With new textures and quests.

I haven't been able to get into playing an MMORPG since Asherons Call 1...played it for about 3 straight years.. World of Warcraft I played for maybe 4 months.. then it just got boring and I left..

Everything else since then was just the same old boring crap done over again...sometimes done worse....

Hopefully I won't login to this game one day and find myself in a sewer killing rats and bringing their tails back to some vendor

Definitely not.

Character development = very, very open. Players pick a race (1 skill line) a class (3 skill lines) and otherwise have access to every weapon, armour and guild (eg. fighter, mage) skill line.

Character build = readying two weapons (of your choice) and slotting 6 abilities to each, and deciding on your magicka/health/stamina distribution (which can be changed). You can switch between readied weapons in combat.

Combat = not the usual cooldown whackamole. There are no cooldowns. Mob AI is more sophisticated.

PvE Missions = a bit more interesting than most MMOs with decisions that can carry through and affect the story / options of later missions.

End-game = appears to be much more varied than the usual repeat-a-few-dungeons-until-your-eyes-bleed.

Read some previews. Looks promising.

While I am hoping for a great RPG, I would be quite happy if they get at least the PVP game right, polished enough I mean. I think the designers want new stuff to happen in this game, but they also need to sell it over and over, so probably they keep the proven formulas ( to follow a marketing strategy).

No cooldowns you say? What is instead of it? Casting time?

There are not many ways of character building and development. There won't be spectacular customization like you hope to be. Because devs want to destroy border between smart players and dumb players(70-80%). In there minds is unfair when smart player find out some good build or whatever else and the dumb player need to search his build on ESOfansite because he is too dumb or too young to think independently.

Hope dies last.

Abilities use either Stamina or Magicka. When you run out of those, all you can do is your basic attack.

Technically you could blow all your resources immediately on one enemy and take him down asap, but you'd be short on resources. So if anyone else comes along, you'll be in trouble.

Whenever somebody writes stuff like that you know he definitely means himself with "smart player".

Besides: Did you play any elder scrolls before? They use magica and stamina instead of cooldowns.

Don't misunderstante me. I don't think about myself as smart players. I just want the game to force me to think to be difficult to me.

I know skill and spell will cost stamina/magicka but its kind of lame when you can cast 5 skill/spells in 1 sec.

I have played other tes games.

And in which TES game have you been able to cast 5 spells in 1 second?

Skyrim. When you used two hand you could cast 2 spells instantly. However in ESO won't be skill skill/spell per hard? That why i am asking.

It's called Animation Priority. They won't let you just spam spells till the cows come home.

Please read the forum rules. Constant condescending and derogatory remarks isn't a good thing.

At this point, we have no idea about how many ways there are to build a character; we don't know the extent of the customization either.

Please link to an official source that says the devs intend to "destroy the border between smart and dumb players". I've been following information, but haven't seen anything that says anything close to that.

There are always going to be "perfect builds". Some players enjoy creating builds. Some enjoy sharing their creations. http://home.comcast.net/~worldofgreyhawk/builds/guild.html You aren't going to stop that.

If you expect to have only perfect players, I suggest you find a different game. This one won't meet your high standards.

Two spells isn't 5 spells in 1 second.

Check the information released, including the game play videos and decide whether it is something you want to play.

Well actually, no, you couldn't do that in Skyrim. Spells like Fireball or Oakflesh did have a small period of time to charge them up and you had to let the animation follow through, not to mention this is going to be an online game so menu pausing to go through your spellbook is a neddy no-no.

Will you have quests where you need to collect 10 bear asses? Potentially, but what has set The Elder Scrolls apart from other RPGs is their abilty to effective mask a lot of these mundane quests in areas like dungeons. Going through a dungeon in Skyrim you did in fact need to kill a certain amount of mobs in order to get epic lewts, the only difference was they didn't make it into a quest telling the player "you need to kill all 10 guys in here to win" because it's so damn obvious you're going to have to deal with these guys in one way or another so why bother making it into an active quest? Zenimax has said that's one of the philosophies they want to continue in with TESO.

It's all about hiding the obvious quests and giving the player the perception what they are currently doing is a choice of their own and not because this guy standing statically in a corner of a city needs his bear asses for his bear hats.

No, this is not a WoW clone unless you consider all online fantasy role playing games with quests to be clones of WoW.

I was there in the early days of AC1 as well. And I also find it hard to get that same feeling of open-ended character development with any mmo since then. There are a lot of good points about eso that should make it a fun game to play but I am not so sure it will have that same kind of depth that AC1 had. You have to remember that back then we had 3 hitboxes on every character so it actually made a difference what you were wearing and where. And you had the damage types of , slash,pierce,blunt with every type of armor giving different protections. And we had all the elemental stuff on top of that! The hybrid skills, lvl system was fantastic and it does look like they are trying something close to that with eso but not the brilliantly balanced points for each skill group that we had in AC.

When it comes down to it nobody wants to build a Fantasy world sim. They know the bulk of gamers want a constant stream of directions to follow so they don't have to think about what to do. AC was an awesome game that helped create the genre when it was a Premium gaming experience for those who were looking for the ultimate game. Nowadays the genre is stuck in a rut with a massive audience demanding all the convenience and simplicity they have come to expect in a mmo. Nobody is innovating very far from the established template because it wont be accepted by the masses if it feels different.

Darkfall gave it a good try and so did Shadowbane. But you see where it got them.

