As of right now, "The Elder Scrolls" RPGs is the 2nd oldest and still active line of RPGs. The only one older is "Final Fantasy." It has a loyal following, of which I'm happy to be a part of. Me, I've started following TES since "Daggerfall" in the MS-DOS days of PC gaming.
Throughout the years, most especially from "Daggerfall" of the 1990s and to the latest TES title, "Skyrim," they've generally followed these basic tenets:
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* Big game world and freedom of travel and adventuring. You are not tethered anywhere at anytime. There are tons and tons of factions to dip in and out of favor with. You start a game, get into the game world, pick a compass direction, and go. And from that point on, you will never, ever be forced to adventure out of anywhere at anytime, and you will never suffer in progression because of it.
* Freedom in building your character. Prior to Skyrim, it was a total skillbased system. Skyrim was different in adopting a Perk / Trait based system, yet it still retained the large amount of freedom in building up your character. If you wanted to be the biggest, baddest warrior in heavy armor and shield there is, you can try to be. If you want to be heavily armored but still heavily using differing forms of magic, you can be. If you want to be a stealthy assassin using advanced forms of alchemy and including specific forms of magic, you can be. In short, prior systems of TES, to include even Skyrim, gave players alot of leeeway in building their characters.
* The game world is your playground. Bethesda tried as much as possible to let you do what you want in the game world. That castle that was once full of daedra and assorted monsters? You cleared it out, cleaned it up, and started bringing loot and items there. You can call it "home." Or Or you can be the biggest thief there is in the game. A goody-two-shoes. Or a murderer. Or an assassin (difference between the last two lol). This is what Bethesda has been best at, IMO, and even BioWare has stated so themselves: Making a big game world for you to live in.
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Those are, IMO, the 3 basic tenets on what TES gaming have been about ever since the 1990s. Regardless of the operating system and platform, they have always been heavy into these 3 things. Bethesda has consistently delivered in these things for more than a decade's worth of TES games. This is what they've built their following and reputation on.
When anyone wants to put an Elder Scrolls game and it doesn't follow the long-followed, successful traits of what makes an Elder Scrolls game an Elder Scrolls game, there is going to be a [censored].

I find this statement more than true.

It's evolve or die, really, you have to evolve, you have to move on otherwise it just becomes stagnant.
Craig Charles

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After viewing some of the posts on the ElderScrolls Online Forum, I have just lost all hope for this game.
Gamers are actually encouraging Zenimax to focus on Making an MMO in the Elder Scroll Setting, instead of Turning The Elder Scrolls into an MMO.
There is a huge difference between the two.
MMO in the Elder Scroll Setting is just that, its an standard MMO, with weapons and armors loot off crabs and deers and wolfs.
With every single regular MMO mechanic that we know of, only in the settings of the Elder Scroll Universe.

Elder Scrolls Into an MMO is quite different, they would keep the feelings of the realism that separates them from other MMO's, where the loot you get is the loot the NPC is carrying. Rats gives out Rat meat, Wolfs gives out Wolf meat. Weapons sizes would look real, and you can get jailed for killing innocent NPC or for stealing.

It just appears that all the players that are giving Zenimax ideas are encouraging them to create an MMO in the Elder Scroll Universe and I am extremely disappointed .
Especially a couple of the posts that asked Zenimax to make sure Trinity is turn to the max, its just scary that these are the posts that is on the official channels.
Development stages can be pushed back, if they need to they can go the Route of Final Fantasy XIV , go back to the beginning and reinvent the game from the ground up. It happened with FFXIV and it can happen with TESO. There is nothing stopping them, especially with the current situation with SWTOR, you lose more money when your game fails and then try to pick up the pieces then releasing an hyped game with the updates that everyone will be pleasantly surprised.
Mediocre beginnings that increases slowly is better than a Huge beginning that keeps going down in a very short 3 month.

Here's the problem:
-You assume turning a BGS game into an MMO will result in a huge success
-ESO isn't being developed by BGS and ZOS has never claimed this to be a Skyrim clone

People really need to understand and accept this. ESO is a new kind of TES game for the franchise. You either get on board and accept it or be disgruntled and go back to Skyrim. From the few games on the market that have tried to turn a BGS game into an MMO (Darkfall, Mortal Online), they were huge failures and ultimately were bad games.

They both had a lot of great ideas and sounded compelling, but execution was overall poor and unsatisfactory. The TES franchise isn't looking to appeal to some small niche in the TES community. ESO is looking to appeal to as many TES fans and MMORPG fans as possible, and this compromise of the two is the most rational way of obtaining that goal.