New article at gameinformer with some new info. Check it out.


http://www.gameinformer.com/games/the_elder_scrolls_online/b/pc/archive/2012/05/11/what-elder-scrolls-online-offers-skyrim-fans-mmo-players.aspx

reading it now.


Interesting read. no new info but i appreciate every bit of info.

Thanks for posting this I haven't seen it yet!

Interesting. PvP is non instanced!!

one thing in the article that concerned me is when it said that when you go into cyrodiil it adjusts your stats to act like your at level cap. don't like that. It should be an endgame thing. and do you get gear from pvping? how can you use it as such a low level.

from article- " Forget about lowbie ganking, since everyone’s stats are automatically boosted to level-cap status in Cyrodiil"

same way Guild wars 1 and 2 did/do it, probably.

"Nonetheless, writing off ESO as “just another MMO” or “WoW with daedra” is doing this ambitious project a grave disservice."

Extremely confident speech here.
We'll see if ESO lives up to his claims.

Anyway i feel the entire article reinforces the fact that other then making improvements on what other MMOs have already done,
ESO does nothing new to make it stand out from the crowd.

never played either. elaborate?

Well GW1 and GW2 don't drop gear in PVP, when playing PVP you get points of various sorts that you can use to buy armor, or materials to make special armor.

Beyond that GW2 just tosses your character up to max level and gives you whatever armor/weapon bonuses you currently have.

It will likely work like this... Since these guys worked on DAoC and then some of them helped with WAR...

When a low level walks into a high level PvP area, his level was adjusted upwards so he could compete to the total war effort. The PvP objective in this game is to take over the main city. The adjusting up of levels allows a low level player to contribute to the top level pvp and help in a major way.

1) Your stats and the stats from your current gear are increased to what it would be at level cap.

2) You do not get new armor and weapons.

3) You do not get the higher level abilities.

SO while this allows you to compete you are at a disadvantage for a few reasons:

1) You do not have high level armor and weapons, and if the gear is set gear, you do not get set bonuses. The higher level player has effects on weapons. The low level player just has stats.

2) The high level player has ALL of his abilities to use. The low level player has the same abilities he had at his regular level, but those abilities are scaled up.

ill prob just avoid cyrodiil until i'm at cap anyways. hopefully there will be pvp servers where you can kill enemies in every zone.

This sentence indicates that the whole feature was only a reacton to the [censored]storm in the forums.

I love how the article pretty much says only things that appeal to "Skyrim players", meaning existing Elder Scrolls fans, in Elder Scrolls Online is the fact that it's set in Tamriel. All the gameplay aspects take parts from that long list of MMOs, but hey, at least there's Daedra.

I love me some lore, but I don't know if that's going to be enough to keep me interested.

Copy/Pasting my reply to the article here, in the hopes that the devs will read it and consider answering some of these questions through the updates they release in the near-future. It's basically what I like about the article, and what I'm concerned about (what they're missing):


Okay, interesting article, but it brings up a few questions.

I love how they're focusing on exploration. Searching for artifacts instead of monsters to grind on sounds great, and right up my street (long time TES player), and I'm sure book hunting for the Mage's Guild is yet another aspect of that. Perfect.

Working with other players without the need to group up is also an excellent decision, and something GW2 is aiming for. Although the way you group with players doesn't seem to have changed in MMOs (right click player, invite to party, wait for confirmation) I have noticed that players seem less interested in grouping. More anti-social and closed off, if you will. Maybe that's because of the stronger guild elements we've seen in MMOs, encouraging players to work with their guild mates and for their guild, and treat that as their social elements of the MMO - if you're not in their guild, they don't care about you, or want to know about you. They just want to ignore you. Maybe it's also because solo play in MMOs has been made increasingly easier (whether that's tweaks to exp gains and quest difficulty in WoW over the years, or companion mechanics in SWTOR). So it's great to see the simple mechanic of "If you're near each other, you can help each other and receive all expected benefits of doing so, without the need to invite and wait for approval." It's a much more tacit and natural temporary alliance, which is a fantastic approach to take.

Fully voiced dialogue is another plus, for the exact reasons stated in the article, and a polished release like Rift is essential. Though just saying "It's going to be polished" isn't enough. I'm sure all MMOs were released expecting to be polished enough, but ran into unexpected technical issues. We'll have to see how that one plays out.

