As it was announced earlier, our most beloved research subject is crossing the line - once you pay you stay in, no matter if you subscribe or if you don't. I thought I'd give a brief overview over the topic, as there might be many questions keeping your minds from the more interesting topics presently available:
What does it mean?
You buy the game, and then you play. The current abbreviations are "B2P" (buy to play), "F2P" (free to play, which is _not_ the same as buy to play), and "P2W" (pay to win, basically stating that you can buy items for real life gold to perform better in the game.
What is the premium membership?
You collect some sort of premium currency ("Crowns"), which will then be used to buy items from some sort of special store. You will likely be able to acquire more of that stuff for reallife gold, but my experience from SWTOR shows that these things tend to amass after a while. You'll likely be able to buy convenience and vanity things - I'm hoping for mushroom towers, guar mounts and additional character slots. You won't be able to buy yourself a Heart of Lorkhan, though, although I totally would if I could.
What is the Crown Store?
It is the place where you can obtain items with the aforementioned currency. These items will be vanity and convenience things, nothing you will actually "need" to "beat the game" (whatever those fetchers mean by that). Gaius was so kind as to sum up the ESO Talk, so here's a list:
Two different Guar mounts
More horses (probably different-looking)
A lot of costumes
Convenience items (Soulgems, repair kits..., like the PVP vendors
The items from the crown store will be bound to your account and will have no monetary value to prevent the Hlaalu from exploiting their sla...apprentices' items for personal gain.
What else is coming?
There will be four new zones - Clockwork City, Mephala's Realm, Abah's Landing and Wrothgar. That probably means that we'll be rid of most of the Hlaalu for a time, as they're going to spend a lot of time with their favourite Daedra. Expect prices to go up.
And the Justice System will be coming. For those of you who were so holed up in their towers that the term means nothing to them: The guards will now mention if people take things that don't belong to them, and eventually those players will be marked as outlawed, so that everyone may kill them. Since the guards are probably too stupid to spot the difference between a stealing fetcher and a Telvanni wizard picking up items for further investigation, caution is advised - should a member of our House be forced by guardsmer to wreak havoc about public infrastructure that will mean a lot of paperwork for me and a very ill-tempered Archmagister for you.
But won't the community turn fully s'wit?
Possible. But I doubt it. There might be a s'wit invasion for a few days, and as soon as they find out how great this game is they will crawl back to their World of Warcraft.
We are the community.
I personally will see that I sit in front of Vault Heimlyn Keep whenever I'm not researching Clockwork City, to make sure that the n'wah are put in place. If they cannot behave themselves, I will personally make sure that they leave Morrowind for whereever they came from, either voluntarily or in a jug. I will appreciate every House Member who joins me on this.
What will it mean for the Telvanni?
We are the privileged. What do we care? We'll just do as we always do. Sell the n'wah to the Hlaalu and use the profits for our own amusement.
Keep up the good work, fellow mer.
~Vivicah
