First, I'd like to present to you your own words towards the product you're currently working on:
"The entire team is committed to creating the best MMO ever made – and one that is worthy of The Elder Scrolls franchise."
Second, I'd like to say that NOTHING in this open letter to you, the developers of TESO, is based on any recent information that may or may not be true about your product as products like yours will shift & change over time through its development. However, this letter is more of a broad "this is what you NEED to know" about the product you're making, and more importantly whom your product is meant for.

With these words as the proverbial centerpiece to this letter let me lay out the success for your product in no uncertain terms from the perspective of the fans to the Elder Scrolls franchise.

The Elder Scrolls Franchise has been, at its core, concentrated on providing the highest of quality Sandbox singleplayer "Role Playing Games" ever since 1996 with Daggerfall. Since Daggerfall we've seen MANY variations of the Elder Scrolls series that has absolutely decimated any other RPG on the market in its time to at the very least an enjoyable adventure singled around one particular group, The Fans!

Who are "The Fans" of the Elder Scrolls series you might ask? Well, it's actually quite clear once you realize what they're not. "The Fans" are not interested in easy linear quest based mouse mazes that hold your hand from place to place. "The Fans" are not interested in "Gear Score", "Dungeon Raid Weekends", or "PvP Arenas". To put it bluntly, we are NOT interested in another SWTOR. If you think going the easy route that, quite frankly, decimated the StarWars IP for the next 10yrs you've got another thing coming to you.

We want an immersive recreation of, at the very least, a product on par with the Morrowind release of The Elder Scrolls in an MMO form. That means NO instances, NO Battlegrounds, No hand-held linear questing, and NO GEAR SCORE with a giant pulsating "DPS =" indicator on our character sheet.

You must understand, you're making a product centered around a VERY specific mindset, and changing that product to fit ANOTHER mindset that had no inclination toward your product to begin with is quite simply a failure in the making. So, if all you're going to hand to the fans is something similar to the current iteration of MMOs that have come out in the past 10years as the "End all Be All" MMO aimed at "Taking a chunk out of WoW's subscriber count" you can go ahead and cancel your product right now.

"The Fans" won't buy it, and something tells me the "other" audience isn't too interested in an Elder Scrolls based on something they KNOW is more fleshed, and quite frankly if they wanted a copy of something they'll play the original.


Thank you for reading, and if this letter has come off as hostile I deeply apologize. Fans have a tendency to be passionate with their favorite franchises, and more so against them being tarnished !

Sincerely,
-A TES Fan



ps: Originally posted on MMORPG :]
pps: The "leaked" info regarding TESO has pretty much stirred up a horrible frenzy of angry fans. Hopefully none of it's true, otherwise you guys will need to restructure the game to something almost indistinguishable from what you have now. Again, IF the leaked info is true.

Very well written. It's entirely true in my opinion. I am a massive TES fan, and I play a heck of a lot WoW. I guess I fit into their current target audience perfectly. But guess what?

I already have a great MMO in WoW. If I was to switch to a different MMO, it would be for something new, like a TES MMO with first-person combat, open player-created factions for shifting and unpredictable political power-struggles, the leveling system that centers on "practice makes perfect" instead of kill X number of enemies for exp points to level up that we see everywhere else.

I was excited for a breath of fresh air from SWTOR. I played for a month, realized it was like WoW with some nifty little improvements on the formula, and ultimately realized that it just wasn't as polished as WoW. No surprise there, since WoW has had 7 years to get that polish as good as it can get. At this rate, TESO is going the same direction - WoW like mechanics with improvements. I don't care for your stamina system with interrupts, it sounds very similar to how a Rogue plays in WoW. I don't care for your open dungeons except for the harder instanced varieties, that IS exactly how WoW handles dungeons.

Come back to me when you've got an MMO that genuinely embodies the spirit of TES.

Signed,

A player of your exact target audience - active TES lover and WoW player

Problem is you are thinking that they are making this game just for the fans,that's your biggest misconception in your open letter lol.

MMO fans are vast numbers compared to your TES fans,this is the market they want to tap into.Don't get me wrong,i love sandbox type game,weather MMO or SPRPGs but TESO will cater to a bit of both,get used to it or stick to Skyrim or SPRPG TES games for your kicks.

You guys really think that this MMORPG is beeing made for TES Fans only?

Sorry but this is a MMORPG with TES Lore nothing more nothing less.

At least someone gets it,unlike the OP.

A nice sentiment, my thoughts as well but im sure they'll ace it. Shame the mods will lock this. P.S. Im pretty ure they dont read the forums and espessialy threads like this, no offense.

All the more reason why it is doomed to fail. So very sad.

So they purposely turned their backs on the Elder Scrolls fans to focus on the MMO fanbase and have already pissed off the majority of their potential buyers in the MMO market by revealing they are doing the same, tired crap they've been playing for several years now?

Off to a great start i'd say!

