I've never played an MMORPG before, so I'm not sure how the subscription model tends to work, so any feedback would be welcome. Specifically, I'm looking for thoughts on how suspending and restarting an MMO subscription tends to work, and whether Zenimax has put out any details on how it'll be handled in ESO.

I have to imagine it's a given you can suspend your your account for a while if you don't plan on playing for a month or two, then when you have more free time again, reactivate that same account and regain access to the characters you've spent countless hours building up. I imagine the PVP campaign you were associated with originally would be reset, but what about other character progress? Or guild membership? Is a levelling penalty likely to be implemented or is it more likely that it'll simply be as though you never left and you'll pick up your progress exactly where you left off.

I'm planning to sink many months / years into ESO, but I know my free time will get monopolized by other games / family / work from time to time, so I'm hoping the process for suspending and resuming your subscription will be made as seamless as possible.

There are no penalties for cancelling a subscription. Although, your guild may kick you out if you are inactive for a long period of time. And yes, you can pick up exactly where you left off.

In most MMO's, when you pay a months subscription, it will last exactly exactly one month from the day you paid/activated the account, you will more than likely be able to 'freeze' your account at any time, this still enables you to continue playing until the end of that month you paid for, after that you can't until you have re-subbed.

You'll still have the same characters, same items, same guild (unless they decided to remove you for whatever reason, if you mean NPC guild then you don't have to worry about that).

Not sure about the Cyrodiil campaign though, you are assigned to a campaign when you first enter Cyrodiil, so after a while of being inactive you might be reset there, not 100%.

It's a month-by-month basis. You usually will play for a month at a time (unless you elect to pay for more, of course), and at the end of the 30 days you can either choose to re-sub or un-sub, in which case you won't be able to access your account in-game but will retain all the progress you've made with your character.

Honestly, I've never played an MMO. If you say online, I think Halo 4 or Battlefield. My two other favorite games. If a TES game was online, I imagine like a team of 6 to 8 players fighting, dying, re spawn time. Lone wolf, free for all etc.

if it's going to be as "busy" as I'm thinking.. Then it might take 24 hours for a re-sub or un-sub to go through... BUT with a game this hyped up (appropriately), they should have ample server resources dedicated to the billing systems.

As for payment plans, etc.. They haven't released that yet and they're not a topic for discussion on this forum. For reference just go to Blizzard's site and look up what sort of payment plans they have available, it's likely comparable to that. Possibly, not actually.

The only thing being un-sub'd could do to your characters is likely a un-naming. be un-subscribed long enough for your character names to go on the "inactive" list, where they're taken if someone actively playing wants it. Again we have no information on any of this, it's just speculation.. I'm going from my experiences when I played City of Heroes

yeah. or the mods will swoop in.

I dont understand this subscription thing either. Is it like xbox live or what? this is more confusing than taking calculus.

it is simple, every month you pay $15 to the company, sometimes it can do it automatically if you set it up that way. No sub = no gaming for you at all

Usually there are multi-month discounts and/or bundles as well. For example, many games have 3 months for $30, and so you pay $30 and you have now 3 months subbed to the game, and once the time is up you can do it again.

the first time its free

no, well, not really. Depends. there is no "free" month in a P2P MMO except for some games have a free trial. in this case you first have to buy ESO, which is probably $60, and that comes with 1 month, after that you have to keep paying whatever payment option you select, of which the only one known is 1 month = $15.

After you pay $60 for the game, yes. The first month is included.

After that, the cost is $15 a month. They did say there would be discounts, so chances are good subbing for more than one month will cost less. They haven't officially announced the payment plans yet.

What you might want to do is start out with a F2P MMORPG before ESO comes out to get introduced to the basics of an MMORPG.

Here are a few F2P MMORPGs you might want to consider before jumping into ESO (you have like 3 months):

Path of Exile

Runescape

Star Wars: The Old Republic

World of Warcraft (it's easy to find a trial version up to level 14 I believe)

All of these are valid, popular games. I myself have played them all and have been playing Runescape for almost 10 years (this March). It's an easy game to get into and isn't extremely complicated (at least at the start).

Most MMORPGs have a steep learning curve and can be very intimidating and overwhelming, familiarize yourself with the genre first.

DCUO is also a good game AND has somewhat similar gameplay to ESO.