There’s a headline going around that rubs me the wrong way: “The Elder Scrolls Online reaches 13.5 Million Players Lifetime”. This just oozes marketing taglines. I’m never going to stop hearing about how it has 13 million players. Surely, dear consumer, you will have friends who have friends who play this game!
ESO’s concurrent player count doesn’t even come close to 13 million players but with the Elseweyr expansion and Year of the Dragon DLC season freshly arrived Steam Charts quotes about 24,000 players at the time of writing and the game is in the top 50 most played Xbox games per the Microsoft Store ahead of NBA 2K18, Warframe, the Master Chief Collection and Sea of Thieves. That’s not a number to scoff at, and we can’t even guess at how many console players across PS4 and Xbox there must be. There’s also the option to play it via the Bethesda store but we can only imagine that being a tack on top of the Steam player count.
There’s a good chance someone who frequently picks up deals on games has this game somewhere in their library by whim or coincidence: This game is frequently $10 on digital stores (like right now in time for E3) and it’s included with the popular Xbox Game Pass. So you might consider then that the game’s actual profit must come from the addon content, and buyer beware: This game is gunning for your wallet at every turn and often time feels like a mobile-friendly clone of an actual MMORPG in its pop-ups and willingness to make you spend more.
The Elder Scrolls Online offers a hybrid consumer model, letting you buy content piecemeal while still offering the max level cap (here referred to as “Champion Level”) or you can embrace the traditional subscription as ESO Plus to get all of the smaller tidbits of DLC for free and some credits for the cash shop.
Here’s what you get for the base purchase: Your character is tied to the race’s faction (circumvented via DLC), you can play all of main story quest and access the later endgame versions of everything included in the base game (with some zones like Orsinium and Gold Coast being DLC) and you get to participate in the majority of the game’s systems like PVP, Housing and everything related to the player-run economy (with shortcuts to some of them available by getting the optional subscription). Are you seeing a trend here?
You could make some decent fun out of the game if you focus on the areas you can play, and the game offers fully voice-acted questing and tons of skill point lines to whack enemies with so you don’t even need to play your class because you can just run off and learn the entire weapon skill line plus your choice of side content like the Fighter’s Guild or Soul Magic. In fact my favorite time with ESO is when I forget the game is an MMO and play it on my controller with headphones, appreciating the immersion of questing in zones I only get to hear about in the mainline TES series. When you start playing the game as a player-driven, achievement-obsessed MMORPG is where the game doubles down on monetization.
There’s a two-fold monetization catch for the player here: There’s tons of actual gameplay content locked behind the smaller tidbits of DLC. Stealth kills are actually a mechanic locked behind the Gold Coast DLC addon which allows you to go back to Kvatch and undertake some assassin training, which most importantly allows you to Metal Gear all over unsuspecting NPCs to get one hit kills. There are more optional examples of this, like Lycanthropy and Vampirism being offered as potions you can buy in the cash shop as an alternative to going out and finding the rare NPCs or getting the afflictions from someone else.
Some of them are specific to the required-purchase expansions such as jewelcrafting and the illusion-based Psijic Order skill line which debuted in the Summerset expansion. Stat-enhancing potions are easily and frequently acquired in the cash shop’s filler rewards, repair kits of better quality than in-game offerings are useful all the time and basic customization options like changing your hairstyle involve a microtransaction. Speed up that leveling with a scroll if you’d like! You are very frequently reminded that this game wants you to keep your credit card handy.
The other side of the pretty penny to spend on ESO is the myriad of cosmetic offering models. You’ve got a cash shop of set items of varying prices and contents like hairstyles, outfits, pets, mounts, housing (which you can buy unfurnished for in-game currency or exclusively furnished for the cash currency Crowns). In addition to this you can buy seasonal loot crates which offer themed cosmetics and exclusive Crown-based items.
So, what if you want to go the old subscription way? There’s an established contract in the ways of World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV: You pay subscription to play, the servers are kept in working order and cash shop is minimal. This game breaks it. What you get out of ESO Plus is the benefit of unlocking every DLC add-on (excluding major expansions like Summerset) and a monthly allowance of Crowns that you can spend in any way you like. Again, full deal of cash shop items is still in your face for paying players but you get some store credit on a monthly basis.
There are some options you can’t access with being an ESO Plus member as well: Dying your outfits (not the same as armor styles, outfits are cosmetic getups) is the cosmetic perk. Your inventory has a separate crafting bag of unlimited space you can only access as a Plus member. Housing has an additional restriction in that you have a set amount of items you can place, which you can double as a Plus subscriber.
I want to touch on the subject of paying into an MMO for it’s server maintenance. When I play WoW, the servers are pretty much always working and the matchmaking for everything works really well. I find value in how good my quality of life is when I play on North American servers. I find the same value in Final Fantasy XIV because the actual amount of content in that game is staggering and well beyond the purchase of about $40 you get for an expansion. There’s a price I’m willing to pay to be able to log in at any given point and expect the playerbase to be at my fingertips.
This is where your mileage will vary immensely. Elder Scrolls Online has only 2 servers: The North American and European “Megaservers” and they are location in two fixed points for NA and EU regions. I suspect for the majority of players in the mid-west US and center of western Europe this won’t be an issue and might even be a positive. But in my experience as a player in outside of the US but being committed to NA servers and in the many experiences reported by players in Australia or only as far as Canada the game frequently stutters along at 250-300 ms latency and this game is unforgiving in desync issues. This is particularly frustrating in dungeon instances and PVP battlegrounds where the game places heavy emphasis on being able to cancel animations into each other.
The strangest thing about ESO is that on the face of it there’s not that much shenanigans going on: Mostly cosmetic options and the same mount affair that WoW has been selling you since Wrath of the Lich King. Most everything has an F2P alternative. There’s a fair amount of value in the base game, you’re not limited to an obsolete level cap like WoW. But the daedra is in the details here, as you’re frequently reminded that you’re one subscription away from freeing up your inventory or getting those lootboxes the game likes to tell you about every time you log in.
What concerns me most about the state of affairs for ESO is that where Blizzard and Valve are rushing to trim down their monetization options and even Nintendo’s mobile offerings are retracting from certain regions to avoid a single article being written about it, this game very proudly wears the lootcrate on its sleeve and asks you to subscribe to boot. It’s offputting if not a little gross to play around with in the eyes of this writer, and I can’t rip on anyone for wanting to see the breadth of Tamriel for about $10 or as part of your Game Pass but I’d seriously recommend you take a good look at the cash shop when you do log in.
With everything said, this game has hit 13.5 million players lifetime. Let the marketing commence.
This is the start of a weekly column series by me where I talk about things that might fly under the radar. I spend a lot of time trying to gather the facts for our gaming articles and keep them useful, so getting into the meat and bones of something is what I’ll be doing here. Thanks for reading!
