Press2Reset has a new editorial asking the question is The Elder Scrolls Online set up to fail when it's released.
More information.If history is any sort of indication, this is how things will play out for The Elder Scrolls Online: The game’s open beta will be promising and it will have a large number of participants. When it launches it will sell a lot of copies, experience the normal issues such as overloaded servers, bugs, and glitches. However, after the free 30-day trial is over there will be a huge drop off of players rather than a gradual decline that will continue. Within four-to-six months ZeniMax will be forced to adapt a F2P model because the numbers are so low that they aren’t making a profit or that the profit margin is negligible.
Until MMOs can evolve, and the genre gets a shake-up, the subscription model is not a viable solution anymore. Developers need to stop looking at their games as a 100-meter race. It is a marathon. If you discourage players right out of the gate then you are setting yourself up for failure.
And ZeniMax Online is setting up The Elder Scrolls Online to fail. If the company wants its game to be successful, then they need to drop the subscription and go entirely F2P. It will help them attract large numbers of players and help them retain a significant number of them rather than watch as their player-base dwindle exponentially over a short period of time.