I have a new reason to believe that this game will be epic: Arena began being developed in 1992 and was going to be released at the end of 1993 (but was pushed back), meaning it took less than two years to make. Daggerfall started being developed straight after Arena and took two years to make, ending in 1996. Both Battlespire and Redguard took two years to make together, ending in 1998. Morrowind took five years to make, starting in 1998 and being released in 2002. Yeah, I know that's five years, but the game was gigantic brilliant for it's time. Oblivion started development straight after Morrowind in 2002 and was released in 2006, meaning it took four years to make. Skyrim began development in 2006 after Oblivion, but nothing happened with it until 2008 after Fallout 3 was released, so it basically took little over three years to make! Elder Scrolls Online has been in development for six years!

I know, six years doesn't seem like much because Morrowind only took five, but Morrowind was one of the greatest games for the original Xbox! If an Elder Scrolls game that's so amazing for its time took five years, then think how good an Elder Scrolls game will be if it took six years to make ten years after Morrowind! Yes, it may be Online and bigger than the others meaning it should take longer anyway, but if you think that Skyrim only took three years and ESO took six, it must still be pretty damn epic. That's double the amount of time spent on Skyrim! ZeniMax Online started developing ESO in 2007 when they first formed, meaning that they must have already had ideas for this game before hand. My hope for this game has just got much higher.

A long development time by no means ensures a quality product (for instance, Duke Nukem Forever or Diablo 3). But given that the developers have a number of games to draw on, as well as some elements clearly being developed simultaneously with Skyrim for implementation in both games, hopefully this does mean that the game is quality. Hopefully if it is released this year it wont be in a horribly buggy or unfinished state.

With todays graphics standards I think the majority of development time is held up by Art assets. Designing and creating a full set of Armour could take upto six months for a triple A MMO from concept to finished product depending on how many racial versions it has. Even with a whole team of artists could still take quite a while when you take into account character models, environmentals, animations and objects. Most of these artists would be working on individual projects for Gui, icons and other stuff as well. Most crafting systems and things like group finders and the like are last minute projects or skeleton templated until closer to launch where they are refined and improved by alpha feedback.

6 years in development should be a fairly solid game though. Unlike Duke Nukem forever, ZoS hasn't had takeovers and budget issues to stall its development. It also isn't subject to intereference from big publishers like EA or Activision which iMO is a huge plus.