So I was looking closely at the bonus pack, and I've noted a few things that are great, and that seem poorly fleshed out in contrast to the rest of players, which honestly i'd rather downgrade my purchase than lose a third of the fanbase (over exaggeration but many people are complaining and saying they wont buy the game)

1.) The pets, These are great! Exactly the type of thing that on its own has sold collector packs before.

2.) the treasure chests, These are pretty iffy, by definition i'm buying in game weapons and armor of high quality or value, for real world money. My suggestion for this is that these items be purely vanity items, some sort of randomized feature of the chest allow it to be a "cash shop lottery" which would have chances to offer a single item out of all of the cash shop items, grand prize being a free month and the worst being a mount or skin.

3.) Imperials... I'm not at all offended by this but many are, my suggestion from a marketing standpoint would be to allow players to unlock this race with a grind

4.) Any-race, Any Faction! I've always been a fan of cross faction betrayal, but i'd argue to limit this to the following: Players who don't pay must go through quest lines to swap faction, and are limited to certain factions per race, such as Dark elves/Bretons joining the Dominion, or Orcs/Redguard joining Ebonheart, Ect. Players who do pay may skip the quest line for the standard race faction swap, and must go on a quest to do non-standard swaps.

5.) The horse! I think that the horse should be level gated and should stack to the speed of your fastest mount. So no mount=no horse speed increase but purely aesthetic mounted movement.

6.) The rings: these are actually a great idea and a terrible idea simultaneously. First off i didn't min when heirloom items were released on Word of Warcraft, but at that point the average player had a high level character to boot. I'd recommend this item be only for a specific friend mentioned upon time of acquisition Until you have reached level cap with a single character, thus making the grind feel less grindy but still making the item seem limited at first.

Other things i'd recommend for the cash shop

Never sell statted items: This is by definition the major greivance that has kept many MMO's from actually growing and becoming financially sustainable. Statted items of any quality with the sole exception of mid-level items with cool looks (As in something designed for a level 20 character) are considered the devil incarnate for a lot of gamers. I'm inclined to agree on that note. When the game gets older experience gain boosts are not too big of a deal, some people just want to rush to cap and play that content.

Sell lots of vanity....stuff:

Special tuxedos, armor dyes, shiny weapon sheaths, Weapon skins, transmogrification... Pets and mounts of all kinds! all for a dollar, or two if you donate to some random charity! (that's the marketing pitch that i've seen work)

Custom emoticons and animations

How about your /salut went from forefinger to brow, to being a chest bump? Or your knockback animation being you sliding your feet in the ground with some earth-scarring particle effects? Maybe you want your Familiar to be a mudcrab? HEY how about a death or /silly animation where you read a book, then jump really high and fall down to your death?

Only thing in the pack I care about is the horse, which is the slowest speed mount anyway.

The pet takes up a slot and we have to share it among alts, and the treasure maps go to only one character anyway. Rings are no good for me, I'm not married and won't be playing with a childhood friend who won't quit the game a month or two after I gave him my only other ring.

So if anything I'd add to the pack and fix the pet so it's a skill like the horse (no bag space, each character has one, and is summoned same way as the horse using its own hotkey).

And also give all characters their own treasure maps (not each being able to have one and individually go explore is very disappointing).

There is no cash shop. There is however a ESO store that sells premium services, such as name changes. You can also buy ESO in the store and items such as coffee mugs, t-shirts, and other such items. But in game items are not sold in the store. When cash shop was first mentioned by ZOS it was at a German convention where ZOS was showing off ESO. Cash Shop was mistranslated by the German and/or misunderstood. He may have thought that the ESO store and a cash shop meant the same thing.

The Imperial horse is the exact same horse you can buy in game, just reskinned. There is no level requirement to owning a horse. Just enough gold to buy one. And who knows, a stable master or two somewhere may even have a Imperial horse or two that he/she found roaming around somewhere and willing to sell it for the right price and task.

There is no cash shop, stop spreading false rumors.

I think it's pretty fair.

These are pre-order bonuses, unrelated to the Imperial Edition.

