Pretty decent article by Tentonhammer.com http://www.tentonhammer.com/elder-scrolls-online/previews/e3-2012



Nothing really new but re-iterates and puts into one place I think what I and perhaps many others feel about this MMO and why we are interested. As a long time MMOr I feel the genre has become stale and stagnant. Devs seem stuck to repeat the same formula over and over. Sure some do come up with new ideas, like SWTOR with its voice overs and attention to the story aspects, but eventually the story stops and you're left with the same ole MMO stuff we have been doing for years already.

Many long time MMOrs will often wax nostalgic for the good ole days when MMO's were made differently, ie UO, EQ and DAoC to name a few. Well most times people do tend to look back with rose colored shades but there is a reason that it gets brought up so often and it leads to thinking that maybe yes some things were done better in past MMO's.

How that relates to TESO is that so far based on dev statements and articles like the above, that ZOS is at least trying to break out of the stale formula. Time obviously will tell if they can actually pull it off, but to me what matters most is that they are in fact trying to make something that evolves the genre and moves it forward. After all there is only so many "new" ideas to go around, so perhaps taking some old ideas and revisiting them is the key.

Aye - good article that. Thanks for bringing it to our attention

It's funny how the rush of subscribers left the classic MMOs for crap like WoW and then years later realize they left something good behind.

People by there very nature go to where other people are. This is my opinion why a game like wow still holds on and does so well, even though other games may be a lot better. But if you are going to go do a raid or pvp etc and there is no one else to do it with or against you won't stick around. With Wow there are others always around which keeps new people around, and new players that have never played feel its the place to be because everyone else is. Daoc was a great game but its almost empty, so a new person never played it before may show up look around but they have no one to join, and they aren't willing to stick around untill it magically fills up they bolt and don't return, it doesn't matter how great it potentially is, it has to have other players for people to stick around.

I sincerely want to know what "old features" besides RvR (pretty much every single MMORPG in development is now RvR) and Public dungeons (i.e. NON-instanced dungeons, about freaking time, if they can do non-instanced dungeons, why in the hell do they still instance some of those dungeons? That's not bold, that's just stupid).

Wow, for once Nehemia, I actually completely agree with most, if not all, of your post. I've always hated instanced junk.

Well instanced content is always going to have its place. What happens when all the public dungeons are full of players already? You just going to stand around doing nothing and wait? I won't, I'll take my group and do some instances instead where its just us.

Having that option of either is another thing this game will be doing well I think and goes back to the point in my OP and the article, of mixing old school and new school mechanics, that will in turn give players a much wider variety of content.

Hmm I can understand that, but to me, that's a game design flaw that can simply be averted by providing more than just one dungeon and/or even making more than one area within that dungeon. I can appreciate instancing, especially with certain tasks/quests, but it also retracts from the reality of the game, and especially with interaction from other players that would be out of your group. IMO, instancing makes an MMO feel more like a multiplayer game, making it not so Massive. Instancing reminds me of the old Diablo2 format.

I couldnt care less, stuff like Cyrodil gets me excited immediately, thats why Im here.

Like I said variety is best in my opinion. Some groups and guilds may prefer instanced dungeons over the public dungeons. I can say as a raider and someone who has lead most of the raid guilds I have been in taking the content at our own pace and learning as we go is how we do it, so instancing is more conducive to that. There's no pressure and we can take our time.

Will have to see how they make these public dungeons but to me it seems like if there's going to be any kind of challenging boss encounters and some groups will do them faster/better than others, you're just opening yourself up to be griefed and called out by other more progressed groups/guilds.