MMO Elder Scrolls Online has removed its six month subscription option without much fanfare, causing some speculation on the future of the title.
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This change only leaves two options: 30 or 90-day subscriptions. As Joystiq notes in its article, other titles have dropped the long-term option in the past before moving to free to play models, or canceling the game altogether. The developer explanation in the forums is simply that players preferred the shorter models, so they decided to remove the six month option.
Elder Scrolls Online is not likely to suffer the fate of cancelation so soon, having just launched in 2014 and as part of a major franchise, but its reception has been mixed. The shorter-term options prevent the developers from having to worry about long term commitments to the model, and if a change is coming, we could see it over the next few months as the existing six-month subscriptions run down.
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If the MMO is struggling, it's difficult to say for sure if a free model would help a game with lukewarm reviews, but we've certainly seen it before--The Old Republic followed a similar path. Again, it could truly just be a change of the billing offerings, and we'll only know for sure if Bethesda makes an announcement in the future.
