[Megathread] Elder Scrolls Online

[wombinator04]

If an MMO is going to be sub based these days it better be one damn good MMO or else it won't make it.

I wouldn't be surprised if they added elements to the game for a future F2P conversion.

[Edge-]

If an MMO is going to be sub based these days it better be one damn good MMO or else it won't make it.

I wouldn't be surprised if they added elements to the game for a future F2P conversion.

Honestly, it would be a much better move to either launch with a freemium model, or launch with a B2P model similar to TSW as it has an optional subscription. They need to have a flexible business model if they're going to capitalize on launch and maintain momentum.

[Throren]

Personally, I hope it's like GW2. Buy the box and you get everything, no sub, no pay 2 win, no paying for extra content. And if they do have a cash shop, be for cosmetics only

[Window]

Personally, I hope it's like GW2. Buy the box and you get everything, no sub, no pay 2 win, no paying for extra content. And if they do have a cash shop, be for cosmetics only

I can agree on a level but there are drawbacks, the lack of content started biting me about 2 months in and that real focus on the RNG chests each event with a slim to zero chance of returns from buying them if they were only cosmetic
If Eldar scrolls does have a sub fee I hope they look to Trions account record with content where you feel like your sub is actually worth paying each month

[Akkep]

FYI Newzoo is actually a pretty good source for market research/data and are used frequently by reporters and analysts alike, same with Superdata.

Here's an estimate of Riot's daily income:

$5-10 million daily estimated revenue from a guy whose job it is to be knowledgeable about the F2P market.

Also, for further evidence: Look at the MMO's of the past 5 years. With few exceptions (Rift and Warhammer...and Warhammer is basically dead), all have made the F2P/freemium transition and seen success through it. If F2P/freemium wasn't a viable model, or a model that generated higher revenues than subscription only for games with moderate sized playerbases, you wouldn't see games continuing to make the transition.

Browser MMO's a la Runescape or the upcoming City of Steam are absolutely MMO's, they're just played through a browser instead of a client. You're correct on the inclusion of some of the mobile games (though some are MMO's as well such as the Gameloft WoW clone Order and Chaos) skewing the numbers, and I'd love to see some more targeted data, but it's in-line with the rise in cash shop based revenue over the years which can be attributed to both the growth of mobile and the improved viability of F2P games with cash shops.

Again you come with research that is f2p advocate, it does not make it a fact and I can say with 99,9% certainly that number is Bs there is no way the average f2p spends 3-6$ a month. Majority of f2p players don't spend a single $. Instead of linking to research, link to a game that breaks down the how much money the average player spend and how much money that game is making. That will make it a fact.

The other games you mention were failures and still is failures after the f2p transition, the fact is the 3 biggest mmo in NA/EU is Wow, Gw2 and swtor in that order and they are not f2p games, except swtor now.

[Zeek Daniels]

Again you come with research that is f2p advocate, it does not make it a fact and I can say with 99,9% certainly that number is Bs there is no way the average f2p spends 3-6$ a month. Majority of f2p players don't spend a single $. Instead of linking to research, link to a game that breaks down the how much money the average player spend and how much money that game is making. That will make it a fact.

The other games you mention were failures and still is failures after the f2p transition, the fact is the 3 biggest mmo in NA/EU is Wow, Gw2 and swtor in that order and they are not f2p games, except swtor now.

When they say average they dont mean every single player is spending money, they are taking the total amount of money spent by the total number of players. And if you read my post instead of just reading edge's youll see where i talk about "Whales" which are players who spend an enormous amount of money each month on a single game. Think D3's RMAH. I am person who has never bought a single item off of it. While there are players out their who have spent thousands of dollars on it. The same applies to a F2P game.

I used to play maplestory and in my 5 years of playing that F2P game i prolly spent around $1,500 dollars. Ive played WoW starting somtime in 2008, I just went back and looked at my payment history and it came to a total of $849. Add a few server transfers and i have spent around $924 on World of warcraft that is also including buying expansions which is included in the $849. So in my roughly 4 years of playing WoW i spent a little more than half of what i spent playing a game i played for roughly 5 years.

This is why F2P games make money, because you have ppl in the community that will spend money if you allow them too. Just look at how ppl in the WoW community jump to buy new pets and mounts in the blizz store. If blizz sold cosmetic armor a ton of ppl would buy that too and that stuff costs more than a sub fee.

[Deleted]

When they say average they dont mean every single player is spending money, they are taking the total amount of money spent by the total number of players. And if you read my post instead of just reading edge's youll see where i talk about "Whales" which are players who spend an enormous amount of money each month on a single game. Think D3's RMAH. I am person who has never bought a single item off of it. While there are players out their who have spent thousands of dollars on it. The same applies to a F2P game.

