I want some honest opinions about this game.
How is the connection & ping to EU/US servers?
How broken is the beta? Quests, skills, glitches, etc?
What level are you able to play in the beta?
Is it fun enough to actually warrant the $15 p/m fee?
Do you see this game going Free 2 play in a years' time?
1. Connection to US servers was fine for me, the usual 200ms type of pings, i don't think we have had the opportunity to play on EU servers yet. Let's just say i could play a AvA (same as GW2s WvW) with like 50 players sieging a castle and pvp'ing around and i did not feel any performance issues at all. In fact GW2 back in the day was worse in this area, like fighting against invisible players and things like that...which i did not experience in ESO.
2. The only thing that was broken (for me anyway) in the beta was quests, but it was very specific types of quests where mobs/items had to spawn (in the public world) after a player interacted with something. Thing is, this was clearly a central scripting issue, which they apparently figured out and fixed (so i can't confirm it is indeed fixed). There was also a predictable workaround for them (i.e. relogging and hoping to enter a zone-instance that did not yet bug out).
I did not find anything else glitchy it all, the combat, the skills , the dialogs and such worked pretty solid for me. Never disconnected or rubber-banded or felt my skills are not firing etc. MMOs like Warhammer launched in a much worse state than this imho.
3. Level? I got to like level 13 or so with my 1 character and had 2 others which i played to about lvl 5 or 6. This is of course after 2.5 BETA weekends, they never wiped the characters. I found it quite slow leveling after lvl 9 or so, but probably on par with most MMOs that launch these days with a lvl 60 cap.
4. Hard to say, it is "fun enough" to play for a few months (3 months) and paying $15 for 2 months is still cheaper than buying a new game in that time. So for me the sub is irrelevant at the launch period, i WILL get my hours and content out of this game in the first 2-3 months...after that , see point 5.
5. Yes. There's nothing in this game that i haven't seen in something like GuildWars 2. The sub will be fine for the first 3-6 months (because everyone will be playing through new content) and then it will start hurting them because as i said in #4, i am quite willing to pay the sub now for a few months , but
once i go into a "check in every now and then when an update rolls out"-mode, i won't be coming back if i have to pay $15 to do so. .
I do not honestly believe there is sufficient content to keep everyone busy for a year to the extend that they will feel $15 is worth it after hitting the level cap. This is the dilemma with every single sub (and f2p) mmo i've played. Unless Zenimax can pull a rabbit out of the hat and actually increase the content+level cap every 3 months (or somehow makes the world insanely large filled with optional content), i don't see people subbing past 3 months just to PvP. It will be easier to just go play GW2 (without paying anything). I am also past repeating dungeons in (easy/elite/nightmare/xxx) modes combined playing the gear-treadmill game, so a few people might squeeze a few extra months out of the game doing that, i won't though.
I won't be surprised if this is the new business model: Launch the game with a sub based system to cover the costs and then immediately starts working towards a F2P model . If i was a CEO of a company like this, i would do this by default. So switching to F2P is not actually seen as a failure, but rather the original plan...i'm sure launching F2P is not as effective as launching sub based, especially not when it comes to a big well known franchise.
Anyway, i am going into this game with the expectation to play it for 2-3 months max. From my beta impressions, i am quite comfortable that i will have a good (and predictable) time in the game. I expect at the 3 month mark that we'll see the population to drop, subs to be cancelled and people moving on, they will return when it goes F2P or a new expansion is released.
Wildstar will also be launching extremely close to the drop-off mark, so i fully expect alot of ESO players to just hop over and continue with Wildstar without feeling ESO was a bad game. Personally i am not keen on Wildstar at this point, even though i might not be playing ESO at the time either, but that might change once the ESO scene gets old. I might then enjoy the "DOUBLE KILL!!!, TRIPLE KILL!!!" absurdities shouted at you in Wildstar.