So ZO is charging us a sub AND having a cash shop for vanity items??? I never thought ZO would be this money grubbing... So much for this quote by TESO director Matt Firor: "Just having one small monthly fee for 100% access to the game fits the IP and the game much better than a system where you have to pay for features and access as you play."

Forcing us to buy even vanity items IS NOT 100% ACCESS TO THE GAME, and IS FORCING US TO PAY FOR FEATURES, so Firor basically lied to our faces. The trends are starting... SWTOR repeat incoming...

Link: http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/08/22/gamescom-2013-the-elder-scrolls-online-subscription-ensures-pla/

Here is another Firor Quote: ""The reason why we don’t need F2P is we have a huge IP behind this. We’re not that worried about getting people in the door." What a cocky attitude... Star Wars is a much bigger IP than TES is, and look what happened. I don't believe they are heading down this road

Link: http://www.pcgamesn.com/elderscrolls/matt-firor-justifies-elder-scrolls-subscriptions-we-re-not-worried-about-getting-people-door

Agreed - but then again this game appears to have more original gameplay than SWTOR.

The really sad thing about all of this for me is this no longer feels like a TES game. The sub fee is used to fund extremely fast content drops - which the community laud - but I think that's a ridiculous preoccupation. For the normal TES games I've got hundreds of hours without ever deviating from the base game, through a combination of RPing and shaking up the play-style. The fact that ZOS thinks they need this frequent content drop and needs money for it tells me that there won't be much room for shaking up a playstyle, or even provisions for RPers (consider the chairs, and the masses of hardcoe players speaking out of character) and that starts to deviate from the core of TES. In TES you enjoy the world, not hound after its additions.

I really think the best model would have either been B2P at a higher price for base and expansions, with an out of game cosmetic shop, or compromise between sub-fee and B2P where you can play the base game for free.

I really hope ZOS is using their 'world class customer service' to see past the hardcoe-praise on these forums to the angry general public.

so, now we have subscription based game, an item shop (with only vanity items but still), and content patches every 3-4 weeks.

guess what will happen with those patches, if subscriptions numbers go down...

for me it's a very bad sign, that they've been thinking about going f2p/b2p from the very beginning. And that the game is not good enough to make it on P2P market.

No one is forcing anyone to buy anything out of the store, it is an option you can use it or not, wow has had a store for a long time selling mounts and a few other things with a sub, that seems to be ok, I see nothing wrong here.. the choice is up to you, not all games are for everyone../shrug

Point taken but there are several other threads about this issue, and i dont see anything new added that was not seen inthose other topics

It would be okay of they scrapped the P2P system

The sub fee is to fund ZO's and the publisher's pockets, that is all. GW2 has no sub fee and pumps out updates every 2 weeks. TESO is charging a sub and claiming it will only be every 4-6 weeks.

Exactly

The choice is up to me, and up to everyone who plays. That choice is what is going to cause so many players to leave TESO because of ZO's money grubbing.

It's really to give them a safety net when developing this new content - which personally I disagree with - GW2 barely breaks even in the profit department but other 20 year old MMOs are profitable. In my opinion they should just save up the content and sell it all in one huge expansion - charging another box fee for that.

Seriously?

You just HAD to make yet another topic on Elder Scrolls Online forums to promote Guild Wars 2 and it's so called supreme payment method (that no other MMO seems to be following, oddly enough)?

Think about the positives. Theres lots lost of free to play players. So they can add content like 2 year or so and keep it in sub and then relaunch the game again as pure free. If you're gonna play this many years like me, I see this is only good thing. Why you want to get everyone for launch?

I'm not sure how to feel about this yet. It entirely depends on the content in the vanity store, and its pricing. But certainly, if I'm buying the game and paying a monthly sub, I expect to get all the content that's released. It's very cheeky to ask for even more money for the content that my sub is funding.

