User blog comment:D0S1981/A Single player Elder Scrolls Online/@comment-5469467-20150109082954

This idea honestly doesn't sit well with me, for some reason. Having a singleplayer instance in an MMO doesn't make it any less of an MMO in terms of architecture, even if the instance encompasses the entire gameplay experience. It's more or less defeating the purpose of making an MMO in the first place, actually. And how's the pricing going to work? Would it still be a subscription, even though you're not playing with anyone else? It'd be unfair for the singleplayer if it was (or at least interpreted that way), and unfair to the multiplayer crowd if it wasn't. Of course, this is assuming the game can actually handle such a transition.

But I think the big no-no is the justification. "You'd make more money if you shoehorned this in" is a really poor excuse. You're basically going against your own game's design philosophy just to bring in more people and their money. I don't think that's the sort of behaviour you'd want to see from Bethesda or Zenimax.