Why is Elder Scrolls Online Pay to Play?

MMORPG's have been around for a long time, and each one has their own system when it comes to dealing with their monetary gains. Some choose to use the F2P method and sell to their players microtransactions for in-game bonuses to give them the leg-up on the competition or even on cosmetics. Others may use the subscription service, similar to games such as World of Warcraft that has kept the same system for over 10 years now at this point. Then, of course, there is what games like Elder Scrolls Online and Guild Wars 2 have opted for; known as the pay to play method. In simple terms, how it works is that you pay a one-time fee, like you would any game, and then you have access to everything in the game – with the exception of the expansions, until you pay for them.

With this knowledge in mind, why is Elder Scrolls Online a pay to play model in comparison to anything else then? Well, the developers stated previously that they never wished for Elder Scrolls Online to be a F2P game, as it meant they had to implement some more nit-picking practices into the game that would take away from the overall experience of the game. Hence why the pay to play nature of the game is a nice middle ground, which makes a lot of sense when you consider how the game's model originally was.

Originally, the game's model required you to purchase the game on PC, PS4, or Xbox One, depending on your preferred platform first of all. Then, after purchasing the game, you would need to pay for a monthly subscription to keep playing the game. For the first year in the game's lifespan the developers stuck to this model, but it turned out the subscription numbers were slowly dwindling; meaning that less and less people were playing the game. After about a year of this subscription model, the developers decided that the subscription model was to be no more and simply owning the game would be enough to play the game.

This sudden and vast change is one of the reason's Elder Scrolls Online saw renewed life and the pay to play model has stuck around for them for so long. Although to be fair, considering the fact that the game has hundreds of thousands of physical discs out in the world, the pay to play model is their best option, as it means they still gain a profit from those sales to some degree.

This model is the reason Elder Scrolls Online has lasted as long as it has and will continue to do so. Without it or with any other model, the game likely won't have survived this long, due to the dwindling number of players. With this knowledge, it just goes to show why Elder Scrolls Online has decided to go for the pay to play model and considering it has allowed the game to survive for a whole 4 years now, it's clearly working!