You constantly see threads on TES discussion saying "They should do a game in ALL OF TAMRIEL, wouldn't that be so cool???" but nobody ever seems to think about it. Think how small the lands in the games are. But think of the detail that is put into the worlds. Now divide that by 9 and that is the average size and detail of a TES game in every province. Even if you, say, double it for this MMO due to the extra development time, that's still 9 provinces ad about 2/9ths the size and detail of a single province in previous games. Imagine how small they would be, how empty they would be culturally, how little creative effort could be put into each one. Now also think how stupid it will be that people can cross the whole continent in a few hours. And regardless of development time, if the same time was put into a single province, that's still 9 times the size and 9 times the detail for that province. This post isn't going into much detail at all, but does nobody ever think of this stuff when it comes to making games? EDIT: I mean nothing good for the quality of the game, it'll do wonders in attracting "ooh shiny" consumers.

Yeah, I think it takes away from each province cause there is no way the MMO will have as much detail for each as TES single player games have. I'd much rather they had chosen Akavir or somewhere as the location, that would have added lots of fresh options.

i agree it would open more lore aspects and more freedom to do certain things

Yeah and the main issue for me is; See Black Marsh in TES online and you'll forever expect Black Marsh to be a certain way. Considering this games lore does seem shaky at best in my mind I may be able to put it in the whole 'fanfic' section. I don't want to see Tamriel outside of single player. With Akavir you'd literally have a ton of options, with the highlight of keeping the magic and TES style. I don't much think from what I have seen of the hero engine that it does the TES 'style' justice. Cartoon WoW style yes, unique TES MMO style, no. Just my opinion though

Its called exercising your imagination. Because really, imagine the whole continent at skyrim quality detail. Sure it would take like 10 years to do the landscaping, but its fun to entertain the noodle every now and then.

If bethesda said they were going to spend the next 10 years making a TES that coverd it all, then I would gladly wait.


That being said, as far as the mmo goes. Its an MMO, so we can already expect nothing close to Skyrim quality detail. That is a given. So off the bat, the work is lessened.

I would much rather they said they were going to do one province at 9 times detail than the whole continent at one times detail. Then it would be like a real province, hugely intricate with enormous cities and proper mountains (or whatever landscape feature is appropriate).

They should just create Tamriel with all the provinces... single player... perfect detail. So help me loading screen

Unless they already provided map size in square miles (I haven't read the article), we can only guess and it may not be that bad. If the map is as big as World of Warcraft the provinces may be quite big because a wow continent (let's say Eastern Kingdom) has about 18-20 "provinces" whereas all of Tamriel will have 9 bigger provinces. If one province (say Black Marsh) will be in square miles as big as Stranglethorn+Westfall+BlastedLands+Duskwood+Elwynn+Redridge, I think it will be big enough to feel like a province. It takes you a lot of real time minutes to travel from Booty Bay to Ironforge on horse, let alone walking!

Sorry people who haven't played WOW, it's the only MMO I can relate to, here are some maps to understand what I'm talking about:
http://codeflavor.com/bbs/screenshots/azeroth.jpg
http://www.imperial-library.info/sites/default/files/gallery_files/minibigmaproadslore31gv.jpg
http://unrealitymag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/large-video-game-worlds2.jpg

Well, in all fairness, they already did a TES game that involved all of the provinces: The Elder Scrolls I: Arena.

It's really just a matter of them fleshing the provinces out and making sure that there's plenty to do no matter where you are, be it questlines or emergent random activities/events/encounters...

Oh. And I hope they actually implement the Tamrielic holidays that seem to be missing from the last three TES games. I want my Tales and Tallows back!

I know... and how many people think the world of Arena was the most interesting one portrayed in a TES game so far?

For the time when it was made, it was spectacular. I don't know of a single CRPG at the time that felt as vast or gave you the sheer amount of freedom to wander around and do whatever you wanted. If Arena was remade using the Creation engine (not bloody likely, I know) and it actually looked as beautiful as Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim, I have a feeling that more people would feel the same way.

Morrowind is heralded as the best MMO of the series, and yet there is less freedom in Morrowind than there is in Daggerfall. And there is less freedom in Daggerfall than there is in Arena.

I don't know... There are more instant gratification seekers in the community now than there were back then. back then most people wanted a vast world with what felt like lots of depth and the freedom to explore it as one saw fit. Now, it seems like "gimme gimme" is the theme. Whether this is a bad or good thing is irrelevant. It's just the trend that the entire game development industry, MMO or otherwise, is experiencing.

I personally welcome the notion of a vast world to explore. And if TESO's world is anything like Arena in terms of the provinces, it gains a big + in my book.

