Theoretically one could mod the game assets as they are stored and presented client side. The only problem would be to override the vanilla assets that are most likely stored in some proprietary archive. If ZOS implements a system that loads looses files from a data folder after the basic archives this would be very easy.

If they were out to make a spin-off, I'd go with RTS instead. Managing towns, battles, playing against AI and other players, scale wouldn't be too much of a problem. There would still be room for lots of lore and references and it's a genre that still has lots of room for improvements and is known to generate perfectly healthy communities. With the benefit of player created content.

It's very much a fantasy version of SWTOR's art style.

Just so it isn't lost on everyone, if you are referring to SWTOR, BioWare licensed the Hero Engine early on in its development when many of its features were undeveloped. They wrote support for those features themselves. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnXqOFACsA0&feature=player_embedded. Based on the discrepency between what Hero Engine showcases and what BioWare delivered, It is safe to say that BioWare integrated their own animation system.

Not everyone realizes that the version of Hero Engine that BioWare uses is not synced with the current source build. They bought the license to the code under the understanding that they would be forefiting support from the owners.

Another thing. SWTOR lacks day night cycles and people think that it's because of the engine. It was a design choice... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34MkAlBZp7c&feature=player_embedded. BioWare chose not to use this for "artistic reasons."

Here's hoping that ZOS opted to keep syncronized with the current build of the engine so that the end result is fully featured.

As to the comic look, there are technical and long-term aesthetic reasons for going with stylized art as opposed to photorealistic art. The latter does not hold up well over time, while the former does. It's different with stand-alone game releases like the TES core series. Each is a different game and so they get to evolve with the technology. But an MMO cannot redesign its graphics and graphics system every time there is a new generation of graphics cards on the market. Also, designing the art stylistically allows them to produce visuals that can be rendered beautifully on even lower-end machines. This opens the door for a lot more players.

I'm not concerned with TESO's graphics. http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1371819-how-will-zos-treat-the-community-after-teso-launches/, in terms of forward-going content development.

Sorry... Double-post.

Looney Tunes > Free Realms > WoW > TOR > Guild Wars > TESO > Skyrim > Age of Conan

They should look at how Blizzard are, they must be a good example because their World of Warcraft game has still a subscription plan and we all know that Free 2 Play means failure.

The screens aren't as overly cartoonish as WoW, or ToR, but the characters do have overly long legs, massive hands, women have overly thin waists, and weapons are oversized. Really, the texture work looks fine, if they would just keep the models at realistic proportions there wouldn't be any complaint from me.

Turbine made their MMOs free to play and quadrupled their profits and doubled/tripled their active playerbase. Yeah F2P is death.

Got some links to back that up? That's not what I remember reading.

Also tripling a profit when its not a profit, as in losing money, isn't terribly hard to do lol.

Cartoony is the aesthetic to choose for MMO's today because it makes sure more people will be able to play it since they usually have lower system requirements.

Was slightly wrong in my numbers, merely doubling their revenue, trebling their peak logged in players and quadrupling their active playerbase, and increasing their subscription count. http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/01/06/turbine-lotro-revenue-tripled-since-going-f2p/ http://www.joystiq.com/2010/10/07/lord-of-the-rings-online-doubles-revenue-since-going-free-to-pla/. DDO had similar figures, but it was struggling prior to the change to F2P.

Not true, it's just what they tell people so they don't complain. It is perfectly possible to capture the more realistic, darker tone of past TES games without a comic look. Make models the correct proportions, use proper lighting, and add the right color schemes and details to your textures. It's not going to look as pretty as Skyrim, but there's no reason it HAS to look like a comic.

Free to play does not mean failure. If done correctly, a la Dungeons and Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Onlinem you have a business model which allows potential customers to ender the full game for free, able to play through the main story questlines, but locked out of support quests, and any expansion questlines. People complained when LotRO's lifetime subscription option went away, but the cool thing is that when you add up all the microtransaction unlocks for everything that a subscriber gets access to, it totals up to be what the lifetime sub was priced at. So it didn't go away, it's individual components were just sold individually. Ideal use of the Free to play plus Microtransaction model incentivizes purchase of a subscription, but offers the individual the option of buying what they want only as often as they want. Short term spending is less than a subscription, but in the long term, you spend more, hence why it's desirable to subscribe.

Dungeons and Dragons Online was operating in the red and failing, and conversion to this model, also called "freemium membership" not only saved the game, but resulted in a significant increase in subscriptions. It was so successful that they decided to apply it to Lord of the Rings Online, which has always been operating in the black. The same results were achieved. LotTO has released more extended content since going Freemium than it did before the conversion. DDO is also about to expand into the Forgotten Realms IP, so it is also doing well.

It's too early to know what business model TESO will take. I believe that it should start as a subscription-based game until it recovers development costs and begins to turn a profit. At this point, they should implement the Fremium option.

Incidentally, WoW may still have a subscription model, but they have already taken it Free to Play for characters of level 1 - 20. And they have been talking about going free to play, or so I have heard. Probably when they launch Titan, they'll adopt a Fremium option for all of WoW...

Right so it doubled its revenue but if its revenue was so bad before the it went F2P... see what I getting at? I agree F2P doesn't always mean the death knell its labeled as for all MMOs. It worked for LOTR because people wanted to play that franchise but be locked into paying $15 a month.

Also Quadrupling the player base isn't hard again when quadruple a low number from before they went to F2P. Also I would home after going FREE the player base wouldn't drop lol.

In my mind, MMO graphical limitations are an excuse to make the game look like Journey. Moving concept art.

I just finished my master in computer engineering and from that point of view this argument is just not true anymore.
As many already said in this thread just take a look at Age of Conan. It is the perfect example.

Well, they just lost me.

I seem to recall age of conan being unsuccessful due to low adoption rate. Part of that was it's M rating, but part of that was also it's technical requirements

RuneScape looks better ? That game was a trainwreck...

Seriously.

A lot of people don't seem to recognize the differences between graphics and art style. Morrowind doesn't have a cartoon art style, but has worse graphics than SWTOR. Morrowind will run on a lot more systems than SWTOR will.

They didn't have to go with a cartoon art style to get this game running on lower-end systems.

It's not cartoony, as Mikedzine said, the screenshots are more vibrant and saturated than previous elder scrolls games.

Eh, I really like the style shown in the leaked screeshots. That one seen where the there are some people battling a giant plant - haha.. that reminded me so much of the cover of one my first D&D modules.. I wish I could remember what it was called. Yeah, I'm an old nerd, but I'm pretty excited to explore the world and see things like that plant.

So, I was looking at those screenshots again this morning and I remembered this post you made. I can't find ANY of the avatars in those screenshots, let alone a female mage that has a 'Barbie small' waste and proportionally 'off' arms and hands. Are you sure you didn't get some strangely formatted SS with a warped aspect ratio?

Apart from the fact that being overly vibrant and saturated do make something more cartoony, it also has impractical armour, oversized weapons and curved building walls. That is cartoony.