I first heard of TES Online years back, but when Skyrim came the rumors started going again. And so did my mind and imagination. Imagine, Skyrim in mmo!! Woooow!! Now that could have been an mmo I'd actually play!

After seeing the first screens and info on this game, it looks like I can conclude that this game looks just like any other mmo. And this is not really a rant about that at all.

This is more of a rant on this whole mmo concepts. WHY does an mmo HAVE to look and play like WoW? This is the one reason I don't play mmo's. Because I think it aesthetically looks like crap. And that's why I love TES, because it's singe player, first person and most of all, it's got a unique feel that nobody seems to be able to copy. I've never even played an mmo, not because I don't like playing with other people.

It's just that it looks like crap. GUI's are horrible, animations are stiff as [censored], and in general they look like they completely lack any art direction and vision.

I'm pretty sure that if Zenimax have had Todd Howard and the actual TES team to watch over the project, and kept it TES, it could have been amazing. This could have changed mmo's forever. But instead we get this.. A game with no vision, no art direction and aims to please the "masses". What they should have learned is that an mmo doesn't HAVE to look and play like WoW..

This. The MMO genre has stagnated badly not for lack of titles but because, for some reason, people have this idea of what an MMO has to look and play like. I thought that sooner or later some creative, intelligent designer and team would actually manage to receive the resources to make good on actually pushing the envelope and making something truly special. This is not it.

This all the way.

Lack of Vision is exactly why the game is bogged down by archaic design concepts. All the things in Skyrim, Oblivion and Morrowind are perfectly possible in an MMO, it would just take a bit more work to implement them. So they take the easiest path of least resistance and screw up everything royally.

I really hope the info that has been released about this game is wrong, as they are creating a pure cookie cutter mmo with a fantasy theme. How can they remove skill based leveling, housing and 3 factions. Elder Scrolls always was about playing anyway you wanted. Not being forced into one of 3 groups.

All of the big money companies try to chase after the Wow formula. they don't realize that wow is, "over." that ship has sailed. All the smaller companies that have good ideas, and different outlooks on MMo gameplay. these games get underfunded, and released early and collapse. see Age of conan, Darkfall. Shadowbane.

Yeah, but again, keeping the traditional TES feel while it still being an mmo does raise a lot of issues. This means it would have taken a whole lot of new thinking.
But visually it wouldn't have had to change at all. They could have used a similar engine as GameBryo, (Which I all of a sudden find to actually be good! ), animations, art direction, 1st person view etc.

Though some problems would have occurred.
For example, how do you handle 100rds of "the chosen ones" in the world? Perhaps there are no chosen ones? Perhaps he/she is non-playable? How do you handle dying and respawning? What happens to your loot? Does each player affect the story? How many players simultaneously?

sandbox bro. I could make this game a million times better like this: Make it just like skyrim in graphical appearance. Add in all the other realms of the map, make them all as detailed as skyrim. small quests, dungeons with random spawns, a periods of dormancy, . make the game a sandbox with minimal NPC's and quests. no main quest for instance, no chose 'one'. make the time frame like 5,000? years before skyrim, like as in the beginings of the mythic era. All the races and dieties and such that we love, but no established story or politics. we the players would create the story from there... we would just make our own assassin guilds, instead of queing up to run the same generic mmo style quest... threw up in my mouth.

Except what they'd do if they had 'vision' is implement Skyrim's simple and easy combat system, which would bore the hell out of people pretty quickly; especially seeing as everything would have to take a nerf in some aspect to be viable for multiplayer play. There'd be no more spamming shield-bash or 'quick reflexes' perk, and no more high damage weaponry, unless it was made excruciatingly slow to swing.

Go make your game, then. Don't have the money? Head over to Kickstart, get donations, hire people, make indie game. I'll await your release announcement.

IMO it should have been like Darkfall but in TES world with TES Rules, Lore and laws.

The devs at Darkfall once said their initial intention was to take Morrowind and make an MMO. All you gotta do is look at the Alfar starting area and see the direct influence. It's a flawed game for sure but all the flaws are things that a large sum of money could fix. Aventurine doesn't have that, Zenimax does so they COULD have really made something special, but they have failed thus far.


