Just to make things clear this is not a "I WANT THIS AND I WANT THAT POST" I'm just trying to make a point about how the elderscrolls can keep it's flavor and be a succesful MMO and all of this is just a point of view and not the "BEST IDEA EVER"

I see a lot of negativity towards this game and it's only been out there for a few days. I'm going to keep my judgement to myself until I can get some solid info that isn't just the basics and some early screenshots.

I just wanted to take a few minutes and lay out some things about all of this. This post might end up being a wall of text and if you don't feel like reading through it then that's fine. On the other hand if you don't mind taking the time to read it all that would nice of course.

So basically I just wanted to touch on the way MMOs in general and Elder scrolls in General are percieved today and how people play and have come to love them. I look at MMO's and people can hate it all they want and they can talk down on it all they want but the truth is WoW has set the standard for MMO's and it has become hard for game companies who don't have a lot of backing to break this mold or try and make something their own with their own flavor.

One thing I see a lot around these forums are people saying that the way the single player RPG ES games are designed would not translate into MMO's very well and it wouldn't be able to pull it off. I don't think this is the case at all and I think this idea that every MMO has to have this RAID and DUNGEON system that goes WAY back to old school MMOs is the only way of doing things and that the real time combat of the ES series isn't being implamented due to latancy issues they don't want to worry about is just sadning to some regard.

Let me give a small idea about how popular ES is to people. To some people, hell a LOT of people you could say without a doubt ES is the best RPG period and it is the standard setter for what RPGS should be. A game that is as beautiful as it's design as it is in gameplay. Be who you want and do what you want in this beautiful open world. YOU are the master of the story and YOU decide what you want in the game. You want to be a traveling salesman imperial who fights with his fists and tries to turn a profit? Go ahead and do it and if you want to be this bad ass warrior of death and destruction who seeds fear into the hearts of his enemies? BE MY GUEST. How this type of gameplay couldn't be implamented into an MMO is lost to me.

People spend hundreds of hours even upwards to 1000+ on single playthroughs in this game. Imagine skyrim times 5 you don't think people would spend over 2000-5000 hours playing? you don't think people would be willing to PAY 15$ a month to be able to play this insanely addictive game with their best pals? Just imagine it for a second all the provinces of Tamriel open for you nothing stoping you from going anywhere you wanted. Imagine all that content there would be in an MMO sized budget. Imagine the thousands of quests you could do and radient story telling that could be done.

You don't think it could be done with hundreds of people running around on the same "server" ?

Here are just some simple ways they could manage this and don't get me wrong they arent the BEST ideas in the world by any stretch of the imagination but I think they are some solid ways to open up a MMO market to this game.

Major cities such as whiterun, imperial city etc etc all have instances they are seprate from the worlds and require you to enter a loading screen. How hard would it be to make it so your city is yours and only yours? If you enter whiterun it is YOUR whiterun and when someone else enters it they go into THEIR whiterun. From a technical standpoint this could be a way to keep people from griefing eachothers cities. want to chil in town have a few mugs of mead? Party up and you can enter the same "town"

You might ask how this would be done for hundreds of players and what kind of technical barriers there might be. But no one said the game has to be the traditional server type they could run a shard system with channels.


now you might be wondering how the open world might work. what about all those towns that aren't instanced or quest givers that aren't static in placement and wonder or are in special places like maybe outside a dungeon or ruin? There is this beautiful technology called phasing it allows you to seperate players in an open persistant world without breaking the game. This could be one of many simple ways around open world dungeons that don't have load in or are sperated from the world such as forts, towers and ruins.

I find it really difficult to believe that the people who religiously follow this game wouldn't be happy with an MMO version of the single player game and really I don't really get why people thing muliplayer would ruin this series. What is so hard about it? what is so difficult to understand and how would adding this feature change ANYTHING for anyone other than the fact that if you wanted to you could press a few buttons and instantly group up and kick some serious ass with a few buddies.

But you might be wondering how would PVP work? I don't want to be out picking flowers or having a good time and BAM some [censored] comes and kills me and now i'm stuck being camped. Well that is why there are such thigns as PVP channels or servers and PVE (normal) type servers/channels. If you don't want to be bum rushed by some A-hole orc mage that goes by the name of Orsipwn then don't choose a pvp server etc etc.

Then you might be wondering what would keep people paying to play?