Really cant blame anyone, today even the top tier MMOs copy tons and tons from previous titles, not to mention the hordes of cat.B MMOs those are really nothing but Cloning & Cosmetic jobs.

ESO so far is looking good though, and really it starts to look w-a-a-a-y better compared to the first materials released. Sure it will inherit a lot of "people would cry if not" ideas, but that is not the design team's fault. If enough crybabies want unlimited arrows they'll get it.

Last thing I heard from the singing birds is that they have done a lot of polish work on the character animations! We already have fantastic level of world details, I cant wait to see what they could do with the characters.

I hope not but as a fan of the series, so far I'm satisfied. As an mmo fan, I'll find out on launch.

@OP
well, games will always be games...




Resource management.

You won't have an everlasting pool of mana/stamina as in most MMOs.
Once you are OOM you actually are OOM, and you positively going to get OOM while fighting.

There are pots in-game and you have to use them in order to sustain longer in battle.

So maybe you could cast your best skill 3-4 times in a row, but if you do so you have no mana left to defend your self or to escape.

I think you should dial it back. I didn't read his post as condescending in any way... what he said wasn't un-true in some regards. I also didn't see where he mentioned wanting a game with only "perfect players" nor of himself having high standards. I think you should read the forum rules, because you felt far more condescending and arrogant than the post you quoted.

To answer the OP: To some extent, I think it will feel familiar. The truth is, when you break it down... all games are the same in this genre. You will end up collecting rat tails as you put it in some manner.... because that's just kind of the system. I wouldn't expect ESO to revolutionize too much, as I would expect them to refine... think of how World of Warcraft did it. The way I see it in the MMO world, you're either an innovator, or a polisher... the polishers make the hits, the innovators make the cult-classics. ESO is looking for the success World of Warcraft saw, and World of Warcraft were polishers.

As others mentioned though, the class system is something new... it's unique, and it's honestly amazing to think of all the possibilities. It really seems based on knowledge they've released, that we'll be able to build some really custom setups. The PvP system isn't "new", but it's definitely going to feel new for alot of people... since it's based on DAoC, which most MMO gamers these days never experienced. The quest system is supposedly very exploration based... it's not going to feel like the normal run around town collecting exclamation marks. I think ESO will provide a fresh experience for MMO vets, and I think it's needed.

I agree, and if you really listen to what the dev's say about the game, I don't know how anyone can come away with the conclusion, that ESO will be another clone, there are a lot of features, that set this game apart from most standard mmo's today, it will have some things we have seen in other games sure. but it will have things unique, to ESO.. I just think a lot of folks gota play it to see what the dev's are saying, time will tell..

For you, yes it will be. It isn't a complete utter sandbox that is somehow magically instanced so the things you do affect the world yet still have other people playing in the same world with you.

After a certain point, the "they are going to make it dumber" because of [take your pick] casuals, console players, or "12 year olds" gets more than a little irritating and old.

It has been a constant theme on these forums, more prevalent since the news about the games coming to consoles as well.

If there is any information out there that the devs are intentionally simplifying/dumbing down the game because they intend to cater to a certain demographic, then I would like a link. News like that would likely make me take a pass on the game. Making statements like that without any evidence or reasoning makes a great way to rile up other posters. It could be considered flame-baiting or trolling.

No matter what the devs do, someone is not going to like it. The game will be too easy, too hard, too complicated, too simple, too plain, too intricate, not personalized enough, too much customization, enemies too hard, enemies too easy, cartoon anime graphics, whatever. There will always be some complaint.

I'm not really going to go into depth, but I'm going to point out some of the biggest selling points for me, that screams "it's not a clone"

Character customization - 16+ skill trees, one for each weapon type, skill trees for race, things like vampires/werewolves, guilds (mages, fighters). An extensive character creation - I have yet to see one on a non-asian MMO at this point. WoW only has a few options for character creation.. swtor.. erm.. I don't need to explain right? You can technically unlock all perks in every skill tree under one character through skyshards. It's speculation, but considering the first three provinces take ~ 160-180 hours to complete, and you have to enter the other 6 to presumably get every single sky shard, you're looking at another 360 hours put into the game before you have everything.

A dedicated story line much like the TES series. Molag Bal is getting some much deserved love in this story line. I'm not expecting Morrowind-like quality for a main quest, but there's still a meaningful story TES fans will be able to pick up on. We know nothing about how they've been treating lore, so I'm not going to compliment them on that just yet.

Combat - there are two MMOs with action style combat, Neverwinter and Tera. Neverwinter was designed around a F2P model and isn't dedicated to the same level of content that can be pumped out like ESO. Tera wasn't at all committed to creating content, and didn't have depth to the game to begin with. It by far has the best combat I've seen in a MMO, but combat can't keep me interested for too long if everything falls short. Basically ESO feels like the first MMO with action-style combat that there's going to be a reason to play for an extensive time and for many years.

You are encouraged to explore - when is the last time you've played a MMO that makes you want to just wander around and see the beautiful world for what it is? Graphically wise, I can't vouch for ESO, but their same philosophy with single player games remains - there's going to be quests out in the middle of nowhere, and going into caves can trigger storylines. There's going to be a reason to get lost like you did in TES games, and it's going to be encouraged.

No, what separates TES from other refurbished copies are the lore, the modern game architecture, the streamlined UI and the updated AI. As far as I am concerned they took a bag of WOW popcorn and added caramel... very few people would say that crackerjacks and popcorn are the same. That is a lot better than taking WOW popcorn and adding butter; that is still popcorn. ~cough~ IMHO