I used to play maplestory and in my 5 years of playing that F2P game i prolly spent around $1,500 dollars. Ive played WoW starting somtime in 2008, I just went back and looked at my payment history and it came to a total of $849. Add a few server transfers and i have spent around $924 on World of warcraft that is also including buying expansions which is included in the $849. So in my roughly 4 years of playing WoW i spent a little more than half of what i spent playing a game i played for roughly 5 years.

This is why F2P games make money, because you have ppl in the community that will spend money if you allow them too. Just look at how ppl in the WoW community jump to buy new pets and mounts in the blizz store. If blizz sold cosmetic armor a ton of ppl would buy that too and that stuff costs more than a sub fee.

Yeah those FTP games with cash store like ME3 tend to be more rewarding for the publishers since they would not do so if it was not profitable.

I spend 100€ on the ME3 MP store for example (those packs) and if I look at my WoW payment history then I start crying because in those numerous years I did quite a few server transfers/race changes/faction changes) so yeah I think if ESO is FTP with a store then they would definitely make a good cut.

[Akkep]

When they say average they dont mean every single player is spending money, they are taking the total amount of money spent by the total number of players. And if you read my post instead of just reading edge's youll see where i talk about "Whales" which are players who spend an enormous amount of money each month on a single game. Think D3's RMAH. I am person who has never bought a single item off of it. While there are players out their who have spent thousands of dollars on it. The same applies to a F2P game.

I used to play maplestory and in my 5 years of playing that F2P game i prolly spent around $1,500 dollars. Ive played WoW starting somtime in 2008, I just went back and looked at my payment history and it came to a total of $849. Add a few server transfers and i have spent around $924 on World of warcraft that is also including buying expansions which is included in the $849. So in my roughly 4 years of playing WoW i spent a little more than half of what i spent playing a game i played for roughly 5 years.

This is why F2P games make money, because you have ppl in the community that will spend money if you allow them too. Just look at how ppl in the WoW community jump to buy new pets and mounts in the blizz store. If blizz sold cosmetic armor a ton of ppl would buy that too and that stuff costs more than a sub fee.

Maplestory is a good example that actually has fact how much a f2p game earns. Maplestory gross sale is total of 1.8 billion dollars 2005-2011 totally and has 92 million registered users (more than lol) by 2009, so they probably has more users now.
In 2007 5.9 million registered users in the US and they spent 29.3 million $ that year which show the average user don't spend a lot of money in fact only around 10% of f2p player spend any money at all. "With $30m in US sales and 6m US registered users, assuming a 20% "active player" rate and 10% "buyer rate" from interview with them. Which suggest average 2$ a month for average US f2p.

So yes you maybe spend a lot of money in f2p but most players don't spend any. And edgecrusher was giving links f2p advocate research suggesting League of legends was earning 3 billion dollar a year and and worldwide f2p spends 5-10 dollars a month which is just garbage.

Unfortunately I can't post links as I don't have enough posts.

[Edge-]

Again you come with research that is f2p advocate, it does not make it a fact and I can say with 99,9% certainly that number is Bs there is no way the average f2p spends 3-6$ a month. Majority of f2p players don't spend a single $. Instead of linking to research, link to a game that breaks down the how much money the average player spend and how much money that game is making. That will make it a fact.

The other games you mention were failures and still is failures after the f2p transition, the fact is the 3 biggest mmo in NA/EU is Wow, Gw2 and swtor in that order and they are not f2p games, except swtor now.

I would argue that they are absolutely not failures. Look at the game that didn't make the transition: Warhammer. That game has one server per region with only one active guild per server (as per my friend who jumped back in early last year to check the game out again). It gets no meaningful content updates and basically sits there in limbo.

The games that have made the transition, are continuing to get meaningful content updates to provide players with more to do. They're generally keeping the same rate of content development as they were pre-transition, so we can assume that at the very least the transitioned helped stabilize them and keep them from losing more players.

And As you said, SWTOR is F2P now because it couldn't survive as a subscription based game. Those are the three biggest if you're talking about the West, but Aion would probably rank second if you took global numbers into account for it.

As for some research and hard numbers:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...rs-better-arpu
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...om-key-players

Enjoy : )

[AestostheInsane]

We're talking that projected so far, we're looking at a GW2 style play, with actually End Game content. I see a ton of content thats said to be included... if it comes out the way it's supposed to then I see no reason why you guys are even mentioning it might be F2P. GW is great, but GW with Endgame is better. Many people would play GW2 over a game like say Rift if it had endgame, so if Rift is making $15 a month and GW2 with Endgame would be better, why would they not charge? Besides quality of game there are most definately enough Elder Scrolls fans out there to support it. If this game comes out, not even better, but even as good as it's supposed to be, you can expect there will also be a draw from WoW. You don't always have to win the popularity contest to not lose. Choices will be made, people will choose 1 game over another. I don't really see this game failing though. There's been too much input from too many different groups. Pro-Pvper's, End Game WoW raiding guilds. I just don't see it tanking.

