[Megathread] The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited

[Katchii]

You are leaving out the fact that the sub also gives you quite a few points to spend at the store.

It is mentioned:

With your ESO sub you get store currency which can be used for the mounts, or anything else in the store.

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Loot boxes, freemium buisness model, being b2p game with f2p asian item shop, being b2p with paid expansion, with sub, with item shop AND with dlc.

Sure, subbing give you most of that and currency to spend on asian item shop (except raw power boost).

Wow charge me for TWO items (toys, from 500 obtainable in game) couple of mounts (from 500 obtainable in game) and couple companions (from literally thousand in game to obtain...) - do you not see the difference? Im willing to give wow money because they have much more consumer friendly monetization. They dont employ trick "wanna be cool? pay up" like eso with costumes, mounts and lion share of overall cosmetics.

I think you're choosing to focus on all the extra stuff that ESO has in the shop rather than what you get for a sub.

You're also not even touching on the fact that they are completely different payment models. WoW is entirely subscription based, whereas ESO is not. Of course ESO will have other things to monetize, it is a business and it HAS to make money on things other than the subscription. Everything you pointed out is entirely optional and cosmetic AND can be purchased with the Crowns (game currency) you get with the sub...so you never have to pay any additional money if you don't want to.

And as i said before in this very thread over and over, paying for sub in ESO aleviate most of those because you get all dlc, great perks like crafting bag etc, money to spend on item store. Both games give me nearly everything for the price of sub, just wow is way more consumer friendly and therefore much, much more worth for me to sub for them. I can also pay with gold for sub which is awesome if that somebody cup of tea - i payed for that when money were rough commodity.

You can play ESO almost completely free (after you buy the game which can be found EXTREMELY cheap) if you want to do that. You can't play WoW for "free" except as a trial.

They're both consumer friendly, you just don't like the way the B2P and/or F2P model works. Which is completely fine. But don't try to set-up some kind of false equivalence between the two.

Granted there are some F2P games out there that are absolutely NOT consumer friendly, but we're not talking about those here.

ESO bombard you with constant inconvenience unless you pay for sub (for instance that fucking pop up window of the store...) which is another thing that frustrate me about it.

FYI, they hit you with that splash screen when you log-in whether you're a sub or not. It's a reminder of what events are going on, what sales are going on, your daily log-in reward timer, etc... and is very similar to the splash screen you'll see in pretty much any other B2P or F2P MMO out there.

[Greevir]

Well, you kind of can play WoW for free. If you can make gold you can just buy game time with gold.

[Katchii]

Well, you kind of can play WoW for free. If you can make gold you can just buy game time with gold.

True, but at some point you had to pay a sub long enough for you to accrue the gold needed to start paying with gold and then to maintain that you need to earn enough gold to keep doing that. While "free" means paying no money in this case, depending on the person there's certainly a time factor involved. That's really not "free." With ESO you have access to the game after you buy it forever with no gold cost or anything.

[Lazuli]

Loot boxes, freemium buisness model, being b2p game with f2p asian item shop, being b2p with paid expansion, with sub, with item shop AND with dlc.

Sure, subbing give you most of that and currency to spend on asian item shop (except raw power boost).

Wow charge me for TWO items (toys, from 500 obtainable in game) couple of mounts (from 500 obtainable in game) and couple companions (from literally thousand in game to obtain...) - do you not see the difference? Im willing to give wow money because they have much more consumer friendly monetization. They dont employ trick "wanna be cool? pay up" like eso with costumes, mounts and lion share of overall cosmetics.

And as i said before in this very thread over and over, paying for sub in ESO aleviate most of those because you get all dlc, great perks like crafting bag etc, money to spend on item store. Both games give me nearly everything for the price of sub, just wow is way more consumer friendly and therefore much, much more worth for me to sub for them. I can also pay with gold for sub which is awesome if that somebody cup of tea - i payed for that when money were rough commodity.

ESO bombard you with constant inconvenience unless you pay for sub (for instance that fucking pop up window of the store...) which is another thing that frustrate me about it.

Don't you have some mindless rep to be grinding? Fuck outta here you clueless scallywag.

[Fkiolaris]

I am not the biggest fan of ESO at the moment, not by a long stretch, but their business model is not one of the reasons for that. The only two things I would hold against it are a) due to the way they change their item sets frequently, you never know if a useless set today will be useful/BIS tomorrow so you keep a lot of them, thus making the crafter's bag and double bank space of sub practically mandatory if you want to play "seriously" and b) some of the nicer looking sets/motifs for my taste are from the store, but with the currency you get from subbing you could save a bit and eventually get them.

