According to Phil Spencer in a Pre-E3 podcast,

http://majornelson.com/cast/2014/06/08/phil-spencer-on-the-eve-of-e3-2014/?linkId=8454790

"Games that blend singleplayer and multiplayer elements on Xbox will not require Xbox Live gold to play."  

He mentioned Destiny as an example of this as Destiny has singleplayer and multiplayer merged together in one big always online shared world shooter.  Destiny will have a singleplayer campaign as well as competitive multiplayer in the game, but they are all built into a always online world just like in a MMO, and so as such, Destiny will not require Xbox Live Gold to play.

According to Phil, this is one of ther recent policy changes that they made along with removing the XB Live paywall, and all that good stuff.

I personally think that this is a great move by microsoft, and hope they expand on this by alowing non gold subscribers to play select F2P games, and MMO ports such as ESO.

Discuss!!

in phil we trust

That's actually great to hear and it would be nice if Sony did this as well since you need psplus to play online.

Sounds like good news.

Great move if true. Now other games please follow suit.

He shouldn't have said this. Now everyone is going to hold him to it.

Desperate times...

(Your username here)

OT: Great to hear! Phil doing some meaningful changes

Why does Elder Scrolls Online require Gold?

We dont know if it does anymore since the Gold change was made after the Elder Scrolls Online thing.  But if it does then I assume it's because it's a different type of game. Im sure Destiny's multiplayer requires Gold but the single-player doesn't. An MMO might be complicated since it's all multiplayer with no other option.