Gimme gimme is exactly the issue. They just want the idea because "Hey, how cool would it be if we could go EVERYWHERE" without thinking of what it means in terms of quality. I don't know what you mean by "Daggerfall had less freedom than Arena", you'll have to explain that better. Because Arena has an infinite random world where Daggerfalls world is technically not infinite but you'd never know it because it would take years to cross? If you're not talking about world design the point is irrelevant to the discussion. What about Arena's world design made it better than a more focused single province design, apart from the fact that you can say "I went across all Tamriel"? Was it deep? Was it well-crafted? Was it particularly interesting compared to others? As for your first paragraph, the thing is it WOULDN'T look as beautiful as MW/OB/SK because they're trying to make the whole world in the same time the other games made one province. Ergo, less time to be artistic and creative for each one. Significantly so.

Size is less important than details. Also looking at that WoW map makes me sad seeing how the different environments look incredibly artificial, not natural at all.

Each one will be very small and not nearly as impressive as a singleplayer version.

They might just be making a small slice of each province with one city and surroundings, rather than each and every province in its entirety.
That would still give the variety of nine distinct environments which they could expand as the game grows.

Well there is one thing to consider here. While we may have an entire continent's worth of places to go, but that does not mean that the entire continent will be one seamless landmass. Even World of Warcraft with its MULTIPLE continents and countries has load transition points. I don't really mind that so much, really.

They could have every town and village present in Arena represented in TESO, and they could be just zones you load into. And depending on how their world building tools work, it may be easier for them to put together everything than it is for us and BGS to build environments in the Creation engine. Do we even know what engine TESO is using? Did ZOS build it in-house or did they license it? If they got hold of something like the Hero Engine, which is designed for the purpose of building massive MMO worlds fast, then they can be both detailed and efficient. If you aren't familiar with it, check out heroengine.com. That's not to say they ARE using it, but it serves as an example of the advantages licensing an engine have over building one in-house. It could turn what would be a six-year project into one that takes three years. Hero Engine is what BioWare licensed for Star Wars: The Old Republic. It should be noted however that the engine does not dictate art style. BioWare's choice to go with stylized "cartoony" art was exactly that... their choice. Just as it was their choice to ramp up storytelling and ramp down everything else.


There seemed to be gameplay options that were present in Arena that were either missing or downplayed in Daggerfall. Same could be said for each subsequent game in the series.


It's all relevant. You can have a world that is beautifully detailed and loaded with pre-baked questlines, but without the gameplay features it can feel shallow.


In a way it was. It was vast. You could leave a town and wander around in the wilderness around it for hours, exploring random things and never scratch the surface of how much you could explore. But one person's deep is another person's "not deep enough."


Again, this is subjective. For an engine that only dealt in squares of varrying thickness with which to build a world, Cities, towns and dungeons were pretty well-crafted. Use of different wall textures helped convince the player that they were in unique areas. So yeah, for what it was at the time, it was well-crafted. At least well enough for me.


Again with the subjective questons... It was interesting enough for me.


No... that's not what I meant. I was comparing the engine used in Arena's construction to the one they've used starting with Morrowind. I'm referring to graphical superiority of world rendering in the game. One would not look at Arena and Skyrim next to each other on a shelf and be compelled to buy Arena over Skyrim. Aesthetics do play a role in a product's marketability. In some ways, Arena was superior to Skyrim in terms of mechanics, but is inferior in others. I was pointing out that if Arena were to be remade using the same artistic capabilities of the Creation Engine, without sacrificing any of the gameplay mechanics, I think people would absolutely love it. And you know? If you strip out the quests and just build the world and mechanics using a modern engine, you can come pretty close. Stories and Quests can be layered into it, and if they have the tools to keep expanding on what is there, the joys of Arena would be reborn.


It's all in how streamlined the tools they are working with are. Every time a new TES game comes out, they reinvent the game. Each subsequent TES game plays differently than the one that came before it. Magic systems are handled different, lockpicking is handled different, Combat is handled different. Skills and abilities are handled different. With TESO, they will have to decide on one way of handling each mechanic and stick with it. They may add new mechanics as time goes by, but aside from minor tweaking, the core mechanics will remain the same. That right there leaves only time for artistic and creative expression.

Of course, this is all my opinion, based on my own personal experiences with The Elder Scrolls since the beginning. Your mileage will varry.

Asheron's Call, for all its flaws, had one of the best streaming gameworlds that felt like an actual place instead of a theme park (like LOTRO, despite its size). It had lots of "empty" space between points of interest. One might argue that's not good level design, but it helped convey a sense of distance and geography. You push too much concent in a smaller place and it feels like a theme park. Oblivion and Skyrim already suffered from this, but it's acceptable since you never actually leave the province.
But if you can get from Skyrim to the Summerset Isles in a play session, you'd need lots of barren lands and empty roads to make the distances more believable. And I just don't see them doing this, it's going to be a theme park, no doubt.
But at least I hope they make it streaming, loading exterior cells is a very outdated solution for an already outdated formula type of game.