The Elder Scrolls Online

[kedaha]

I’ve seen the occasional article about whales, and I believe they exist, but I’ll be blunt: I disbelieve that that’s the predominant revenue stream in games like, say, LoTRo, and any claim that that’s how FtP games make their money requires evidence. I would be willing to bet that the median player pays an order of magnitude less per year than they would be if they were playing Subscription WoW in 2005.

I agree, the subscription model does compel developers to create deliberately frustrating mechanics and time sinks to encourage players to buy out of them.

Oh, you were talking about FtP games, and you meant “buy” as in money? Weird. I thought you were talking about traditional subscription MMOs, and were referring to the huge number of dollars poured in to them by players, measured in time.

I believe (but can’t find evidence atm) that ftp games is like income tax. The mean, median and mode are all very different, and the top few % pay a disproportionate amount of the total income.

[Desslock]

So, just to make sure I understand you:

-Getting $180/year from people who don’t actually play the game: fine, no problem, totally OK, Mega-American.
-Getting $180/year from people who play the game but spend that $180 on, say, fancy hats: evil incarnate.

Is that a fair summary?

If you’re going to be so disingenuous in arguing your position, feel free to play this debate by yourself. If you somehow translate paying a couple of beer/month for a service that you’re enjoying for even a few hours into a requirement to pay $180 for nothing, then what’s the point in continuing? Sensible people also don’t believe you need to play 5/hours a night or 150 hours a month in order to get a few dollars of value out of a game, as you previously suggested.

I’ll leave it at this, which I think is a fairer summary: you think $15/month is too much to pay for an experience that you’re unsure you’ll play enough to personally feel you got fair value. I prefer that option to the intrusion, artificiality, design compromises and focus on extorting larger amounts of money out of whales (whom we both agree do not represent the average player). You prefer the FtP option because you don’t acknowledge the design compromises of FtP and/or they don’t affect your enjoyment, and you’re sensible enough to limit your expenditures to something you feel offers appropriate value, even if other players are less able to do so.

[peterb]

I play about 5 to 10 hours a week and feel I get my money’s worth from Elder Scrolls Online (and WoW before that, until I didn’t anymore and cancelled). I certainly don’t feel compelled to play for hours every day. In fact, I feel that the subscription model puts me in control of my play time; I can just do the parts I find fun as often as it’s fun. If you buy a “free to play” module and don’t like it, do you feel free to abandon it?

The way LoTRo deals with this is by having their “VIP mode”, which is, basically, a subscription model, and then the FtP mode for those who don’t want to pay a subscription. Seems to me that’s the best of both worlds.

I’m not trying to criticize the way you enjoy the game - if you’re happy with your subscription, that’s great! - but rather just to counter Desslock’s strident argument that there is One True Revenue Model.

[Desslock]

rather just to counter Desslock’s strident argument that there is One True Revenue Model.

Please stop manufacturing statements and attributing them to me.

Which is particularly ironic, since you’re the only one who declared one revenue model to be “a failure.”

[rei]

Guess I don’t have to play it anymore since the director is no longer with the company.

[Telefrog]

Matt Firor left?

[KevinC]

Matt Firor left?

Rei’s director, not ESO’s director.

[Telefrog]

Rei’s director, not ESO’s director.

LOL. OK. Got it.

[rei]

Yeah, he got fired.

[Redfive]

Let’s hope your next director doesn’t like SWTOR.

[Daagar]

I play about 5 to 10 hours a week and feel I get my money’s worth from Elder Scrolls Online (and WoW before that, until I didn’t anymore and cancelled). I certainly don’t feel compelled to play for hours every day. In fact, I feel that the subscription model puts me in control of my play time; I can just do the parts I find fun as often as it’s fun. If you buy a “free to play” module and don’t like it, do you feel free to abandon it?

I think there is some psychological effect going on here, as I still struggle with not playing WoW some certain amount per week to ‘ensure I’m getting my money’s worth’. It is similar to going to an All You Can Eat buffet or somesuch, where you are inclined to eat more than normal to justify it - yet, you’d probably pay the same amount elsewhere for a normal portioned meal without batting an eye. I don’t understand why only some things trigger this behavior though. Cable TV, for example, doesn’t (as frequently) seem to cause people to watch with quite the same reasoning. Granted, I’m generalizing and maybe this is all just me. Yay anecdotal evidence.

[Aszurom]

Does this game still do that obnoxious instancing of zones based on quest progression that makes party members turn invisible when crossing an invisible threshold on the road to town? That’s why I ragequit it after about 5 days.

[rei]

Yeah. You briefly sometimes see the NPCs of the default/lowest quest progression level appear then disappear as you come closer. Also it’s a super bitch to actually help other people if you’ve done a quest phase already. You can never again help them in their quest phase and are kept apart by being invisible to each other.

WoW, for a while, basically became an extended “Facebook for like-minded gamers” – since the high of socializing, chatting with your regular guild/friends/alliance faction celebrities. You easily got your money’s worth. It’s the pull of a popular MMO where all your friends are playing it. It’s quite “sticky” for that reason.

[Aszurom]

WoW has replaced IRC, essentially. :-)

[gurugeorge]

Yeah. You briefly sometimes see the NPCs of the default/lowest quest progression level appear then disappear as you come closer. Also it’s a super bitch to actually help other people if you’ve done a quest phase already. You can never again help them in their quest phase and are kept apart by being invisible to each other.

WoW, for a while, basically became an extended “Facebook for like-minded gamers” – since the high of socializing, chatting with your regular guild/friends/alliance faction celebrities. You easily got your money’s worth. It’s the pull of a popular MMO where all your friends are playing it. It’s quite “sticky” for that reason.

These types of level restrictions are so antediluvian. Why, it’s almost as if Cryptic had never invented (or at least made well-known) sidekicking/mentoring in an MMO.

With TESO, much as I enjoyed it as a single player game for a month or so, it constantly amazed me how, as with just about every recent MMO, every effort seemed to have been made to prevent people from playing with each other. In a goddamn MMORPG.

And people wonder why the genre is dying.

[gurugeorge]

WoW has replaced IRC, essentially. :-)

Older MMOs were always just glorified chatboxes for a lot of players. And that was no bad thing.

[TheWombat]

Older MMOs were always just glorified chatboxes for a lot of players. And that was no bad thing.

Heh, in EQ you had so much downtime, between meditating for mana, waiting for spawns, or waiting to make up your group composition, that you had little choice but to chat. A lot.

[gurugeorge]

Heh, in EQ you had so much downtime, between meditating for mana, waiting for spawns, or waiting to make up your group composition, that you had little choice but to chat. A lot.

In CoH in its heyday (it was a pretty big hit at launch, and still a decently big success for a couple of years after), before the devs introduced loads of insta-travel thingies, it still took a bit of time for a team to assemble (everyone had travel superpowers like flight or teleport or whatever, but it still took a bit of time to cross a few zones), maybe up to 10 minutes or so, and chatting and emoting were an integral part of the fun of waiting for the team to assemble at the mission entrance.

le sigh, happy days.

[kedaha]

WoW before they added new FPs, made some more direct and allowed for multi-part journies had a lot of travelling downtime.

That I enjoyed. It made the world feel…like a world.

[gurugeorge]

Also, all that assembly chat was useful in terms of getting the measure of your PUG-mates - who was a newbie and might need instruction, who was a dickwad, who was a rock, who was nutso but obviously knew his stuff, etc. Which made for more effective teams than just a total bunch of strangers being plonked into a dungeon by an automated dungeon finder, and hustling through the mission in grim silence, only to find too late that the dickwad was a dickwad, the newbie a newbie, etc.