Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
BOLD Predictions!
Thubub
Member UncommonPosts: 62
Since the servers are down I will start off with some BOLD predictions about the game's future. In a former life I was Nostradamus, so use caution when you try convince everyone that I am wrong.
1. This game will go free to play....... NEVER!!!!
That's right, I said it. It is NEEEEVER going free to play. It currently has a ginormous subscriber base (1-2 million at least) and the game wont lose enough of that subscriber base to warrant the free to play move. Also, going free to play will devalue the brand long term. So all you fence sitters waiting for that fateful day when the game no longer costs a monthly fee can move along. It will never happen.
2. ZeniMax/Bethesda will get their act together and deliver on providing a smooth, glich-free, stable server with relatively few bugs left by the end of April BEFORE they try to add more content and completely bork the server!!!
I am SUPREEEMELY confident that this will happen. Well, maybe not supremely. I am sublimely confident this will happen. Perhaps I am just subliminally confident about this. Ok, maybe it is just hope, but I am predicting it!
3. Player and guild housing will be added by the end of the year!
Why wouldn't they do it, right?
I will limit myself to only those three predictions at the moment. Channeling my inner Nostradamus is a bit taxing.
Comments
No argument from me, this is spot on.
When I said i had "time", i meant virtual time, i got no RL "time" for you.
The jury is still out on this game for me. I am enjoying it right now but I still don't see the hook. Looking at games that have really grown over the past 10 years you have games like WoW with steep gear grinds which ESO doesn't have and your have PVP games like EVE and LoL that are very different but both require significant time investment to really excel at which ESO doesn't seem to have. ESO is going to have to give players a reason to stick around for more than 2-3 months and I still just am not seeing it.
I see going two months without new content assuming the end of May for the first big content patch as a long time to wait and a problem rather than a advantage. People are going to burn though what's there pretty quickly at which point they are going to start asking "what's in it for me to continue to sub?". New content is the answer to that question but if it's only coming every 2-3 months why not just let your sub expire and renew for patches?
Player/Guild housing would be cool but guild size limits 10 times what they currently are would go a long way to helping the lack of AH woes as well.
free to play in 6 months
damn, I wish I could take this bet, I doubt if you are trustworthy to pay up tho.
When I said i had "time", i meant virtual time, i got no RL "time" for you.
If I had a dollar for every subscriber an MMO lost in the first month or two I would be a rich man. It isn't how you start....it is how you finish that first few months of your existence.
The pvp seems to be the only thing keeping people interested in this long term, otherwise it might as well be a single player game. I truly think this game would have been better served being released as a single player/co-op game with Cyrodil being a multiplayer pvp area. Not feeling like it is worth a sub at this point, I doubt my opinion is rare.
I will give it a year.
1- Correct, most likely not. Not unless there is no alternative.
2- Thats a gimmie in improving the game and servers stability. End of April might be pushing it though. Three to four months seems about average. With it getting better optimized the further it gets.
3- No, I have to disagree. Maybe some kind of guild housing before its a year old, maybe.
"I understand that if I hear any more words come pouring out of your **** mouth, Ill have to eat every fucking chicken in this room."
My prediction is... 10 million subs by the end of the year!!!
2-3 million on PC with 1+ million migration to the game from other games over the year.
3-4 million when console version comes with 5 million joining the fun throughout the year.
True story. Warhammer Online lost tons of subs the first month due to instability and bugs, it never recovered despite becoming a great game for the next year or so before committing suicide via mega-rat-patch.
"You have a very suspicious mind. In my experience only dishonest people think this way" - Daario Naharis
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
Why wouldn't they do it, right?'
I hope they do. However, I'd like to see some housing that has a purpose, unlike the current trend in MMO's. In DAoC, beyond storing and displaying the spoils of war, your house—or guild house—was the player to player vendor location. This caused traffic to your house and built interest in other items. Those items could be the items for sale in the store or the vast array of trophies that you have amassed in your journeys. I am not sure how they could do this in ESO with the current model of Guild Stores. I'd just like to see some reason for other people to venture to your house. I mean, if I can't show my shit off, what use is it? LOL!
This is a very key factor , sadly it's a bad one and a good one. If the tech works, best idea ever, if not worse idea ever for the reasons you describe.
"The monster created isn't by the company that makes the game, it's by the fans that make it something it never was"
Not bad. I make Abe Lincoln look like Barack Obama tho.
When I said i had "time", i meant virtual time, i got no RL "time" for you.
The little comment of Matt Firor saying that some fan was a pack rat for asking for more inventory tells me they probably think the same about housing. Keep at Zenimax and bend them to your will, shout the housing from the rooftops around the world. Show them how much people want housing, and they will do it!
I hope you are right, I don't think there will be player housing anytime soon (not in a meaningful way at least).
The major bugs are really kicking the hell out of this game. Several friends and quite a few guildies are putting it in the "check it out again in 6 months" pile once the free month is up.
Hell that's everybody!
Why do you think there are even a million playing at current?
The server instability stateside has nothing to do with sudden population explosions but server/coding issues on the back-end that were rearing their head during beta. The slower market for the game (US) has been having issues that the faster market (EU) hasn't experienced. The US market isn't magically much larger all of a sudden than the EU market.
Yeah, except it does. You can tell that it does by the fact that SWTOR is introducing player housing in their next expansion.
Sigh... the poor hero engine already has enough issues without people making up limitations that don't even exist...
^^ That
When I said i had "time", i meant virtual time, i got no RL "time" for you.
My estimations:
1.5-2m subs right now
1-1.5m after free month
600-800k after 6 months
WoD release. We will see what happens then.
I don't care about consoles but anyway don't count much on them. Console ppl are not used to p2p. It also requires last gen consoles making customer pool even smaller. Last but not least, many console owners owns a pc too, they wont buy the game 2 times.
So imo, if they can hold up to 500k subs then it will stay as p2p. If not...then we will see
I believe the OP is expressing whats known as Wishful Thinking. I also wish it would have that level of success...but then you know.. reality calls.
Reality is saying that the chances of such long term success are slim. The real challenge will be to see if the numbers drop after the usual 2-4 month mark, if the number begins to drop. The pattern suggests that it keeps dropping. There may not be enough in the game to keep players interested in the long term. Dont forget, this is an elders scrolls spinoff, not the traditional elder scrolls game we know all to well.
I will enjoy this game while it lasts, but being rational here, its not really better off than all the others that tried and lost their sub counts after a few months. WoW was a freak of nature, solid, timed right, but its hard to repeat that after the cat (or in this case, kajit) has been let out of the bag.
Wishful thinking does not a Bold prediction make.
F2P within the first year.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!