Your reasoning is that because the development of TESO had no impact on Skyrim and therefor TESO once released won't have any impact on the development of future TES single player games (you know, games that come after TESO's release). I think that logic is flawed.


I think most people in this thread who more or less agree with my OP are concerned, but most of them didn't jump to any conclusions. I see more people jumping to the conclusion that TESO won't affect future TES single player games at all. All I am saying is: Don't be too sure. Financially they can't be seen as two independent variables.

I don't really get why they would. There's more money to be had with the MMO, and the story can still be told through it. I still don't think the same will happen to the Elder Scrolls.

Lets not turn this into a Blizzard debate, though haha

I'm going to post a quote of something I wrote in a now locked thread, since I don't really want to write it again.Now, what I'd like to add is that I think it actually might be a cool idea if they continue to do the single player numbered entries, while simultaneously having the MMO. The MMO, being set 1000 years prior to the events of Skyrim, has potential to add new lore, which could in turn become subjects of questlines in the single player games, which would (likely) continue the plotline of the series in the Fourth Era. But of course if the MMO fails on the front of creating new lore that is worthwhile, then it's not so hot of an idea.

Also, one thing I want to know is if Argonians will be a playable race in the MMO, as well as the other nine playable races. Or are they just going to stick with only the human and elf races for the playable races in the MMO like they did with Battlespire? It seems to me that they would receive a lot of complaints if you could explore Elsweyr, but cannot play as a Khajiit. Used that race as an example as they've become quite popular due to their depictions in Skyrim.

ZeniMax doesn,t need money ,they have the same amount of money as Valve and EA.I don,t know where you got the impression that ZeniMax will go down financially.

In all of the comparisons of MMO's spawned during a SP franchise, it is interesting to me that noone has brought up the Final Fantasy series. Though I would say the quality in their more recently released titles has been lacking, I would also say that it is due to the fact that the storylines they have been creating for the games have been mostly unoriginal. Also ignoring the fact that the most recent FF MMO is of low quality SP titles from the franchise continue to be pushed out, and that is with the SP and MMO games being developed by seperate divisions. So maybe the TES series does have a future after all. That's not even mentioning the fact that Bethesda has no track record of not caring about their games quality. Those guys are dedicated.

I don't know where you got the impression that I said anything about the financial health of ZeniMax? I said that financially TESO and the single player TES games can't be seen as two independent variables. They partially share the same market (PC gamers who like Elder Scrolls). That has all kinds of consequences for the "how" and "when" of the development of single player TES games (games I care about). The closer they get to each other the more they compete, which is a bad thing. Marketing teams want to avoid that.

It's easy to say "the past TES games sold very well so future ones will also sell very well", but marketing teams don't think in such vague terms. They try to calculate every factor into models to predict sales. It's math. A 5% difference in the predicted outcome of a particular plan can be enough to opt for a completely different plan. TESO grabs geographically exactly what I want in the TES series. It also solely targets the PC market, and I'd like future TES games to be more PC friendly and less geared towards consoles. Marketing will want to move TES games away from TESO, so TESO might affect single player TES games negatively (in my opinion). TESO might also cause a delay of future TES games to ensure a bigger gap in technical advancement.

This should not be a concern, as they are completely different companies and thus do not employ the same people. They are simply owned by the same parent corporation, but Todd Howard and his crew work for Bethesda Game Studios, not Zenimax Online, so other than consulting for continuity there is no real mechanism for them to "share" or "borrow" employees. As for TES VI, it's probably not being worked on right now. If they follow their normal development pattern, then they would have already broken off a small portion of the Skyrim team to work on patches and DLC, while the main group has begun work on Fallout 4. Of course, I am speculating, but it seems logical that they would stick with the pattern given the success of both franchises. So in all liklihood, you will see Fallout 4 maybe in 2014 on next-gen consoles, with TES VI in 2017, 2018?

