[Megathread] Elder Scrolls Online

[mickybrighteyes]

Other than Skyrim's civil war questline I think ESO's quests are better as a whole.

i... don't know what to say....

I don't particularly remember Skyrim's base game civil war as anything of merit and wrote it off as mostly unfinished by the devs standards (hell I basically removed it from my game saves with a mod that overwrote the whole thing with an allegedly more complete version)

[Random Word]

1. Getting to level 15 takes a couple hours
2. Bow is currently the most powerful weapon in the game.
3. Mage builds are still best for zerging and survival due to Resto staffs being awesome.
4. Templar? Currently weakest dps, but probably best PVE tanks, also very defensive with good sustain in PvP.


Another thing I should mention is that the meta will be drastically changing very soon (probably late January), in patch 1.6. The main reasons for this are:

• Alliance War Support skill line is getting a Stamina-based group heal.
• Stacking shields while wearing Light armor no longer possible, therefore always less tanky than actual Heavy armor.
• Ultimate generation will effectively be normalized across all classes and builds

Thanks for input. I only intended to play an archer, be it a rogue archer or templar archer, but the thing was that stamina based builds, which includes archery, were terrible for both pvp and pve. If that has changed, I'm giving serious thought to trying the game again.

[smackyslap]

stam is great for pve (infarct I pull 1000 to 1600dps single target now avg for 1300+ it depends on luck ) now pvp it can be but it has few uses it's great for ambush style of play if you do it right and thats about it.

[Deleted]

Are there people here that will play on the PTS once it launches in 1-2 weeks?

[Tierbook]

Speaking of which I heard January 5th for PTS drop.

[Anonymous Coward]

i really liked this game when it came out. i got to level 48 or so before the sub ran out... is it still pretty active? in terms of PvP campaigns, player activity in cities and chat / etc. i've been getting the itch to resub because i miss cyrodiil, just curious to hear how 'alive' the game feels in terms of actual presence

[Valeron]

despite my dislike of the combat, I resubbed for a month for the holidays. I can't say anything about the PVP since I don't do it. But for PVE, the lower level areas have quite a lot of people. The mid level areas such as Alik'r are pretty sparse however. But just have to say, that is really the norm for all mmos, all of the mid level areas after the first few months are always sparse in population. I can't tell you anything about the high level stuff, my highest level character is 35.

[Deleted]

i really liked this game when it came out. i got to level 48 or so before the sub ran out... is it still pretty active? in terms of PvP campaigns, player activity in cities and chat / etc. i've been getting the itch to resub because i miss cyrodiil, just curious to hear how 'alive' the game feels in terms of actual presence

game feels alive enough on the EU side 1 campaign is always full (thornblade) while other campaigns see some moderate action to action on peak hours. Lately I have noticed Haderus became a campaign that is fought over in the evenings and the other 30 day campaign is often close to full.

in terms of zones for ad reaper's march and grahtwood are currently quite active with some activity in Craglorn in terms of endgame hubs. For leveling zones the very first zones are very active but after that it goes down steadily. Around vet there is a huge peak in the first zone of the first alliance but then it starts to go lower and the amouth of people will be less and less, but I never had problems finding a group for content I wanted to do.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanx for the replies guys, sounds like there is enough activity for me to resub, just wanted to make sure

[Aoewy]

It helps that it has the megaserver tech for that.. It has its problem at launch with phasing and all, but when it runs correctly, you almost always see people around.

[Bugg]

i really liked this game when it came out. i got to level 48 or so before the sub ran out... is it still pretty active? in terms of PvP campaigns, player activity in cities and chat / etc. i've been getting the itch to resub because i miss cyrodiil, just curious to hear how 'alive' the game feels in terms of actual presence

for me it is.
it's not a game for everyone... and it's not wow
as far as PVP goes, I can tell you this: AD > EP > DC (IMO) in size of population on the EU server. I play DC, and I pvp A LOT. I am member of a small guild and we run a 'raid' of 4-10 ppl, rarely more. For us it's fun.
as far as PVE goes, no idea.
the game is pretty alive, imo.