Having said all that, I find it fine for a B2P model because I can always go back to check for free ALL the content that I paid for (unlike WoW, since it was given as a counter point) without any restrictions in gear/content/systems, while if I want the "full experience" I pay a sub (like WoW). So I fail to see the issue.

If the argument is "X set that is BiS or Y class that OP/FOTM is only available if you buy Z expansion" then, well, isn't that the same with WoW? Did you get DKs without buying WotLK? How about Monks and MoP? DHs and Legion? At least in ESO, if you sub for 2 months (literally) you get enough store currency to buy the Warden class from the shop, or at least you could when I last played. Finally, you don't get the bollocks of SWTOR where if you don't sub you are made to feel like a thief and have a ton of QoL things and content (ie raids and instanced PvP beyond 5-10 games a week) taken away from you. In ESO, if a raid is part of content that you bought, you ALWAYS have access to it, even without a sub and with no restrictions on its gear or gearing in general. Ditto for BGs.

[Aliven]

It is mentioned:



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I think you're choosing to focus on all the extra stuff that ESO has in the shop rather than what you get for a sub.

You're also not even touching on the fact that they are completely different payment models. WoW is entirely subscription based, whereas ESO is not. Of course ESO will have other things to monetize, it is a business and it HAS to make money on things other than the subscription. Everything you pointed out is entirely optional and cosmetic AND can be purchased with the Crowns (game currency) you get with the sub...so you never have to pay any additional money if you don't want to.



You can play ESO almost completely free (after you buy the game which can be found EXTREMELY cheap) if you want to do that. You can't play WoW for "free" except as a trial.

They're both consumer friendly, you just don't like the way the B2P and/or F2P model works. Which is completely fine. But don't try to set-up some kind of false equivalence between the two.

Granted there are some F2P games out there that are absolutely NOT consumer friendly, but we're not talking about those here.



FYI, they hit you with that splash screen when you log-in whether you're a sub or not. It's a reminder of what events are going on, what sales are going on, your daily log-in reward timer, etc... and is very similar to the splash screen you'll see in pretty much any other B2P or F2P MMO out there.

I see that screen popup in asian mmo i tried, not western or maybe i forgot about them. Swtor dont have that, neither gw2. Unless they changed something.

In any case i dont like greed and developers of eso, or publisher i dont care just give me that vibe, so i have hard time to justify spending money on them (saying that - dlc and expansions are fine in my book and im up to date with elsweyr (lacking behind in dlc) ) :P

[Katchii]

I see that screen popup in asian mmo i tried, not western or maybe i forgot about them. Swtor dont have that, neither gw2. Unless they changed something.

In any case i dont like greed and developers of eso, or publisher i dont care just give me that vibe, so i have hard time to justify spending money on them (saying that - dlc and expansions are fine in my book and im up to date with elsweyr (lacking behind in dlc) ) :P

You still really haven't explained WHY you think the developers of ESO are greedy, or any more greedy than SWTOR or GW2 or pretty much any other F2P or B2P game in existence, when they all are honestly doing the same thing (aside from the ones that are blatantly pay to win). If anything, SWTOR is far more greedy than ESO with most of it's development work being on the Cartel Market and hardly any game content.

I just meant that every F2P or B2P game I've ever played has some sort of reminder somewhere to spend money in their shop, typically it's a splash screen of some kind but in some games it isn't automatically there on log-in, it pops up when you open certain windows though. If a splash screen when you log in is a deal breaker, there's more going on than what you're letting on. SWTOR has reminders about the Cartel Market, and not so subtle reminders about not being a subscriber when you aren't one and GW2 has reminders about it's cash shop as well.

It honestly just sounds like you don't like the F2P or B2P model at all....if that's not it, you seem to just have a huge bias against ESO for some reason.

I'm not trying to be a white knight for ESO, it has it's flaws (and if you were talking about the game play and stuff this conversation would be very different, but you're hung up on the business model) just trying to understand why you are seemingly singling ESO out among the sea of F2P and B2P MMO's when it's really not any worse than any other F2P or B2P game out there and IMO, much better than some.

