ZeniMax Online Studios have rather quietly pulled the six months subscription plans for their popular MMORPG, or massively multiplayer online role-playing game, The Elder Scrolls Online. Now that the six month plans have been removed players can only choose between a 30 day and 90 day subscription plan. No formal announcement of this change was made by ZeniMax Online Studios.
There has already been a lot of speculation that The Elder Scrolls Online might be moved to a free-to-play model. The fact that the longer subscription plan has been pulled is giving birth to wild speculation, primarily on the game’s own forums, where many now expect that somewhere down the line all subscription plans will be pulled.
On the French forums an administrator said that this change has been made because players “preferred” the shorter plans. So far there is no official word yet regarding a possible shift to free-to-play.
Would a free-to-play model work for The Elder Scrolls Online? There’s ample evidence to prove that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with this model. For example after slow growth for an entire year under a subscription model Star Wars: The Old Republic made a successful transition over to a free-to-play model back in 2012.
It obviously can’t be said for sure right now what ZeniMax is going to decide in the long run, even if it makes this decision, it would be hardly surprising for anyone.
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