I have wanted to get into an MMO for a long time.

• Years ago, a friend of mine discovered Archlord, and invited me to play it. We had fun, but that was mostly because I was playing it with my friend. It was a cheap game, but it had some good ideas.
  
• A few people have asked me to play WoW. I've always wanted to, but I never got into it. As the years went by, it was harder and harder to justify starting up.
  
• I pre-ordered Aion, thinking that would be my breakthrough MMO. Alas, even it was short lived and somewhat disappointing.
  
• I never even bothered with the Final Fantasy MMOs, because people told me they were pretty terrible.

With all of this, though, I have learned a few things. A great MMO has little to do with how the game is coded or designed. Sure, you need an interesting world to explore, but TES has never had problems with that. Sure, you need something to do, but it can't really be that complex because you have to set it up for many people to do, possibly over and over again.

At the end of the day, the quality of an MMO depends entirely on who you get to be, and who you play it with. For me, I have a lot of friends that play TES. I even have some friends on these boards that I would love to fire up a round of TES with.

Not only that, but TES has been a part of my life for a long time. I've loved the ES world, spent time in it and gotten to know it. There's actually nothing I can compare it to, there's no other fictional world that I've ever been so ... fond of as this.

So in short, for me, a TES MMO is going to be a game like no other. I'm going to love every minute of it. Not because it's the greatest story ever written, and not because it has the most complex quests ever designed, and not because the combat is the most evolved system ever created.

Nope, none of those will even be true, and I know this.

What I'm going to love about this game are the people I get to play it with. I'm going to have fun sharing a world that I love with fun people in a way that I've never been able to do before.

Not only that, but I'm going to love this game because it's the Elder Scrolls. There's nothing else like it out there. No lore, no story, no world that approaches TES. I know that there's just no possible way I won't enjoy this game.

So to all of you that are trying to judge the merits of an online elder scrolls game, I give you this:
Sometimes it's not about the merits.

A great game doesn't have to be well made. You just have to enjoy it.

FFXI wasn't bad.

I will be happy with TESO as long as it's balanced, is fun and it works.

I have been a TES fan since Daggerfall so yeah I am excited. TESO seems like the closest we will ever get to a DAOC 2 so I have high hopes. Last mmo I played was LOTRO and I am ready for a new adventure. TESO and Neverwinter are the only mmos on my radar atm.

This isn't an Elder Scrolls game as far as I'm concerned, it looks nothing like the previous Elder Scrolls, it will not play like the previous Elder Scrolls. It may be a good game, but it won't be an Elder Scrolls.

I played DAoC from release to about 2007 and then on and off sometimes. I played WoW for a couple years then got bored. I tried LOTR but the lack of epic pvp left me bored. Every other MMO looks to cartoony and goofy. I'm really hoping ESO will somewhat fill the void of DAoC. I'm not going to get too excited though until I see more from E3 probably. And I'm not going to just quickly dismiss the game either because we are still a year or more away from launch. My gut feeling though, is that this will be my new mmo home.

i wish I could say I was excited about this game

My opinion as well. + I don't fancy the monthly subscription so I'll probably pass this up.

But it is an elder.scrolls game. Lol.

That's what I am saying, just because it doesn't have real time fighting everyone is losing their minds. If you want to kill everyone just go hop on Oblivion, Morrowind or Skyrim. It's not that hard lol

I hear what you guys are saying. It certainly won't feel or play like a single player TES game that we are so far familiar with.

However, it is the Elder Scrolls Universe, it's just put into a new setting, a new medium. To me, this is as much Elder Scrolls as the books were. I mean, the books aren't games, they don't "feel" or "play" like an Elder Scrolls game ... they aren't games. But that's ok, they have the lore, the setting, the world. That's what makes Elder Scrolls. At least, it is to me.

So yes, this game is going to look and feel very different. However, in my opinion, that doesn't mean it's "not Elder Scrolls."

Yea hopefully it'll have deeper RPG elements than Skyrim at least.

Couldn't agree more OP. This is going to be the greatest Elder Scrolls ever.

I'm with you, OP - I've played TES since Arena (pretty sure I still have the box stored away!) and I put thousands of hours into DAOC. Can't be any more excited about an upcoming MMO.

I'm apathetic. Everything I've read is PvP this, PvP that. Yawn.

Don't knock it til you try it. It won't be traditional gank fest style pvp. When I first made the move to DAOC from EQ, I was pretty apathetic about the RVR (pvp) also. Then when I hit level cap and wandered out to the frontier and some realm mates were sounding the alarm about some Albion forces trying to take one of our keeps, I got caught up with the excitement and hurried over to see what was what. That was a turning point for me. Defending that keep from superier forces was so fun, I lost track of the time for the first time in a long while and ended up heading to work with very little sleep the next day

I'm not knocking it, if you want to play PvP, go for it. But I've tried PvP in tons of games, and it's just not that interesting. It's the same combat as the rest of the game, except with impatient 13-year old [censored] who boot you the second they realise you don't have what they consider to be the right build.

wow is my only and final MMO

unless TESO proves me wrong

honestly TESO is pretty much the only game that MIGHT get me to play an MMO ever again, it has the best chance tbh, if the combat is good and the landscapes are magnificent and atmospheric then its instant buy for me...

TES lore is so much deeper and more captivating than wow- wow lore is now basically a comic fantasy gone insane- that I might just even get into RP for the first time in my life (if the above conditions are met )

Saying this isn't an Elder Scrolls game is quite Ignorant. Its not a first person, single player rpg like the first five games, but it still very much is Elder Scrolls.

I'm going to be playing this game regardless if it soars or flops. I'm a TES fan and anything that involves me in the TES world I will play.

Truest words ever spoken.

Name one thing other than the setting that identifies it as an Elder Scrolls game.

What else would it need? Are Redguard and Battlespire not Elder Scrolls? Are The Infernal City and Lord of Souls not Elder Scrolls?

Although it started as games, The Elder Scrolls is so much more by now. It's a complex and rich fantasy IP with a huge body of lore. It can stand on its own.

I can't say for certain what the controls were like for Battlespire, but I assume since it started life as a Daggerfall expansion pack, it at least shared similar controls. And Morrowind and Redguard's art styles are fairly similar, although of course Redguard is a few years older. They also all share a development team, at least in part.

The books don't count. They're not games. You might as well say that the Alduin statue that came with the Skyrim collector's edition isn't Elder Scrolls because it's a toy.

TES Online's art style doesn't resmble an Elder Scrolls game. The gameplay doesn't resemble an Elder Scrolls game. There's less player freedom than you'd find in an Elder Scrolls game.

I'm not necessarily saying it'll be a bad game, as I obviously haven't played it yet. What I am saying, is that from the information we have so far, there's nothing outside of the setting that resembles any other game in the series, except maybe Arena. And Arena was pretty damn generic.

All we need is the lore to be in tact for it to be an Elder Scrolls game. Thats it.

Thats like saying the animated series of Star Trek wasn't a real star trek series just because it was animated and not like the original.

a lot of the wikis about the past history of Tamriel are from the books from the in game, those are huge for lore.

Gotta agree with this. As much as im looking forward to this, the only thing this game has over other MMOs is that its TES lore. Granted they've added a number of "unique" aspects to the game but that's not enough to seperate this MMO from others. Simple.

Like Ehngage said, I too will be playing this game flop or not simply because, after Skyrim, (never played a TES game before that) I fell in love with the lore, the landscape, and especially the ability to explore whatever I dam well please. Oh and the 1 shot backstabbing. Yea, never get tired of that.

Or, going with things actually relevant to games, a Grand Theft Auto racing game.