[rarhyx]

imo esos payment model is one of the better ones.
just buy the game and expansions (if you want) and most of it is free. pay a sub and you have everything + you get ingame currency to buy cosmetic stuff (and to some degree xp bonus) if you want

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imo wow should also get that route. basically everything except current content is free. want more than f2p? buy the raid dlc/dungeon dlc/whatever if you dont want the expansion. with a sub you get everything as well like in eso

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imo wow should also get that route. basically everything except current content is free. want more than f2p? buy the raid dlc/dungeon dlc/whatever if you dont want the expansion. with a sub you get everything as well like in eso

[qwerty123456]

Don't you have some mindless rep to be grinding? Fuck outta here you clueless scallywag.

Everything he says is true though. Wow doesn't have the equivalent of Pacrooti to egg you on and get you to spend fuckloads on crown crates. I've played wow since it came out keeping my sub up the entire time and have purchased mounts/race change/etc stuff and even then I have spent the same amount of money or more on ESO in the 3-4 year I have been playing it(mostly housing and crown crates).

Text.

You don't add loot boxes to a game or sell homes for over 100$ if you aren't being greedy especially when you got a sub. WArframe has packs for over 100$ but they don't have a subscription. And any random chance pay mechanic is just pure greed.

[Katchii]

You don't add loot boxes to a game or sell homes for over 100$ if you aren't being greedy especially when you got a sub. WArframe has packs for over 100$ but they don't have a subscription. And any random chance pay mechanic is just pure greed.

I can't really disagree with this. IMO it's not "greedy" to put overpriced stuff in a store knowing some people will pay for it, that's just business but that's not the point I was trying to make.

The issue I had was specifically calling ESO devs greedy vs giving a pass to other games that have equally "greedy" practices. Why single out ESO?

[Fkiolaris]

I can't really disagree with this. IMO it's not "greedy" to put overpriced stuff in a store knowing some people will pay for it, that's just business but that's not the point I was trying to make.

The issue I had was specifically calling ESO devs greedy vs giving a pass to other games that have equally "greedy" practices. Why single out ESO?

To be fair, something that I completely forgot because it was added when I was leaving the game, was skyshards and skill-lines in the shop. Now THAT is greedy for me, for the rest I am not bothered that much and find ESO's model to be pretty good.

[Katchii]

To be fair, something that I completely forgot because it was added when I was leaving the game, was skyshards and skill-lines in the shop. Now THAT is greedy for me, for the rest I am not bothered that much and find ESO's model to be pretty good.

I can understand that, but it's a convenience option for alts since you can't buy them unless you've unlocked that group of them on another character.

[Aliven]

You still really haven't explained WHY you think the developers of ESO are greedy, or any more greedy than SWTOR or GW2 or pretty much any other F2P or B2P game in existence, when they all are honestly doing the same thing (aside from the ones that are blatantly pay to win). If anything, SWTOR is far more greedy than ESO with most of it's development work being on the Cartel Market and hardly any game content.

I just meant that every F2P or B2P game I've ever played has some sort of reminder somewhere to spend money in their shop, typically it's a splash screen of some kind but in some games it isn't automatically there on log-in, it pops up when you open certain windows though. If a splash screen when you log in is a deal breaker, there's more going on than what you're letting on. SWTOR has reminders about the Cartel Market, and not so subtle reminders about not being a subscriber when you aren't one and GW2 has reminders about it's cash shop as well.

It honestly just sounds like you don't like the F2P or B2P model at all....if that's not it, you seem to just have a huge bias against ESO for some reason.

I'm not trying to be a white knight for ESO, it has it's flaws (and if you were talking about the game play and stuff this conversation would be very different, but you're hung up on the business model) just trying to understand why you are seemingly singling ESO out among the sea of F2P and B2P MMO's when it's really not any worse than any other F2P or B2P game out there and IMO, much better than some.

Because in the best case scenario they have B2P game with paid expansions and sub with huuuuuuge item shop and lootboxes. Too many traps.

Compared to GW2 i cant sub, they still have lootboxes and pain expansions (but are now no b2p).

Even swtor give more (yes, that shit of monetization) because for a price off one month sub i get full game up to date with the latest expansion, and it is f2p so i expect huge item shop and lootboxes.

This is the best of and worst is that Eso got evey monetization trick - lootboxes, b2p, paid expansions AND dlc (for good loot AND story progression, dlc that is, so even non min maxer would like to experience it) and item shop to boot. Sure, they BEST is comparable with other BEST (but still weakest IMO) but they worst is oooooh so much worse than anything in the western market, yes, even worse than swtor IMO (but that highly open for discussion).