[carnifex2005]

The Elder Scrolls Online quietly removes six-month subscriptions

Wonder if this means it will be going B2P (most likely) or F2P when it goes to consoles in 2015. That would make sense for a console launch.

[smackyslap]

The Elder Scrolls Online quietly removes six-month subscriptions

Wonder if this means it will be going B2P (most likely) or F2P when it goes to consoles in 2015. That would make sense for a console launch.

look back a page ago this has been discussed and their reasoning was not many people used the 6 month option. whether it is true or not remains to be seen but could be something with the upcoming console release.

[Deleted]

look back a page ago this has been discussed and their reasoning was not many people used the 6 month option. whether it is true or not remains to be seen but could be something with the upcoming console release.

It sounds like a poor excuse though. It's not like having 6 month subscription option is taking money and resources from them

[Deleted]

Well I have been thinking about it.

With the subscriber loyalty rewards & if they possibly go b2p. What would the point be to remove 6 month sub? Even after that they will keep the sub active (otherwise you lose so much money from it) so them removing 6 month option is not an entirely good idea for a b2p game.

And for those who think they will remove subs, that will never happen as it's quite profitable on top of b2p.

[Wilian]

It puts the RPG back into MMORPG.

How does that manifest itself?

[Count Zero]

Their reasoning on removing 6-month subs makes very little sense (like someone else said, how does just leaving it there actually hurt anything ?).

But the other possibilities make even less sense. Why would they do this if they're going b2p / f2p ? Assuming they remove subs entirely (which is unlikely even in a model transition), why not just remove them all at once when the time comes ? Unless a transition is happening in just a few months - literally there'd be about a 3 month window (assuming there is a 3 month sub option, don't actually know) where they could announce whatever transition and that they won't be accepting any new subs that extend past (whatever date).

But, idk, maybe things are moving that fast in that direction. I just think it would have been smarter - in that scenario - to keep accepting subs, but give cash shop (assuming any b2p / f2p model they go into relies heavily on one) credit pro-rated by how much sub time you have left. But, again, I think it's highly unlikely they completely drop subscriptions.

So, idk, I guess somehow it really must just not be cost effective for them to keep it in. Or its model is transitioning in just a few months.

[Deleted]

Their reasoning on removing 6-month subs makes very little sense (like someone else said, how does just leaving it there actually hurt anything ?).

Quite simple. Squeezing everything out - that is the reason to remove it. Say 5% use 6 months subs meaning those 5% really like the game (hopefully). Now let's take away 6 months subs and thus increase income because 3 months subs dont save you that much money as 6 months subs do. So you actujally make more money.

[Count Zero]

Quite simple. Squeezing everything out - that is the reason to remove it. Say 5% use 6 months subs meaning those 5% really like the game (hopefully). Now let's take away 6 months subs and thus increase income because 3 months subs dont save you that much money as 6 months subs do. So you actujally make more money.

I thought about that after I posted. But I figured it must be just a tiny amount of money, really. What's the price diff between 6 month and 3 month per month, maybe a dollar ? So that's 12 more dollars a year from a fraction of the player base. Let's assume they have a million subs and 25% of the fans had the 6 month subs (just random made up numbers for math):

250k accounts paying an extra $12 a year ... $3,000,000 a year. Ok that's actually a lot more than I figured, but I'm also guessing they don't have that many subs and that less than 1/4 of the players used the 6 month option.

500k subs total, let's say 10% used 6 months ... 50k accounts paying 12 bucks more a month is $600,000 ... still actually a pretty decent sum. Hrm, maybe that's it, then. Although really between total subs and how many used 6 months, I'd wager it's really probably no more than maybe 1-300k a year they'd net from this. Which, yeah, still a lot more than I was thinking. And also I'm assuming what the price diff is. Could be as little as maybe 50k a year they're netting ... which is closer to what I originally thought (but still a bit over ... bad at in-the-head math, I guess) but still a decent amount.

[Wilian]

Quite simple. Squeezing everything out - that is the reason to remove it. Say 5% use 6 months subs meaning those 5% really like the game (hopefully). Now let's take away 6 months subs and thus increase income because 3 months subs dont save you that much money as 6 months subs do. So you actujally make more money.

That's a gamble on the 3 monthers resubbing.