The wait between Skyrim and TES VI would be at least 5-6 years anyway (Oblivion-Skyrim was 5.5) so I can't see this changing things too much, could be longer depending on how long Beth takes to develop the next fallout, which I assume will most likely come out late 2014 once next gen consoles have gained some track, the next elder scrolls game will probably be around 2017, although it might come earlier. If Bethesda were to split into 2 teams it could come as early as 2015-2016 but I dont think that's likely.

Unless the marketing team changes that plan because TES 6 would still compete too much with TESO. It could be a difference in sales most here would consider negligible, but would count as significant to a company. The more successful TESO is the higher the risk.

The next ES game wont be coming out for at least 6 years. No one will remember this game's sights by then, unless it turnes out to be an awesome game, and if that happens then it doesn't matter, does it?

Elder scrolls is such a cash cow, they're not going to over saturate the market by having a release 3 years after the MMO comes out; by that time the subscriber base will presumably be MMO fans. Companies such as Activision up the ante by releasing titles yearly in their successful franchises and are planning more and have online subscriptions and they still haven't burst their bubble so zenimax should be pretty safe.

Isn't the new game set before the Warp in the West? Which means that a good chunk of the provinces don't even exist yet (Hammerfell, Orsinium, High Rock) -- or at least not in their modern forms.

But it will affect Bethesda, because they're not going to turn over more than two decades of lore to a separate company without having a hand in what they do with it. An MMO is not a single game- it's constantly updated, and they will have to have continuous additions to story and lore in order to keep players playing. They will have to add new enemies, dungeons, and eventually new weapons, spells, and things that aren't in the series, because they need to keep people coming back to get their monthly subscription.

This will ALL affect Bethesda and what they can do with the future single player games. If they add crossbows and spears to the online game, you don't think they'll hear about it? If they introduce a new type of creature, people will expect it to appear in future games. Plus, when the well runs dry on new ideas, where do you think they're going to turn? "Hey, Bethesda, we need to introduce a new world-wide bad guy. What do we do?" Bethesda will be giving them new stories and lore to use, things that could have been used in a single player game. All the little touches like books and stories told by NPC's that they normally set aside over the course of the years of development will be used.

I'm sorry, but having a separate team doesn't mean it won't affect the single player experience. Those ideas will have to come from somewhere. They'll come from future TES experiences.

No, they'll just completely ignore everything that TESO did when it eventually flounders, crashes, and goes F2P. They'll consider it non-canon because they don't care.

It's set a thousand years before the main games and to handle so many different locations and players at once (even on different servers) is a lot to compute.

So the story arc, environments, level of detail and some of the game play will indeed be different, there's definitely still room for Elsweyr or Black Marsh etc as single player games to visit. People should rest assured of this!

This is my biggest fear.
Because of this MMO, the single player franchise will be cast aside.
Proof: WoW destroyed any hopes of a future Warcraft 4. Some WoW players DID NOT even know it's RTS roots!!

Anyway lets say this MMO earns them big bucks and even De-Throne WoW.
Why would they focus on making Single Player games anymore then?

In my heart, even tho it hurts to say this, i sincerely hope the mmorpg fails, so we will still have hope for more single player Elder Scrolls.

yeah i have been thinking the same thing what happens if the MMO is wildly popular and zenimax wants to support it for a decade with resources including money? or they want a sequel and they want bethesda to make it?

This is not proof. Warcraft was a PC game, only sold to PC players. When WoW took over they saw that the user base skyrocked and the chose the more successful one.

Now let's think rationally about this. Bethesda's PR is under the impression that 90% of their user base is on consoles. It would be absurd for them to completely cut out those sales. Blizzard didn't have to worry about that with Warcraft.
Because that is all Bethesda Game Studios makes, and with the recent huge success of Skyrim you can bet without any shadow of a doubt that they will make another one.

I don't know a lot about Warcraft or it's popularity before WoW. Was it even that big (sales wise)? Did it win game of the year awards? Was the series (as an RTS) becoming increasingly successful in the way TES is?

All I'm saying is you don't need to use this kind of cynicism to realize there will be another single player Elder Scrolls game in the future.