http://www.gametrailers.com/side-mission/69021/amazon-leaks-the-elder-scrolls-online-imperial-edition

The imperial edition has been leaked and one of the bonuses you get? An ENTIRE race. Because locking one of the biggest and most significant races behind a pay wall is a great idea. Gamestop has it on pre-order for $100. Everything about this game says "We just want as much money as possible before we're forced to go F2P".

Huh, that's pretty interesting. Imperials are just normal humans as far as I recall, so it's not really that much of a bonus the way I see it. Still, I do agree that locking a race behind an $80 paywall is kind of a jerk move. Given the other contents of the collectors edition though, I actually think the $100 set might not be that bad of a deal.

I got to play the beta and it's not a very good game. Stuff like this makes me 100% sure I wouldn't ever want to try it out though.

Thats nothing new Remember Star Trek online if you wanted to play as a borg it was 300$ or what ever the lifetime pass was.

I'd probably be more annoyed/upset about this if the beta didn't turn me completely off to the game already. It so weirdly resembles an Elder Scrolls game in the way that it plays, that it's difficult to think of it as an MMO. Instead, it just kind of feels like you're playing a crappy Elder Scrolls game. As an MMO, the combat is light years beyond what most other games are doing these days, but as an Elder Scrolls game? It feels like Morrowind.

Don't imperials usually suck anyway? Unless there are mad speech checks in this game or something?

Also, racist.

Just can the game and release Fallout 4 and ES6, how is this not going to fail.

I haven't looked at the game at all because I have no interest in it, but I assume one of the other human looking races is freely available, like Nords or something. So its perhaps not the craziest omission, even if its totally gross.

Hardly. I know this is the internet, but that's just baseless hyperbole. It's standard practice to hold digital content (even entire races) behind some kind of pay wall, even for MMOs with a monthly fee. WOW did this like... 3 times already?

Why do people find this pretty okay, sort of innovative MMO so fucking offensive?

Oh well, at least you get a giant enemy friendly crab with it too.

The Elder Scrolls suffers from be less and less interesting as each new game comes out. What was interesting or innovative three games ago is just typical or clunky now. Bethesda is TERRIBLE at engines and stories, their games are built upon the idea of brute force execution of code. Memory leaks, too many forks, or just meeting every NPCs in the game turns their games into mush. The everything and teh kitchen sink approach to making a game is just the flip-side of a bad coin to laziness. Not being able to 'edit' or 'direct' a game is just as lazy as putting in too few system or ideas into a game.

If you want to play a western RPG play The Witcher, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, or even the next Dragon's Dogma. Hell wait to see where The Division or the next Borderlands will be like because they might end up being more role playing than not.

I personally don't give enough of a shit about it to be offended, but I think the reason people get angry about it is because they're charging a subscription fee in a market that doesn't really have a place for that anymore, and it's for what is clearly being seen as a totally sub-par experience.

Sure, there's WoW, but WoW has always been a special case. No other MMO has even come close to the success of WoW.

It's not an innovative MMO. It's a very standard MMO which received a lot of mediocre to poor feedback in the beta, costs $60 to buy, then $15/m which is an incredibly dated and tired payment style and on top of that puts one of the races behind a paywall. It's blindly obvious it's going to crash subscriptions and go to F2P just like The Old Republic or really any MMO that isn't WoW or EVE. WOW did it for extra races but the main 4 you'd expect were in the base game. They were also expansions. Blizzard didn't go "Wanna play as an Orc? Buy our collectors edition!".

I bought that and never played the game.

I've played through two beta weekends and really liked it, as did a lot of other folks, so it's not "clearly" a sub-par experience.

But I'm not even trying to defend this game in particular. I'm just baffled at this constant negative reaction to everything ESO related. If, like you say, they're charging a subscription for a bad game, why would people give a fuck at all?! There are shitty games that come out all the time, but I don't feel the need to make a thread about each of them.

If this was the only other game Bethesda was working on and it was preventing them working on Fallout 4 or whatever, than sure, damn them as much as you want. But it's a totally different team just making a game that you can easily ignore if you're not interested.

