The Elder Scrolls Online

[Miasma]

This is one of those scenarios that desperately needs informal anecdotal analysis, alongside queries to guilds and any form of player census that can be managed.

Because, knowing that Paelos has only a remotely nonzero possibility of being wrong about the box sales pump&dump explanation, zenimax is going to be extremely cagey or possibly completely opaque in terms of providing server population numbers and subscription numbers.

Anecdotal evidence could come from how many instances are up since it's a megaserver.  Naturally on launch day there were so many instances of the newbie areas that you could log in/out ten times and be in a different one each time.  Only way to tell really is by seeing if the same people are around when you log back in.  I haven't noticed even a second instance of a zone since the level 43 area.  I'm probably somewhat ahead of the levelling curve (and playing the least popular faction) but I still find it surprising there aren't enough people for even a second instance.

I really love the quests and some other things but I totally agree with the reviewer above.  I try, but can't, find any reason to group and this bothers me even though I enjoy playing MMOs solo the majority of the time.  It's nearly everything about being in a group that I don't like in ESO.  Some people like to explore dungeons, some people want to rush through;  I like to read, most people don't etc.  I suppose if you can find three very like minded people who enjoy exactly the same sorts of things you do, it would be great.  So when does THAT ever happen?

I've done most of the regular dungeons and have decided I don't really like them due to design decisions, bugs and group problems like these.  I'm the tank and I like to at least listen to the quest dialogue but when I tried to do that I would hear combat in the background within ten seconds because others had just clicked through.  And then when I want to move on no one is there because one person is looking at bookshelves, someone else is looting every single pot/sack for cooking mats and the last guy is off picking the lock on a treasure chest.  I just did them to get them finished, I don't want to go back.  I have no interest in the veteran versions, which is a whole other pile or problems.  It also means I have very little interest in this whole craglorn stuff they are working on.

[shiznitz]

It's going to be very interesting over the next week as we see how many people are lost to the subscription kicking in.  Especially since actual guild features like the bank and auction house stop allowing deposits/new auctions if you dip below ten and fifty people respectively.

It is not likely that a sub lapsing would result in a character being deleted so there could be plenty of guilds with "50" members but only a dozen actually subscribing/playing and the guild still qualifying for the benefits of 50 members.

[koro]

It's going to be very interesting over the next week as we see how many people are lost to the subscription kicking in.

Considering the game requires you to give 30 days prior notice before canceling your sub, and thus had to have canceled on the same day you started your free month, I imagine a lot of people will be locked in for an extra month they don't necessarily want, and will be quite pissed off.

[Miasma]

They have claimed that non subscribed members don't count.  Or maybe you get unguilded once your suscription lapses, we'll find out soon.

It's going to be very interesting over the next week as we see how many people are lost to the subscription kicking in.

Considering the game requires you to give 30 days prior notice before canceling your sub, and thus had to have canceled on the same day you started your free month, I imagine a lot of people will be locked in for an extra month they don't necessarily want, and will be quite pissed off.

What?  Really?

[Samprimary]

lol if that is true as precisely worded

they just added the first month sub effectively to the box price of the game for anyone who hadn't immediately unsubbed day one

[satael]

I did some grouping for VR content where the exp gain from doing stuff "properly" is really slow. It was with guildies so it wasn't as bad as it gets but it was still continuous running from point a to point b to point c mowing down any mobs without any inkling of difficulty (except maybe for being awake enough to get the game to acknowledge your participation). There are ofcourse the veteran modes for dungeons but they haven't really impressed me and for some reason the pvp in TESO seems somehow off for my personal taste though I can't really say what the problem is. I did enjoy the (single-player) experience to 50 and finishing the main quest + most of the other bigger quests for my alliance but I'm seriously considering cancelling the game before the first monthly payment in the next few days due to a general lack of interest in what more the game has to offer at this point  

[Paelos]

They have claimed that non subscribed members don't count.  Or maybe you get unguilded once your suscription lapses, we'll find out soon.

It's going to be very interesting over the next week as we see how many people are lost to the subscription kicking in.

Considering the game requires you to give 30 days prior notice before canceling your sub, and thus had to have canceled on the same day you started your free month, I imagine a lot of people will be locked in for an extra month they don't necessarily want, and will be quite pissed off.

What?  Really?

If true, that's the exactly the kind of fuckup I've been waiting for. It also would completely confirm my point that the sub model is a scam.

[01101010]

lol if that is true as precisely worded

they just added the first month sub effectively to the box price of the game for anyone who hadn't immediately unsubbed day one

So they went the pornsite model for billing? 

not shocked though... from what I been hearing.

[Mrbloodworth]

Lets ignore the bugs.

This is a Terrible Elder scrolls game.

This is a mediocre MMO using a tried and tired format.

Then, there are huge bugs.