[Edge-]

I just don't see it tanking.

I don't see it tanking either. But if they choose a subscription model and can't deliver something that other MMO's currently aren't delivering, then I can see them transitioning to a F2P model within a few years as it will likely end up being more profitable.

[Valeron]

I'm going to take a guess in saying that the biggest critics of this game will be the Elder Scrolls fans (similar to how the biggest critics of GW2 have been GW fans).

[AestostheInsane]

I don't see it tanking either. But if they choose a subscription model and can't deliver something that other MMO's currently aren't delivering, then I can see them transitioning to a F2P model within a few years as it will likely end up being more profitable.

It's totally possible to transition INTO F2P, I can't see any game starting F2P then transitioning to pay though. That would just be a bad business model. Will they goo F2P? if they don't do as well as projected, possibly. But all they have to do to avoid that is deliver what they've said so far, even without adding any more. Now if they actually want to kill the market deliver what you promise and nuke the sub fee to like $10 instead of $15... that could put a serious dent in competitions Sub base.

---------- Post added 2013-01-21 at 01:43 PM ----------

I'm going to take a guess in saying that the biggest critics of this game will be the Elder Scrolls fans (similar to how the biggest critics of GW2 have been GW fans).

I played the first GW and actually wasn't all that happy with it, no end game, and the Pvp felt like doing Pvp in Diablo moreso than Pvp in an MMO, I just don't like the top down feel of GW. I heard GW2 had no Endgame planned... and wasn't even interested in trying it, tinkered with it on my friends account, liked the gameplay, but I just can't do a game without raiding.

[Akkep]

I would argue that they are absolutely not failures. Look at the game that didn't make the transition: Warhammer. That game has one server per region with only one active guild per server (as per my friend who jumped back in early last year to check the game out again). It gets no meaningful content updates and basically sits there in limbo.

The games that have made the transition, are continuing to get meaningful content updates to provide players with more to do. They're generally keeping the same rate of content development as they were pre-transition, so we can assume that at the very least the transitioned helped stabilize them and keep them from losing more players.

And As you said, SWTOR is F2P now because it couldn't survive as a subscription based game. Those are the three biggest if you're talking about the West, but Aion would probably rank second if you took global numbers into account for it.

As for some research and hard numbers:

(can't post link)
(can't post link)

Enjoy : )

Well your links says exactly what I been saying, 93% of f2p player spends 1$ or less, so I'm glad you just proved my point.

[Valeron]

I played the first GW and actually wasn't all that happy with it, no end game, and the Pvp felt like doing Pvp in Diablo moreso than Pvp in an MMO, I just don't like the top down feel of GW. I heard GW2 had no Endgame planned... and wasn't even interested in trying it, tinkered with it on my friends account, liked the gameplay, but I just can't do a game without raiding.

That wasn't really the point I was making.

I'll take a different angle on this. The Elder Scrolls Online won't have nearly the amount of freedom that Skyrim has for example, that won't sit well with a lot of the fans. For other mmo players it won't be an issue, but for the hardcore elder scrolls fans it will be (of course there will be a lot of fans who won't let it bother them, that recognize it's a totally different game and game type).

[voidillusion]

F2P, Sub model, expectations, yadayada

I just want beta to open up!

[Edge-]

Well your links says exactly what I been saying, 93% of f2p player spends 1$ or less, so I'm glad you just proved my point.

Check out the ARPU in the first link, which would be more akin to what you see in F2P MMO's as the company publishes MMO's and not browser games. Almost $40 ARPU for paying accounts. That's pretty damn good.

The number of overall paying players or overall ARPU isn't as significant as the overall revenue generated. If they can monetize a group of players heavily and pull in whales to fund the game, that's even better as it ensures that they can continue to make money. It does put them in a bit of a precarious position, but it's seemed to work so far.

Again, I don't see how people can argue against the F2P model when it continues to be a viable financial model for existing games to transition to, and a viable model for new games to launch with (PS2 for example). Considering it's taken over as the dominant business model, it would stand to reason that it's the most viable business model in the current market for the overwhelming majority of games.

[Throren]

ESO cast, an elder scrolls online pdcast with Force and Jesse Cox

[mvaliz]

I don't see it tanking either. But if they choose a subscription model and can't deliver something that other MMO's currently aren't delivering, then I can see them transitioning to a F2P model within a few years as it will likely end up being more profitable.

I don't see ES:O tanking... but I also don't see it doing well either. I think at best they'll just make up their expenses and get a little bit extra... but I do not believe it's going to be a long-term success at all... probably only popular for a few months at best.

[vizzle]

http://signup.elderscrollsonline.com/

Beta! Sign up!

I totally checked the "I work in the press" button. Cracked counts as press, right!?

Didn't get in before it crashed...