Now for some issues, and questions:

Seeing more of the world: Yes I want to see Blackmarsh, and I really do want to see it on a modern engine. Hero Engine is modern? I suppose if you go by the fact that it's current and being used today, then yes, that is A definition of a modern engine. But it sure doesn't LOOK modern. That screenshot suffers from the same issues as all modern Western MMOs - cartoon artstyle, with low polys, designed to run on low-end machines. Why do people do this? There are a lot of new MMOs being released right now (TERA) or in the same launch window as TES Online (Blade and Soul) that look drop dead gorgeous and can still be scaled down to run on low end machines. So yes, I do want to explore Black Marsh, but no, not on the Hero Engine with visuals like that. My modded copy of Morrowind looks better than that, and I can just as easily wait for a talented mod team to recreate Black Marsh for TES:3, 4, or 5. The other thing that worries me about exploration is this:

Player Owned Housing isn't in the game "because of the constraints inherent to an online game." This is annoying me. I've seen that comment used several times now, and it's a lie. There's no other way of putting it. Star Wars Galaxies had open player-owned housing. I think Runescape may even have player-owned housing. These 'constraints' are fictional. If you don't think Star Wars Galaxies handled it well enough, then show them how YOU would do it. It's a staple of TES gaming, and needs to be in there for release. Don't make the mistake Bioware did and say "We'll work on adding these new features for expansions!" because players will realize the game isn't ready yet, and not pay you until the game is ready and waiting with the features they want.

It also ties into my worries about exploration, because the issue housing would have is lack of real-estate for the thousands of players. That would mean the world being created is fairly small - more comparable to WoW's small patchwork quilt of zones rather than TES's beautifully realized 16 square miles of Skyrim. I've also read that although Cyrodiil is using the Oblivion heightmap for the province, it's been scaled DOWN. So how do I get that feeling of exploration, when the provinces are small enough that I can learn all of their wilderness locations by the back of my hand? How can I enjoy exploring it on a modern engine when it's rendered in an exaggerated art style instead of the realistic art style that TES games are known for, especially Skyrim?

And my biggest worry is still the lock-on combat. Go play Tera, and you'll instantly realize that lock-on combat is a thing of the past. Go look at some Blade and Soul videos and you'll see that this 2013/2014 game is taking that dynamic combat even further (as well as exploration, but that's another matter). TES Online is doing a fine job of qualifying itself against existing and old games like WoW, SWTOR, and Rift.. but has it taken into account where the genre is heading in the near future? Why do the devs think that tab targeting and lock-on combat is going to compete with the likes of Tera, Blade and Soul, and god knows what else will be releasing in that similar time frame? I'll bet a sizeable sum of septims that Blizzard's next MMO has thrown lock-on combat out the window.

I am interested in this game, being a huge TES fan and long time MMO player, but I'm a little concerned that TES Online is trying to compete with games from the last decade, instead of looking to the future and thinking about what players are expecting to see from the MMO genre in this decade.

"ESO includes sections of every province in Tamriel"
So this means we can't just go wandering all over Tamriel?

Yes, exactly. Only parts of Tamriel are in the inital release. Big parts will be reserved for later expansions, e.g. (from the GI) Windhelm will be in the initial game, Winterhold and the College will not.

F**** YAH

I'm excited for the PVP and have high hopes for it. but the open world pvp isn't really anything new. their take on the 3 factions and crowning emperor will be what makes it unique.

Also, article says they'll still have instanced arena for people interested in that kind of pvp.

Imo, that's a really good thing. If they're not forced to build the entire continent all at once, it'll be not only bigger, but more detailed as well.

i'm ok with sections of the continent at first as well deathpuppy. They've already said they'll add more landmass in expansions. As long as they do service to what they put in i'll be content.

Yeah 100% agree it's an outrage
OUTRAGE!! This is TES damit, not the next generic WoW/WAR/whatever wannabe. I'm extremely let down by the combat and lack of housing since it IS POSSIBLE and have BEEN DONE in many other games.

i'm ok with the dev's focusing on other aspects of the game then player housing or twitch combat. The tradiional MMO experience is fun so hopefully they're spending most of their time and resources refining it and really getting the Elderscrolls world right.

Well it is understandable that it isn't going to bring much new to the MMO's, since the planning began in 2007. However, after reading that article, I'm a bit more positive about TES Online. However, still not enough to say "yay" or "nay".

its tons of fun in GW2. i dont want to grind for PvP i want PvP RIGHT NOW

So Zenimax basically threw an enormous amount of money to polish MMO features already existing in other MMO games?