I dont talk about mechanisms in the game which i despise (horse training, limited invetory and encouragment to create mules, gimmicky (in a bad way) combat, etc). But i can live with those system and indeed i have, i played the game, i have fun with it, i liked it and get my elder scrolls need scratched. Eso is the same for me as swtor - not worth investing time unelss i plan to sub and, honestly, both FF14 and WoW are just worth more and give more for the same price. I could play Eso for pure story and lul but then i hate inventory managment minigame (my biggest drawback). Same with SWTOR. Even as a founder :P

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I can't really disagree with this. IMO it's not "greedy" to put overpriced stuff in a store knowing some people will pay for it, that's just business but that's not the point I was trying to make.

The issue I had was specifically calling ESO devs greedy vs giving a pass to other games that have equally "greedy" practices. Why single out ESO?

I never singled out other devs.

I think swtor didnt have the choice but yes, EA is greedy, nobody can deny that.

Gw2 again, was forced into f2p model but they also pump much, much than eso into the game vs item shop.

[Thefatness]

You don't add loot boxes to a game or sell homes for over 100$ if you aren't being greedy especially when you got a sub. WArframe has packs for over 100$ but they don't have a subscription. And any random chance pay mechanic is just pure greed.

B2P/F2P games need money in order to be maintained and have new content created for them. 99.7% of the items on the ESO store have zero outcome on anything in the game other than cosmetics. No one is forcing you to buy loot crates. Yes, it's greedy, but so is Blizzard offering six month subs with a mount in order to keep the margins in the positive during the next content drought. Activision has a much longer track record for greedy microtransactions than ZOS does.

People want games to be free but aren't capable of understanding the cost to create and maintain them. Simply offering $1 skins isn't going to keep the company or the game afloat, nor pay developer's enough to continue working on the game. If you don't agree with loot crates, here's an extremely crazy and unheard of idea, don't buy them. I know, it's hard because ZOS is clearly forcing you to take out your wallet and buy the crates or expensive houses, etc. Anyone familiar with F2P games knows that in most cases, "whales" are what make-up a majority of the F2P sales. Star Citizen is a perfect example of this concept, the game is almost entirely funded by people with way too much money to spend on games. There are people who play ESO who have unlimited funding, this lets them support the game if they choose to in the way that they see fit, but if they don't, here's another mind-blowing concept, they don't buy it. Expensive cosmetic items in a game are no different than the rich guy down the street who drives the Lambo. There will always be things in life you cannot afford that others can, letting it control whether or not you can enjoy something is a joke.

If the items, THAT ARE OPTIONAL, for sale in-game that are there for the sole purpose of keeping the game, employees and servers working is what deters you from this game, you don't like the game. You can buy the game and play for free. If you want more and want to show a little support but don't want to go crazy, you can pay a standard sub that many other MMO's have and have access to virtually everything except for a few things, while also getting currency to spend in the store. If you have enough disposable income to support the game you enjoy beyond that, the choice is there to do so.

Every single company running a game with an item shop can be labeled as greedy. There are far more greedy and shady tactics going on in games like WoW that aren't as apparent as item shops. ZOS is a long way's away from being one of the greedier developers. Every item shop has expensive items, up until recently virtually every online game had loot crates, every company wants to MAKE money(this is the craziest concept in all of history) and every company has bills to pay.

[qwerty123456]

B2P/F2P games need money in order to be maintained and have new content created for them. 99.7% of the items on the ESO store have zero outcome on anything in the game other than cosmetics. No one is forcing you to buy loot crates. Yes, it's greedy, but so is Blizzard offering six month subs with a mount in order to keep the margins in the positive during the next content drought. Activision has a much longer track record for greedy microtransactions than ZOS does.

People want games to be free but aren't capable of understanding the cost to create and maintain them. Simply offering $1 skins isn't going to keep the company or the game afloat, nor pay developer's enough to continue working on the game. If you don't agree with loot crates, here's an extremely crazy and unheard of idea, don't buy them. I know, it's hard because ZOS is clearly forcing you to take out your wallet and buy the crates or expensive houses, etc. Anyone familiar with F2P games knows that in most cases, "whales" are what make-up a majority of the F2P sales. Star Citizen is a perfect example of this concept, the game is almost entirely funded by people with way too much money to spend on games. There are people who play ESO who have unlimited funding, this lets them support the game if they choose to in the way that they see fit, but if they don't, here's another mind-blowing concept, they don't buy it. Expensive cosmetic items in a game are no different than the rich guy down the street who drives the Lambo. There will always be things in life you cannot afford that others can, letting it control whether or not you can enjoy something is a joke.

