The future of single player hardly depends on TESO. Single player Final Fantasy games have survived through the failure of the movie, which was made by a different studio much like TESO is a different studio from Bethesda, and two MMOs. Final Fantasy XIII was successful, FFXIII-2 was successful, Final Fantasy Dissidia was successful, all despite being made by the same company that made the MMOs. So... how exactly, with the continued success of a company that has made both single player and MMOs, two of them mind you, does this mean that the success of one company hinges on what happens with another that is working on a spin-off project?

Why not make some other mmo instead of a TES mmo ? (facepalm your self) because they wanted to make a TES mmo ..............


A co-op mode in Skyrim ? God please no, give us an mmo, leave the single player games alone.

Dear Darkside Eric,

The same is the case with WoW and the Warcraft franchise. Ever since they've mutated Warcraft into WoW, there hasn't been any news about Warcraft IV. In other words, by plunging into the online market succesfully they've discovered a gold mine, so naturally now they haven't any intention to go back to the commercially inferior sphere of single player. Blizzards next project is also a MMO. Diablo III is an online game with no single player.

I doubt there will be another single player age of empires (though to be honest #3 was not so great).

Or even a co-op mode for Oblivion would have been a much better decision than TESO. That way they could test the waters first and conduct reception anolyses before going full-blown in a MMO direction. However they've obviously decided to skip that stone, plunge $300 million into an ambitious project that'll fail, and go directly and suicidally to the saturated MMO market where only the fittest can survive. The way I see it for the next couple of years is WoW and GW2 will wrestle at the top while TESO, like countless other MMOs will play in a smaller league.

In order to create a successful AAA MMO you need some kind of successful IP with a built-in fanbase. There was no realistic way that Zenimax's shareholders would ever let them use a new IP on such a massive gamble as an MMO. Not now and especially not in 2007. Some IPs are self-built like Guild Wars. Guild Wars 1 was not a top-tier MMO but Guild Wars 2 could be due to its building of a fanbase, and due to the first game's modest success, more investment was given to develop GW2.

As to the overall question of, "why make an MMO from TES in the first place?"

Well, BEFORE the details of the MMO came out I would have answered with this: "TES is the only AAA RPG franchise that has the potential to truly break the AAA MMORPG mold by adding the amazing TES gameplay, from the combat, to the freedom, to the interaction, which has been proven possible by numerous smaller companies in MMOs in the past, backed by a massive budget and fan-base and truly give us an MMO worthy of such a storied and epic saga."

Now that we know a lot more about the game, my answer is: "Money."

I whole-heartedly agree. TES is my favorite game series of all time and it's grown to be that through the single-player genre. I know that Bethesda has heard constant remarks like "This would make a great MMO." or "I'd love it if this was online." because I have as well. The simple fact is, though, that this is a colossal mistake. The people that express these ideas are not true fans of the series and turning it into an online franchise won't improve the actual fanbase or create more support for the series. I'm a gamer, and while I don't get passionately angry at game developers for doing things like this to a series I love, I'm making an exception for this. I'm not saying that losing one fan would make a difference to Bethesda's development team or that the game wont bring in large profits, but I guaruntee you that I speak for millions of ES fans when I say that this will drive them into the ground after they've spent more than 20 years getting to the top. Even if this does satisfy a lot of fans of the series' wet dreams, they simply wont be able to compete with the MMOs that already dominate the market like WoW and TOR. Im really disappointed in this decision, and I know a lot of my friends who are fans will be as well when I tell them. But, I am a console gamer. At least I can say they aren't trying to market this [censored] to me.

Yes because these factors are what made the TES model great for the past decade. The sharp departure on many key points of fantasy based rpg games (Tolkien/D&D classes being one of the big ones) is what made TES a great game.

Take those away and then keep the same MMO dynamics that have been compared and contrasted in many threads so far and what do we have? We have the same old thing (both in terms of classes and MMO mechanics) with a veneer of TES lore on top.

The lore alone is not sufficient to carry it. While interesting at times the lore is not what made the last several games - it is the game play and vision of the game play.

Zenimax is making this, and has been making this during the time Bethesda was making Skyrim. Todd Howard worked on Skyrim, not TESO.

Zenimax owns Bethesda, Bethesda makes a wonderful game, Zenimax decided to make an mmo out of it to wring as much money as they can from fans and it didn't matter if Bethesda liked it or not. So please stop blaming Todd Howard and Bethesda, they have no say in what their parent company does.

I was one of the people saying, lets not be hasty and throw rotten veggies just yet, but seriously there is no reason to throw crap at Todd Howard and Bethesda thats just incredibly ignorant.

