I would agree. I was avidly defending since its announcement but that completely turned me off.

This ... is only the beginning ...

Great Phyber, real encouraging...

I think that's the main point. And it's true not only for MMOs but game development in general. You just have to look at how huge nowadays AAA budgets are to understand (from an economic point of view) that you can't risk breaking too much new ground, which allways bears the danger of failing. Still from the view of a non-casual/passionate gamer it is a shame that more and more you have to lay your hopes on small independent developers to truely see some "evolution" or "innovation".

As far as MMOs go I just received word about an ambitious project called "Embers of Caerus" which is only in prototyping stage and far from being a finished product, but the visions of the guys working on it have the potential to really change some things in the genre if they become a reality. Especially by proving that some claims often made about things being impossible in MMOs due to some technical restrictions simply are untrue.

But enough of hijacking this dicussion. Like I said it's a missed opportunity in my view to rely on predefined factions and seperated territories for them, but that's hardly a game breaker for me. Such a world still can be huge fun to play in. And if it's done well you only "notice" it because you know about there being parts of the gameworld not accessible for this character. As I'm mostly interested in the PvP part and some nice RP and less in exploration and seeing everything it's still the opposite for me: I was disappointed about the first announcement made, but the more details get revealed the bigger grows my interest in this game.

Hey you can take it both ways:

Positive: This is only the beginning announcements, who knows if they are gonna announce Co-op options or other cool stuffs in E3

Negative: Meh~ u know what i mean.

Next week will be the telling. There's a lot of ESO in the schedule. I'm pretty sure we will see some footage and hear a lot more info. My guess is a lot of complainers will come back praising how awesome it looks.

We shall see about that. Like what Kevin Van'ord said "ESO has the potential for Greatness, or the potential for Great Disaster."

Although personally im more interested in Dawnguard right now. Hope they also mention about Hearthfire too.

They won't say anything about Hearthfire yet because they want Dawnguard to shine.

^^I'll be one of those guys. I really just can't wait for this thing to come out. Ever since Morrowind, really, I'd been hoping for an MMO from TES. And they do claim to have "The best MMO ever made."

It's been said before but I'm kinda worried about the different sizes of the realms' regions. EP has Skyrim, Morrowind and Black Marsh of which MW and BM are among the largest regions in Tamriel. DC only has High Rock and Hammerfell. Maybe the desert is LOADED with towns, ruins, and caves to make up for the landmass?

Yea there's a couple spots for Dawnguard, which looks awesome.

What is Hearthfire? Another Skyrim DLC?

Taken from the below article:
While we already know that the first dose of DLC for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim will be called 'Dawnguard', Bethesda parent company
Zenimax Media has since filed a trademark for 'Hearth Fire', hinting at a possible title for a subsequent DLC or indeed something else entirely.

http://www.xbox360achievements.org/news/news-11835--Hearth-Fire--Trademark-Filed-For-The-Elder-Scrolls-V--Skyrim.html

Ah very interesting. My guess would be the next DLC after Dawnguard.