While I agree they need to rethink their target demographic, I just can't get behind the constant wish for first person action-based combat. TES combat has always been rather bland to me, and the series has constantly decreased the RPG-amount in the action-RPG formula. I have always played in 3rd person since Morrowind, 1st person makes me claustrophobic. So, I'm very interested in the combat system they described for TESO, especially the Finesse-System.

And i bet you will still buy their products lol.

Get over it,TESO is here to stay.

Very true.

Combat in all TES Titels are the least appealing Mechanics of the whole Serie.

I really hope we get a DAOC like Combat system.

You're assuming that 100% of the player base wants exactly what you want. This is false. Instead of 'WE WANT' it ought to be 'I WANT'.

If they are focusing on the MMO fanbase, then they are failing miserably. Since the MMO fanbase is experiencing severe diminishing returns on WoW-like content. Every polished hot-key MMO that has released in recent years has failed, SWToR being the biggest of them all.

SWToR is evidence that people are tired of WoW and that they aren't willing to pay anything for something that doesn't boast all of WoWs features, which is neigh impossible for anything but.. WoW.

And without further ado, here are my concerns:

• Paul Sage recently stated the UI has to be 'comfortable' to mmo players, and yet fails to realize that WoW's interface was entirely new to hundreds of thousands of players who had never played an MMO before when it launched. If all those newbs could learn a new interface, why can't experienced players be given the chance to learn a UI more befitting TES.
  
• One of the hallmarks of TES is exploration, and rewards for that exploration. Bread crumbs and hand holding quests that take you from one quest hub to another are not appreciated.
  
• While I don't expect graphics to be the extreme quality of Skyrim, I do expect the graphics to mimic the style of past TES games. That style is severely lacking. The current style looks like any other generic MMO.
  
• Combat. The fun of TES combat NEEDS to translate to this MMO. Plenty of MMOs have working free-targeting systems.
  
• Skill-based system. This also needs to be in this game. No classes. Let people build their own combinations.
  
• Wide open territory needs to exist. Period. No funneling terrain.
  
• Intricate character customization. That's also a given.

I am one of the Elder Scrolls 'fans' who doesn't mind this games existence and will probably buy it if I ever get a better computer that can run it, but from what your letter says, the fans do not want this game at all.
Thanks for showing me that I am not a fan of the Elder Scrolls games.

1. Being "comfortable" to your average MMO player doesn't mean it isn't going to bring anything new to the table. Take EvE for example; throw your average WoW player in there, and he'll get lost within minutes. You're looking too much into it, I say.

2. IIRC, the interview said there wouldn't be quest hubs. Instead of seeing an NPC with a big golden "!" above their head, one could complete the same quest just by wandering through the area and killing that mob. I'm imagining that most of the "Go here, kill this, return" quests will be given to you in the form of rumours through various sources.

3. That's what happenes when you work with a different engine, and different artists. To be fair, they did an excellent job on re-creating the Orcish armor. As soon as I saw it, I knew what I was looking at.

4. Manual aim doesn't work for MMO's. I mean, it does - but then you alienate those with less than stellar connections.

5. Already proven to not work very well in DF. The game was ripe with bots and macros doing all the work for the players, and giving them a lead nobody playing "fair" could ever hope to close.

6. I agree. I don't think we'll see it, but that's one of the things I'm hoping for.

7. Absolutely. If we get shafted with a couple of presets and that's it, I'll be very disappointed.

could not have said it better OP

I hope they take more risks and actually make the game hard and interesting

Hey, didn't I hear that recently? I could have sworn people said the same thing about Skyrim....

Signed, Endorsed, and 100% agree.

What you called failed is not what devs called failed,you don't need WOW numbers for an MMO to be successful and return a profit,you obviously know nothing about running a business.

You can have 500k subs and be quids in where MMO are concerned.

500k x $15,you do the maths for the monthly returns.

Be under no illusions that TESO will have 500k subs and more,you may not play it but many others will play the game.

Haha, what? Seriously?

So there was a huge public outcry about Skyrim beign a WoW-clone and ripping off other established online games to make a quick buck off of the TES franchise?

Dang! Where was I when that happened?!?!?!

I heard that too although that was drowned under people screaming 'RUINED FOREVAR!!!!!1!!!!11!' with very little evidence to why.

Give the game a chance before the pitchforks and torches are brought out. It might not be that bad.

No, but if you'd been around in the Skyrim forums pre-release, you would have seen the same type of posts. People were claiming that the "true fans" were going to rise up and boycott the game, and that it would destroy the series. People continued to say that, even after sales and critical acclaim proved them dead wrong.

This happens with every new Elder Scrolls game. The "True, 100%-Angus Beef RPG Fans™" claim that it's the end of the world. They gnash their teeth and flail their arms to the heavens. And when the game actually comes out, they're always proven wrong.

keep up the good work dont listen to these whinners.

Not so much proven wrong, more like moving on and not posting anymore ...
Or rather, moving back to the Morrowind/Oblivion uterus.