No they didn't http://www.p4rgaming.com/zenimax-debunks-elder-scrolls-online-200m-budget-rumor-we-couldnt-have-wasted-that-much-money/

Still, I highly doubt it. Bethesda/Zenimax is not a greedy company and its not like they spent 200 Mil making this game either. Lets just pretend they did go free to play. Do you really think they would sell out their user base the way tor did? I think of a game developer like Todd Howard and he would never let this happen. And the other thing is what are they going to monetize? XP boosts are out as they are already in the game via crafting, Mounts are out, only so many horses the user base could stand, they went crap all over lore like tor did for gear. So at the end of the day what are they going to be selling? Bank Space, pets? At the end of the day I really feel they are too good for that. Not to mention 3 platforms and one of the biggest gaming IP's?

I logged in last night, waited 10 mins in que and gave up. Game is dead.

The problem with this game is little amount of subscriber content they release VS paid content. Even if you play this game every day some months you'd be better off cancelling your sub and putting that money all into cartel coins. Part of the problem is too when you look at something like GSF and lets pretend GSF is the only thing you play. Why wouldn't you spend all that sub money on coins? You would level faster by the xp conversion.

If the voice acting is bad in ESO doesn't that mean its bad in swtor too? There are so many of the same voice actors but then you get Bill Nighy, Michael Gambon, Alfred Molina which are just on another level compared to Jennifer Hale and someone like steve blum. Crafting is actually a pretty big deal, that idea might get lost if you've played swtor for awhile since its so bad but its a very big deal in eso.

This is exactly true. All the big guilds on the server I was playing on fell apart pretty much due to no content ATM. This game gets darker and darker each day. They are now focusing on casual content and content they can monetize. ESO will steal many of the casual players and crafters and wildstar will pull the few remaining raiders. You simply can't maintain a raiding guild off of recycled content that takes only 1 week to beat.

The starting islands are somewhat underwhelming (You can skip all that now) but unless you are only looking for end game raiding ESO is much better then swtor. Better questing, better worlds, better graphics, better pvp, better voice acting, better crafting and super immersive (Outside of launch bugs ) If you don't like it that's one thing but overall its a much better game then swtor.

This bugs me so bad people judging ESO before actually playing it. The game has such great reviews and is just so so good. It of course has some issues but its overall an amazing game with a very very very large population.

I very very highly doubt ESO will go FTP anytime soon if ever. If you have played the game outside of the starter islands you'd be very surprised on how good the game actually is. Questing, exploring, crafting and pvp are all done so well in ESO to the point that it dwarves a game like swtor in comparison. Of course the game is not all good, end game leaves much to be desired and launch bugs are pretty rampant which might drive some players away but at the end of the day most people playing the game have nothing but good things to say about it. Just because its not skyrim with multiplayer doesn't mean it bad, just like how swtor is not star wars galaxies. Having played swtor since launch and seeing the Dev team/Community team destroy the game I can honestly say ESO has more to offer right now. Swtor has never been a hardcore game but now the focus seems to be casual content and content that can be monetized (GSF, Housing, cartel Market). If you are a casual player why wouldn't you try eso? the questing is better, the world is better, the voice acting is better and pvp is better.

GSF is heavily monetized, sure you don't need to pay money for it but levelling a ship 3X fast for credits? Same will go for housing, you won't need to spend money but it will be set up in such a way that many players will spend money to get it rather then actually playing the game. If you took a poll right now of all the players that ever played swtor I'm sure the majority of them would say the game needs/needed better flash points, operations and warzones. Not player housing, not galactic junk fighter.

You were the chosen one!

This is exactly the problem with him.

Thank you! Once again, I don't think he's bad, its just hearing him in every update is kind of getting old.

I can assure you its nothing to do with blocks, when people work or other things they might be doing. I've played the game since launch and for the last 8 months less and less players are around in the game. You go to any of the planets and they are dead, the daily areas dead, raiding guilds falling apart, pvp not popping like it used to. It should be no surprise though, content updates take longer and longer and the quality of the updates continue to plummet as well. Its sad this game isn't what everyone wanted it to be but there is no use in defending it. Its in a really good spot for everything that happened but at the end of the day this game is just a cash grab.

Well before I even stopped playing queuing for pvp and GSF on my server was impossible outside of peak hours and low level pvp never popped even during peak hours. Games population is struggling, no if ands and buts about it.

Today was the first time I logged in for almost 2 months and on a content update day it took me over half an hour to que for a brand new flash point. I can't say that is all because of ESO but it does got to show this game has a very poor player population.

Decided to use my last couple weeks of sub time and come on and check out whats going on with 2.7. I did the Koriban incursion flashpoint and couldn't help but feel the whole time through that the character voice acting was suppose to be for something else. My character hardly said anything short of half a sentence and each of the different voice actors just seemed largely out of place. Now to be fair the none player character stuff seemed to be all original work but once again we see an appearance from Steve Blum. Don't get me wrong, I like Steve Blum but he seems to be the only guy you bring in to do voice acting at this point. Is he like the only male voice actor on biowares payroll or something? Its just getting old hearing him do every voice for every piece of content. As far as the flashpoint goes it was pretty boring, but did look pretty nice so props to whoever took care of that bit. Also falling through the floor to transition areas? Pretty disappointing.

15 people working at Bioware Austin?

Makes me very sad they have the tech to update the CM on the fly but don't have the tech or "Staff" to do cross server que, proper class balance and make good quality content on a regular schedule. This game might be making good money now but at what cost?

Yeah he did a really good job and everything on that list is true. I really wonder how long it will be until they have to merge all the servers together?

POTF has had some que timer issues for awhile, I pretty much gave up on pvp myself 5 months ago. Its interesting they are not doing cross server que when the population struggles so much.

You pretty much hit on everything. Player population continues to fall making it harder and harder to pvp and do operations. Content seems to be focused on things that can make them money, GSF and soon the player housing. Being that so many players have opted to spend their time in game buying things with cartel money its put bioware in a position where they no longer need focus on content that keeps subscribers playing the game but rather paid content they can make money off of. Clearly they will continue to make player content but emphasis seems to have been put on things that can draw extra cash. I stopped playing this game because I was tired of not being able to que up pvp outside of peak hours, tired of doing the same operations over and over and tired of new cartel stuff coming out all the time when pve and pvp content sometimes takes 6-9 months. I understand they need to make money but I feel they have gone too far. I think it would have been better for them to close the servers down then to sell out and continue milk players.

This was clearly an early April fools joke, We all know the Devs would never listen to our feedback. For real though, people have been giving suggestions since day 1 but now it seems to matter?

What has impressed you about this game and how the engine works?? The fact its so limited you can't have chat bubbles or if you have a high end video card you can't run the game in anything but full screen windowed because evertime you move the graphics stutter.

But you play swtor? Don't get me wrong swtor is not the worst mmo ever but it is the most disappointing. It doesn't really matter how bad ESO is it can't be any worse then swtor right? I mean the pvp in ESO alone has already given the game more lifetime then swtor did at launch. At this point swtor is pretty much dead, servers are all under populated and can't support player base, the dev cycles are beyond glacial and all new features are made around a cash shop? I understand peoples love for the star wars universe but you'd think there would be a point where they realize they are suckers.