*sigh*
WoW has nothing to do with this. Nothing. Matt Firor's first MMO, DAoC was doing the three faction, restricted system three years before WoW began it's campaign to destroy the MMO world. People need to stop throwing around "WoW clone".

This is a good thing. It will foster pride in your faction and make things much more interesting. It worked well for DAoC, it should work well here too. Also, it will make people put a lot more thought into their choice of faction.

Patience, miss. All this could just be a misinterpretation of Firor's words... maybe... hopefully... fully...

Just play on a coop server and you can play with everyone. Chill.

It's not stupid and you are making a mountain out of a molehill. I will be very surprised if they dont make at Least one fully cooperative server where all factions play together and can freely explore each area. If they are copying so Much from DAOC already it would be stupid not to include this as it was a major feature having the carebear server in DAOC.

Stop with the doomsday predictions already. Y U NO Look at the positives?

I do agree that it's a tough pill to swallow for hopeful TES fans (such as me). And picking a faction against my friends does worry me a bit, but friends will find a way to work it out together.

I hope its false or is a misinterpretation. If it isn't I'm flat out not getting this game. Simple as that. It is not TES if it breaks lore by pretending all the races think the same and have no individualism. There would be trade between factions. There would be travel between factions. There would be non faction races living in other faction provinces. Nords in High Rock and Orcs in Skyrim and Morrowind. This is easily the dumbest decision made by them if it is true. PvP can take a back seat on this issue. I even want to PvP dammit. Not be on some non pvp server. There must be other ways of building 'faction pride'...yeah I'm pretty pissed about this of it is true but not enough to hate on the game. Myself and my money will simply disappear and show no more interest in this game if this information is true.

I don't get the "pride in your faction" argument. As far as I can see, you can only have real pride in things you created yourself (not necessarily by yourself, group efforts count too). Everything else is being a sort of nationalism - only with a made-up nation this time. That's not pride, that's being a follower.

Im still gonna get the game. And not only that, i will be one of the FIRST IN LINE to queue up for a Collector's Edition of it.
I'll just play it for the 1st month then just keep it in a very dark place under heavy lock and chains and forget it ever existed.

I will use my wallet to support the Elder Scrolls series because that is what is practical, but make no mistake. My soul will burn with hatred for it.
So don't worry Zenimax Online, i promise you will get my money for this game. Enjoy my tear soaked money.

Thats not the WoW system at all.....

This is the DAOC system, very different to WoW.....

You make a valid point, and I think this is really where the player base will come into play. Even in the podcast, either Matt or Paul stated that how these factions turn out will ultimately be up to the communities who builds them. Even when a faction takes the Imperial throne, it will be a player that is crowned emperor, not an NPC for the faction. Sure, some of the features they are implementing aren't things we all agree with.

That being said, whether you are a leader of a guild, or are one of the various leaders for an entire faction, there is going to be a lot of responsibility, and as a result there will need to be a sense of pride and cohesion to maintain that community. It's definitely a long shot and risky business placing so much faith and responsibility into the players, but I think it can pay off (it has in other MMOs), and if they give us the right tools, very effectively.

I'm all for social features as I believe they are key to maintaining long-term commitments and investments to any MMO. Anyone can tell you the most important aspect of any MMO is allowing players to build their own communities and give them the tools to maintain it.

Overall, I think this community was much happier before that podcast came and popped everyone's bubbles. I still don't believe that players are restricted from at least exploring enemy faction provinces. Show me the quote and I'll shut up.

I believe it was mentioned by Paul Sage that players would fight each other in PvP in order to gain the Imperial throne and then have the opportunity to PvE for better gear. So - end game equipment - that's why you'll be PvPing.


I love this idea as well. Good thinking! I do hope that there will be some sort of map which shows faction control of every fort, city, farm...otherwise it'd just be hard to keep track of who's winning. I'm sure there will be.


Am I in the wrong forum? I thought this was about The Elder Scrolls...not DAoC. I know Firror was the guy that made DAoC, and it's a great game, don't get me wrong. I just want the core of exploration that has been so key to the TES franchise. What is the game going to say when my Dunmer is on the Valenwood border..."You shall not pass!" or "You cannot go that way" like in Oblivion? Get outta here


Completely agree with you. Those examples^^are all great reasons why we should be able to explore other faction areas. Especially with all the different races having moved to other provinces in past games...though in the future by TES timeline.

You certainly are in the wrong forum if you refuse to even acknowledge Firor's previous work and how it relates to ESO. This recent revelation proves just how much DAoC still influences his decisions.
PS, there will likely just be ranged guards that will insta-nuke you. Yeah, that was in daoc, too.

I would like to freely explore as much as anyone, but it looks like that is not the case. I'll deal with it. You should, too.

Just because you enjoy what was being forced down your throat doesn't mean anyone else should feel the same.

I clearly am acknowledging DAoC's influence on the game. It probably has many similarities, which there's nothing wrong with. I just want Elder Scrolls Online to be true to The Elder Scrolls. If you could describe the RPG world of the elder scrolls; I'm willing to bet that within the first paragraph you mention player's having the freedom to wander the world at your own will. That's whats at risk here, I think. And voiced by many other people in this forum as well. Now, of course, I do understand that I can only take what I'm given here. And there will be oodles and oodles of Tamriel to explore for everyone...I just want more, I think we all expected more.

