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The Elder Scrolls Online

Elder Scrolls Online to get "huge, ongoing" support

Bethesda confirms the reason behind TESO's subscription model.

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The Elder Scrolls Online has drawn a few perplexed looks since it was announced that the MMO would employ a subscription-based financial model that looked like it was making its way out of common use in the industry.

In a recent interview, Bethesda's Peter Hines has been discussing the thinking behind the decision, explaining how Zenimax Online Studios are planning on supporting the game with "real and meaningful content support on a regular basis" to make fans feel like their getting value for the money they'll be handing over every month.

"If you feel like you're getting your money's worth for whatever you're paying - whether it be $15 for a month or $2 for a DLC - then you're going to be happy. If you're not, then you won't," Hines said to CVG in a recent interview. "You could do a free-to-play game where somebody wasn't happy, because maybe they don't feel like they're getting value for the money that they played upfront, even if it's not a pay-by-month subscription."

Hines continued: "We felt like the subscription model fit best what we wanted to do, not because we want you to pay per month to play the game, but because we want to provide real and meaningful content support on a regular basis. That's not just a few items or a thing here and there, that's real significant stuff that adds to the game in a whole host of ways, and doing so needs a good sized group of people who are working on and creating new stuff. That's stuff we can start working on now, as well as stuff we can work on when we start to get player feedback."

"There's a couple of Guild quest lines in the game at the moment, but there are certainly noticeable Guilds that aren't in the game - there's no Dark Brotherhood, for example," Hines explained, dropping a name that fans of the previous Elder Scrolls games will be all too familiar with. "You can't set aside a bunch of people to work on a cool Dark Brotherhood quest line unless you've figured out a way that you're going to pay those bodies to spend that time. Otherwise you'd just put them onto something else. We feel like this approach is going to give people who want to play the best value, and reason to look forward to the next new thing that's coming out. The Elder Scrolls is our crown jewel and it's the series that made everything we do possible, so it's a big triple-A title that demands huge, ongoing triple-A support."

The Elder Scrolls Online, which will launch on PC first on April 4, and on PS4 and Xbox One in June, will feature a monthly subscription that - according to Zenimax Online's general manager Matt Frior - will cost £8.99 a month. You can read our beta impressions for more details on the game's starting areas.

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