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[Sindain]

$15/month was normal a decade ago. If it's too expensive for someone, that's one thing, but it's not like this is some unprecedented extortionary price.

Eh, a decade ago there was no where near as much competition for MMO's. So while it may have been justifiable 10 years ago, it's somewhat harder to justify now.

To be fair, 15/month now is equivalent to 12/month 10 years ago.

To be fair, real wages were higher ten years ago.

Fair enough.

To be fair, any currency not made of indentured souls is worthless in the long run.

Damn right, its about time we institute the soul stone standard.

[da_nang]

To be fair, any currency not made of indentured souls is worthless in the long run.

...

Damn you, Molag Bal, you magnificent bastard.

[Putnam]

To be fair, any currency not made of indentured souls is worthless in the long run.

Ah, yes, "lunar currency". It's what the Aedra run on!

[Stuebi]

The subscription model is absolutely fair on a MMORPG. You're basically paying for a constant service you're using, and hosting Servers for hundreds of thousands of players isnt exactly free. F2P CAN work as well, but without knowing much about the works behind the whole thing, I guess its too big a risk for a lot of Companies to take. I mean, somewhere down the line you have to run down the numbers, and a subscription-based model sounds infinetly better to any investors than "Money we maybe sorta kinda will make if we're lucky." compared to a substantial amount of Players who are playing your game, using your bandwith and maybe even your support without netting you a single cent.

However, in the case of TESO I do think the game is neither worth a monthly fee, nor the initial price. I labeled it "Less optimized "Meh" Online-Skyrim" after playing the Beta for a while, and watching a ton of Videos and Reviews. Also, their pre-order bullshit rubs me the wrong way, combined with the fact that they seem to ignore the community for the most part, because I still cant find a decent response to the numerous complaints about the Game on the Web.

In short, another bad attempt at cashing in on a big name while delivering subpar Quality and using some stupid business-practices. I've had my yearly shot of that with Thief, thank you very much.

[Bauglir]

Subscriptions are probably the right way to go for an MMORPG, but subscriptions and an initial purchase price are suspect. That kind of scares me - do you think the game is so shitty that I won't be around for long enough to get a return on your investment? Or, at least it would if I enjoyed the genre in the first place - I don't, but it's got nothing to do with the pricing scheme. Although I would seriously consider that Daedra game.

[Greiger]

I think part of that up front price thing is that they are still selling physical copies. 

Sure that's not gonna come out to the current price tag by itself and there is likely something else going on there, or at least some exec getting greedy, but it's not free to distribute physical copies.   I wouldn't be surprised if somebody in management just checked the price of other physical copy games and decided that if they can get away with that price so can ESO, and decided that in order to be 'fair' they need to charge that much for digital too.

I am pretty confident if they never decided to go with physical copies, if there was still an up front price it would have been lower.  I mean, do people even buy box copies of computer games anymore?

EDIT: Thinking more on it it may be an investor issue too.  Developing the game costs money, and it's a time when they are not raking in subscription fees, getting a bunch of money for launch and from preorders thanks to a box price, probably gets the bank loans and investors off their backs quicker.

[LordBucket]

do you think the game is so shitty that I won't be around for long enough to get a return on your investment?

That kind of is the message being sent, isn't it? If we want to be generous we could blame it on last minute executive meddling. But given that there's already a cash shop, sounds to me like they want to make sure the infratstructure for an inevitable switch to a free to play model is already in place. Which doesn't say great things for their confidence in the long term.

[Leyic]

Query: Why are people freaking out over pre-order bonuses, of all things? Plenty of games have had pre-order bonuses, plenty of MMOs have had pre-order bonuses, pre-order bonuses have been around before modern MMOs existed, so they're kind of a thing. Yet only for this game, and this game alone, have I seen multiple people act like pre-order bonuses are some sort of horrible travesty. You get a pet, some treasure maps (which likely lead to cheap loot like all the other maps), and the ability to play any race in any alliance (which will likely be meaningless once people start hitting soft caps). What is so terrible about any of that that makes the pre-order bonuses worth protesting?