Here is a good one and something I want to bring up about what you consider "content". Just look at what Skyrim has brought to the ES series as a whole. Much better quest design and dungeons have actual meat to them and arent just complete rinse repeat. You have unique backstory for a lot of dungeons and ruins that add hours of gametime. Imagine what a AAA MMO budget could produce with that kind of story telling. Imagine thousands of unique dungeons and stories they could craft with a 6-7 year production time. Imagine the epicness they could build massive labrynths to the smaller 10-15 minute caves. (that could be YOUR dungeons just like the cities)

Not this traditional raiding or dungeon system that relies on a holy trinity of the like but just good ol' well designed dungeons that you and a few friends could hop in and experience a story. loot could be randomized so that things didn't get as stale always going in these dungeons to find some good stuff. is it really that much different than 8+ man raids? running the same 1-2 raids or dungeons every week over and over? what would you rather do have 400+ unique and engaging dungeons out in a massive persistant world? that can all give you nice loot or 1-2 raids every 3-6 months of big patches

Imagine what they could do with the princes and the devines. 16 shrines in each province each giving a unique quest. Wouldn't you much rather craft your own story? Wouldn't you rather be able to pick the race you want to play and play it how you want to? why be stuck with the same faction as races x y and Z why not be a Nord mage who worships molag bal? why not have a special faction for each prince? it doesn't even have to be this massivly over complicated thing. it could simply be 2-3 quests from each shrine a shine being in 3-4 of the provinces doesn't even have to be all of them. How great would that feel?

Or being a devout follower the devines traveling monk or vigil of light seeking out injustice where ever it may be OPPOSING the princes. maybe you want to join the imperial legion and become a soldier on the front lines? maybe your friend believe the imperial army is too oppressive and seeks to rebel and joins a rebel army (for example sake the stormcloaks) now you two are opposite of eachother fighting for 2 different causes.


this is the elder scrolls multiplayer that i can garentree millions of fans would like. What isn't there to like? really i can't find any reason why people who arent die hard fans of the single player game wouldn't be loving this I really can't. You have all the single player elements nothing is comprimised other than what? balance is the only thing that would be effected here theyw ould have to balance things so that a thief type character wouldn't 30x damage a mage into oblivion or that a mage type character wouldn't route another player for 67 seconds. these things can be easily balanced in a MMO fashion without destroying the games elements.

Why can't fear last 60 seconds on an NPC when you perk it up? why would it not be ok for a player to only be feared for 6-10 seconds? and have diminishing returns. again this keeps the single player aspect alive and opens up multiplayer.

why can't a player be a vampire? you become more resistant to frost and take more fire damage now you have to build around this but so do your enemies? how is this any different than MMOs today. Someone builds a way and people have to fight that person and best their builds.

WHY CAN'T elder scrolls translate into multiplayer and still hold all those single player aspects together and intact. Can you really make an arguements against it? If you've never had riches in your life could you miss them? the answer is no. people like to feel powerful and it is one of the nitches of the elder scrolls series. making your character a god among mortals. How can this NOT be achieved while keeping balance?

you can craft yourself a nice ebony sword with fire and frost damage and 2 shot NPCS all day long but why wouldn't they be able to balance it against players. It's not like the players are going to be on = standing with the NPCS. Hell they could have monsters that scale with you and monsters that have a static level like they did with skyrim and it would be perfect.

The game i've been spouting about for the longest time now I just can't see not being a success. Skyrim is a success because the game as a whole. people have their favorite nitches and they stick with them. So how could everything i've said in this post not cater to ANYONE who loves the ES right now? there are MILLIONS of fans and if poeple are spending hundreds of hours one ONE character in ONE province imagine the epicness of the entire tamriel open to you?

expansions you say? how about going to the princes realms massive content to be explored RIGHT there.

ALL IN ALL MY BOTTOM LINE IS CONTENT IS CONTENT AND MILLIONS OF PEOPLE will pay if they get to play the game they love at a massive open world scale.

I would pay 15$ in a heart beat for this and i'm sure I can say that a lot of people would agree. How is paying 15$ a month for hundreds of things to do in lets say WOW any different you have the current tier your progress on for 4-6 months and you have side things like PVP, pet, collections, achievements alts, etc etc and all of this can be found in elder scrolls how is raiding with 8-25 people any different than going into a remastered laberynthia with 5-8 real life people taking down some bad ass lich lord or dragon priest of old undead being summoned all around you.

or going into a dungeon to take down the wolf queen. HOW IS THAT NOT EPIC and just as satisfying to people as raiding. People play elders scrolls because it is elder scrolls and people would play the game I have talked about because it is what they love and it is something they can sing THOUSANDS of hours into and never get bored building 10+ characters with thier OWN unique story.

SORRY FOR THAT MASSIVE WALL OF TEXT I LOVE YA'LL FOR STICKING THROUGH IT.

again I aint going to judge the ES:O just yet it might turn out good but there are lots of sides to this and I can agree with both sides on some points. people want ES that is all i'm saying and it doesnt need to follow a formula already out there to be successful the fact that morrowind, oblivion and skyrim have all set standards is enough to prove this.


sorry if there are some typos in there I pulled an all nighter and running on coffee as of right now lol