Vision would require a more in-depth version of the Skyrim system (remember each TES game does approach the genre anew - while retaining the same core mechanics) and adjust things accordingly, but you've clearly never played Mortal Online. An underfunded diamond in the rough MMO with Mount & Blade style combat including magic and pickpocketing and mounted combat/archery/spell-casting. Never. Gets. Old.

Real-time combat, especially in PVP, introduces major tactical confusion. In an typical MMO like WoW, there is a perfect predictability to everything: I hit you with this spell and you will inevitably counter with this interrupt and debuff and I will inevitably counter with this AOE. With real-time combat the concept of "the rotation" goes out the window and the tactical playing field becomes vast and unpredictable, making for much more exciting, involving and varied gameplay that is never the same twice even if there are "less moves" at one's disposal.

+1. Just look at Meridian 59 people.

Guild wars 2 breaks the cycles already with no lock-on and the ability to dodge attacks and completely disrupt people who try to 'cycle' skills.

Traditional MMO combat is, well, it's crap. But MMOs such as TERA/GW2 are fixing the dominant issues.

Exactly! I mean, the low-res cartoony graphics scream "WoW clone" to me. All we need is a WoW-style skill bar at the bottom of the screen, and there you have it.

Hell even games like Kingdoms of Amalur and Dragon Age take a lot of their general look from WoW. This needs to stop. WoW is an okay game, but it's hardly life-changing.

If you want to make a great MMO, take risks and release something we haven't seen before!

The disapointment I feel at seeing more of the same coming my way is profound. Darkfall and Mortal Online were full of great ideas, they felt TES-like, but they ultimately fail to deliver a compelling experience because there isn't enough money to realize the vision. They DID realize realtime combat that works fine. Then in comes Zenimax Online with a bazillion dollars to make an MMO and access to the premier OPEN WORLD RPG franchise in PC gaming. What do they do? Take WoW, mash in some TES lore, mangle the lore to include DAoC aspects and...profit? No, not profit, fail.

When you strip away everything else from them, FREEDOM and IMMERSION are what sells TES games. Sticking a TES logo on a standard MMO does not make it a TES game. Throwing out the standard MMO formula, and challenging convention to bring ALL of the core concepts of the single player game back to MMO's is what needed to happen. UO was a huge very successful sandbox that included most all of the critical TES concepts, Minecraft is a huge very successful sandbox with no progression whatsoever. Skyrim is considered to be an epic fantasy SANDBOX. Throwing all that away for a faction based theme-park is madness. Madness I say. I love the CORE TES games. I didn't like Redguard or Battlespire. They are not what the series should be, and they failed. So will this MMO.

It is like I typed these words myself! When I played Darkfall and Mortal my reaction was always: "If only the amazing potential in these games could be fully realized by the financial and iconic backing of a major franchise like TES." When I play other traditional MMOs (including the GW2 beta) my reaction is always: "This is ok I guess, but I really wish it played like TES!"

So many self proclaimed Experts on everything.

If you think you can make a better Game, go to Kickstarter.com, raise funds and Bam enough money to start your own Game.

Please go on you guys amuse me.

They all don't have to be the same.

The Secret World from Funcom is changing many things about MMOs.

WoW was NOT THE FIRST HOTKEY/CLASS medieval/fantasy based game.

DAO was NOT influenced by WoW, these new gamers are so annoying.

I'm on that ship and I'm having alot of good times.

i still cant understand why they dident make it more like monster hunter or vindictus where the gameplay is nice and it satisfys the mmo players by giveing them a little town to hang out in and get nothing done

Copying WoW = Failure.

Fail sauce.

Bad news is Bad

+1 to OP.

-1 to TESO

True, FunCom is in some ways really good at taking risks. Heck, they loose money all the time and rely on governmental funding. Which is ok for me, cause I pay taxes and indirectly pay for games FunCom make.
The Secret World does however have the 3rd person view. And I think that needs to stop as well.

I'll believe that when i see it. Funcom promise a lot but deliver little.

I'm not saying its going to be good or bad for that matter but we haven't seen any demos or gameplay yet, I'm sure zenimax online is a very capable game development studio we might as well see what they can offer before we shun them