Elder Scrolls Launching With a Subscription Fee?

The Elder Scrolls Online screenshot

It’s still far too early to get confirmed details about many things concerning The Elder Scrolls Online, and one of those is whether or not the game will have a subscription fee or be free to play. One analyst named Nicholas Lovell (founder of Gamebrief) is convinced we’ll have to pay a monthly fee to play TES.

The reasoning behind it is that since the game’s development started way back in 2007 when pay-to-play games were at their peak The Elder Scrolls will adopt the same business model.

“It is conceivable that Bethesda will launch with a subscription service to attract the early adopters, because that is the model they understand.”

Dozens of MMORPGs switched to freemium over the past couple of years, many of which used to have monthly subscriptions. For games such as Age of Conan it worked great and saved the game from the brink of shutting down. Even Star Wars: The Old Republic, a fairly recently launched MMORPG is struggling to keep subscription numbers up, and an upcoming switch to F2P wouldn’t surprise me.

Lovell does believe that The Elder Scrolls Online will launch with a monthly fee but will eventually switch to F2P:

“It is conceivable that Bethesda will launch with a subscription service to attract the early adopters, because that is the model they understand.”

“They will switch to free-to-play later, in the same way that many iOS games go from paid to freemium over their lifetime,”

It does in fact make sense. Considering the insane popularity of previous The Elder Scrolls titles and especially Skyrim, many players will be jumping on the bandwagon and play this game. If many of the players end up being disappointed in the game, switching to free to play is a logical choice.

We barely know anything about TESO currently and this is just speculation, but I’m sure we’re all crossing our fingers that ZeniMax can make one amazing game worth playing, regardless of the price.

Published 4341 days ago This entry was posted in Game Info. Bookmark the permalink.

2 Responses to Elder Scrolls Launching With a Subscription Fee?

  1. erich says:

    My thoughts when I heard that they were going with a subscription monthly charge.
    Sure at the game launch they will have high subscription numbers just like other mmo games did for example Star Wars TOR, Rift to name a few.
    When Rift went to free to play for example we now have one of the best in my opinion in game stores where the player has the freedom to purchase or not a lot of really cool stuff to add to each character but still have to quest to get the really cool gear which is how it should be. We also get game updates a lot faster.
    I think the developers in my opinion will have a hard time meeting these goals but could be wrong. The average player like myself would choose a free to play game over a subscription game which is what really most mmo game designers are using for their game model and what players prefer and will stay with the game in the long term. I am very excited about what I have seen so far on the character creation features for elder scrolls though.
    What I like most about the free to play over paying a monthly subscription is I still have all the things I can do in the game and play whenever I want. I really hope that at some point the game will go free to play and let the players purchase what things they want from an in game store when they want to or not at all. For some game players who are playing a game with a monthly subscription just do not have that freedom and some may be ok with that but most I hope are not like myself which why I prefer a free to play model over a pay to play one.
    I so far just do not see how I can see that with what I have seen and have heard about elder Scrolls so far.
    With that being said I am most excited with the fact that I will be able to play the game both on a PC as well as the XBOX next console.

  2. Marcus Scott says:

    Well I don’t mind p2p but if they could do something like Secret world and have the option to buy a lifetime subscription. I think if I remember correctly Secret world was like $200 dollars for game and lifetime subscription. And you figure normally it takes a game to go to the f2p option usually around the second to third year depending on how launch goes. But not having been disappointed by Bethesda in the past I’ll bet this will be a high quality game so 15 a month for 24 to 36 months and hope it goes to a f2p or pay up front 200 bucks and not have to worry how much you spent over the years on a game that eventual went to crap i.e. WOW 15 a month since 2005 I don’t think I want to do the math on it. So if ESO is a p2p I hope for the option to purchase a lifetime subscription at a reasonable price

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