I said deal with it, not enjoy it. If it's going to go that route, it's doubtful that they'll change it. This wouldn't have been a knee jerk decision. It would have taken serious thought and discussion.

Im smelling a complete misunderstanding here, as the one with the hero engine. Just a smell.

On limited exploration.
As many have mentioned before me, the main reason I was initially excited about the game was the idea to get to explore the whole of Tamriel. To see the world we're familiar with in one art/graphics style. So to hear this is a bit like turning my excitement-bar down to zero. Sure I can make more characters than just my intended Redguard but, that kind of takes away some of that fun too. I want to invest my time in one character. Not play every aspect of the game in order to simply see the world. I believe that, in order to want to continuesly play a game, it needs to have something you haven't done before. Some form of gameplay that you have yet to experience. So if I would travel to a foreign city, I would be a stranger. I would not know the rituals and the culture of the people who live there. I would not know the architecture or the landscape. I would not know what kind of nasty magic that sly Khajiit in the streetcorner could do to me - I would be on new ground. As it stands, I won't be able to do that. I can't be the stranger.

What I'm getting at is, I don't want to have to play 3+ different races to see the world. I don't want to have to make different characters every time I see something across my borders and go "Oh, that fortress over there looks pretty cool, I think I wanna go check it out". The fact that we'll be limited to that defies what they've said all along about "non-linear questing".

On faction pride.
This 3-way-battle has always sound like a good idea. The fact that two teams could battle it out over an objective, and then a third hidden team comes in to wipe off the survirors did have a nice ring to it. And that, if anything, I think would bolster faction pride. If you coupled that with say visual banners and flags on your person, to let your enemy know who you're representing. Or lets say having a raid come at your hometown, and your faction rally up to drive the attackers back and show them that your strength is not to be meddled with. That creates faction pride, because together, you drove back the attack that could have destroyed your home! I just have a feeling that Cyrodiil will feel... unpersonal. Having an attack on your doorstep is terrible, having an attack in your home is even worse. With Cyrodiil, it feels like an attack on a faraway land, a place which you have no real connection with. So where is your incentive to step up and do battle?

I'm certain this game could have amazing world PvP, providing all factions could invade eachother/travel across the border. Imagine if we could lay siege to a foreign town, forcing those within to repair walls and mount defenses to repell the invaders. There would be no need of a battleground, and ZMO would get the massive fights they eledgedly want. Ganking is the least of all concerns. One way to deal with it is to give all "young characters" a battle horn. If a low level player spots a high level enemy riding towards them, or simply killing them - let them blow the horn and a few elite guards show up to show the intruder who's boss. And let the roads be patrolled regularly. And I'm talking heavy guards here, that are really strong and hard to kill. More than enough for the average ganker. Or hell, even make them imprison the ganker for "attempts of murder", and you could involve some sort of jailtime in this ES game as well!

On the whole situation.
To go with the theme of the podcast, "it is way too early to say anything about any of this yet", so all we can do is cling to our thumbs and hope. There is a lot of potential in this product, but it is up to ZMO if they will make the proper use of it or not.

I have to second that. Or else I'm just too stubborn to accept the truth.

Edit:
To prevent cluttering the thread with my responses, I'll answer to the next post:
Puny elf, agreeing with me?! Shoo, my thoughts are too sothi-... sokhi... shotishipat-... ... Sofishicatered for your little head to understand!

Im in your same place my friend.

Easy advice there. Myself and many other TES players will deal with it by choosing not to deal with any part of the game if this faction restriction thing is true. I liked the game up to this point but this is 100% a deal breaker for me. I am sure others will feel the same.

Well, yeah, it's a total buzz-kill. Contradicts a lot of my motivation towards this game. But I'll still fork my money over, I know it. The characters could end up looking like teletubbies and I'd still play the game...it's TES c'mon! (that's no excuse for you developers to take advantage of players like me) I feel violated

I don't know about deal breaker, but yet another factor of the game that is sacrificing the known and liked game mechanics of the solo games for the sake of the MMO game mechanics created by the dumbed down game culture of MMO games.

Does that make sense?

No, not really. Since when was it a game mechanic in the single player games that we can explore all of Tamriel? That wasn't the case since Arena. Neither has this anything to do with "dumbing down". You don't make a game easier accessible by limiting the explorable area. It's a clear design decision to facilitate the faction gameplay of the game, one I don't agree with, but it's not dumbed down, nor is there a "dumbed down game culture" of MMOs. Most MMOs are far, far more complex than the TES single player games.

Of course I'll still buy the game, but I will moan about this until the day they change this nonsensical restriction, or the servers shut down for good.

Apples and oranges there sir.

A game mechanic from the series is go anywhere do anything ... changing the topic to whether all provinces are available is some kind of logical fallacy.

Well please do point me to the MMO where there is more to do than raid parties and go fetch quests. Like where you solve mysteries or try to make a real impact on the world.

Great post. Your vision is one that I believe many TES fans would accept and love to have implemented into ESO.