Other The Elder Scrolls Online

I Loved oblivion,
Skyrim I couldn't get into.
Really not liking ESO so far.

 

ESO like every other paid mmo has huge struggles to really succeed. Its going to need 2-3mil subs to stay paid for. Anything below that and the free 2 play model gains more cash ( this is what EA said about star wars)

The beta I played id consider it a Alpha, Theres alot of work to do in the 2months between now and launch date and if this was the middle of march instead of early feb id be a worried customer if id of purchased it.

Wildstar another spring mmo lauch feels alot more finished from the beta I played of it.

MMOs end of the day if your paying for them you gotta play them 20-30hrs a month to really make it worth while. If all you going to do is 1-2hrs a week its probably not the game for you. (cost wise its pretty expensive)

They are asking £69 for the digital collectors edition and £49 for the normal game ( its available less looking around at least the standard version)

Ive always wondered how Oblivion would scale with multiple players considering they have yet to offer the game in any form of co op format. Jumping straight into a mmo where multiplayer content is expected from the word go is a big ask of any company.

 

Can't wait for Friday

 

ESO is heavily overcharging for their game and that is a concern for me. If you are going with a 'buy me AND sub' style game, then your game should be far less - especially a digital version. No MMOs are more than £30, GW2 was £35 in store, £29.99 online and that was sub free and the most expensive I remember.

I am trying the Beta this weekend and look forward to seing how it goes, I am not a huge Elder Scrolls person - not because of the game style but because single player games bore me, so it will be interesting.

In reality, you only need to be playing 3 hrs a month to 'justify' paying a sub. THe problem is people have the mentality that they must play loads to make it worthwhile. It is a self imposed requirement. A movie at the cinema costs you £9 + any popcorn etc. so up to £15 that is 90 mins - 2hrs, for £10 a month you get access to a game...why does it need to bring anymore entertainment than a movie for the same cost? (admittedly for the first month you need to play more to make up for the games initial cost).
Same goes for going for a drink, depending where you live, 3 pints will cost more than a months sub, again that is about 90 mins.

If you are playing 20-30 hrs a month you are well up on the deal.

As for how many subs a game needs, that is all dependant on the cost of the game. If a company goes overkill on costs (such as Star Wars) then you need a lot, but otherwise you don't need nearly as muc has been claimed.
FFXIV has 600k subs after 5 months of being out and is considered a big success - so much so that it made a big difference to SE's profit forecast and when you take into account the costs of shutting down the original and rebuilding. It is also more subs than FFXI ever had and that game I believe is still going.

 

I love it, I have been looking forward to another weekend. I just wish it was a bit cheaper on the pre-order.

 

got my code today, tried setting up my beta account and it wont accept my billing info/beta code.

i figure servers might be slammed so ill try in the morning!

 

Tbh, I had my wallet prepared to pre-order but from the world i'm seeing, no thanks jeff

 

After the disappointment of the beta, i have a key to give away. takers?

 

Problem most are having is the lack of grind and basically the game is single player questing only up to the point you unlock dunguns. Also does not help that in the current beta your running outta cash pretty fast due to repair bills to armor ect. With basically no mobs to go farm it makes it a difficult game to play.

Each quest basically been 40-60mins is rather long and the fact they are solo play only in reality does not help matters.

Cant even share quests in the current beta.

Star wars has been here before and it fell flat on its face. Trying to take what is basically a single player game multiplayer.

Skyrim with Co Op would of been a better idea and alot easier to stomach. Just like Star wars has gained a revenue of over $1bil since going free 2 play, This game will eventually head that way and will likely aquire its single player base. That just wants to see the story on the characters they own.

1000 player pvp battles sound great in theory but bad in practice, No game has successfully done that sort of scale battles without major lag issues surrounding them. Servers just not built for that level of load.

 

lol what! where did you pull that figure from?

 

EA recently confirmed its income from Star Wars since free to play was $1bil before costs. So from the horses mouth so to speak is who its from.

 

I'm in a 1 hour 45 minute queue just to log on, then there's the queue for requesting a character. Crazy.

 

Played it for a few hours but won't be going back, was bored almost immediately after getting out of start zone... Nothing new to see here. It does look nice to its credit but visuals only go so far before the normal MMO tedium sets in. Go there, do that, come back do it again somewhere else.

It is however what I expected, so not disappointed.

 

Would like to see the proof of this. In 2013 from EA's own figures widely documented, F2P pulled in an additional $139million on top of subscriber income. SWTOR has nowhere near enough subscribers to validate this $1billion statement surely?

 

Having played the beta this weekend I am not impressed at all.

Not going to bother buying this when it is just going to turn out like my purchase of Age of Conan... sitting in a drawer never to see the light of day.

 

I think that was possibly a case of selective reading there.

The only direct statement from EA that I'm aware of is
"There is no denying the pace of change at EA is accelerating. The successful launch of blockbusters like FIFA Soccer 12, Battlefield 3, The Sims Social and Star Wars: The Old Republic; smashing our goal for generating $1B in digital revenue; and the dramatic growth of Origin – each of these is a huge milestone in our digital transformation. EA will exit this fiscal year a profoundly different company than we were at the start. From here on, change is constant."

Apart from that, I can't see any other statements that mention a $1B profit.

