With the announcement of P2P, a whole lot of people are going to be turned off from buying the game, including myself. Cash shop in a P2P game, console users will have to pay double subscriptions, etc., etc. They've probably already lost half of their potential console buyers and a whole lot of their potential PC buyers. They would have made a lot more money with a B2P model with an optional P2P service where they would earn extra vanity items or cash shop currency to buy the vanity items. Very sad, ZOS... very sad. I am extremely disappointed.

This being the gamesas forums, there are a lot of misinformed users here supporting P2P who will disagree with this thread and myself. I disagree with you, you disagree with me. Great, there's no point to argue.

I am expecting B2P within the first few months.

First of all your title is incorrect, 2nd they want to do this and I support them as well.

If $180 a year is breaking your bank then so as getting a game as well.

I think it is funny all these people complaining about the P2P model. Look at all the polls people held, P2P was the highest voted option. P2P is the best option for ESO, as long as they can provide constant end game content.

Also console players won't half to pay double, why do people keep saying that.

No, I'm pretty sure my title is correct. I don't support them with this decision. $180 a year isn't breaking my bank, I just don't want to pay for game time. I want to be able to jump in the game whenever I want (and some other stuff I'm really not bothered to explain to someone who isn't willing to listen). Also, if I'm going to play TESO as long as the TES singleplayer titles, then it's going to be much more than $180. And it's not $180, it's $60 + any future expansions + $14.99 a month ($179.88 a year) + cash shop expenses if I want to look at all appealing + console fees (if I were playing on console) + tax.

Chances are they are simply losing the the sales of the people that wouldn't really support them through a cash shop. Most people who play b2p and f2p games don't spend a dime on the cash shop thus don't support the game.

Incorrect. I've spent hundreds of $$$ on F2P games.

You are not most f2p players. the vast majority of them don't spend enough to support a game in a cash shop.

Again, incorrect. A lot of them don't spend money on F2P games, sure (not a problem with the game being B2P), but a lot of them do.

http://www.gamezebo.com/news/2013/03/21/more-100-million-americans-prefer-free-play-games The forum polls are insignificant.

No most of them don't, maybe a buck here or there, but nowhere near enough to actually finance the game. The masses don't add much to the funding, the minority that actually regularly uses the shops do and they often spend more in those shops than they would in a p2p game. THey rely on getting large populations to snag the smaller group that will spend in the store. They also have just as much player loss as p2p games.

It is still a problem with buy to play as with buy to play you maybe get enough to recoup your dev costs, but your further development costs have to rely on a shop which might or might not give steady income and for that shop to give steady income you have to keep creating new reasons to use it. In essence it takes focus off the actual game and places more on marketing rather than developing. I rather they be able to focus on developing new content of all players than new objects and sales just to get their money.

I play a good many f2p games and b2p games. The quality of those have always been less than those of p2p games and the content has always been less. Best model is what EvE does. P2P but you get rich enough in game you can buy game time

So, if ZoS were going F2P I guess we would stop reading threads over and over on how it will fail and such?

You're forgetting a couple of things: 1. The game never stops selling. Once they earn their development costs, they will continue to sell the game to new players. 2. Expansions. Expansions mean money. Lots of it, even if they're small. Price it at $60, people will buy it. Price both the game and the expansion at $60 with a $15 monthly fee, a lot of people wont. You can't expect free expansions with P2P. And 3. Don't underestimate the cash shop.

If the game was going F2P, you would expect to see a lot more threads, since a lot of people will see that the game is free and will decide to try it out and discuss it on the forums. I don't think it should go F2P. B2P with optional P2P and cash shop is the best decision for this game.

That article is...interesting, especially without seeing the actual questions that the poll asked and the full set of data obtained.

It's vague as to whether this is primarily in relation to the smartphone/tablet/FB market or includes PC gaming.