If the items, THAT ARE OPTIONAL, for sale in-game that are there for the sole purpose of keeping the game, employees and servers working is what deters you from this game, you don't like the game. You can buy the game and play for free. If you want more and want to show a little support but don't want to go crazy, you can pay a standard sub that many other MMO's have and have access to virtually everything except for a few things, while also getting currency to spend in the store. If you have enough disposable income to support the game you enjoy beyond that, the choice is there to do so.

Every single company running a game with an item shop can be labeled as greedy. There are far more greedy and shady tactics going on in games like WoW that aren't as apparent as item shops. ZOS is a long way's away from being one of the greedier developers. Every item shop has expensive items, up until recently virtually every online game had loot crates, every company wants to MAKE money(this is the craziest concept in all of history) and every company has bills to pay.

Jesus that wall of text. Clearly you didnt read what I wrote. I said Warframe has 100$ packs and it isn't greedy imo because its free to play. ESo has a sub, b2p, cash shop with cosmetics, skyshards, skill lines, crafting, and everything else under the sun except for gear with stats. Yes games have to make money but when they monetize 99% of the game thats pure greed or abysmally low numbers of players.

The most egregious thing imo is the crown crates which pray on addicts. And then you have such low drop rates that when a non addict does spend 50-100 bucks and gets complete garbage they continue to buy until they get the item they want/"need" because it feel like they just wasted a ton of money if they didnt get it. They could easily sell all those items in the cash shop. Choosing to put it in a loot box is proof of greed. There is literally no reason on earth for a paid lootbox to exist other than to exploit people for money.

And yes a game can survive and thrive on 1$ microtransactions if they have the playerbase and enough players willing to purchase items.


And again you clearly didn't read anything I wrote as I explained how I have spent well over 3k in ESO already so Idk why you think me saying they are greedy is about jealousy.I have purchased probably 10-15 or so of the houses with crowns including earthtear, paraiahs, 2 of the land in cold harbor. I'm clearly ok with people spending money in the game but to when you look at everything ZoS does you would either have to be a fool or delusional to think they are milking people for as much as they can.

And lets not forget that ZOS "accidentally" installed spyware the week every other company was announcing they would be more transparent.

[Katchii]

I never singled out other devs.

I never said you did, I said you singled out ESO among the sea of other games that have similar practices and only call ESO greedy.

I think swtor didnt have the choice but yes, EA is greedy, nobody can deny that.

They have just as much stuff (if not more) on the Cartel Market as ESO, including loot boxes, and they don't release expansion worth of content enough to charge for (Except Rise of the hutt Cartel and Shadow of Revan which they DID charge for at the time). They're FAR too similar for you to give a pass to one and not the other.

Gw2 again, was forced into f2p model but they also pump much, much than eso into the game vs item shop.

I am honestly not as familiar with GW2 as I am with other games, and what exactly was in their shop...I just remember being reminded they HAVE one all the time.

You can dislike the model, I'm not a fan of it either and IMO Lord of the Rings online is one of the worst offenders but I'm still playing that right now. All I'm saying is be consistent with what you call greedy, because they ALL are, or be honest with why you don't like the game (because it doesn't seem like it's not JUST the model, it's a few other things with the business model attached to it not helping at all.)

[Aliven]

I never said you did, I said you singled out ESO among the sea of other games that have similar practices and only call ESO greedy.



They have just as much stuff (if not more) on the Cartel Market as ESO, including loot boxes, and they don't release expansion worth of content enough to charge for (Except Rise of the hutt Cartel and Shadow of Revan which they DID charge for at the time). They're FAR too similar for you to give a pass to one and not the other.



I am honestly not as familiar with GW2 as I am with other games, and what exactly was in their shop...I just remember being reminded they HAVE one all the time.

You can dislike the model, I'm not a fan of it either and IMO Lord of the Rings online is one of the worst offenders but I'm still playing that right now. All I'm saying is be consistent with what you call greedy, because they ALL are, or be honest with why you don't like the game (because it doesn't seem like it's not JUST the model, it's a few other things with the business model attached to it not helping at all.)

