(This topic is about payment model)

Now that the latest AuA confirmed that gear is indeed repairable, and thus eternal, i have been wondering how Zenimax is going to prevent the server economy becoming flooded with high end gear.

As we know so far, there will be: no kill lockouts, competition within alliance is discouraged, instanced and individual loot, repairable gear, no pvp/pve gear specialization and players being able to craft/upgrade best gear. All of this suggest that there will be huge influx of loot and items coming into economy.

Now that there is no death penalty to remove these items from economy, the only thing that can create large enough sink is the playerbase itself. I mean that game is going to rely on new characters to hog up the item influx.

What i think is that the constant supply of new characters is generated by specific payment model. Namely Buy2Play. And along with it there will be optional monthly subscription fee.

Similar to Runescape, where players can explore only fraction of the game world. In ESO im expecting B2P players being allowed only their alliance zone and Cyrodiil and being restricted from 50+ and 50++.

So after player is through one alliance zone, he/she would either roll an alt to next alliance to play that content or pay the monthly sub to advance his/her character further.

Repairable gear = B2P? What?

Guess Blizzard didn't get that message.

Very strange linkage here. IMO high end gear is going to be BOP. So there won't be any huge influx to the market. I also don't think the uber high end gear is going to be a breeze to get. BOP is the solution I'd guess to the problem you are expecting.

You aren't taking into account everything we know so far. For example, we know that deconstructing items to learn properties and obtain mats will be in game, which leads me to believe that you won't see a lot of crap gear on guild AHs (as most of it will be deconstructed).

That being said, if Zen is smart, they will put a huge emphasis on crafted gear (make difficult to obtain ingredients, make it equal to, if not the best gear in the game, etc.)

gear is customizable. Even drop armor from high end PVE stuff will be upgraded by crafters. How many times and to what extent I don't know. But that would slow down the endless heaps of used gear piling up since it gets upgraded for longer service.