Bethesda Exec Defends Elder Scrolls Online's Subscription Model

Bethesda's Pete Hines thinks that the experience offered by The Elder Scrolls Online's will be "worthy of a subscription."

Haven't they already said this? I could have sworn massively did a blog about it.

Yea but you know all the F2P people are just soooo upset cause you should only have to buy the game and get constant new content and updates for nothing.  :)  I mean they would really prefer to have a cash shop and spend more than 15 a month on stuff there than to pay a sub fee.

Sorry couldn't resist a brief rant rage.  Reading some of the forums out there is both funny and sad at the same time.  People who have basically already written the game off as a failure because it has a sub.  Never mind that World of Warcraft has a sub.   

I still can't wrap my mind around why there are people so dead-set on poo-poo'ing the Pay-to-play business model.

I always wonder if there are just people out there who do not understand whats happened to the MMORPG market over the last couple of years and the drastic changes that have occurred.

The complaining and ranting has to be the product of gamers who were just spoiled for waaaay too long,  or something so abstract that i just can't understand.  But i agree with ESO having a Pay-to-play model, and honestly, i don't feel like people should feel the need to defend it, the product itself should do all that justification on it's own; and well- it does.

I'm happy to pay a subscription fee, in theory. The game has to be worth it.

Were it not for Gaiscioch, I wouldn't pay one for ESO. At least not based on the two beta weekends I played. This isn't due to bugs or any of the things that are to be expected from betas, it's just that the game seemed rather uninspired and generic. Like they took Fantasy MMO #X and put Elder Scrolls IP over it. It looks nice, and there are a few features I really like, but overall I wasn't impressed.

I am, however, impressed by Gaiscioch, and to be honest I'd play just about anything with the group of people I've found in this guild. So I'll go ahead and get the game and pay the sub fee to play with you guys. I'm going to keep my GW2 characters active as well, of course. I want to continue with that game. But even given that my initial impressions of ESO are that it is rather bland, I know I'll have a great time anytime I am running with members of Gaiscioch.

I would have bought this game anyway but, Gaiscioch's involvement made that choice a very easy one.

@Sultrie

I, too, will play ESO and give it a fair chance just because Gaiscioch opened chapter 5 with ESO.

However I also think the game can stand on its own merits based on my short beta experience and reading reviews and watching some game play videos.

I like PvP and the AvAvA warfare is very nice.  Hopefully they expand on small-scale PvP later on.  The combat also has potential, it is very different from the piano-playing style (many many skills to use and global cool down) that MMOs like WOW, SWTOR use, which if done right can be very nice.

I also like crafting and the crafting in ESO is said to be very deep, I like the sound of it.

You can use any weapon and armor styles, which is a fresh air to the MMO genre.

The game world is quite very immersive.

The game IP has a big following so the game should have good financial ground to grow.

I am playing on the public test server until game launch so I will get more first hand feel very soon.

@Solo

Thanks for the comments. PvP is one thing I haven't tried, and I'm looking forward to giving that aspect a shot (though by nature I'm more of a PvE person, I'd like to try PvP in ESO with the guild). I leveled two characters to level 9, and while I enjoyed it well enough it's not something I'd pay for without the guild to play with. I guess I was hoping for a more sand-box sort of game, coming off my experiences with Skyrim, Morrowind, et al. Combat is something I did like, though I'd like to be able to put at least a couple more abilities on the hot bar (maybe two ultimates, and one more regular one).

Still, there is a lot more to explore than what I did in beta, so these are only my initial impressions. Any time I play with the guild I have fun, and I don't think ESO will be any exception to that.

The most important things going into launch, for me, are fixing all the quests so they aren't broken, and dealing with spawn time of quest mobs and items, at least near starting zones, so you don't have twenty-five people standing around in the hold of a ship for however long it takes for a crate to appear, then each person trying to get credit for the mob. On some of the bosses, I couldn't tell if the spawn times were just way to slow for the number of people in the starting areas, or if they were just glitched.

I'd also like to see public events, because I think it helps with world immersion (i.e. it makes sense when something is happening in the world for people in the area to be drawn over to it).

In any event, MMOs always seem to be a work in progress, and I liked enough of what I saw that I'm going to get on board and see where the ride takes me.

To those of us who work in the private sector, expecting pmt for a service is not a new concept, let alone one that needs to be explained/justified.  Really, are so many people that out of touch with reality? or maybe just subsidized?

On the other hand, mmos are natural monopolies and the marginal cost of adding a subscriber is not $15.