We talk about Eso and not generally which company/devs are greedy. Thats why i dont see a reason to talk about them, at least not in this thread.

[Katchii]

We talk about Eso and not generally which company/devs are greedy. Thats why i dont see a reason to talk about them, at least not in this thread.

Fair enough I guess.

[Koriani]

If you go to the store now, there are 3 things to buy: 1) ESO standard which gives you the base game plus all the expansions minus the current one (Elsweyr), 2) the current expansion, Elsweyr and 3) the next expansion Greymoor. So in a way it's like WoW.

The difference is the DLC (think of them like major patches in WoW). You either buy them separately one-by-one and keep access to them forever OR pay sub (ESO plus) and have access to ALL of them while being an active subscriber. ESO is B2P so you can buy just the base game/expansions and play for free.

I hope this makes sense

Also - the nice thing about the monthly sub with TESO - is yea, you don't have to buy all the expansions for access. They just have to not be the "current one."

So even new, old, or current sub players of TESO - if you don't care for the new expansion or don't feel it has enough (as some don't) to warrant the full expansion price tag - wait one year. When the next expansion comes out (next year), this one will become part of the "regular game" you get for your subscription. No extra money needed.

It IS a very nice thing TESO does - you do NOT at ALL have to buy every (or any) of the expansions to play them. You just have to be patient.

And if you are a new player, its really easy to be 'that' patient because there's plenty of other content and all expansions to play through before you would have to touch 'new expansion' content. Now, if new expansion content is just where you want to start and you don't care about the rest of the game - then yea you gotta pay to be in "first."

But at least there's the option to be able to play the 'next new content' as part of your sub price and never pay any more extra for any of it.

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Loot boxes, freemium buisness model, being b2p game with f2p asian item shop, being b2p with paid expansion, with sub, with item shop AND with dlc.

Sure, subbing give you most of that and currency to spend on asian item shop (except raw power boost).

Wow charge me for TWO items (toys, from 500 obtainable in game) couple of mounts (from 500 obtainable in game) and couple companions (from literally thousand in game to obtain...) - do you not see the difference? Im willing to give wow money because they have much more consumer friendly monetization. They dont employ trick "wanna be cool? pay up" like eso with costumes, mounts and lion share of overall cosmetics.

And as i said before in this very thread over and over, paying for sub in ESO aleviate most of those because you get all dlc, great perks like crafting bag etc, money to spend on item store. Both games give me nearly everything for the price of sub, just wow is way more consumer friendly and therefore much, much more worth for me to sub for them. I can also pay with gold for sub which is awesome if that somebody cup of tea - i payed for that when money were rough commodity.

ESO bombard you with constant inconvenience unless you pay for sub (for instance that fucking pop up window of the store...) which is another thing that frustrate me about it.

While I agree with you on some of your points (I actually sub to both WOW and TESO, so obviously I feel both have merits lol) -

The ONE thing WoW just hasn't been able to match is TESO's production cycle. If you are looking at game content v game content for a monthly sub price (or monthly sub plus expansion costs) - TESO gives you new content more regularly and reliably.

TESO puts out full-on, entire, content-adding expansion every year, like clockwork. Something Blizzard has promised time and again, and never been able to match.

So while one may spend months and months in WoW waiting for the 'new expansion', or the 'new big content patch till we get to the expansion", to have "something to do" - while maintaining that sub (if you do maintain a sub when you're out of content); TESO does give you that new content at a faster, and consistent, pace.

I am often playing TESO during the 'months' of downtime between WoW expansions. And so far, though I've been playing TESO pretty regular over the last 4+ years at this point, I AM STILL BEHIND 2+ expansions even before the release of this new one. That's two entire expansions worth of questing/lore/whatever content I've not even SEEN yet that I can plug through before even paying for the new expansion (if I ever have to pay for it).

In that same last 4+ year period, I've spent at least 3, 4, 6 months at a time each and every expansion, waiting on WoW to give me "new content" to see. (For the record, I've played WoW since launch, but just comparing the two periods of time spent playing both games).

That right there - whether I like it or not - whether I PREFER it or not - means TESO subscription is giving me the better value for my money. And I don't even have to sub to play any of that. I could be doing it all "for free" and have access to all of it. And I still have more content left waiting.

But every year of WoW sub, every expansion, several months of subscription to a game I don't even have a reason to turn on - to wait for the new content. Not even possible to touch any of it at all, ever, without that monthly fee.

