Do people like the whole action MMORPG thing? I think I'm starting to miss the old way of having auto attack and a lot of spells and combat abilities to use over this action oriented style of play. I guess it just kinda bugs me only having like 5 spells slotted when I have a lot of cool things I could be using especially in this game since there is no class locks on weapons and gear. I think SWTOR is good in between of the old school style and the action style like ESO, Neverwinter and Tera.

Poll options are a bit stacked; 6 month period vs 3 month period etc. That said it being a year until free to play strikes me as extraordinarily unlikely.

I voted 6 months to a year, but that is under the assumption that it won't do gangbusters. Just long enough to recoup some development costs, and then F2P to draw in a new crowd of people to keep player count up.

Oh god I hope not. Not sure if anyone here has played a subscription MMO for a decent length of time (if you've played WoW that might be a different case), but for me the feeling of paying just as much as everyone else, having the same quality game and being just as strong as everyone else is worth the sub. Let's not forget, all the nice goodies you can buy in the cash shop in a F2P game, you could get them from the game normally in a subscription based MMO.

That said, I have not played ESO and have no plans to play it atm. I'm just defending the subscription model in general. I think the general consensus among longtime MMORPG fans (particularly pre-WoW) is that a subscription based MMO is a better quality experience, but the F2P market is too lucrative for investors. Not to mention the community is usually better as they tend to have paying jobs; fewer teenage idiots playing.

Now if ESO is not only subscription based AND has a cash shop... well fuck ESO and zenimax then. Do one or the other, or else you have the worst of both worlds.

Unless it's an initially colossal failure on the level of The Old Republic, one year minimum.

Yeah I think around there, if not a little longer. My feeling is that with all the ill will being directed at the game and it's pricing model they are in a bit of a precarious position. On the one hand you can imagine there will be a push to move the game to a F2P model in the medium term but they also do not want to risk alienating the people who bought longer term subscriptions right off the bat - the same people who are likely to include elder scrolls loyalists who are, in turn, likely to be the very "whales" they need to keep a future F2P model afloat.

As an aside, I do hear an awful lot of negativity about the game but personally I am really, really enjoying it. I do think it's too expensive - but I enjoyed the beta enough with friends enough to invest anyway. It's far, far from perfect - there's a lot of quest-style repetition (though no worse than any other MMO I've played, although maybe that's a problem in itself) and i've encountered my fair share of bugs that have required me to log out multiple times (particularly weird de-sync issues and attempted climbing of walls putting me stationary up in the sky etc.). Fundamentally though, I really enjoy the universe the game is based within, I am getting an awful lot out of the progression options and crucially I am finding it to have a really rewarding feedback loop which to me is the core thing I enjoy about MMOs. Other things aside, I feel like the game rewards me fairly for what I do and the rewards it gives (unlocking abilities etc etc) are interesting and fun enough in exchange for the effort I put in.

It may sound a bit of a cop-out but it's still pretty early days for the game considering they are promising new content every four weeks or so. Don't get me wrong, that's no excuse to release a game with multiple flaws with an expensive subscription model. I just mean that the sheer amount of things that can go wrong within a universe of the ESO's size, the fact that i'm enjoying it and the scale of ambition of the project make me feel like giving it the benefit of the doubt to some extent.

This game already has some convenience and progression issues. I can't imagine how much worse the design would have to get to fit in F2P garbage.

I hope they just drop subscription.

It's inevitable.

When the subscriptions decline and won't get enough profit.

Both the Final Fantasy MMO's are still going strong on a subscription model as is WoW.

Yeah, I hate to break it to you, but I played WoW for 7 years, and a subscription model did NOTHING to deter teenagers from playing. Hell, just read the forums if you want proof of that.

This brings up a good point: What are the payment options available? Subscriptions "slide" at each of the first plan time spans. Does ESO offer a 1 month, 3 month, 6 month plan? Then expect the first drop to happen after the second month and precipitous drops after each period.

People dislike ESO because it is vanilla. It neither excels at classic designs nor bring new tech or design to the genre. The fact that it is bug ridden with various levels of annoying and crippling problems and seems to already be infested with scavenging bots and item duping doesn't help either.