not need to spend any money on, and it simply failed due exactly that, nobody needed to spend money on gems in APB so nobody did.

A 5 bucks a month is good for a game. It's just a game, not a cell phone contract. It should be plenty for server maintenance and wages for those guys, plus whats coming in for game sales if the game is popular. No need to milk our teets by doing a 10-15 dollar a month sub for playing a game when we already paid to play it.... Greed is the only thing killing the mmo industry hardcoe. Why can't they just be reasonable? Meh.

Are you sure about that :

@http://www.gamesas.com/user/859864-deisbrand/ Exactly. Anyone with a shred of common sense doesn't pay 2 play monthly to enjoy a game, especially a WoW vet who has quit it prior. So who's left in the WoW community? Honestly, 15-16 year olds and younger kids. Or Jobless advlts who are still living in a dream world that haven't had a proper reality check yet.

like i said before, my other game is Battleground Europe. a subscription based MMO simulation of world war II. it is now 12 years old and has had 34 major feature patches, making it a constantly evolving game.CRS says that over half of the $18/mo fee goes for bandwidth so you can have a 196 viewable server. it has such advanced gameplay that it is truly an online war. if TESO was to be subscription based you could also expect the game to evolve over time.

paying a monthly fee for a game is not as bad as you might think.

battleground europe, 18 dollar monthly sub? Lmao..? Why haven't i heard of this game before ??? oh yeah... its a fail.

I would rather pay a monthly fee and have access to all content (including cosmetic and weird content). B2P is cool, but you are always wondering where they are going to rip you off next with some money grabbing gimmick. F2P is just a right pain in the rectum.

I couldn't have said it any better than this.Paying for a game subscription is a challenge for many in these tough times.

admitedly Battleground Europe has its problems, but thats not the point. the point is by having a subscription fee and a loyal playerbase, they have survived for 12 years and introduced 34 upgrades to the game in those 12 years.

imagine the possibility's of having Elder Scrolls that has improvement patches 1 or 2 a year.

I appreciate you supporting my idea but let's face it: [censored]s come in every flavor, every age, every origin. This is why trust is not something freely given.

Hyperbole and pretend facts win arguments. True story.

Just want to drop this here.

http://www.slideshare.net/bcousins/paying-to-win

It's long, but if you decide to watch it. It might help some of you understand what the devs go through, and why some they do what they do.

Sidenote: Why can't I post a link?

Who can argue with such irrefutable logic?

Though I would also like to just take this opportunity to point out that the MMO-that-shall-not-be-named runs off of a subscription model and has absolutely the most abysmally horrid community it has ever been my misfortune to step into. P2P does not solve any problems at all in my opinion. If anything I would argue that P2P causes people to feel entitled, angry and scattered.

I also don't think p2p solves much. You'll still get immature people f2p or p2p because you'll never escape thoes kinds of people unless rules were set and enforced, and you'll still get them because that's how people are.

Games like Rose Online which was p2p had a cash shop before it became f2p. So just because it's p2p, doesn't always mean you'll escape that.

It also depends on the company as well. Grandchase is a f2p game that gets updates and maintenance that use to be every week for NA, now is every 1-2 weeks, but the NA server started to go downhill after other servers started to open and take away from their player base.

I say how a game will make it or break it is on the company who owns it and how they run their business.

A lot of games failed because it was a game owned by a different company and it didn't give the other servers patches and updates it was giving the orginal so the others just died out. Nothing anyone could do even the company running the server that died out becuase it could only do something if the makers gave the ok.

well i think i do have to agree with you on this ... i have played P2P before and yes its true i was expecting alot more because i was paying to be there .. and come to find out it was worse then some F2P mmo's .. so yes your right

I always feel like 'I need to play cause I am subbed' in sub games and I don't like that forcing feeling. And considering P2P games are losing popularity I don't want ESO to go 'ftp in 6 monthes' category either.

And TES have a single player community and B2P like a single player game would encourage our whole community as well.

I will play it anyway but the same can't apply to all potential players out there and pricing can be a huge encouragement.

I wish more people would realize this. The payment model in reality does not matter at all; if the game is a decent game and is well-managed people will play it regardless of how payment is set up.

People only go with what they know, and most don't put forth the effort to find out why something really does or doesn't. Just the fact that it was this way when it did and I was there.

having a little bit of trouble with agreeing your comment ... only for the reason of money. i have seen before that companies have created a Great mmo and then once it was well established they fired or laid off all the people and brought in all new staff and then totaly changed everything in the game and then went free to play when there was NO reason whatsoever to do it other than Money. i dont know much about zenimax ... we have seen bethesda do a great job .. i think thier staff and methods and work history is awesome. just dont know alot about zenimax other then they are connected to bethesda. ive read here 3 different beliefs on this forum about thier conection
1) zenimax owns bethesda
2) zenimax is only a sister of bethesda
3) zenimax is not associated with bethesda, thier only a suporter and they sometimes help in the production ...
i dont know which is true because i never looked it up. mainly i was under the belief that #2 was the truth because you allways see both loggos on elderscrolls titles and the videos made by zenimax on thier youtube channel

All MMO companies lay people off after the game is released. You may need 200 people to develop the whole thing, but you definitely don't need that many to maintain it. It's a normal part of the development cycle.