The Elder Scrolls Online has gotten a lot of attention from gamers and the media as for the first time; the series is opening up the normally single player world to the MMO crowd. This can also be seen as the other RPG giant that could finally pose a legitimate competitor to World of Warcraft. And like WOW, ESO will have a monthly subscription rate.
It’s a risky move and one that many feel is foolhardy and leads me to ask the following question: Can the subscription model be revived?
The MMO Upheaval:
The MMO genre has gone through some major revisions both from WOW’s dominance and the rise of F2P games. The subscription model of paying a set amount for each month of access has become a major stigma against a game as opposed to being the norm.
One part is that the market has moved on from the model as many games are providing content for the low price of free. Granted a F2P game may not have the hours of content that something like WOW or Everquest had, but they are still something that can be played whenever someone wants without requiring one cent.
The consumers have responded favorably as well while decrying any subscription model. Games like Star Trek Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic, The Secret World and so on had a tough time securing a fan base with their original subscription model. As many gamers know that the market has changed and will simply wait for the inevitable F2P shift.
Another major problem is that the big advantage of subscription model games: That they can be continuously updated with new content has yet to succeed. DC Universe Online promised expansion level of content per month and could only get one month out before failing to keep up with demand.
The worlds of the Elder Scrolls games have always been massive experiences and is why the transition to MMO seems like such a good fit.
Meanwhile Guild Wars 2 not only succeeded without a subscription model but flourish by keeping the onetime cost and reserving major expansions for additional cost.
The developers were still getting paid for developing new content, just not as much as with a subscription model.
That brings us back to Bethesda and whether or not ESO will work with a subscription model. As we’ve talked about, the MMO market has changed and moved away from it in favor of F2P or expansion related content. But in my opinion it’s going to come down to the actual scope of ESO’s content.
Blizzard has managed to be the only MMO on the market that can still get away with subscriptions on top of expansion pack releases. And that’s because of the depth and the amount of content the game has compared to other MMOs. Now if Bethesda has as much or even more content and things to do in ESO compared to WOW, they may be able to take some fans away from Blizzard.
What I find funny is that while other MMOs struggle to promise continued content with subscription models, Blizzard has managed to avoid that problem. That may be where ESO can find an advantage or fail miserably. If they can actually get out game changing content every month, a task that not even Blizzard has managed to do, they may be able to get the subscription model to work.
However there is a major risk there for them. ESO is being developed around having that subscription model to pay off the game, meaning that a lot of money is being put in to ESO’s development. There is a rumor going around that its costing 200 million dollars to develop ESO. As a comparison, WOW supposedly cost less than 100 million dollars to be developed, (Not counting continued support and expansion development.)
The real test of ESO is going to be the monthly support, as that’s going to make or break the game for many MMO fans.
Now that definitely sounds like a lot of money for one game and even with subscriptions and the initial retail cost, it’s still going to require a lot of purchases for them to break even.
Even if the game sells well there is also the cost of maintaining the servers and the promised continued development to factor in.
And that takes us back to our original question: Can Bethesda revive the subscription model? Personally I think they’re betting a whole lot on not only ESO being a success, but a grand one. However, we’ve talked about for years now what game will be” The WOW killer” and after the worlds of Star Wars, Star Trek and DC failing, Bethesda with The Elder Scrolls has the best shot of earning that title.
With a current release date for April, we won’t have to wait long to see if Bethesda will score a hit, or be one the biggest busts in the MMO market since The Old Republic and Final Fantasy 14.