[satael]

lol if that is true as precisely worded

they just added the first month sub effectively to the box price of the game for anyone who hadn't immediately unsubbed day one

So they went the pornsite model for billing? 

not shocked though... from what I been hearing.

Considering it says
ACCOUNT STATUS: Active - Cancelled (You have 5 days of game time remaining.)
for me after cancelling it just today i'd say that that is bs and probably has something to do with the fact that they were checking (and reserving) your credit card or paypal for the full sub amount (so for example it was about €35 for me since I was going to go for the 3 month option) instead of the usual dollar or so (not saying that that in itself wasn't a pretty bad move).

[Paelos]

Well, we shall find out. I wouldn't imagine it's true, but it provides excellent fodder for the money grab.

Also, if they release numbers at all about subs or users, it will be a whitewashed lie.

How many subs do you have?
WE HAD 500,000 AT LAUNCH! WHEE!
No, how many paying customers do you have today?
...
WE HAD 500,000 AT LAUNCH!

[Cadaverine]

I just cancelled my sub, and I saw nothing that would indicate they would be charging me anyway.  Also, I got the following email:

This message confirms that you have successfully cancelled your subscription to The Elder Scrolls Online. You will no longer be charged for a subscription on a recurring basis, and your access to the game will expire at the end of your current subscription cycle.

[Nija]

Another thing that everyone who paid for this thing should be aware of:

Crazy shit happens when a new MMO company tries to auto-bill people for the first time.

Prepare yourselves.

[Falconeer]

They have claimed that non subscribed members don't count.  Or maybe you get unguilded once your suscription lapses, we'll find out soon.

It's going to be very interesting over the next week as we see how many people are lost to the subscription kicking in.

Considering the game requires you to give 30 days prior notice before canceling your sub, and thus had to have canceled on the same day you started your free month, I imagine a lot of people will be locked in for an extra month they don't necessarily want, and will be quite pissed off.

What?  Really?

If true, that's the exactly the kind of fuckup I've been waiting for. It also would completely confirm my point that the sub model is a scam.

I unsubbed yesterday, and it says that I have 4 days left, and that's it. It went smoothly and it doesn't say anywhere that I am going to get charged.

BUT

I just remembered that I got charged on the day I the early access expired and I had to put in the release key. A friend of mine who works in a bak told me that's just them "pinging" your account to see if it's valid and that they are reserving the payment and that it's not a real payment. Considering that was surprising and confusing to begin with, I wonder if they could go through with that and cash on the "free month" of the unsubbers.

[satael]

They have claimed that non subscribed members don't count.  Or maybe you get unguilded once your suscription lapses, we'll find out soon.

It's going to be very interesting over the next week as we see how many people are lost to the subscription kicking in.

Considering the game requires you to give 30 days prior notice before canceling your sub, and thus had to have canceled on the same day you started your free month, I imagine a lot of people will be locked in for an extra month they don't necessarily want, and will be quite pissed off.

What?  Really?

If true, that's the exactly the kind of fuckup I've been waiting for. It also would completely confirm my point that the sub model is a scam.

I unsubbed yesterday, and it says that I have 4 days left, and that's it. It went smoothly and it doesn't say anywhere that I am going to get charged.

BUT

I just remembered that I got charged on the day I the early access expired and I had to put in the release key. A friend of mine who works in a bak told me that's just them "pinging" your account to see if it's valid and that they are reserving the payment and that it's not a real payment. Considering that was surprising and confusing to begin with, I wonder if they could go through with that and cash on the "free month" of the unsubbers.

Luckily I was going to pay with paypal so contesting any transaction they'd try is easy (compared to other payment options)

[Miasma]

Version 1.0.6 patch notes.  Not sure if those are going in though since the patch apparently screwed up the EU servers.

They added a loot timer to all the delve bosses, that's going to piss a lot of people off.  Didn't bother to tell us what the timer was either.

[Draegan]

This thread reminded me to unsub. Thanks.

I got my monies worth in the last month. Didn't make it to max level thanks to my wonderful 1 year old teething daughter, but I had a great time thinking about builds and testing out different mechanics. Game is too buggy for me right now in any case.

I'll probably come back at a later date once things have been smoothed out. Might even be F2P then.

[Signe]

Yeah, it reminded me, too.  I hope they fix the things I dislike so much so I can play again.  I'm not sure I can handle not having an AH or something when there's so many things to collect.  Some of us, I'm sure I'm not the only one, dislike joining HUGE guilds, which is the only way I can see selling your stuff will work. 

[Miasma]

I've joined a couple large merchant guilds to see if it would help but the auction house UI is just utter garbage.  You can't find anything unless you are willing to carefully scan page after page of mostly junk.  Since you can't see what your item sells for people just make wild guesses.  Plus it takes a punitive 30% of the sale.  Lack of a good AH also means zone chat is 90% WTS/WTB spam.