Misplaced rage and arbitrary bias. Maybe it's just the internet.

ten, please.

@monkeyking1969: Just want to point out that Bethesda has nothing to do with this game.

I played beta and had a lot of fun. Definitely not preordering an MMO, but I could see picking this up. I'm cool with subscribing, but 60+subscription is a little steep for me. Right now the best price I can find is $45 for regular edition. But again... I'm not preordering. I'm in no rush to play it.

Again, I don't care even a little bit about this game, my interest in it is next to nothing, I'm just spouting out the sentiment that I've absorbed through osmosis. It appears to me to be a game that was thought up when the market was completely different, but is coming out in spite of the fact that it's likely not going to do well. As everyone says, I think it's only a (probably short) matter of time before it goes free-to-play, and I feel like people have been burned by that happening enough times that having that expectation immediately makes for a shittier experience. I also don't think that people want it to crash and burn, I just think they expect it to.

EDIT: No idea why it's linking to you there, that is not my intention, nor do I have any idea how to fix it.

Also, as a comment on the original topic, 100$ for a collectors edition is completely stupid, I don't care if it's common practice or not. Don't buy this shit for this price, and they'll stop gouging you so much.

To those saying it'll go free to play just like The Old Republic did, well The Old Republic only sort of went free to play. Without a subscription, TOR is nothing but a glorified demo, if you really want to play it you kinda have to buy one or pay for a bunch of unlocks and boosters, which would probably cost even more.

If ESO goes free to play I have a feeling it'll be more TOR than Guild Wars. Just saying.

Hold on, WoW has never done this. In WoW, new races are introduced with expansion packs - in addition to all the new content you get, you'll also get new races. They've never made it so only a select group of people could play a race if they purchase the collector's edition of the game. WoW does release collector's editions of their games, but usually it's just cosmetic stuff that you get in game, nothing as significant as a new race.

My mother was an Imperial and I am Very offended.

To be exact, WoW has never "...hold digital content (even entire races) behind some kind of pay wall..." In fact the reason why Blizzard can't do that is due to the architecture of that MMO makes it close to impossible to "pay for options" like this. Basically World of Warcraft can't do it because it was never built that way.

Thats not even remotely true. They could definitely require you to make an additional purchase to access a race. They already require you to purchase an expansion to get access the the races they introduce in that expansion. Blizzard could theoretically add 4 new races in an expansion and lock 2 of them behind a pay wall not associated with an expansion.

a mudcrab vanity pet.

...

*sigh*

All the physical stuff is legitimately sweet if you are an Elder Scrolls lore fan.

And surely, someone out there is, right?

But that is a new feature in new product. This is like saying "Man, I can't play Halo 4 matches in Halo 3" and being mystified why no one else is outraged. If you didn't buy "Mists of Pandaria" then you can't run around in Pandaria, make a Pandaren, or use specific MoP features and content. That doesn't seem like a pay wall but just not owning the right product or license.

The next WoW expansion is coming out later this year. It is going to involve rebuilds of the combat engine, modes, dungeons, and in game models. Are you going to complain about how you are behind "the paywall" because you did not buy it? You can try but that seems like splitting hairs because at that stage anything you don't have access too because you didn't purchase it is behind a paywall and that is a bit too much. If you need a big hint: One of the big issues with World of Warcraft is that it is so old that Blizzard can't do "pay walls" design properly in this game.

What is happening with ESO is different and reflects some of the new trends in market. It is just something that WoW doesn't have that granularity to support it and none of their other modern games seem to have it either. There is no way to turn on and off granular features for bnet account in WoW which is really necessary to make it work.

@extomar: Your original statement is very obviously wrong though. Of course they could lock things behind a pay wall.

This is pretty obvious. So say you did not buy Mists of Pandaria - you cannot create a pandaren no, but you can see others running around as them.

You have basically patched in all the data, and if you add the expansion to your account you can just go right ahead and create one.

