I recently read a very good article on IGN titled: "http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/07/30/are-aaa-hardcoe-games-doomed" A very good read that I'd recommend to anyone who's hoping that ESO will have "that old magic" so many of us long time MMO'ers are seeking these days. I know I am... I won't quote the entire article, but will pull some quotes I feel are relevant. Anywho...

Innovation in not just the MMO industry, but the entire gaming industry has stagnated. Badly. I hate hate HATE to use the term "WoW Clone" but it fits my point here, so forgive me, dear reader with any kind of sense whatsoever. WoW has definitely set a standard for this generation of gamers. It's almost an anomaly how insanely popular it has become, but it definitely has opened the eyes of big corporations that there's real money to be made off WoW's success. And thus, we end up with games like Rift, TOR, and a bunch of other "WoW Clones". Rift blatantly poked fun at themselves about being a WoW clone, and the TOR devs openly admitted that they're "not trying to re-invent the wheel". Gaming companies these days are desperately clinging to what already works that innovation in the big titles has come to a screaming halt. The mentality seems to be "WoW has this/that/those, we need to have this/that/those in order to make the !&@*load of money we promised our investors!" Open up Steam. Look at the scrolling headline games. What major pattern do you see here? Sequals. Established IPs. Almost every one of them.

This week, Victor Antonov, creator of Half-Life 2's City 17 and Dishonored told http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-07-18-its-been-a-poor-poor-five-years-for-fiction-in-the-video-game-industry, “It's been a poor, poor five years for fiction in the video game industry” adding, “there have been too many sequels, and too many established IPs that have been ruling the market."

Trying new and innovative things has become a gambling man's sport. And why shouldn't it? Big corporations invest a LOT of money in games, and, being corporations, have shareholders and investors who want to ride the dollar train of a game's success. They want safety. Assurances. A lot of money is exchanging hands here. They better make this work and not fool around. If I'm not mistaken, Wasn't the price tag of TOR something like 300-500 MILLION dollars? That's a lot of clams, people, and a lot of investors wanting to know that their money is going into a Safe. Investment.

In this generation the average two-SKU (Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3) game is costing $20 million plus, and needs to sell about 2 million copies to be profitable.

Zenimax is guilty of this as well. I'm not trashing The Elder Scroll series, as I'm a huge fan of it. But it's all sequals. Fallout as well. I'm looking forward to their upcoming title Dishonored in the hopes that it'll add something new to the table. Which brings me around full circle to ESO. Will ESO just be the same old stuff with a fancy IP slapped on it? Didn't work so well for TOR, did it? Or will we see something NEW, the likes of which would make us old jaded MMO'ers say "OMG, I've never even THOUGHT of that!" Will we sit in amazement from Day One, going though all sorts of different, unique aspects of the game? Or will we just jump in, already primed from WoW, Rift, TOR, etc etc. Knowing exactly what to do, how to do it, and the most effecient way it can be done?

Laura Miele has been working at Electronic Arts since the mid-1990s, and has held many senior business-planning and marketing positions. She is currently SVP of Global Marketing at EA Games. She told IGN, “The stakes are high, the investments are significant, the marketplace is very complicated. New IP [Intellectual Property = games franchises] is not for the faint of heart. But it's incredibly important for the health of our category and our industry and our organization.”

Now, obviously, ESO will not be new IP. It's very blatantly using a well established IP. That's ok, really, but what matters the most is what they do with it. The Elder Scrolls, at it's heart is just lore, freedom and exploration. Each installment changes how you interact with the world, but the lore, freedom and exploration are what people seem to love the most about it.
Lore and exploration are going to be a no-brainer though. An MMO needs different layers of depth and gameplay. I for one want to see and do new things. Sure, I want a little comfort, but I want it to be a NEW adventure. Not a re-skinned adventure I've already had... time and time again.

I think that TESO will walk the way of both: conventionality and innovation. But... is just a tought.