So in almost every screenshot, every trailer, we see this incredibly short view distance, probably about 250 meters until everything becomes completely obscured by fog.

This is reminding me of the biggest graphical problem with Morrowind, the distance fog.

Do we think this is hard-coded in or is this just the minimum distance settings?

If I can't stand atop the throat of the world (or another mountain peak) and see to the Northern Coast like I could in Skyrim something is seriously wrong with this graphics engine. Heck, I'd be happy with 2500 meters. That's not asking much.

And before anybody tries to say that this is an MMO and they have to reduce the view distance to account for all the people. The answer is no they don't. Graphics aren't streamed from the server (only player data,position, action and effects), they are client-side. They could have object and scenery view distance go as far as they want and the only limit would be on the client's CPU/GPU.

Even if this was a sandbox game where players could deform the terrain, updates could be sent with very minimal packets like in the ProcWorld engine.

Also I get that some areas are just going to be foggy, due to weather conditions, but all areas all the time?

I do not like, or understand the need for the distance fog all over the place. It is ugly, monotone and will annoy the crap out of me while adventuring in game. How are you supposed to do what they said you could: see a tower in the distance and go "that looks interesting" if you can't see...at all...into the distance beyond a few hundred meters.

Examples:

http://www.keenandgraev.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Elder-Scrolls-Online-Introduction-Sieging.png

http://static.elderscrollsonline.com/assets/img/cms/media/screenshots/9c9fb5471c45551e9b.jpg

http://www.shoddycast.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/first-person-mode-in-the-Elder-Scrolls-Online-MMO.jpg

http://skyrimofftherecord.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/nordmountainview.png

http://tamrielfoundry.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/khajiit_epic-720x360.jpg

http://www.blogcdn.com/massively.joystiq.com/media/2013/03/eso-strosmkai.jpg

http://images.mmorpg.com/images/screenshots/062012/inline/25435.jpg

Also interesting to note that a lot of promo shots from ESO are done from low angles...

In before the "In ArcheAge you can see into infinity" posts. Just sayin.

eh - i see what you mean but it doesnt really affect me rly - we're talking about things that hundreds of yards away. even with the obscure details past that point you can still make out landmarks and mountains in the distance, which is all that matters for looking that far away anyways. Seeing objects and landmarks that far away. It's not like im castin anything that goes that far

I see what you mean. I am hoping there is a setting to be able to turn this fog off. i know my PC can handle anything that TESO throws at it since considering this game will run the PS4 and Xbox 1. I now know that my rig will not even sneeze when playing this game on max settings.

I don't think that will effect, in my opinion, the important things like actor view distance. I don't care if the mountain in the distance is foggy, as long as I can see that pack of elven scum riding towards me from an adequate distance.

They also might have their view distance set to medium or so in the screenshots, its hard to say.

Personally I think the fog adds a great amount of depth to the scene.