Every expense I have costs more now than it did 10 years ago because of inflation. The fact that premium MMO subscriptions haven't gone up in the same time is great. No one says, "the economy is bad so cars, gas, cable, food, whatever should cost less than it did a decade ago when the economy was stronger."

it is mostly (just do not take me seriously - I'm not an expert) because technological progress - doing the same costs much less, until you try something new (like megaserver) or give much more content (like ESO).

The price of subs have not kept up with inflation. Try and find that in a Wal-Mart. Also $15 per month amounts to $0.50 per day (30 day month). $0.50 for upto 24 hrs of game play, not a bad deal. That amounts to $0.02 per hour. What else can you spend $0.02 on and get an hour of entertainment? Nothing. Try and go on a date for an hour and spend no more than the $0.02. You will have a long lonely life.

Most major MMO's start out as P2P, though most cant keep players and resort to F2P. It's a lie that pay to play is dead.

This just seems to backwards to me :/ If you really like a game, you should WANT it to have a sub-fee. Why wouldn't you want more of a great thing? I don't understand how console gamers buy DLC and new games every other week and then think a sub-fee is a bad thing.

I SUPPORT THIS!

I made quite the flaming post the other day related to the complaining of the subscriptions, (which ended with my suspenion for 24h) but beside that, I can understand why the thought of paying for Xboxlive or PSN AND TESO is kinda lame, hince why I have chosen to play on PC, among other reasons such as modding. But the subscription to TESO ensures constant everchanging new content being presented to the player base in a timely manner, as well as rewards Bethes and Zeni and there devs for the hard work they put into the content. I'm all about paying $15 a month for better quality, while there is plenty of free games out there to play that dont require subscriptions, I doubt many of them have the same quality of lore, content, depth, graphics, and player base as those that require monthly subscriptions. And of course there is always the dreadful pay to win aspect, which is how those free games make money to offset the non subscription.

Personaly I hate the idea of paying for xbox or psn for the sole purpose of paying for TESO to play TESO, but you pay for PSN and xbox live for the content they give, not nessecarily TESO. its the same reason why I hate paying for Xbox simply for Netflix.. which I pay for alone. but thats how technology and marketing works.

(Sorry about spelling and grammer, my keyboard doesnt light up and its dark brotherhood dark here, we need spell check >.< )

No, that's not right. We have to pay 15$ a month, it's MONTHLY subscription, not daily. Nobody can pay 0.50 for one day. We have to pay 15$ for a month, no matter if you play 3 hours per day, or 1 hour per 2 days.

To buy NASA supercomputer for 20 years you have to pay 0.50$ per day. Why not buy one?

That's not what he said. The average price of the sub is $0.50 a day. While you still have to pay the $15 the average cost per day is $0.50 and the average cost per hour of gameplay is $0.02. He is correct about the averages but you are correct that you still have to pay the lump sum to cover the month. The point he is trying to make is to the people who are complaining about the sub fee, he is showing you how small a fee it is when you break it down per day and per hour. As far as I heard the people playing on PS4 do not have to pay for PSN to play ESO. Thought that has already come out in an interview somewhere. However, the Xbox people are getting screwed as they still have to pay for the game and the sub to Xbox live.

And why would i need a NASA computer anyway?

It doenst run TESO better than my i5.

For this year I have very limited time and I'll be lucky to play for 1 hour a day and I was almost not going to buy this game because of that and the fact it has a sub. I'm not getting much value for money. But in the hope that next year I will have more time and that the sub will be as promised by Bethesda (i.e. "lot's of DLC type content every month because a sub allows us to do this without limits" etc.), then I will gladly pay the sub along with having paid upfront for the Digital Collectors Edition.

Hopefully you wont let me down, Bethesda. I gave up going to MotoGP at Silverstone, Farnborough Airshow and British Superbikes tickets to play this game in 2014. It was either tickets for those three events or this game. I have a limited budget.

where did I say you didnt have to pay the $15. In fact I even said so, re-read my post. What I did do was to break it down to what it comes out to both for daily and hourly costs. Not reading and comprehinding what is said, is what leads to misinformation.

Why is this continually an issue? It is an MMO. All AAA MMO's outside of Guild Wars 2 in recent years have started with a Sub payment model. This isn't anything new. As for the consoles? This is new territory and will play out how it plays out. This whole '' I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO PAY FOR [censored] AFTER BUYING THE GAME!'' non sense needs to stahp. PC gamers have been doing this for years. Console players who play online have been doing this for years as well through PSN or Xbox Live.

If paying a subscription fee for an MMO is beyond you, then just shut up, were tired of hearing about it. Everyone complaining about this acts as if they are ''entitled'' to this or that, you are not entitled to anything other than waiting for the next ES title if you CHOOSE to pass on this one.

This needs to be stickied at the top of the forum, please, so everyone who comes here has to read it.

Subs keep people that do not love the game away, keeps gold farmers away, keeps annoying children away. The first reason alone should justify it. I think the problem here is the game not have a single player mode with an optional online mode, but that's how MMOs are, you pay for a persistent world, competition and cooperation.

