It's OK as far as it goes, I guess the quibble would be if there were... say, ten classes, and each had three (for the sake of argument) unique skills, you'd by my reckoning have the option of only ten out of a possible ninety character/class builds. Perhaps some skills are not unique, which would cut the possibilities some, but the point still stands. Unless very loose, or very numerous, classes tend towards an un-improved MMO "welcome to the game... which is your character" type system, rather than a "welcome to the game... what is your character" arrangement, which you'd think could have been accommodated. Likesaid though... who knows at this point.

Also, you're quite right... much crap is spoken on YouTube... although "ShoddyCast" can be pretty good at times.

It's weird that this thread shows up as Shoddycast's new episode talks about almost all this stuff mentioned in here. I'd suggest giving it a watch solely because the guys over at ESO: Off the Record join them and talk about how the game is very much a TES game and breaking the shackles of a lot of bogged down MMO mechanics. This is coming from people who actually played the game, not just watched the footage. I suggest everyone watch it & get pumped for ESO. They talk questing, exploration, classes & skills, customization, and about how archery felt in the game.

http://youtu.be/ZpMduGPX70Q

Also, would like to clarify that I'm not affiliated with either of these to websites in any shape or form. I just like watched the new episode and came here to see this new thread first and thought it would help alleviate people's worries for this game.

Yea, the "WTF Classes?" comments get me laughing. TES has had classes since Arena. Only in Skyrim did classes disappear.

My complaint about classes is that they are no longer guidelines. They now lock a player into a specific class with class specific abilities. Sure, 2-handed heavy armor mages are possible, but they are still Mages. They have some Mage only abilities.

So much is unknown.

Watching this right now. I'll make my comments as I go

I had a long list of contentions with what was said in the video, but decided to sum up and say this about the video. There is a LOT of speculation, especially about PvP. There is a lot of uninformed statements about MMOs. It is obvious that all three speakers are TES:O fans, which is not a bad thing, but presents only one side of the equation. One of the speakers likes 3rd person shooters best of all game genres. I don't hold his opinions in line with what I look for in a game. Another speaker thought Diablo II is an RPG. I disagree with this assessment of Diablo II, thus making me wonder how he views things in TES:O.

Overall, I was not impressed with the information in the video. It settled maybe 1 or 2 worries I have had, at the same time reinforcing a few issues I have with TES:O. There are many reasons for players to like TES games. As many as there are players, it seems Some of what I find enjoyable about TES games I find lacking in TES:O. Other parts are indeed included. I do thank you for the link, though.

This is pretty much exactly what I thought about the video. They didn't seem to know much about gaming in general, much less about mmos.

To be fair, they did acknowledge that their PvP talk was mostly speculation. However, most of everything else (at least from the Off the Record guys) was from personal experience playing the game. I'm not saying that they're most knowledgeable about everything, but a lot of their TESO 1st hand experience was very accurate, though I can't go into more about that due to the NDA. And I don't personally think their MMO talk wasn't as bad as you're saying, but hey I may have missed something they said. I watched this at 3 am after all.

Also, Diablo II is an Action RPG. While not as fleshed out as a normal RPG (which its not supposed to be; hence 'Action'), its still technically a RPG.

And the Off the Record guys (and maybe Shoddycast as well) agreed that gameplay was the most important part for their gaming experience, which Shoddycast showed a pic of their current poll results with that same question, but I agree with you. It wasn't the most important to me, but I can see how it kind of HAS to be the most important for an MMO.

We have a difference of opinions when it comes to the video for sure, but that's fine. I think they provided some great hands on knowledge of how the game feels and compares to TES. They talked about 'grind', dynamic quests, exploration, and skill trees/classes. While they did speculate at certain points, they did make it a point to say they were speculating on certain topics, something that a lot of posters or others won't do; which leads to misinformation.

All in all I think the video provided some nice info as well as while letting people know how the overall game and certain mechanics play in comparison to the TES games. Plus they did all that with what little info we have on the game, so kudos to them for that.

And hey, at least it settled 1-2 of your worries! Every little bit helps with the devs not showing us anything! Its just hard to know how this game plays, and suffer people grasping for info; which leads them to make uninformed bold statements about how this game isn't very TES. You brought up a lot of good points, and went about it the right way. But for every one of you we have, we have 100 more just ranting and raving that this game is fail because they watched a few vids.

Also, did we just have a slight difference of opinions without calling each other names or raging? What has the internet come to when people have civil discussions!!!