EDIT: Thinking more on it it may be an investor issue too.  Developing the game costs money, and it's a time when they are not raking in subscription fees, getting a bunch of money for launch and from preorders thanks to a box price, probably gets the bank loans and investors off their backs quicker.

Zenimax Online is also a new studio (in that they have no other product) that's been around for over six years now, so they should have nothing but massive liabilities, as I doubt their parent company and other investors were charitable enough to keep giving them free investment for all that time.

[Sinistar]

I think the freak out over pre-order you are seeing is just the tip of the mountain, Leyic.

TES are games with quite some following. So naturally, whenever a new game in the series comes out, they are bound to be under scrutiny by some people. In TESO's case, it was very easy to point out mistakes that were made, in fact, TESO has been facing criticism even before open beta, IIRC. So naturally, as the time goes on, the mistakes will only seem larger. There can of course be a moment when the public will forget about all this pre-order businesses, forgive TESO's mistakes and just start to play it en-mass. From what I gather, there ARE people who love this game, so once it goes out of beta...we'll see how long it lasts.

So because there are a ton of f2p MMOs these days, all future MMOs must be f2p just to get anyone's attention. Meanwhile, everyone complains about how the f2p trend is killing gaming as we know it, and how publishers are monetizing everything to the point that they only see customers as money pots. I find this amusing in a farcical kind of way; it's like we don't even know what we want as gamers anymore, so we sheepishly allow ourselves to be herded along to the trends concocted by various marketeers, all while complaining about how horrible it is.

/soapbox

Yeah well, you see, we got spoiled. Simple as that, The market by now is used to MMO's being F2P due to large flood of various cheap (and in some cases quite DECENT!) MMO's without a brand behind it. So this goes to what I wrote above - TES is a known brand, and so there are a lot of people to criticize it. Would it be unknown, people simply wouldn't care about monthly fee. If it would be bad, people would laugh at it and forget about it, let it be swallowed by other titles. But it if it would be good, P2P would simply be a hindrance in it becoming great. Same goes for TESO - if there wasn't such obvious mistakes such as disputed lore thingies, high starting price and critics it offers nothing the same, this game would be hailed as the next and only MMO. But as it isn't, it still has enough followers to not be forgotten like a less-known titles so people keep bringing up it's mistakes and maybe even make them look bigger by doing that. Hell, game just started it's life cycle and it's facing such strong criticism.

TL;DR - TESO has a brand behind it and because of that people expect standards. When those aren't met, everything that might otherwise seem reasonable is shown in a bad light if only it can be.

[Leyic]

For reference, I'm well aware the franchise has a following. I've been playing TES in some form since the Betony demo was released almost twenty years ago. I'm also one of those people who was strongly discouraged by the early coverage of the game; it wasn't long ago I was calling the game 'generic' in this very thread. It was only after the final beta weekend when I convinced myself to buy the game as I simply found myself wanting more of it. I'm still concerned for the game as ZOS isn't being forthcoming with their plans for the game post-launch (we know there's an "adventure zone" coming; that's it).

Despite all of that, at no point did I think "They're trying to give me a free pet and junk, and get me into the game five days early; clearly ZOS/Bethesda/Zenimax is terribly exploitive and I refuse to do business with them.". If the only things people have to complain about are the lore and the business model, then that's not at all informative about the game itself.

[LordBucket]

Why are people freaking out over pre-order bonuses, of all things?

I haven't seen nearly as many complaints about that as I've seen complaints about the triple-dipping of buy the box plus monthly fees plus in-game microtransactions.

For those who are concerned about the pre-order bonus, a few of those bonus are especially troublesome. In particular, the "place any race in any alliance" and "exclusive imperial race" bonuses. These are troublesome for a couple reasons:

1) Using world of warcraft as my basis of comparison, play any race in any alliance potentially has massive pvp implications. In some cases it would be a huge advantage. Few people mind cosmetic things like vanity pets, but this reeks of selling in-game advantages over other players for cash.

