Starting off, I'm no artisan in Elder Scrolls lore, I do enjoy it greatly, but I may be missing key information in the following.

Taking World of Warcraft in example, where you have two factions that are vastly different, race wise, and the fact that the "heroes" on either side have no means to communicate with eachother, I'm wondering how TES:O will do this. Throughout my experiences in Cyrodiil and Skyrim, I have yet come across anyone who is unable to use the english tongue (I won't count the spooky voice in Labyrinthian, cause that eventually spoke english).

So lets make an example where I (a Redguard) runs into a Nord. As of that moment, I have no grudge with this fellow, even though he is clearly of a different alliance than my own. He doesn't lift his sword or try any aggressive actions, and thusly I have no reason to do the same.

Now, the moment of truth - can I talk to this Nord? I'd like to say we both speak the same language. I've spoken to several Nords, and they don't seem to have a lot of language-difficulties. Then again that was 1000 years in the future, so perhaps it will take another millenia before all the races of Tamriel learns to communicate in the same tongue? I don't know.

What do you fellers think? Should cross-faction chat be allowed, or prohibited?

I honestly don't like factions in MMOs period. It limits a players possibilities. I've commented in another thread that NPCs in many MMOs are able to bridge that race / faction / language gap, I feel it's silly that players for some untold reason cannot. 3 factions is great for pvp reasons, I wish I could choose who I want to associate with and even change my mind if it makes sense to me.

Allowed. It would not be lore-wise if they cant communicate each other.

I don't like not being able to communicate with enemies. In WoW I held more enmity towards people on my own faction than I did for these nameless, faceless enemies that the game told me I'm supposed to hate. It's really just a completely terrible mechanic, both from a PvP standpoint and a roleplaying standpoint.

For sure there are barriers. There is just to much potential hatred between the combat participants. To save GM-work-hours for resolving insult-accusations they just bring you silence!

No matter how nice player politics and user generated content based on this can be...

Good lord there had better not be...that would make NO sense. Three races per faction each having their own language? Or all three races of a faction know the same language? I say either let them taunt each other or...no...wait, that's the only option.

I really dislike the fact that your race determines your faction. Another thing devoid of Elder Scrolls tradition. Any race should be able to join any faction and you should have to actively seek out the faction to join, so people who wish to opt out of the war can do just that.

1E 2813 — Cyrodiilic becomes the Official Language.

• Cyrodiilic becomes the language of all legal documents, replacing High Elven. Cyrodiilic is the ancestor of modern Tamrielic language.

DAOC didnt allow the three factions to talk to each other. Dont know if the devs here will make this game a total DAOC clone or not

There will be too much griefing if you allow all factions to talk to each other. This is why PvP MMOs do not allow it.

Since factions will have the ability to form temporary alliances, they'll have to be able to communicate.

You have no idea ...

Lineage II, EVE Online, Darkfall ... all of these allow unlimited communication between enemies at all times.

And there isn't when they can't? Speaking from my experience in WoW, preventing communication only really hurts the people who want it for proper reasons, the griefers just find their way around the problem and do it anyway.

Don't speak from your "experience in WoW". It doesn't apply here.

I really hope that there isn't one. This was something that completely destroyed immersion for me in games like WoW and SWTOR. Griefers will grief no matter what, why limit everyone else if the problem you are trying to fix is easily avoided?

You can form a temporary alliance without communication. Team A and Team B assist each other to kill Team C. After Team C dies, Team A and Team B proceed to kill each other (or not, depending on what you do).

No, you can't.

Without written communication in game, yes, but that's not the only form available and it's impossible to block all of it.

Of course I'm talking about in game. Do you expect Zenimax to block the internet, or block Teamspeak or Ventrilo? Of course you can't stop that, but you'd be surprised how well people self police themselves if they are loyal to their faction.

I am guessing griefers are essentially trolls by another name but more like the unintentional moronic variant?

My point is, there are non-written, even non-verbal means of communication even within the game. You can only coordinate if you can use them ... on the other hand, you can't interact at all if they are blocked, so they are essentially unblockable.

If griefers want to work around the language barrier they need to buy another account making the developers more money.

No, griefers are very much the intentional form of troll.

Had a feeling something like this existed, cheers for finding it.

Now all my dumb brain needs to know is.. which year are we going to be in now?

Somewhere in the middle of the 2E, probably shortly before the Akaviri invasion.

What is the point? You are paying money to troll people then? It's like trolling yourself...
Finally someone noticed that lol. The MMO is set roughly 1000 years before Skyrim so at about 2E 530ish or so. Well after Cyrodiilic becomes the official language. Cyrodiilic or some variation of it is the commonly spoken language I am guessing. Which basically means English still.

It's worth remembering that in Warcraft the horde and the alliance have always been enemies. It isn't entirely clear cut (such as High Elves becoming Blood Elves) but for the most part the division in the MMO has been with the series since the beginning. The linguistic divide therefore makes sense with the setting and helps heighten the cultural divide between the two sides (and thus the faction division).

Tamriel is different. Not only is there a common language but these nations were dealing with eachother quite a lot in the centuries before. Suddenly losing the ability to communicate wouldn't make much sense.

Now racial languages would be an interesting option. That is, everyone speaks Cyrodiilic as well as a racial language. You'd also need the ability to learn languages for this to work. This would not only promote interaction between the races of each faction, but learning a rival language would be extremely advantageous (and presumably also extremely difficult).