Hello glorious fellow TES fans!


There's a lot of comparison to "World of Whatcraft" on this forum, about things lacking or missing in the game so far.
I'll make a few short descriptions of concepts in other MMORPG games, that while these games haven't been of Whatcrafts size, both have 10+ years of runtime.


Both of these games have similar unique features, which I believe are fundamental to why they've survived for such a long time.


Four of those are 1) Death Penalty 2) PvP Drawbacks 3) F2P options. 4) Economic Need


1)
The Death Penalty


In Game #1, you lose a % of your total accumulated experience, skills, magic level and so on. Which can be lowered by the purchase of divine blessings.
You also run a 100% chance of dropping containers (Bags, backpacks) and a 10% drop chance on each of your equipment pieces. Which can be prevented with the purchase amulets.

In Game #2, your "mount" may be entirely destroyed, which takes up to months to "breed" beforehand and is worth hundreds of millions of "gold".
Furthermore, crippled as you are after your "mount" has been destroyed, in the case of PvP, players may destroy the pathetic "tricycle" on which your life depends, destroying your body.
Luckily you may clone yourself beforehand, preserving your character and it's trained skills. Though the purchase of clones is quite expensive, and you'll have to purchase a new backup clone each time.


2)
PvP Drawbacks (+ extra)


In both of these games, while PvP is an extremely popular and vital part of the game, it's heavily punished. Most often by death.
Both games runs on an open-world PvP system, with "safe" areas.

In both games, you receive and "outlaw status" after attacking another player "unjustifiably".
In both of the games, any player may attack a player with "outlaw status" without repercussions.
As of a fact, it's very popular to hunt down and kill players, which naturally makes players a bit hesitant to turn to PK (player killing).

However, the death loss, combined with the ability to open-world kill players has resulted in the same thing in both games.
Huge Political Wars.

The ability to "Get back" at players whom have wronged you greatly, is something rather unique to these two games.
But with the great risks of participating in these wars, with each player in each "guild" fearing for his own individual life, future and economy

and with the risk of making an unfair or unjustified declaration of war and ending up
having the very large or sometimes even the entire community siding with your enemies. (Which makes it hard to win, due to the sheer amount of enemies and difficulties of procuring necessary supplies)

These wars are therefore most often only fought between the two biggest guilds or coalitions of guilds as a very last resort.
When occurring these wars are fought in both games for periods of anywhere between days or in the extremest cases for half a decade.

And the rest of the community, especially the lower leveled portion, follows every battle and frag with utmost excitement.



TL;DR The ability to svcker punch that guy who has been griefing you for days or weeks is just too awesome.

3)
F2P Option!

These days, it's very popular to >not pay for games<.
Everyone wants to play, while some (read most) aren't as excited to pay.


The standard P2P scheme goes as following:

You pay $$ for 30 days of Gametime.
After 30 days gametime runs out > cannot play <
You pay more $$ for another 30 days of Gametime.


It's a renewable source, it's an easy system, customers stays dependent on Gametime.
In a sense it's food. It's a no-brainer, you need food to survive, you need Gametime to play.



The popular F2P scheme however goes as following:

You may chose to pay $$ in special shops for various items.

But why?
Well, these items usually have something that makes them special, more often than not they are not obtainable without paying $$.
Common things in MMO are either Weapons and Armor that are far superior to weapons acquireable by normal play,
or cosmetics, outfits, and so on following the latest trends. Gangnam Style T-Shirts for your Khajit and Mr T chains for your Redguard.

However, eventually everyone has ImbaItem#1 and Justin Bieber shirts, so they why buy another shirt?
This forces developers to spend a lot of time and resources on continuing to come up with new tempting offers.




But! These two other games have come up with a quite ingenious F2P method.
Before explaining the idea, I'll explain why it works first.

In both games, the most valuable thing is, money.
In both games, primarily players whom have a decent economy in real life, a burning passion for the game, but less time to play due to work
takes advantage of the feature to help them get a decent economy, so they can focus their little spare time on raiding or similar they enjoy rather than menial tasks.
This also more often than not results in a lot of these players actually playing at all.


So what is this awesome solution?

Gametime is purchaseable online through a safe system, and acquired as an item in-game. Which is guaranteed to be safe to trade with other players.


Short explanation:

Player A goes on Webpage, buys "Gametime Item - 30 Days"
Item appears in Player A's backpack ingame.

