I was wondering.
They just made the announcement, usually when you are at this poit you expect a lot of excitement from the fanbase.

I don't think this was the kind of Excitement they were looking for.
A few people are happy about the result
Some other are cautious.
A lot Are Angry or extremely disappointed.

and the leaks... they weren't supposed to come out with the article and the info right now, but they came out..

What do you think is the actual reaction of the people at Zenimax?
Are they concerned?
Are they discussing possible tweaks and Plan B?
They are just saying "all is well" and proceeding on their estabilished path?

I Imagine two scenes right now.
One is a meeting were they try to see what can they tweak to make it more appealing, and possibly without changing anything in a way so blatant that screams "yeah, we screwed up and needed to reconsider various things"

The other.. furious calls to game informer Complaining about the leaked article.

i have been asking myself this since the reveal.
i see alot of people who are angry, but im mostly on the fence with an eye towards being hopeful.
i read the article, i see some comparisons to the single player tes games. but others see too many comparisons to world of warcraft, because thats the only mmo they can relate to :/

Right now, the folks at Zenimax are probably scared out of their minds thinking that they've spent years working on a flop, while Pete Hines over at Bethesda Softworks is probably equal parts pissed off and equal parts desperately trying to figure out how to get this [censored]-storm under control.

I think that more than a technical comparison WoW is used as a derogatory term.
In general they use the word WoW to say 3rd person, autoattack on click, hotbars, skills with cooldown.
I know it's not just wow features. Still is not a TES feature.

Some of them are sitting at home online, probably laughing at some of the speculation threads they are reading. It is 4 A.M. on a Sunday Morning.
I can just hope Zenimax attempts to follow the established Lore behind the ES series enough to keep it from being a WOW clone. I may try it, but I want to know more before I spend my money to do it.

https://twitter.com/#!/DCDeacon/status/198805554775330817

Is he "not remotely" shocked because he knew the game would receive this criticism, or because he doesn't care?

In any case, I expect Zenimax to wait for the gameinformer coverage to end before they act one way or another. Early june, we will probably see the real forums launch, and they will channel the feedback from there. Then we will see how they proceed.

IMO
the combat has been one of the weaker elements to the series since daggerfall. skyrim is great, but its far too repetative.

one thing that i know they are trying to do [obvious comparison to guild wars 2] is try to add more of a viceral action element to the combat [something tes has in spades], by one: limiting the hotbar down to a few specific abilities [if you played an mmo you would understand why this is awesome] and 2, making the combat have a little more weight and significance to each move.. it also has a stamina and active blocking feature

He is a PR guy.

Hehe.

I'm sure they're in huge denial right now over the fact a good 80+% of the internet doesn't want this game the way it is. Also the fact that even if the people wanted an Elder Scrolls MMO is the form of WoW or GW2, they would play those games instead.

EDIT: Might have misunderstood your post.

Sorry dude, but if you think any mmo has better combat than skyrim, you might have a very bad taste for it.
Hotbar based combat would never work in a TES game, neither skill-tree would do.

I think that's exactly what Pete was saying with "Not remotely".

I think anyone in Bethesda or Zenimax who was privvy to this project would have been fully aware of how it would be received by TES fans.

I don't think so, but they surely are not shaking in their boots either.
I bet they expected controversy, but tilted on the positive scale, otherwise they would have done something different.
I don't think they are panicking but .. a little bit of concern... That I can expect.
I don't see how having the informations of the game leaked and being flooded by negative reactions even before they released a simple teaser on their scedule could have been part of a winning plan.

Very true. No business (and video games are exactly that) makes plans to fail. This entire situation has me baffled. I still can't fathom who thought this would be a good idea. It does EXACTLY what you shouldn't do to a long established franchise - alienate core fans in an attempt to attract new ones. That doesen't work. It never has. It never will.

Zenimax only care about money, not you. This MMO, much like Skyrim, is about pulling in new players (new money), not veterans of the franchise. They don't care about the opinions or feelings of people who have stuck with the franchise for years. They don't even care about people who started with Oblivion. Skyrim and this MMO are aimed at a new generation.

Of course they saw this coming because TES has been around for a long time. and this is a radical change. The only thing that would have probably caused a bigger stir was if Bethesda was making this game.

Bethesda themselves went through this with Fallout 3. Anyone who was around at that time knows that the response to that was a lot more severe than it is now. For Fallout fans it was a tough pill to swallow that their beloved franchise was not only taken over by an 'outsider', but also that this new game was nothing like the games they loved so much. And they also knew that this was the only Fallout left they'd ever going to get since Bethesda had acquired all the rights. At least us TES fans know that this isn't the way TES games are going to be from now on.

It's a common strategy of the last few years, common but has horribly fail...
Look at D&D 4th edition... they were the absolute kings of pen & paper RPG, with a single bold move they alienated their entire base and sales crashed like a wingless plane

I think ... nothing ... it's a Sunday.

I think the shift to MMO is much more drastic than the Fallout scenario. But here's the thing, I have no interest in this game not just because it's an MMO but because my experience with Skyrim has made Elder Scrolls franchise dead to me. Literally, I have no feeling anymore, I'm completely indifferent. That game was so buggy, so bland, my experience with Bethesda's deceitful and disrespectful attitude so bad, that I don't think I'll be buying anymore games from them anymore. This MMO is just more fuel to the idea that Bethesda sold out and Zenimax, just like a cliched company, will do anything for profit, until they've destroyed themselves.

I hope they have noticed us and are right now working with the combat and control system trying to make them more TES-like.

I don't think that's possible ..
Or at least not mantaining the 2013 deadline

Why not? If they focus on it and asks support from Bethesda who already knows how to create a decent combat and control system it shouldn't be too hard.

Well, I'm damn sure if no major changes happen with the features, TES fans will launch a huge boycott on the game, waiting for a REAL TES:O to come out. The community waits years for yet another TES game, and I'm surely we can skip one that only carries ones name, but not the features.