Source:
http://www.ea.com/news/ea-announces-changes-to-executive-team

 

Well, I managed to get my first play on the game this Beta, and log in issues aside on Saturday, I was able to play a decent amount. So thought I would share my impressions, for what they are worth. Before I do, I should probably clarify a bit of my background with regards to ES games. I warn you now this post is long winded and if you have no interst in what a random geezer on the internet is blabbering on about, I advise you to skip my post now.

Overall, I am a casual ES player, I am not a huge fan of their games, I like their style, but ultimately, whilst being able to boast freedom and huge games, I found I get bored of them fairly quickly, one of my favourite things about gaming, especially RP games is that I like sharing the experience with friends. In ES games, fun though they are for a while, I find them to be very large, lonely worlds and I cannot imagine ever spending hundreds of hours in them.

MMO wise I am a hardcore casual player – I spend a lot of hours playing, but am not all that interested in racing to end game and farming raids there endlessly for more gear in preparation of the next content.

So, onto the Beta. It definitely felt like ES games, they have styled the game well in that aspect – obviously as an MMO you would expect things to be somewhat diluted, but the style is undeniable. I can’t help but feel you really must be the hardest of hardcore ES players to believe the game does not play like the single player ones.

MMO wise it has that familiar feeling, yet also different. Classes are very loose as you would expect from ES games, but as with MMOs roles can be defined. Again, you really must be a hardcore ES fan to feel this is some kind of WoW clone, or someone so burned out on MMOs that it feels the same.

My biggest concern with the game currently is just how well it will work as a multiplayer game, but to be fair, all MMOs these days feel single playerish till the end, so only time will tell with ESO.

All in all I felt it was an interesting blend of MMO and ES, as someone who is without an MMO or any other game at the moment it is one I will be getting for the wife and I as it is a refreshing take on things – Whilst overall it is not innovative in regards to either genre (MMO or ES) by combining them together they have brought a freshness to the MMO scene and it should bring me some entertainment for a decent while.
Having said all that, I do expect the game to be forced into F2P within a year for the following reasons:

1) Cost to produce. At $200M the game was just too expensive, it is the same error SWTOR made. When you blow that much money on making the game it is a huge ask to try and get that back and you need a lot of subscribers to do it. Unlike a single player game which has a MUCH wider audience, you really can’t indulge in such costs for a game. In reality, with a Dev team of 20, at about $70k a year each, an audience of only 100k (tiny in the eyes of MMOs these days) you easily earn enough to maintain servers, the staff and can work on updates whilst still turning some profit. Whack on a $200M debt and it is a whole new ball game and you need to keep huge numbers to stay afloat, add that you want to make considerably more profit than what 100k subscribers would give you and you are asking for too much. FFXIV was remade and after a few months was at 600k subs, this is viewed as a huge success for the company and improved their profit forecast. Compare that to SWTOR who as soon as they dropped from 1M were already hitting panic buttons and eyeing up the F2P option, you can see why the hefty price tag is too heavy to cope with

2) What kind of audience is the game going to appeal too? Hardcore MMOers aren’t going to want it – it doesn’t fit the modern gamers style. Clearly hardcore ES fans are also not supportive of the game either as it is not ES enough for them, but at the same time people who dislike ES games won’t like this because it is TOO ES for them. I am pretty sure I am a minority audience for MMOs – I like old school games, the WoW and beyond generation of MMOs tick none of the boxes for me and sol I can’t last more than a couple months on them. I am also the minority ES gamer too – not being a huge fan of the big worlds the single player offers yet liking the style of the game enough to want to play an MMO version.

3) Game cost and decisions made with it. £50 for the normal version is a crazy high price for an MMO, at least £20 more than it should be and is typical for an MMO. Add in the controversial Imperial race lock behind the Collectors Edition and you have people put off on principle. The reality is, the Imperial is going to be nothing more than Cosmetic (whatever ‘role’ you want to make in the game already has a race ideal for it, so there is nothing the Imperial will have that will leave someone ‘short changed’ by not being able to make them) but that isn’t really the point, people feel shafted by this decision.

The excessive cost is clearly related to the games production cost, they want to scrape as much money as they can from sales to make their money back, as in reality that is the only hope they have of avoiding going F2P – if the game sells about 2M PC copies (may be possible, initial sales are usually very good for an MMO) that gives them about $100M, likely more thanks to Collectors sales. Then if they were to sell 1M for Playstation/Xbox, that would be around $150M they would be on track to be able to survive the rapid attrition rate of post release (2 or 3 months post launch) and be able to support the game on much more reasonable subscription numbers. But it is a fair few ifs and buts.
For me, I will buy it and play and enjoy it for what it is – an interesting love child of ES and MMOs, likely leaving once it goes F2P – Like I said, I am a minority in the modern era and F2P quickly puts me off a game

 

Asteldian, just like to point out that you signed an NDA when you signed up for the beta. Any discussion of the systems and content of ESO outside of the offical forums is in breach of that.

 

Good call, I forgot that despite not revealing anything not already in public domain, as those reviewers have permission to reveal, I do not, so have modified the post to avoid any notable detail (I think)

 

urm, ya. and then some...

Slightly NSFW wording, but thought it funny and appropriate.

Got my key over the weekend, and busy downloading it now. I know what a lot of people are saying generally, but I'll see for my self. Besides I'm generally more likely to play and enjoy with just what's there, regardless of what isn't.

/2cents