When people complain about any race any faction it just show's they know nothing of the Lore of TES

This is a video I came across the other night, this guy seems to break things down, around the misunderstandings. It's on Youtube called Imperial edition and preorder misunderstandings, his user id is TESOS.

I'd have posted the transcript but I believe he's Scottish and the transcript is complete [censored]e.

My understanding is that the horses are exceptionally expensive, it's only about the weight of the horse in gold really and being able to ignore that and spend said gold on potent weapons instead

I heard about the cash shop in a blog, so i was misinformed

Again sorry i heard about this in a reviewer blog, he must have just been misinformed

Same deal though, still a premium service...

Sounds good i'll look him up ^.^

If you're perfectly happy to see these games exploit my playstyle for money, forcing me to pay just to get things that should be available in the game itself, then I have no reason to support you when they decide to exploit your playstyle for money.

When it comes to things like this I take an all or nothing stance, they either exploit us all or none of us.

I don't think anything in the Imperial bonus pack is a big deal, except the Imperial race, and I hope players post-launch will be able to gain access to it. Aside from the 5 day early access, there's nothing in it I want.

Imperial race? 100% sure I will never play it.

Any race, any faction? Each alliance has a race in it I'll want to play.

Horse? I guess I'd like to feed it, but I doubt I'll be using it, since I hear it's slow and I prefer exploration on foot.

Mudcrab pet? I will destroy this immediately.

Rings of Mara? I have someone I might be able to use these with, but the exp bonus will be so small I may as well not even bother.

I honestly don't think anything is a majorly big deal, i just think that in contrast to the content of what you have to do it's pretty big.

I'm not sure how it's exploitative, just capitalistic really. There's a difference between play for shiny things and pay to win. Pay for shiny things is just a way for a company to make money for small addons, like statless shirts or skin replacers, pay to win is where you get to skip content and have real edge over other players.

Shinies wont detriment anyone, nor will they help other players to overcome you

The only real world difference is I'm being exploited and you're not. You make up the other difference in your head when it comes time to exploit you. You say there's no detriment to paying for shinies and in doing show a complete lack of empathy for my stance, it is a detriment to me. It's something that hurts me.

But you don't care, so long as you're not the one being exploited.

You've failed to show how you have been exploited, I will never show empathy over someone having grievances with the payment model of a video game that they don't own yet and did not help to create. The fact is that the current common marketing strategy for MMORPGS, even the respectable balanced ones, have a shop that offers in game items and/or content. There is no difference between that and an expansion pack. The difference between the good marketing models and the poor ones are that the good models offer cheap Cosmetic services and expansion packs, putting their money to good use for support of the game and company alongside service to the clientele.... whilst the bad ones offer five dollar "sword of win the game"s and don't expand content or patch bugs.

Furthermore, if my actions have no negative effect on your daily life other than offending your marketing beliefs, then i have done no wrong. We chose to be offended over little things.

Please explain to me how either Zenimax, or myself are supporting your exploitation.

Don't bring up everquest 2 either, because i've seen no indication of pay gates for this game...

Capitalism is exploitive... That's its nature.

I'm a roleplayer, the items you're fine with being paid items are roleplay items. You're a PvPer or an endgame PvEer, the items you're not fine with being paid items are PvP/endgame PvE items.

I've shown you this quite clearly, you have simply chosen to ignore it because you're not the one being affected.

Why should I have to pay for the items that are a part of my playstyle, but you shouldn't? You can bring up "pay to win" but why should I care about that when you're happy with me having to pay for roleplay items?

unrestriced capitalism is nasty business. +1 Luckily we don't have that in North America ^^

Exactly. Capitalism exploits a desire in people for something (to have/be something).

Selling exploits wants. There's no way to argue that selling vanity items only is not specifically exploiting the people who want vanity items (personally I hope they have lots of vanity items we can collect by playing the game rather than needing to pop off to a cash shop and buy our fun/vanity things).

Im going to enjoy the Imperial Version. The armor sets look AWESOME!

Check out the other Topics that show you these on Youtube...

Either way is fine with me as long as it enhances my fun time in the game...