LOL. Sorry, I'm just sick of hearing about how ''I want this, and I wont be getting X until this happens...'' Most of these folks complaining will be complaining still once they are in game... meaning, they will get it anyway and more than likely wind up spending money in the shop like most people.... WOW made over 250 Million last year in the shop ALONE. There is like what, 12 items available in it? If anyone things an MMO or other online console game isn't going to have one now days, is plain wrong. Hell, people on consoles and PC are even paying for downloadable content now days, how is this any different??

Hmm I wonder why they lock them? I suspect most of them are flammatory in nature. I only meant to discuss the subscription in light of the article I posted. I think the author of that article brings up a lot of good points about MMO subscriptions in general.

I think you misunderstood me. I think Word of Warcraft is a good MMO, but I'm not it's spokesperson. I was just saying that if I have to pay the same for both, I'd probably go with the one that I know and that is so well established. Maybe TESO IS the superior game. We will see how it pans out on release.

This is demonstrative of the mindset that is "beyond me". I'm not saying a subscription is bad. I suspect you never bothered to read the article I posted, which is fine, but nothing you've written supports subscription based models for MMOs or really elevates itself above whining.

Downloadable content is a one time purchase for an item that you then own. Subscriptions are just payments to use a service. I think that difference is self-evident. This thread is not based around complaining either, so your comments are baseless and not pertinent to anything I've written. If you want to vent, that's fine, but it annoys me when people try to take a thread that is conversational and make it their personal soapbox.

It isn't any different. Day 1 on disk DLC got outrage, then apathy, and is now common.

This is a continuation. It will create outrage, then apathy, then become common.

Some people are unhappy with it in this case as you are paying a subscription as well as the game price tag.

I'm unhappy largely because of day 1 on disk DLC, it being content you actually have regardless of version purchased (it'll be on all the discs as they are printed), it was developed with the same finances and budget as the base game. You aren't actually buying anything, you are merely paying to unlock it, hence being charged twice for the content (once for the content of the game and again to access the content of the game). Did it suprise me? Not really, but then it doesn't have to suprise to annoy. This has been on the horizon since the birth of the F2P model, it was merely time until parts of the game were sold off piecemeal along with a subscription.

I agree not everyone cares, some are happy to spend their money and thats their choice and if they believe it's acceptable then good for them. However some seem to believe that because it's fine for them then it should be fine for all.

Do I think my comments on a forum will accomplish anything? No, that would be niave. Am I free to make them? Yes, until the owners of the site tell me stop, just as you are free to voice your opinions and not read those of others.

Before someone mentions post launch DLC, or expansion packs, they require additional developer time, not included in the original games budget, and I have no problem paying for their hard work, I just don't like being double dipped.

Also when you come back there will be tons of updates that came out while you were gone, that you get for free. When people complain about the sub fee they are acting like once you buy the game you are forced to pay the fee forever. It's an optional price for people who want future updates. If you don't want those updates, stop after a month of play like you would for most games.

In before it turns into a P2P, P2W, F2P, and B2P disaster--and the eventual lock

Well said

I have never seen a subscription fee keep gold farmers away. If the game looks like it will be popular, or is popular, there WILL be goldsellers. Subscription or not.

Annoying children are usually actually annoying advlts, either way again subscription isn't a barrier for such, as EVERY subscription game has shown.

It keeps MOST of them away. And yes it works, provided they ban gold farmers often enough.

Subscription based MMO's at least have a chance to be good games.

F2P and B2P MMO's so far have all been really terrible.

The reason why the recent P2P MMO's have "failed" is not because of the payment model.

They were just terrible games that should have never been P2P MMO's in the first place.

This is all very interesting (not really, since we've been over all of it thousands of times already), but the article wasn't about pay to play vs free to play. It was about the practice of first charging to "buy" the game, then also charging monthly for access. I put quotation marks around buy because the truth is, when you buy something, the implication is that it's yours, to do with as you see fit.

The author pointed out that while there are plenty of things out there with monthly subscriptions, such as Netflix, XM Radio, and so on, none of them asks you to pay for the client. You only need pay the monthly subscription. This is kind of what differentiates between what is a product, and what is a service.

I have to say, I agree with him in this. Why is it that only in MMOs do we see this pattern of trying to "double-dip" as it were, and treat your game as both a product and a service? The answer of course, is that gamers are really not the brightest of consumers, and game producers are smart to get all they can from us, and rightfully so. I'm certainly not mad at the producers of MMOs for being capitalists. I'm mad at us gamers (myself included) for being dupes when it comes to intelligent consumption.

Hopefully, one day an MMO producer will give the subscription model a true go: i.e., download the game client for free, pay a monthly sub to access the game. NCSoft tried a kind of P2P-F2P hybrid with the buy to play model, and it worked pretty well, but I'd like to see a company try the opposite- free to download, but pay to play. I think it would be interesting to see how it does.

Of course, the main disclaimer on that: the quality of the game play will FAR out-weigh the pay model, as it always does, for any game.