Oh here's another terrible idea or maybe bug.  If you send an item CoD it takes something like 10%, if you send two items in the same mail it takes 20%, then 30% and so on.  So if you want to sell a suit of armor you need to send seven different mails...

Random rant - Hirelings.  There are skills in most craft lines to get a mail once a day with a few mats in them.  At the second level you get a chance of getting the important improvement mats that turn whites into greens etc.  Even though mail is account bound the hireling rewards won't show up until you log onto the character that has them.  Worse yet that is when the timer resets.  So if you don't log in until ten at night, the next day you don't get the mails until ten the next night.  If you don't login for a week and expect your seven mails you're out of luck, you get one mail.  Even crazier is that the final skill point into hirelings make them come every 12 hours which to be useful would mean you would have to log in during the morning and then again at night, on every character that has hirelings.

It's just so frustrating that this is another game with really good quests and storyline being screwed up and abandoned because of terrible core systems and bugs.  It's like The Secret World all over again.

[Paelos]

The CoD thing and AH cut are hysterical. Thank you for that. 

[Modern Angel]

Another thing that everyone who paid for this thing should be aware of:

Crazy shit happens when a new MMO company tries to auto-bill people for the first time.

Prepare yourselves.

Since my bank card info got stolen and I'm on a new card number, I am safe from all harm!

[Miasma]

Launch recap and future plans.  Five free days for the problems.

[Paelos]

Lol Death Recap is a feature. 

[Tannhauser]

I didn't see any addition of an AH in there so...

[Paelos]

Maybe it's in the Death Recap.

I'm still chuckling at that bullet point.

[Ingmar]

Death recap was probably the feature I used the most in my WoW dps meter thing!

[Paelos]

Death recap was probably the feature I used the most in my WoW dps meter thing!

Oh no doubt, but to put that in as a feature point just seemed ironic to me.

[Simond]

What's odd about TESO isn't that it's in its death spiral/lining up to F2P already, it's the near-total lack of drama about it from most people: No screaming ultimatums to devs, no True Believers ranting about how it's secretly the WoW-killer we need just give them more time, nothing like that -  people have just bought it, played a month, and quietly gone "Nope" then quit. Compare it to SWTOR or WAR or, hell, even TSW and it's noticeable by its absence.

That's probably more damning, mind you - at least when someone is making obscene suggestions to the official boards about how the devs know (in the biblical sense) unclean goats if they don't make this one small change/bugfix/complete redesign of the entire game, it means they care. Apathy means the customer is just gone, and probably permanently: A- "Hey, remember TESO? It's free now" B - "Meh~".

[Miasma]

You can't post on the official ESO boards without some sort of "invitation".  I am guessing the only ones who got this are the people who signed up for the forums back in early beta.  Most of them either left before launch or are very much fanboys.  I am quite certain their boards would be on fire if anyone with a subscription were able to post.

[UnSub]

What's odd about TESO isn't that it's in its death spiral/lining up to F2P already, it's the near-total lack of drama about it from most people

The final stage of grief is acceptance.

[palmer_eldritch]

You can't post on the official ESO boards without some sort of "invitation".  I am guessing the only ones who got this are the people who signed up for the forums back in early beta.  Most of them either left before launch or are very much fanboys.  I am quite certain their boards would be on fire if anyone with a subscription were able to post.

Um what 

[Draegan]

You can't post on the official ESO boards without some sort of "invitation".  I am guessing the only ones who got this are the people who signed up for the forums back in early beta.  Most of them either left before launch or are very much fanboys.  I am quite certain their boards would be on fire if anyone with a subscription were able to post.

The forums (which are the worst forums ever in existence, seriously who fucking made those things?) use your real name/email address/login name as your UserID. So nope. Won't go there.

[amiable]

You can't post on the official ESO boards without some sort of "invitation".  I am guessing the only ones who got this are the people who signed up for the forums back in early beta.  Most of them either left before launch or are very much fanboys.  I am quite certain their boards would be on fire if anyone with a subscription were able to post.

Um what 

This is correct, at least for me.  I bought a new copy and gave my existing copy to my wife (so she could play any race in any faction).  There is no mechanism for me to get a forum account, and I contacted customer support about it but unsurprisingly I have not received a response.

[Miasma]

The forums (which are the worst forums ever in existence, seriously who fucking made those things?) use your real name/email address/login name as your UserID. So nope. Won't go there.

I've never been able to login with any combination of info.

Edit: I just dug through my email and it looks like I was sent an invitation code on head start day, tried to use it now and it has "expired".  So you get a mystery email and have a limited amount of time to register for the forums.  At any rate what it means is only a very small number of people can post there compared to the number of people who bought the game.

As mentioned the forums were designed by a dimwitted sociopath so they aren't very useful anyways.

[Yegolev]

Why is that video 38 minutes long?