According to this article over at Massively, Elder Scrolls Online is aiming for monthly content updates. Not only that, but they intend for these content updates to be rather large and contain more than just a “funny hat”. Of course, this is a very, very good thing. How long can they stick to that promise though?
I think the first month or so after release will consist of mainly bug patching and systems improvements. Its really hard to get out large content patches in the first month. Bugs that they did not find during the beta and during stress tests will rear their ugly head. These will take priority. After that is when you will start seeing some content patches. What they will entail and how big, is any bodies guess at this point. But, they will have to be pretty large to justify the $15 a month. Gone are days when people will pay a monthly sub fee for only the privilege of server access. The only MMO that can do that now is WoW. ESO will need to be much more aggressive.
The timing of the content releases also ties into the other news we got today; Wildstar has set their release date for June 3rd. That gives a month and a half or so for Elder Scrolls Online to show that they mean business when they talk about monthly content updates. I imagine that the first content update will release right around the time Wildstar releases. If not the actual patch, then we will have an announcement of one and details of what content we will see.
ESO simply can not afford to let Wildstar steal a bunch of momentum. They have a month and a half to grab fans and show them they take the content patches seriously. Hook them in that month and a half and the Wildstar release won’t have a major effect on ESO’s population. Lose momentum or let the players get bored before Wildstar’s release and things could get dicey.
Regardless, I won’t be playing Wildstar. I’ve already posted my Wildstar impressions but, to sum up, I found it a technically well made game but didn’t like the combat system, art-style and flashy colors. I wish it well and I hope its fans have a great time playing but I won’t be one of them. There is room for both ESO and Wildstar because they are wildly different and both differ in playstyle, end game emphasis and art-style. Hopefully, both will do well and redeem the subscription model.
Wildstar’s never appealed to me, not from the 1st article I ever saw about to, all the way up to the current stuff. No idea why — I don’t see anything about it that sounds bad. Just nothing about it draws me in either. I was the same with WoW — I tried it a couple of times, but it never hooked me.
As far as ESO goes, I loved Morrowind back in the day, but I never bothered with Olbivion or Skyrim, so telling me a new MMO was set in the ES orld wasn’t a big draw to me. But I got into a beta weekend last November and liked it well enough during the few hours I played it that I ended up buying Skyrim during the Steam Sale. And even though I’ve said to myself “beta characters will be wiped, don’t need to log in this weekend becuz anything I do will be lost” for past beta weekends, I’ve dutifully logged in each of the weekends and while I have mostly just “dinked around” rather than really trying to advance anything, I’ve still just been loving my time in its world. I’m very much looking forward to the full release in a couple more weeks. Pre-ordered and everything.
No idea why it hooked me either. But it did.
I just stumbled onto Wildstar and finagled a beta key from some website by registering. I will give it a go this weekend(I need to kill time until TESO) and see if it is too colurful as explained by said parties.
I will turn to logic and illogical means of demographics as well as morphographics. I will search beyond the realms of nakedness and turn over soil like it’s manure. As some people state that people donate money to twitch streamers because they have lost focus on reality and have no clue what the definition of money is.
Why do people donat money to Twitch streamers? I’ll tell you what I know exactly on the subject. I have no freakin’ idea why people donate to these fools, I mean why these fools donate to these people?
There is one dude that was streaming live ESO and he was not accepting donations. He was actually pretty cool and had written permission to stream said content as long as he didn’t go above level 17. Turns out, ER from the Tamriel Foundry was so jealous about some measly developer getting a chance to stream live, had to cry, yes cry, like little babies about it.
I will never involve myself with anything that has to do with these ER punks. They are a bunch of butthurt crying turdskulls. The End!