Even then, if we take it at face value, the average spend of $30.59 is easily 2 sub-based MMOs a month and nearly 3 if one takes into account discounts for subscribing in blocks of 3, 6 or 12 months. Tell me again how free to play is actually free?

P2P will not hurt ESO - The main obstacles for ESO are the announced cash shop (a lot of arguments can be made on both sides for this but, perception wise, it's seen as double-dipping and will hurt the game), ensuring there's enough content updates (a lot of games that went f2p did say as a band-aid for a lack of post launch content, so far ZOS says there will be but then I remember TSW promising monthly updates, things can change), competition from FFXIV:ARR and Wildstar and, essentially, whether the game itself is any good and how much the PvP-influence on the wider game affects game play.

There are more articles on this... http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/26494/Study_58_Of_Users_Buy_Goods_From_FreeToPlay_Games.php , http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/21/study-claims-more-than-100-million-americans-prefer-free-to-play-over-traditional-games/ etc... The study was done for F2P games in general, so yes, that does include PC gaming.

I'm pretty sure P2P will hurt TESO. I personally know plenty of people who will not play the game due to P2P.

I really, truly don't believe in the whole P2P model guaranteeing a better quality game thing like many people here seem to. A bad game will fail regardless of business model. Plenty of P2P MMOs have shown that. Lets just hope ZOS can live up to expectations.

I will be VERY annoyed if I find out that the cash shop stuff is unobtainable through regular game play though.

I dont like cheap games. F2P isnt free, games arent made to be free, they are made to profit. F2P is just cheap model for cheap people. Im more than happy to pay subscription

Sure, games aren't made to be free. That's why new games tend to cost around 60$

It seems that it is leaning towards that way with the vanity items. I don't think that the special pink sparkly horse from the cash shop for $6.99 will be a drop from a boss. I wouldn't have a problem with this if the game was B2P.

All three of those articles reference the same study.

The very first line of the Gamasutra article sums it up:

So the data was collected from a company that sells software to let developers sell items in games. The study and it's sampling are biased towards the results that they would want to show to market their software to other companies.

Just as Sky TV, TESO will be a premium product. You pay for entertainment. I don't know how much people are used to stream or pirate their favourite episodes and movies, but thats not how its intended to be.

TV-packages for Sports, as Sky TV, cost monthly and are very popular because they do it right. People pay monthly for sportsevents which you can't see on the TV. Of course you are sometimes able to stream, but mostly its not even High Definition or it has a really bad connection.

Anyway, the producers of Sky TV also don't expect EVERYbody watching and buying their package. Of course there are also free transmitter on the TV.

Games are just entertainment.

Polls on forums tend to be inaccurate. The P2P may be popular amongst the dedicated minority who like to use forums - but the majority of players never use forums and these players - core players'- are less inclined to pay ￡9.00 a month to play a single game.

I don't think this move will hurt initial by more than about 5%, but I imagine thy could lose a very large proportion of their players after this - considering that prior to this news a lot of single player fans were considering checking this game out as their first MMO, but now can't unless they invest lots of money in a game they may not like.

Let's play math!!

For simplistic reasoning lets say there are 50 potential buyers.

50x60(cost of game)=300

They lose half with a sub...

25x60=150

In one year they make an additional 4500

25x15x12=4500

Plus the 150 from game purchase

150+4500=4650

B2P=300

P2P=4650

Looks like losing a few is a much more viable option...

Of course they'll be losing sales. They'll get lots of money in the first several months however before they go F2P, which is probably making their accountants all sorts of giddy. Who cares about making gamers happy when you can make more money?

as a consumer i care more about quality of the game than people unwilling to pay for said quality. also even though they will for sure lose sales the game being of higher quality will result in people keeping subs longer and in turn making them more money

Except subs =/= high quality.

Or are you saying that every MMO that had a sub was high quality?

Good games would be good. Bad games would be bad. Regardless of what business model they decide to use. Having a sub guarantees NOTHING.