So again - I DO AGREE with some of your points, the monetization stuff (I disagree with all of it but the TESO model is less predatory than most at least) - but straight content production vs. content production on a monthly sub. TESO is running circles on WoW with it. *AND YOU DON"T EVEN HAVE TO PAY FOR ALL OF IT to play it*

YMMV - but it is something to consider, depending on people's content type and preferences - on sheer raw content value. *shrugs*

[Witchblade77]

Because in the best case scenario they have B2P game with paid expansions and sub with huuuuuuge item shop and lootboxes. Too many traps.

Compared to GW2 i cant sub, they still have lootboxes and pain expansions (but are now no b2p).

Even swtor give more (yes, that shit of monetization) because for a price off one month sub i get full game up to date with the latest expansion, and it is f2p so i expect huge item shop and lootboxes.

This is the best of and worst is that Eso got evey monetization trick - lootboxes, b2p, paid expansions AND dlc (for good loot AND story progression, dlc that is, so even non min maxer would like to experience it) and item shop to boot. Sure, they BEST is comparable with other BEST (but still weakest IMO) but they worst is oooooh so much worse than anything in the western market, yes, even worse than swtor IMO (but that highly open for discussion).

I dont talk about mechanisms in the game which i despise (horse training, limited invetory and encouragment to create mules, gimmicky (in a bad way) combat, etc). But i can live with those system and indeed i have, i played the game, i have fun with it, i liked it and get my elder scrolls need scratched. Eso is the same for me as swtor - not worth investing time unelss i plan to sub and, honestly, both FF14 and WoW are just worth more and give more for the same price. I could play Eso for pure story and lul but then i hate inventory managment minigame (my biggest drawback). Same with SWTOR. Even as a founder :P

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I never singled out other devs.

I think swtor didnt have the choice but yes, EA is greedy, nobody can deny that.

Gw2 again, was forced into f2p model but they also pump much, much than eso into the game vs item shop.

Im sorry, but i HAVE to disagree with your asserion that its worse than swtor. having played swtor preferred vs ESO non subscriber - sure one month of sub unlocks acess to content, but the amount of quality of life features you lose in SWTOR if you do not subscribe is absolutely staggering. even if you spend gigantic amounts of cartel coins to unlock every possible quality of life feature like you know.. being able to use all 3 crew skills, having more skill bars, being able to hide your helmet - it still restricts you by a LOT

in ESO you lose a craft bag. in SWTOR you get restricted to how many credits you can use and you lose ability to purchase more bag space etc with in game credits anyways. ESO - full acess to trials for whatever content you own. SWTOR - NO acess to ops. ESO - you gain 10% less xp and gold than subscriber, which honestly I barely even felt, especially with no gold maximums per character. SWTOR you gain 10% OF renown xp and THAT is an improvement from you originally getting ZERO command xp back in a day. housing. ESO - buy a house (and you don't have to get one of the crown houses, there's like 40 something houses that have a gold cost and some of them are quest rewards, so you basically get them at no additional gold cost) and you are good to go, SWTOR - upgrade one wing at a time and because of credit limits, you pretty much have to use cartel coins if you are not a subscriber. furniture - bulk of ESO's furnishings are crafted/vendor/achievement based. relatively small amount is cash shop only, and almost no furnishings are locked behind RNG cash crates. SWTOR. bulk of the furnishings are cash shop only, and more then half of those are locked behind rng crates.

and so on and so forth. one of the biggest differences in cash shops is that in ESO - a lot of what is sold in a cash shop, is earnable in game. there is an overlap. you can buy it with cash, or you can buy it with in game gold and now that crown gifting is a thing, you can literally get all of the DLC's gifted to you, traded for in game gold. I am aware that you can buy most cash shop things in swtor with credits, BUT... the costs are prohibitive especially with credit limits.

in a nutshell i can continuously play ESO without subscription just fine and mostly it just means I spend a bit more time on bag management and cannot hoard as much gear. i can NOT play swtor without subscription unless I'm just leveling alts and even then, unlike ESO's overlap of cash shop OR in game means (like the newest motif for instance, you can buy it from cash shop, or you could farm vet dungeon for drops), in swtor most things kinda have to come from cash shop before they can even be sold to players. there are NO in game means to earn those things.

is ESO perfect? no. not even remotely. but is it worse that SWTOR? it takes some serious personal bias to say that with a straight face