Blame Zenimax, atleast focus your anger towards those who are actually making the game, with or without a care for the fans of the series, yet everyday it looks more and more like Zenimax just cobbled some MMO templates together and are expecting to just make some quick money off box sales cause they probably aren't even planning to keep servers running more then a year unless everything we've seen so far was just concept art and word of mouth.

TESO is basically a way to try and bring in a wider variation of audience, not everyone is a fan of single player games, there is a whole community that is devoted to playing MMO's. This is just to attract more people to TES franchise, if they are interested in the MMO then they might be tempted by the single player to see what kind of different experience it can offer. TESO is also a bit of market research, see how many people like MMO's, this is a way to see if they should continue to make online spin offs of their games. They will still always continue with their single player games, there is no doubt about that, but it's just to attract more people to the game.

In the end their main goal is to bring in money, if it gets more people interested, then the more money they will make. It's simple marketing strategy.

*Sorry of there were a few mistakes, getting things right on the iPad can be annoying sometimes.*

Personally, I would love to see stricter, more traditional classes implemented in an Elder Scrolls game. When I pick, say, an Agent or Nightblade I want it to mean something.

Yeah that could be interesting *IF* it did mean something.

To me meaning something means that a class (or skill set) determines how a quest unfolds and what kind of quests you can even take on. I find most of the MMOs I've tried the classes mean only how well a party can fit together as they all do the exact same quests.

That's part of it. Mainly what I meant was that it would determine what kinds of skills, weapons, magic, etc. you can use and what you're proficient at. Traditionally, that's how classes are thought of, how they fit into a party and what their "role" is in that party. How a quest unfolds is only determined by your character's class when your character's skills come into play in order to accomplish certain things.

If they made it real time fighting, high end graphics and first person you would all be complaining about the lag, plus you would have to overhaul your pc or pay tons of money to play it.

yup lol

^{I can see how people want your own custom classes, but I feel it is for balancing purposes. I can not wait for the game personally.}

I don't see a problem with custom classes necessarily. In the framework of the current TES system you'd just have to limit each class to, say, 4 major skills and that's it. Something like that.

That could work you know... i hope they pay attention to this forum.

it might actually be good. I hope that right now the people reading this from Zenmax are now trying to do things to make the game more appealing to hardcoe TES fans. Just a few changes might do it

yeah I mean this game is going to be good just don't want to be flamed here cause im a really devoted fan to TES.

Its hard to say if a game is going to be good or not until youve played it. People can flame me if they wish

It would be an entirely possible approach and would give people some sense of being able to create their own class by choosing their 'Major and Minor Skills' from a list of skills and make their own character.

example
Combat: Archery ? Block ? Heavy Armor ? One-handed ? Smithing ? Two-handed
Magic: Alteration ? Conjuration ? Destruction ? Enchanting ? Illusion ? Restoration
Stealth: Alchemy ? Light Armor ? Lockpicking ? Pickpocket ? Sneak ? Speech

And then each skill would grant you access to its 'Star Sign/Talent Tree' where you can select stars/talents as you level up (+5% Damage with Bows etc.). Major skills granting access to the full tree, Minor skills granting access only to the first few tiers. Just an example ofcourse, but say someone would want to make a heavily armed warrior with some minor Restoration and Destruction spells and access to Alchemy and Smithing:

Major Skills: Heavy Armor, Block, Archery, One-Handed (access up to Tier 6)
Minor Skills: Restoration, Destruction, Alchemy, Smithing (access up to Tier 3)

I wouldn't mind an MMO ES game, but my biggest fear is that they'll retcon the entire series. I don't want to see another "akatosh event" like what happened in Daggerfall, causing a "warp of the west" rendering whatever you did in Daggerfall null and void. Here just as well, I dont want that happening to the entire previous installments to the single player series...

^^ yes limits like this and then have it so that classification is not a limit from the beginning and one can grow into the roles, and even be a gimped jack of all trades.

I'd also think for hardcoe MMO fans that class could be demoted to earmarks on a character that denote qualifying for certain archetypes.

I think TES games paint themselves into a corner with the main quest where the single player is once again the savior of the world. It makes things like being head of the assassin's guild silly. "Yes I'm the listener, master assassin ... oh and savior of the known world." This silly all quests in one agenda can be seen as a justification for having all skills maxed possible.

Getting away from all quests being available and doable by all characters then it would be best if the character was allowed to grow as they like and then by their choices then be offered quests or party invites based on their skills set qualifiers.

As for flaming - I've not really read any replies to lovers of MMOs, TES, Bethesda as flaming. Some are excited and many appear lukewarm - the hardcoe TES fans seem lukewarm, to me. We can agree to disagree.

Mr. Horse - the game is set in the second era - previous to any previous game as far as I know.

We have in-game books based on the second era, with specific events... I'm just wondering if they'll make the game with those events incorporated, showing consistency.