Just to add to my previous comment as well, I have to wonder how many mixed messages the company is going to be getting on this.

It's obvious that there is a small, but insanely vocal group of individuals who believe that sub based play is and will always be the true way of playing MMOs. You can see it all over (Massively is a bastion of anti-F2P around their comment sections, for instance). It 'gets rid of the rabble' or something like that. So, it makes me wonder how many of these people are going to prop things up as much as they can and throw as much support Zenimax and Bethesda's way as possible for it. Thus, the company will think that there is TONNES of support for this and will feel they're completely validated in their choice, when they're just pandering to a minority.

I can't help but think of Final Fantasy XIV's original release...

How the hell did that ever get past the alpha and beta stage without anyone actually bringing up that there were a lot of problems? Well, apparently, a lot of the people in the beta were fans and wanted to make sure that the company felt like they were doing well and what not. This obviously caused some issues when they released the game and it was outright panned.

Sooo...how many super-vocal pro-sub people are going to give them this idea that subs are most definitely the way to go? It's going to make for some very interesting discussion.

I wouldn't have been playing it much to start with, so I won't be getting it.

Yes! Great decision.

FTP sucks. A subscription model secures a much more dedicated user base for the game, plus it's more fair.

Sub fees make games better, look at games like SWTOR when they go F2P. It makes the games more balanced and allows for more actual content.

That being said.... I don't know if I'll give this game a serious look if it's sub based. Money and time are precious resources.

Because MMO's are vastly bigger than traditional games, and have a continuous stream of content added to them. That $180 would likely give you a awful lot more play time that buying four brand new games.

Every MMO that has gone FTP ends up in the dust bin for me, the exception being EverQuest though I am still playing a SUB for that (it just doesn't require one to play at the lowest level). Inevitably major sections of the game ends up being part of the in game store. So much so that to play what I feel should be the standard base game tends to cost _way_ more than a SUB would. They introduce boring and annoying grindy mechanics that you can speed this one tie _if_ you pay a small fee. It just adds up to a unfun experience.

People like to cite GW2 as a good example of FTP games out there, which manages to get new content out every 2 weeks. Which is good, though I wonder how much of that is really being paid for by the one time purchase of the game vs the in game store. If its the former than expect a _heavy_ push of the store, possibly imposed pay gates etc, when that money dries up. Or they could begin to jam most of the content updates into xpacs.

As for ESO. I'm still not convinced of the games concept to begin with let alone whether it deserves a SUB.

http://www.pcgamesn.com/elderscrolls/blimey-elder-scrolls-online-has-had-over-3-million-beta-sign-ups

I personally wish the game was Buy-to-Play (e.g., Guild Wars), but as an Elder Scrolls fan, I'll probably subscribe for a month to try out the content. I'm not a big MMO gamer, so I have no desire subscribe for any longer than that.

Hahaha fuck you Bethesda and zenimax

 well said Pullus. This is basically why I cringe at the thought of subscription fees for games. I juggled plenty of games every year and sometimes I just don't play some for months, especially MMOs. I would basically be pissing away money everytime I'm not playing this game and I would be wasting away time for my studies when I play it for long periods of time...Something like that.

I'm not super opposed to subscriptions, hell, I still have my runescape membership up for a year in a row now. However, $15 a month is really steep for me.