Just curious if we think this game will include Companion characters, similar to how SWTOR did. For those not familir SWTOR had companions characters for each class with differing fighting roles and story aspect, it even included romance-able companions as well. Now granted in the KoTOR series which SWTOR was based on Companions played a much bigger role in the single player games than perhaps TES series has but Elder Scrolls has always(or at least mostly) had companion characters that you could adventure with and battle along side.

Having played SWTOR I think they very much enhance the leveling up process and the story telling aspects of the game.

I must admit that I really like the Companions in SWTOR. They were about the only thing I liked really. I would like to see maybe Henchmen in TESO but if not that then a wolf to adventure with me when I am roaming the mountains of Skyrim.

Companion characters might be interesting...with how emblematic characters like Lydia have become, I could definitely see companions being included.

I know that I will probably be spending much of the game on my own though, without player or NPC companions. I really miss the 'loneliness' and 'isolation' that you could feel wandering through Vvardenfell, and would like to try and recapture that feeling if I can.

Meh, anything that discourges grouping an MMO is bad, imo of course.

From a purely MMO Mechanics standpoint Konata is right I guess. I don't particularly like grouping with strangers though, so if I can avoid content that requires me to group (aside from the obvious...dungeons, pvp, raids...) then I'm happy.

Understandable. That's why I hope TESO really focus on the social side, so that people start to form a community and stuff. ^^

Well Companions would'nt be as effective as other players. So grouping with others would always be preferable. However Companions could fill in if needed would be much harder though. In SWTOR the Companions took nothing away from group content as it was tuned with all human players in mind.

swtor encouraged solo gameplay so much that it killed grouping completely, games that encourage solo play to the extent swtor did dont do well...having a hireling to carry crap for you or stuff like that is one thing but having hirelings to fight for you is a recipe for disaster

Played SWTOR from launch and still do. This is simply not true.

i like the idea of having a companion. always having to find a player to help you with something could get annoying.

I don't like companions, but what I hated more was that in SWTOR you were seriously weakened if you leveled/grinded without them. If anything, I only found them a little interesting during cutscenes and dialogue.

In Skyrim I never used them, and was happy that I could still be effective without one.

I hope there's none in this game, to be honest, apart from maybe the odd one or two 'pet classes'; although I'm doubtful there'll be such a thing in TESO, anyway.

In Skyrim I walked around with like 9 companions but I was RPing as a Necromancer.

EQ2 has hireable mercenaries now. Good luck finding a group for anything other than capped level content, as people prefer to just use their mercs. I hope the devs have spent some time looking into what works and what doesnt in terms of finding groups, from a players perspective. An unwieldy tool will be ignored by the community. While cross-faction dungeons did alot of harm to WoW in terms of comunity, their dungeon-finder tool is admittedly right on the money. Im just thinking no to the whole companion thing as it will have an impact on grouping, and if there is one thing I would like to see for sure, it is a strong and loyal community come up around this project.