Player B has poor economy in real-life and cannot afford paying gametime monthly.
However he saved up money too buy the game and received 30 days of playtime along with it.
He spent a lot of time and worked really hard to save up money in the game, why?
Because Player B knows that Player A is selling a "Gametime Item - 30 Days".
Which allows him to continue to play the game he loves for another 30 days.



Oh, and also, I know some of you thought "But Player A gets an unfair advantage! And Economy will get screwed and all this and that."
So just "Hold!" for a second.


I'll quickly explain how this does NOT effect the overall economy and gameplay.

A) But player A gets extra money!! That's unfair!
The money has not magically appeared in the game, it has only switched hands, Player B could've technically just given Player A the same amount of money whether or not the item existed.

B ) But the item "Gametime Item - 30 Days" is added to the game!!
This item itself has no advantangenous effects, it doesn't make your avatar stronger in anyway. And gametime whether or not it's used in-game or added by writing a code on a webpage is "added to the game."

C) But eventually there will be over 9000 "Gametime Item - 30 Days" if people keep buying and trading it ingame!
You obviously forgot 'bout the fact that the item is used up. The gametime expires, runs out, dissapears. It has to be continually rebought, reacquired, replenished.





4) Economic Need

In both of these games, you need a lot of money. Unlike other games, where you have millions of hundreds of tens of gold, in these games gold is constantly used for literally everything.
Bribe this, pay for that, travel here, pay for that.

With the need of things such as ammunition (Trust me, Ammo is extremely costly in the long run despite costing near the lowest amount of gold) Potions, travel fees, customs fees, taxes.
Your money spending is quite high from just living.


However, the biggest money thieves in both games despite being entirely different games theme wise, is Death and War.

In Game#2, your pony is destroyed, at that point you have to buy or build a new shop, both options are very costly. And you need to buy a new backup clone. Since this game is ridiculous, you probably lost $2000 if you were an elite player. Though as this is incomprehensible for most of us, imagine that somebody took your sweet roll.


In Game#1, your character weakens with death, all of the money you invested into acquiring the level(s) you just lost has completely gone to waste.
AND you need to buy new supplies from production players to regain the level you just lost.

But hey, that's not so bad! Cause in Game #1 if you were high level, you were probably blessed by priests to reduce deathloss. However this comes with a price.
And you probably had an deathdrop proteciting amulet, which was destroyed upon death, so you need a new one. All together these two things alone are worth about 120 days of gametime~ each death, not to bad.

Dying obviously svck. With previous portion of text about PvP, you see how players prefer to NOT PvP unless absolutely necessary now, don't you?

Oh, and you guys thought it was tough to repair armor for money that you makes in 10-20 minutes.




Also as these things are deeply connected with each other. War participants selling gametime for war funds during times of war. Low levels selling gametime to rich highlevels for a budget boost during times of peace.


And also, the difficulty of both games are regarded as quite high, even the most menial of tasks, because regardless, dying svcks. You wanna avoid it at all costs.
And in both games, FRIENDS and allies are possibly the only thing more valuable than money. And both games also features a system where 90% of your necessary supplies are produced by players and traded for money.
Less OP item looting, more crafting? Trading for the little gold looted instead, economy? Yeah?


(Oh, just worth mentioning. Both games are two of the few if not the only where there is an "outlaw region" where players of all factions may unite and form guilds. And you can acquire private homes, guild halls etc.)


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Now, you either read this as an incomprehensible wall of text. Hope you enjoyed the read.
Or you read about these scenarios, and started thinking, hey? How could these elements be implemented in ESO to make it a better, longer lasting game that we'll enjoy in 10 years.
I'm not coming with my own suggestions, I'm just trying to provide alternative information to encourage new innovative ideas. I thought of these things, I came up with ideas for change that I'd love.
I rather present the thought process, and if same ideas are reached, then maybe it was a good idea, if not, then maybe it was just a foolish dream. I'm no master level game developer.


Maybe it's just me, but I grew up with Morrowind, converting to Oblivion and then Skyrim. I like the bottom-of-the-sea deep roleplay elements. I don't want this to be a casual 3-10 months game.
I'm looking forward to the next (if any) beta, and the release.

And I won't be a Templar, Nightblade, Dragonknight or Sorcerer. I'll be only a blacksmith, nothing else, so if you're anywhere in the borders of the Daggerfall Covenant, let me know if you need a new sword, axe or helmet.


Thanks for the beta invite! Thoroughly enjoyed it.
See you in Tamriel.