For all we know, there will be a monthly subscription, but in my opinion, it’s going to be buy-to-play. Then they’ll have, maybe, a few expansions later down the track. They have confirmed that there will be expansions, because there are zones at the start of the game that are locked, so you can’t actually go into them until expansions are released.

1. Development of the Elder Scrolls Only Part 5 – Subscription and Beta-testing
The next bit of information, and this is really important to a lot of you guys out there who don’t
want to pay for a game monthly, is that the business model is still not confirmed. For all we
know, there will be a monthly subscription, but in my opinion, it’s going to be buy-to-play. Then
they’ll have, maybe, a few expansions later down the track. They have confirmed that there will
be expansions, because there are zones at the start of the game that are locked, so you can’t
actually go into them until expansions are released. That’s a little bit exciting for me, the fact that
it does seem like they’re going to bringing expansions instead of a monthly subscription.
The next thing is that The Elder Scrolls Online is currently in closed beta, and it’s being tested by
hundreds of developers and gamers out there. They’re also accepting people interested in betatesting for them. Beta-test, this means that the game’s near, but in another way, it means it’s got a
fair bit of time to go. They’re still trying to test out things, mechanics in the game, and they’re
removing things from the game and adding things in. They’re trying to get glitches and bugs out
of the game. Beta-testing will feature both open and closed phases, so I guess that’s a good thing.