User blog comment:Alduin1996/Draft letter to Zenimax Studios regarding ESO/@comment-7153552-20130907155241

Dear Elder Scrolls Online Team,

Thank you, first of all, for the quick response. It is most appreciated, as I'm sure you have quite a bit of mail coming and going, electronically and otherwise. It is nice to see a company that communicates with it's fan/customer base.

I read the interview when it released along and, but thank you for the refresher. Also I had been keeping up with the news and following the content updates and such ever since the game was announced. We, as a community over at the Elder Scrolls Wikia,  were all very excited about it up until the business model was announced. As I said in my previous communication, I understand the need for steady and guaranteed income. However, I'm not sure that using the classic price on the classic business model is the right choice.

There are people within our community that won't just need one account. Some of our staff members have spouses or significant others that will play, one of them has expressed interest in multiboxing like he used to in World of Warcraft. So for that one he'll need at least three accounts (two for him and one for his spouse). What good would it do him to spend $45 each month, plus the possible cash shop purchases, if he's just starting a new marriage and has all the expenses that go along with that and moving into a new place?

That is just one example. There are countless others where people had wanted to play, but with the overall cost of their playstyles or needs they can no longer afford it. I know the easy answer is to just have them ease into it. Perhaps for the example above, the gentleman could just get one account, then next month another, then down the road get his own second account. That would certainly help with the cost of the initial media, but it wouldn't make the monthly fees any different at the end of the day.

Just to give some perspective, we are currently running a poll on our front page asking users if they still plan on playing ESO now that the subscription model has been announced. The numbers are small and we don't have all the votes in yet, but I can give you rough percentages based on our current numbers. Over a thousand have voted so far:


 * 223 (roughly 17.5%) said "Yes"


 * 155 (roughly 12%) said "No"


 * 147 (roughly 11%) said "If they drop the fee to $5.00"


 * 777 (Roughly 59.5%) said "I'll wait for it to go free-to-play"

I realize this ultimately means nothing in the grand scheme of your player base, but if this small sample (a sample that is still growing) can be trusted even slightly as a representation. . . then you have 18% of your former customer base giving you $15 a month.

Please understand, we here at this TES Wikia wanted to play the game. We had a work-in-progress Wikia Guild that we were going to establish across all three platforms for the expressed purpose of running various content and recording it back here on our site. I'm not foolish enough to think for a second that this community base will make or break your Intellectual Property, but I can vouch for the fact that we represent a large and diverse group of players. We have people on our community from the Real Time Strategy market, the MMO market, the single player RPG market, the First Person Shooter, the Platformer, etc. They all come together under one heading in order to discuss, with great fervor sometimes, The Edler Scrolls. If a large portion of that sample group has no desire to be involved in the game any longer, then what can we say about the rest of the community?

We aren't market analysts, we aren't industry specialists, we're simply concerned players who know what we can afford. We also keep up with the news within our community, and there haven't been an overflow of good comments about this choice. We watched the gameplay at QuakeCon and were excited! We have all signed up for the beta events - some of us more than once. We want to see this game work for whatever personal reasons we have, and because it has one of the richest and fullest stories of any franchise in any genre out there. Also, for some of the Elder Scrolls Community, it's a lifestyle. Currently it's just a lifestyle we'll have to wait for Bethesda to make a chapter six of.

I don't expect you to drop the monthly fee altogether, at this point you couldn't do that and be taken seriously. Let's face it, you've defended the business model too hard. What you haven't defended is the price, though. What good is $15 from 18% of people if you could have $5 from 85% (just to use rough numbers as an example)? Sure a large portion of our poll have said they'll wait for you to go free to play, but a good number of those can still be swayed. If you drop to free to play too early you'll be seen as failing or lying about your income needs. However, if you bring the price down you'll be seen as compromising with two of the largest gaming communities out there, TES and free to players. The reason so many people go to the buy-to-play and free-to-play games is because nobody has given a good alternative to the classic subscription model. You're already trying to break new ground, why not break one more mold and make an affordable monthly fee with great cash shop items? That should make you far more money than sticking to your guns and only getting 18% of the potential profits.

At the end of the day we at the Wikia don't expect things to change overnight, nor do we fully think this letter means much in the grand scheme of things. What we hope, however, is that you will will consider the possibilities and take a look at our concerns. We are acting as representatives to the community at large, we are crying out for those who can't or don't think anyone can. We are speaking for the other 82%, please don't turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the 82% that chooses not speak out directly to you. Instead patroll the forums and the community news articles with their comments, reach out and check out what is being said. We just want you to be made aware, and we hope that it makes a small difference.

Signed in hopefullness,  //  Staff at elderscrolls.wikia.com  //  On behalf of the Community