http://kotaku.com/5918689/the-elder-scrolls-online-is-not-as-world-of-warcraft-as-you-might-fear
new interview from Kotaku
apparently the whole "Player housing is too hard to create in an MMO" thing was just a misunderstanding

People will read this and still act uniformed.

Theres definitely enough cool ideas to make it different but its enough? Kinda hope theres something out of the box like SWTOR's space combat. Mob could just bash it down as "yet another generic fantasy MMO/wow-clone"

believe me, that space combat got boring after a couple of tries, let's hope they can add something more interesting

Aye I played SWTOR myself 3 week too. My point is though just something like that MMOs needs nowadays.

A good read, people really do need to get off the whole WoW clone thing; it has no merit whatsoever.

well to be honest it makes it sound good, but i have to see for myself and Kotaku isnt realy my favorite source. In fact its my least favorite source for anything. They are probably just baiting for hits.

I don't like Kotaku either; articles from Kotaku have done nothing but bash this game since it's been announced. This is the first positive article I've read from them.

Matt Firor, ESO game director (and longtime producer on the pre-WoW Dark Age of Camelot series): " Making an MMO is making an MMO. I worked in the industry beforeWorld of Warcraft, so I can tell you that World of Warcraft had a lot of influences from a lot of games.

I love that Matt said this. It is so true and often forgotten by players.

That is relieving to hear about housing. That one really kinda threw me for a loop, and didn't make much sense overall. Of course, I still think they should be working on it for various reasons that will just de-rail this thread.

I particularly liked this bit:

Reading between the lines: "ST*U and wait before you judge it".

People tend to forget there were MMOs even before WoW. WoW wasn't the first, and certainly isn't the best.

Also, weren't people complaining about ESO not having real time combat?

thats great and all but when is a demo coming out. and im not talking about that viewing the world demo they got. i want to see sum gamplay.if they bring that out then people will see if they like it or not. have a demo showing a person playing the game what keys there using and such. i just want to see gameplay.

Im just happy, and even more happy for the compulsive complainers out there. Its really funny how, many things so much people complained knowing nothing is reversing for the good side. Lets hope this kind of thing keeps them down for a while.
And well, Frior expressed the feeling of many of us here... "wait to play before complain" .
Enough said!

Why in the world would put out a demo when the game isn't even in beta yet?! It would be a marketing disaster to let people see things that may or may not be in and thus inflame the fanbase even more. I would much rather see a combat demo that I knew was the exact model then something in an alpha state that was pretty much still in development (they have their concept for what kind of combat they want and that much they have detailed for us).
I for one will not pass judgement good or bad until I have had some hands on time with it, preferably in beta (here's hoping). Are there things about the game so far that I don't like, yes, are there lots of things about the game so far that I do like, yes, but to render judgement on an incomplete product would be grossly unfair.....so many of the people who are complaining bitterly are making it sound like they have prepaid for a 5 year subscription and they can't get their money back. I don't think any of us has spent a dime on this game yet and that is where ZOS will have to make its case things progress.

It will either have the features people really like and the type of game that people are will to pony up for or it won't. The good news is that utimately the consumer gets to be the final judge.

P.S. I liked this article thanks a ton for the link, I loved how the reporter tackled some tough questions in regards to the fanbase. Kudos.

This is a little weird, in light of this article from Gamasutra:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/171973/Elder_Scrolls_Online_director_....php#comment153301

In it Paul Sage talks about, rightly, how MMOs are not a genre and that they are not defined by mechanics. However, Matt Firor says "Making an MMO is making an MMO" in the Kotaku article which is fundamentally wrong, considering how many genres of MMOs exist in the world. Matt is essentially saying that ESO seems "same-y" because they have to live up to MMO conventions but Paul is saying essentially the opposite.

I wonder which one of them wins this argument internally. Sadly, it's probably Matt because he is the lead.

Also, the article, them being so much on the defensive without giving any actual concrete examples that illustrate that, is kind of silly.

This part made me very sad and only reinforces my disappointment:


Skyrim does have surrounding crowds, and MMOs will only have them if you design them to have them. So sad.

Or "give us your money before you judge it!"

I still think this sounds very close to Guild Wars 2, which is good, I love GW2's combat...but It's kind of underwhelming at the same time. Once again, I reserve final judgement until beta.

I think it sounds good so far. It is what I'am looking forward too next year. Here are a few things that I would like them to get into game and few I don't care about

What I hope they do
- Make questing fun (grouped or solo it should be fun)
- 3 faction PvP should be great (I have faith in Mr. Frior and team here, make it hard and make it awesome)
- A Crafting system that matters, that has great gear instead of grinding for drops or buying from vendors while also making it hard (I don't need easy bake oven crafting).
- Make the game for advlts (not xxx advlt just add some blood, [censored], cursing to name a few) so many kiddie games out already we don't need more.


What I could careless about
- Housing (designing barbies dream house is not my concern, give me a bank to hold my [censored] and I'll be happy)
- Battle Ground style PvP (don't play in it so I don't care about it)
- Little stupid pets that follow you around to look cute and serve no purpose
- First person view

I agree with you except for battleground PvP. When WoW added rated battleground it went from annoying game full of idiots to strategic planning and actually made it worth playing.

I took Firor's comment as referring to the UI and what information needs to be presented in a multiplayer game as opposed to a single player game, such as the compass/minimap, hotkeys, unit frames, etc. Many MMOs have these similar interface elements regardless of the genre or specific game mechanics. So TESO may seem (i.e. look) like other MMOs when in fact there are significant differences.


In Skyrim I've rarely had to fight more than four enemies in close quarters at one time (except for some civil war battles), so there may be flanking but seldom are you ever surrounded. And I'm sure they'll design the mass PvP so that everyone will always approach you from the front....

Yes, capture the flag is quite a crowd-pleaser.

LOL that would be hilarious.

So we agree that Matt's comments run directly contrary to Paul's.

When I play my main character in Skyrim I rarely get surrounded too, because I'm picking off people with my bow from the shadows. But when I play on my Orc Barbarian, I am usually always surrounded, because I choose to charge head-long into battle and it is great fun to wade into a group and smash all their puny skulls!

By design, I mean that, in PVE you can scale any parameters to make being surrounded not only a tactical problem but also not necessarily a game-breaking mess. In PvP you just have to be very situationally aware like any first-person action game. It's that simple, It requires more player input and more player focus, disallowing the lazy gameplay style of many MMO players. Perhaps that's why some people are supporting the current combat systems of major MMOs? Because if it were like TES they couldn't go make themselves a sandwich while in a fight (yes, that's an exaggeration, but the point stands)?

The idea that they can't design for first-person is only because they didn't think to design for first-person in the first place. They do not care (read: it's not their focus) about preserving that from TES games, so they didn't design the game with it in mind. If they tried to force in true first-person action gameplay they would likely have to reverse-engineer several systems in order to get it to work. I doubt they are willing to do that no matter how loud and numerous their fan-base yells about it, even once they've played the game.

Actually I probably could go make a sandwich while playing Skyrim because I got a set a daedric armor and nothing can hit me anymore, which renders the game boring. Also the combat is not that good, first person view in a mmo is lame. You can zoom all the way in if you really want to play like that without your arms showing.

Ever played Mortal online?