So, I've taken some time to take a look at the information we currently have on this game and I gotta say...

It hasn't really grabbed me.

Generally speaking I have a tendency to fall for hype. I read about some new, interesting and innovative (I know it's interesting and innovative because the devs say so!) feature in an upcoming game and, despite having next to no information, I build up a mental image of what I would like the feature to be. I try to moderate that vision with a cynical vision of what it will probably end up being but I still find myself getting excited by the merest possibility of my newest dream feature coming to fruition.

And then I play the game and generally discover that I was being blindly idealistic and that my 'cynical' vision was, in fact, a 'realistic' vision. Sometimes it's still worth playing, other times not, but I can't shake off the feeling of an opportunity missed and of a vague sense of disappointment.

But with TESO I don't have that. Everything I see I have seen before. It's just another third person hotbar MMO with faction based PvP, instancing, class roles and a middle-of-the-road art style. Indeed I can't help but look at it and see it as a reskin and rebranding of SWTOR.

It doesn't seem to have a USP (Unique Selling Point). Or rather, it has a USP (It's an Elder Scrolls MMO) but it doesn't have a URP (Unique Retention Point); it has nothing to make it uniquely capable of holding onto the customers it lures in. There is nothing to stop all those people to whom it successfully appeals from simply moving on to the next big MMO.

Many games can get away with not really bothering to work out how to set themselves apart, because they are not attempting to enter the realm of exclusive gaming that is MMOs. People play one MMO at a time, people play MMOs for periods measured in months rather than days and a brand new MMO needs to convince people to give up everything they've already achieved so that they can enter this new world and start anew.

But it's early days still; I shall sit quiet and wait for news of a feature that slaps me round the head the moment I hear of it and screams "Why has no-one thought of this before?" into my now wildly free-wheeling brain. A feature that makes me forget what I'm doing for a few minutes while I vainly attempt to work out all the wonderful consequences. A feature that makes me believe, however briefly, that I could happily play this game for its entire lifespan or mine, whichever happens to be shorter.

There is no information to get hook by yet. what were you expecting?