@stilblad: No, actually you do not need to purchase the expansion in order to play the new race. I know this from experience. I leveled a Pandaren priest without Mists of Pandaria. They locked the class "monk" behind the expansion, but comparing an expansion to a $100 collectors edition is absolutely ludicrous. It would be much more acceptable if the game was free-to-play and required you to make a $20-$30 purchase to unlock the race, or a selection of races, much like nearly every other free-to-play game.

This reeks of greed and exactly what the fan base sees coming. Ignoring the pattern of P2P MMORPG's resorting to F2P models later down the road based on sales and subscriptions sticking is pure ignorance.

This is going bomb so fucking hard. This is going to be the Tunguska of games.

Either the title of this topic is misleading or I'm missing something - is the only way to get the Imperial race to buy this collector's edition for $100?

"Theoretically" being the key word here.

Of course they could do it, technically. The reason they don't is because it would be a bad business practice. And we are talking Activision here.

The point is that many people are already complaining about the price system of the game: having to pay full price up front and then some more monthly for access to the game feels too much, specially in a market where every MMO has turned free to play or free to access; and them locking significant content to the special edition under some day one DLC feels like rubbing salt into the wound.

The reaction here is ridiculous. It's one of a set of bonuses being included in the collector's edition. So a) it's not paying $40 for a single race, it's paying x% of $40 for the race and b) it's not locking desirable content behind a paywall, because Imperials are the least distinctive race they could have held out - if you want to play a human in this game you can choose Redguard, or if you want to be a white human, a Breton.

You all are basically getting angry that they are giving out cosmetic content for money, which is widely agreed upon as the one totally acceptable form of microtransaction.

Can't wait to play it once it goes Free To Play.

@hermes: I was just stating that it would be easy for them to put a race behind a paywall similarly to what is apparently going to happen with the imperial. The person I quoted said that it would be difficult for this to be implemented which I disagreed with due to how it has worked in the past. I wasnt trying to say that there wouldnt be outrage, just that it is very technically feasible.

@kindgineer: Ok well I guess I was wrong but the whole point of my post was to say that it is possible for them to put a new race behind a paywall which the post I quoted said wasnt possible for them.

@veektarius: Amen!

No thank you!

Gotta make whatever money back that they can because oh god they're going to have to fast track that shit to a F2P model hella fast

I don't give a fuck about the game, but that artbook and map would be kinda cool to have.

Everyone saying that this game's going to immediately flounder: You realize that it's coming to consoles, too, right? I cannot fucking for the life of me explain why MMOs on consoles are such a lucrative market, but FFXI is not only still going, it's the most profitable Final Fantasy game that Square's ever made. This isn't going to be some gangbusters release, and it may not even turn a profit if it's being made for TOR money, but I am willing to place a bet of thirteen American cents (maybe fourteen) that this thing stays subcription-based and successful until at least mid-2015.

It may be subscription based but it's not going to be successful.

I suspect Imperials will be available in a couple months - just like the Drow for Neverwinter. To keep it "exclusive" (if they bother), they may change the name slightly. But it'll be the same thing.

@mb: That is what the discussion in the thread has been about so seems so.

Seriously? Imperial? If they wanted to make it enticing at least make it a cool race, like Dunmer or something. Or even Nord (because for some reason, a lot of people like to play as Nords... don't know why :S )

Aren't Imperials like the blandest of the bland?

@sissylion: DC Universe was on consoles too and didn't last a year with its subs.

Vote with your wallet. Aren't traditional Fantary-MMORPGs pretty dead anyway?

Everything about this game so far is turning me off.

I imagine they're a completely superfluous race, anyway. According to the game's position in the timeline in the Elder Scrolls lore, the Imperials are off doing their own thing defending the Imperial City from all sides while the rest of the game is going on. They really have no reason to be beyond the Imperial City, which I bet is where they'll start Imperials off, alongside the other races. It wouldn't make sense to put new players in the Imperial City, since it's "currently" a massive bloody battlefield.

Besides, wouldn't you rather be a cat man?