Well, yesterday, I was cautious towards this announcement. But now that I have learnt more about the game... well, I have much more fears than before, and less hopes.

Later, I'll post somewhere what my fears and hopes are, but I am still not ready for that, as I think I need some more time to state them in a proper way, avoiding useless flaming and whining, and nailing down precise key points.

Anyways, hopes and fears aren't what I would like to discuss here. I'd like to share something that striked me. It seems that what underlied the very crafting of TES:O is the adaptability of TES to the MMO mechanics. Somehow, I feel it's a wrong paradigm.

My stance originates in the way I perceive and apprehend the TES series and, more genrally, fictional worlds. I personnally consider that there is some "fictional reality" underlying fictional works, to which fictional works refer. It's probably a strange and bold stance, and I am unfortunately not skilled enough in philosophy to substantiate or defend it, but I state it because I feel this way. Maybe an argument in this direction would be that if there was nothing to underlie the games, then it wouldn't make sense to consider that any information gathered in an Elder Scrolls game pertains the understanding of the events depicted in another Elder Scrolls game. By behaving as if something was common to all the games of the franchise, I think we implicitly assume that there exists something beyond the individual games, which is what I call here the fictional reality.

But if such a fictional reality exists, it obviously exists outside our universe, outside our physical grasp. So how can we claim we know anything about it? Here come the books, the video games, the concept arts. I consider the video game as both an art and a media. As a media, it is intermediate between us and this fictional reality. It provides us with an epistemic access to Nirn or in other words, through them, we can gather knowledge about Nirn (and about other realms as well). This is the purpose of the games in my opinion : they are there to let us discover a world. The specificities of gameplay, the statistics, the user interface... all these aren't central. What really matters is the discovery of a world. The experience of it.

And here comes my point. My opinion is that trying to adapt TES to the MMO gameplay doesn't even make sense. Rather, one should try to adapt the MMO mechanics to TES world. If one wants to acquire knowledge about an object, one does not change the object so that it is more suited for some specific measuring tool. Rather, one adapts the tool to the task which needs to be performed.

So, what do you think about it? Shouldn't they have sought to adapt the MMO mechanics to TES world, rather than trying to adapt TES to the usual contingencies presumably dictated by the MMO gameplay?

I agree. I could have sworn the game would be a 1st person real time combat game. It doesn't inspire enough TES if it looks and plays like all the other mmo's. Heck, they could have even used Gamebryo if that's what takes to keep the TES mechanics alive.

I think they've done this more than you guys think. Hard to see from a leaked magazine article, though. I recommend waiting til after E3 before you get too depressed.

Short answer:

Bethesda proved to the world that single player games and single player rpgs were not dead. In a growing trend where everything has to have some social aspect or multiplayer aspect to it, Elder Scrolls wore their "Single Player Only" Badge with pride.

The Elder Scrolls should have stayed a single player experience. The only reason this new game is a MMO is because the single player game did so well so it has brand recognition.

In theory yes. Commercially? Unfeasible. MMO gameplay is trial and error. Many of the ideas brought to the bag in the early days of MMO were discarded because they proved inefficient in a larger unpredictable environment. MMO's are highly tricky to manage because of the varied demographics co-existing in the same virtual environment. Many features that are planned in the drawing board, fail to perform well when you account the human factor. So MMO design has been gradually evolving, borrowing from each predecessor, but it's not entirely revisionist by nature, as we'd all love to see. That would be too risky.

Many of the elements that made TES special were never stress tested by a massive audience of interconnected players, while others are outright technically impossible with your average hardware. So no advanced AI, advanced physics, state of the art graphics, real time combat. And there is no room for extensive testing in a project like this, it's a huge investment, years of developing, too much at stake. So studios choose the safe path. There may be one or two new design trinkets for the sake of innovation, and they may or may not survive in the future of TES:O. Maybe they'll spawn new mechanics, which will be copied later by other companies.

But experimenting with a completely new gameplay mode that has previously only worked for singleplayer games, under a massive budget from a well known IP, is a big no no as far as risk goes. Maybe it's cool for smaller/indie companies with lower expectations and pressures to cope with.

Wouldn't a safer path would have been sticking to single Player Elder Scrolls games? Each one tends to sell more than the last.