2) Forever for the life of the game, the most central race from elder scrolls games lore is going to unavailable to anyone who didn't buy in early, nothing they can do about it? MMOs are games people play for years. But, if you happened to not be around during this particular couple month window, too bad for you. Seriously, that's the plan?

3) We don't really believe that zenimax will honor their claims. #2 is obviously not going to happen. Players will complain, and management will see an opportunity to make money, so previously exclusive content will be made available. This means that people are paying now for an exclusive benefit that will not be an exclusive benefit. Those people are going to be unhappy with 6 months from now anyone can pay $5 to get what they paid...checking prices...apparently $80, in order to allegedly be one of the only people who would have it.

4) #1 and #3 set terrible precedents. If people can pay for unique races, and exclusive race/faction pairings, that's not quite pay to win in the sense of buying artifact gear, but these are definite in-game benefits that are available for cash. Do you really want to play a game where in-game benefits are sold in the cash shop? If they've done it once, why would they not do it again? If they claim now that pre order stuff will be exclusive but then make it available to anybody, that means they lied. And some of us are anticipating that they will go back on their promises. If they're lying now, why would they not lie again? Other games have fallen due to lack of integrity and excessive greed on the part of the company running them. Even companies that have started out with good ethics have sometimes fallen into this hole. Here, eso is looking kind of sleazy right out the starting gate. If they look sleazy already, what's it going to be like a year from now? Do we really want to invest out time playing a game that's looking sleazy already and is likely to get worse?

[Stuebi]

While LordBucket explained it pretty nicely, im against _most_ forms of pre-order bonus from the get go, for the very same reason im against season-passes.

First of all, it's basically luring people into buying something that is either unfinished, or doesnt even exist yet, in order to get as many people as possible to pre-order the game. It reeks of "Lets just get as many people as possible on this train before it crashes, by offering cookies.". It's especially brazenly to then offer exclusive stuff like the race-thing, locking people out of the content if they do not buy "the cat in the bag.".

I will admit that with Betatesting, this is a bit less of a problem with MMORPG's, since you can test the game beforehand (altough its unfinished, and honestly most MMO's are neither refined nor optimized even at release.), but I still think its a bad practice, as you cant wait for a few weeks or months to see how the game fares, before you make an entirely unbiased buying decision.

If this was some digital collectors Edition-Stuff, I wouldnt mind. But it's pre-order to get access to something exclusive and potentially very important to a lot of Fans of the franchise, and thus I consider it a pretty bad kind of "hook" for your customers.

[Leyic]

The Imperial race is NOT a pre-order bonus!!!

It comes with the Imperial Edition, which any subscriber can upgrade to for $20. It is not exclusive, it never was.

Imperials aren't even special compared to the other races; their passives let them be a little tankier, but every race has its specialty.

And as I've said here before, the 'play any race in any alliance' thing is unlikely to have much of an effect in RvR. The racial passives generally aren't that great to begin with, require skill points to be invested, and most are subject to soft caps which limit their usefulness towards min/maxing.

[Stuebi]

The Imperial race is NOT a pre-order bonus!!!

It comes with the Imperial Edition, which any subscriber can upgrade to for $20. It is not exclusive, it never was.

I doublechecked that, and its true. My source was old, I apologize.

But while its not pre-order exclusive, you HAVE to get the Empire Edition, which is still somewhat upsetting for people wanting to play the race. Some people want to play them just for the heck of it, and not any advantages. And locking an entire race behind money seems a tad greedy, me thinks.

Also, playing any race in any alliance might not be a problem balance-wise, but I still think its a stupid thing to offer for pre-ordering. First of all it diminishes the actual Alliance-stuff to begin with, not to talk about Roleplayers who get the short end of the stick if they DONT pre-order. But its also still trying to hook people in by selling (non-Mechanic) advantages.

Its a bit less bad with Imperials being glorified DLC and "only" the Alliance-thing being a preorder Bonus. But I still think it sucks.

[Elephant Parade]

In my opinion, locking an entire race behind a $20 purchase was a really obnoxious thing to do. Seriously, the game is expensive on its own ($60, was it?) and has a $15 subscription fee. It's completely unfair to all the people who like to play as Imperials.