The point about SWTOR having a huge audience is apt too. There was so much excitement leading up to that game's launch. TES does NOT have a Star Wars sized fan base. I knew Star Wars fans who rarely ever played games who bought into that title at launch. The difference here of course is that SWTOR was a pretty bad game, whereas ESO is shaping up well enough. It certainly doesn't look like it will be revolutionary, but it's a good enough foundation to start with. If they can hold on to 1 million + players after the first 6 months, and keep them hooked with regular content, ESO should be okay. The scary thing is that most other big MMOs are either launching without subscription models (Guild Wars 2) or completely free to play (Everquest Next), and we've got shooters moving into the MMO-esque market (Destiny) without subs too. A lot of potential ESO players will definitely be put off by the price point of monthly subs when so much of the competition is cheaper. And that cash shop is only going to make things worse.

Wait...we cannot earn the Vanity items? [censored]!

Ptp equals all access imo. $15 a month is already money grubbing...

No one has said those vanity items cannot be obtained from playing.

Hence the question mark. So long as they are obtainable in normal play I am fine with it.

This is false, and not based on fact at all. NCSoft's profits are up 348% (yes that's three HUNDRED forty-eight), 21% of that being from GW2 alone. That's huge. You should look up information before posting "facts."

I'm not here to promote GW2, I am here to promote it's payment model however, because it's the perfect way to both be profitable, and to focus on game quality. P2P MMOs are a very dated model, and even PC gamer agrees with me as you can see in my second link.

P2P MMOs have a hard time putting out quality updates when subs go down. B2P MMOs don't have this problem.

I'll believe it when B2P MMO's become the standard.

Right now it seems that all serious AAA MMO's are still going for P2P.

B2P is becoming the standard. All of these "serious AAA MMOs" that you're talking about are going F2P within a year. Here is the PC Gamer quote:

"Despite the slew of subscription MMOs shifting to the free-to-play business model, The Elder Scrolls Online will demand a monthly fee, it was revealed earlier today. Where once such a practice wouldn't have raised a single eyebrow, it's a bit trickier to justify in the face of countless free titles."

It's not a P2P market any more, and any game that goes P2P will suffer massive population losses shortly after release because of the "countless free titles" that PC Gamer is talking about.

So, now that NO_Walking can't moan about what the payment method WILL be and how right he is, you have to bring up a problem that probably isn't even there?

It's not like there isn't a thread on this already. Come on, dude...

You can quote me as many articles and gamer posts you want.

Not a single B2P MMO coming out after GW2 tells me more than those articles ever can.

And I've said it hundreds of times before; Only BAD MMO's go from P2P to F2P, not all of them.

But I'm gonna stop responding to you about payment model here because I don't want the thread to turn any uglier.

348% is a proportion - not a number. I could make ￡1 in my first year and ￡3.48 in my second, and that'd still be 348%.

I like the way you've proceeded to attack me instead of picking up on the points in my post WHERE I AGREED WITH YOU!

Wrong. What games are these, exactly? FFXIV: A Realm Reborn, is that the one? Oh, how about that WildStar, is that it? Hrrm, is it ArcheAge? WoW, what about that?

B2P is a rarity and F2P games are awful and abundant. At least back up your ridiculous statements, please.

The people and companies who write those articles are much more in tune with the gaming market than we are, and if they're unsure about another MMO going P2P, we should be too. Especially when they add in a cash shop as well.

I attacked you? I'm pretty sure I rebutted your argument, and didn't attack you. That proportion measures how successful a company is BTW. Making a billion is nothing if you made 10 billion the previous year. It's all about percentages, not amounts.

That makes such little sense that I can't even be bothered to continue this conversations if you think proportion is only want matters, take a look at my example.

I'm with you, fellow Briton.

Saying that you've backed up your statements doesn't mean you've backed up your statements. You completely chose to ignore what I said, and until you can come up with those B2P MMORPG's that are so badly "becoming the standard", then I'm done here.

Have fun being wrong once more, just like you was with the F2P model delusion.