It's a bleak time for The Elder Scrolls Online following the disastrous release of Update 35, and a misleading Black Friday Special on the game's Crown Store has only exacerbated the divide between the development team and the aggrieved players. The microtransactions in The Elder Scrolls Online emerged when the game shifted from a subscription-only model into a hybrid one, made initially popular by Star Wars: The Old Republic. Though the offers on the Crown Store have largely been cosmetic, players have never been happy with the overall practices that ZeniMax Online Studios employed to maximize its revenue.

From flavor of the month rotations, to loot crate exclusives, and even flooding the in-game store with useless convenience items meant to bait inexperienced players into purchasing them, many fans of Tamriel lament that The Elder Scrolls Online is not exactly consumer-friendly. Between empty gestures of compensation, and its Creative Director mocking players on stream, the community feels like a powder keg ready to explode, and the Black Friday Special offered today is yet another spark threatening to set it off.

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This "Black Fredas Special" offers players an exclusive recolored elk, ten experience scrolls, twenty riding lessons, ten fortifying meals, ten soul gems, and fifty potions – all for the price of roughly $16, while seemingly claiming a value of about $69. Needless to say, it didn't take long for The Elder Scrolls Online players to unpack this offer and share their outrage on the game's official Reddit community, where r0lyat's thread kicked off the discussion.

If one would ask the real value of this Black Friday Special, the answer would find them sorely disappointed. The offer provides players with fifty Tri-Restoration Potions, a consumable that can also be obtained in similar numbers simply by claiming daily login rewards. Soul gems can be easily purchased and filled through a skill line available to all players. The Crown Fortifying meals offer a tri-stat buff for two hours only sought after by tanks – and even then, non-premium alternatives are quite accessible.

Riding lessons in The Elder Scrolls Online are time-gated, only allowing players to train one lesson per day, but otherwise having a negligible gold cost. The experience scrolls are useful in getting to Level 160 faster by increasing experience gain up to 50%, but this is also achievable by just playing the game. All that's left in the offer is the recolored elk mount, and if the Crown Store is trying to claim that a $16 re-skin is worth $69, the player outrage starts to make a lot of sense.

After Firesong's disastrous launch, The Elder Scrolls Online should be searching for a way to make amends with a gesture stronger than a recolored Guar minion. Business as usual won't cut it. If the gameplay remains broken, the story has become stale, and the only thing the game can reliably sell to its players are misleading premium bundles, then the direction of the game needs to change.

The Elder Scrolls Online is available for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Series X|S.

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