It's fairly obvious if this is a clone of anything, its DAoC - 3 faction PvP, former DAoC dev leading the project.

It does say PvP will be player-driven, which gives me a bit of hope at least. I have also grown fundamentally tired of theme park style MMOs, and with events in EVE being in the gaming spotlight again it makes me really yearn for a more sanboxed, player-driven high fantasy MMORPG.

Most importantly, no WoW art direction please. For the love of all things sacred. No WoW UI, either. I swear on my life this alone would prevent me from ever playing ESO.

Too late

its actually not a WoW clone, but still the wrong direction imo.

Its cutting pretty close there. Maybe not a full body clone, but I see some clearly cloned organs.

I think TES should definetely go in a different direction than WoW. Make it an entire new game. Make it fresh.

Here's my 2c on the Game Informer article...

I couldn't get over how many times they actually straight up said World of Warcraft in the article. They're really aiming for a traditional MMO experience- and depending on how you want to look at it, it's a "WoW clone". However, they are trying a lot of different things, especially when it comes to dungeoneering and quests, to get the community to interact better. It seems like they're trying to make combat a little different from the WoW approved cluster [censored] of abilities with the whole hands thing; the AI changes and environmental "combo"s seem cool. It sounds like they're trying to make the player economy and crafted items not completely worthless, but they haven't said what they're doing in this department at all. I think the 3 factions adds more potential to conflict that WoW's 2 faction system doesn't have. To me, their main selling points is the PvP focus, the more community oriented questing, and the changes to combat mechanics.

Am I excited? Eh, not really. It sounds interesting, but its hard to tell how much is just gimmick at this point. Maybe after I see some video, or get to play some kind of beta, it might change my mind. But who knows what'll happen. TES seems like the biggest name to go MMO since WoW (That actually brings something new to the table. SWTOR had nothing.), and maybe the recent success with Skyrim will be enough to catapult TESO into heavy weight territory? This is all baseless speculation on my part, it's really too early to say anything.

Its much more of a DAoC clone. Its not a WoW clone. WoW actually invented nothing mentioned in the article that ESO has.

I'm also quite curious to see what they do. Although it would be fun to have an Oblivion style leveling system, I'm not quite sure it would be the most balanced. It almost has to be like the traditional class style, if at least for basic things like their theme. Further specialization can occur.

I don't know... from what I read of that article they even changed that.

Seems like more of an MMO for DAOC fans, rather than an MMO for TES fans.

Once can dream...