Actually I'm kinda disoriented by the fact that there is a Definite MMO standard dictated by WOW and the like...
They should have strived to Litterally make a wow.. so a massive multiplayer Online game.... without trying to pick mechanics for MMO alredy existant...
Sure .. typical TES system would have suffered tweaks here and there but still be a strong base for the MMO version.
And sure I will follow the developement but as far as hope there is harly anything left after some declarations.
"it needs to be comfortable for people who are coming in from a typical massively multiplayer game that has the same control mechanism"

Who says they arent? Its Zenimax online developing this, Not BGS. Unless you are afraid that if this fails, or even if it is a big success i suppose, they might not be as interested in making the next singleplayer Tes?

Not if they put together a studio to develop online games and leave the single-player franchise alone. Which they did. That's executives thinking, they go where the money is. You can't match the profit margin of a successful MMO and subscription based method to a single-player game.

That's actually exactly what I'm afraid of. That it will fail and damage the brand recognition or succeed and they wont have a need for the single player side anymore.

Here's a good anology: You don't re-invent chess. You either make a completely new game or you make small twists to the ruleset of Chess and call it Chess-something. Maybe visual differences.
If they were to make a TES with co-op features, that would be nice. A TES with MMO features, however, would still be an MMO and therefore have the same gameplay rules with slight variations. They can't diverge too much without creating an entirely different genre, which they won't for the reasons I mentioned above.

Slap on the Elder Scrolls brand, use lore thats already in place, use an MMO system that has made millions in the past. $$$$

A great quote I read elsewhere:
I mean, really. Elder Scrolls is really self-defining. A rich, "living" fantasy world, first-person real-time combat, 'be who you want', 'get better at what you do', etc. If an Elder Scrolls game can't even define itself by Elder Scrolls standards, then what is the point in calling it Elder Scrolls? The only reason is to pull in a pre-existing base of Elder Scrolls fans, who are just going to hate you for dropping what they like about the Elder Scrolls games.

This has failure written all over it.

Like?

Sounds like you want to not swim against the mmo flow.

Or you can't answer the question.

Like:
-Having a huge openly explorable world with no quest hubs and plent of dynamic content?
-Having open dungeons to walk into and explore?
-Having all the races and towns and lore of TES with voice acting characters in a living, breathing world?
-Creating an epic story line in which you are working to both defeat and evil Daedra Lord and capture the Emperial seat?
-Having intelligent NPC character that use their skills and allies to fight you rather than responding to 'taunts' like very other MMO?

We could go on and on, but I think you need to relax and wait to see exactly what ZOS has done to try to bring TES alive in this MMO.

None of that is MMO mechanics brought into TES.

I don't want to answer the question. I don't want a Elder Scrolls MMO. I can't see how they can do it right. Thats swimming against the flow buddy.

Well, you and I are either speaking different languages or our perceptions are very different. I'll just agree to disagree.

So because you can't see it, it has to be wrong?


Skyrim already has a large open world and has lots of "dynamic" content. Unless you're meaning the entire continent, Skyrim is already large.

Skyrim already has open dungeons.

Already has all races and such, but the world is fairly dead.

Already has an "epic" (/cough) story.

Skyrim doesn't have intelligent AI in the least.

So... what MMO specific mechanics are you bringing in... exactly?

A large working and changing economy? An auction house? Ability to form groups with other players? Leveled dungeons that you can only access when you are said level? What exactly?

Perfectly stated, Muthsera. Couldn't agree more.

I just don't see a reason or a point to a TES MMO. From a business point of view it makes good sense. From a fans point of view, its something I will pass on.

It won'e be a TES mmo it will be an MMO with a TES skin and lore.

this game is dead before birth
so much mistakes!

elder graphic
worst design
worst gamedesign

PFF im going to the eve or archage

PS and I said nothing about Lore

There are roughly 23 million current active MMO subscriptions in the world paying a monthly fee every month to play per MMOdata

There are about 5 Million copies of all Elder Scroll games in the World....That only paid a one time fee to purchase the game.

You adapt your product to gain market share and paying customers....you do not make the market adapt to your product and expect paying customers to change for you.

It is a business decision, and one that can reap them substained monthly profit year after year that just does not exsist with console games