You kind of proved my point. You don't like the MMO gameplay so you won't play an MMO. Why try to capture your interest, especially when you say that you wouldn't have time for an MMO anyways?

It's best if they try to improve rather than re-invent the wheel.

Indeed.

They are going to try to appeal to as many TES fans as possible but at the end of the day this game is going to be a true blue MMO. If you are simply just not into MMO's than playing this one regardless of the IP probably isn't in your best interest.

Because people are freaking tired of the old model. Besides, just imagine how much could have been done with an actual Elder Scrolls MMO - it would be groundbreaking. Look at how many people bought Skyrim, people like the Elder Scrolls, that's all the financial incentive they really need to make an actual Elder Scrolls MMO.

No one is 'freaking tired' of MMO-style raiding, pvp, grouping, dungeons, 1-tank, 1-healer, variable-DPS group dungeons, In the same sense that no one is tired of 'shooting things from a first person perspective' just because they're dissatisfied with Call of Duty. You can refine, improve, even modify the formula to some extent but there are millions of people out there thinking 'I want an online game where I can go raid with my buddies, roll a tank because I enjoy that position, and play objective based, third-person oriented PvP with characters who fight in real time but use a d20 system to determine damage, hits, dodges, etc.' Not in quite so many words, but you get the picture.

Well then luckily so far by the info coming from the interviews and vids so far thats exactly what they are trying to do, ie move forward and evolve the genre. (Whether they can actually pull it off is another thing entirely).

I just don't get how some can make such final judgements with so little info and what info we do have is proving you wrong to begin with. eh, MMO/gamer community's, gotta love em lol.

Oh really, do please explain Guild Wars 2 and Tera to me then. Let's look at what happened to the last two "big" games that stuck with the same-old model.
Rift: I'm a huge Rift fan, but it's not exactly a smashing success.
SWTOR : They call it the TORtanic for a reason.

They made a great point on the new podcast: they aren't making Skyrim, they are making an MMO, if you want Skyrim go play Skyrim.

Guild Wars 2 isn't subscription based, meaning that comparing it to other MMO's maybe isn't quite fair. There's less of an investment required, you know, when $15 a month isn't required to play the game. As far as I'm aware, Guild Wars is just like any other MMO but with more of a pvp emphasis...

Tera looks like a smashing flop to me. I predict that in a few months you'll be talking a bout 'TERAtanic' too.

I don't follow Tera at all, so i can't comment on that.

Guild Wars 2 isn't subscription based, because it doesn't need a subscription. Subs were justified back in the EQ days when running a server actually cost something, but not anymore.
Lets look at what GW2 does different than other themepark MMO's , shall we?

- No holy trinity, you have to actually think about combat now. Go look up an Explorable Mode Dungeon video for Guild Wars 2 - Total Biscut's is my personal favorite.
- Active combat,
- Dynamic World
- Incredible PvP
- No loot treadmill,
- Personal Story, (....that you can do Co-Op...)

In discussions like these on MMO forums I am always astounded at the opponents of free choice. As if by allowing some players to essentially design-their-own-hybrid, or choose what faction they want their character of whatever race to join, it somehow prevents you from sticking to the expected model. Just because someone wants to be able to use the traditional ES approach to creating a caster/rogue hybrid, and play as an orc who has chosen not to align with any of the factions (of any kind) and instead is exploring Tamriel for personal edification, doesn't mean you can't roll your standard tank, and raid or battleground with your friends. It doesn't even preclude a background element of faction war. These things are not mutually exclusive. And that level of freedom would be something dramatically different for a well-funded MMO to do, and would also be entirely in keeping with this franchise and the expectations of the built-in fanbase.

All of that sounds really cool and all, but doesn't it use the same basic mechanics as any other MMO? I'm at a bit of a disadvantage because I haven't played it, but I've always been under the impression that it's just like any other MMO, just with different areas of focus than some other MMO's.

I still think subscriptions make sense though. If your only source of revenue for a game is the initial purchase someone makes then at some point there are, financially, diminishing returns for the developer when it comes to releasing patches, which experience tells me are a necessity for any MMO, from start to finish.


Oh my goodness. No one is even talking about this... I think there are probably a need for at least semi-impermeable barriers to switching factions to stop people from bandwagoning around, but aside from that everyone is pretty much on the same page as you. We're talking more about the game's mechanics as defined by traditional MMO activities - raiding, dungeon runs, group pvp not how they decide to arbitrarily divide players into different groups, or place limitations on players therein.

They seem like simple changes, but it really does change how you play.
I'm not trying to say TESO is going to be a bad game, I won't make that judgement until I've hit max level, and I'm having to decide whether to resub or not, I'm just...dissapointed. It could have been so much more. I've been wanting an Elder Scrolls MMO for years, this is...underwhelming to say the least.

My sentiments exactly.

I think the title of this thread should be "Why this post is stupid." Nothing in the original post would have to be changed.

Is this the part of the Disney movie where you look longingly into the sky and start singing?

A lot of games could have been "so much more." Unless you believe us game designers and development/production staff can just y'know, wave a magic wand around to make all our wildest dreams, and yours, a reality.

Says the guy who has not only never played it, but hasn't even seen gameplay vids.

It has been tried and it has failed. You can look at Darkfall Online and Mortal Online as they are the closest examples of having Skyrim gameplay in an MMO setting. With current technological limitations as well as the biases and balancing differences single player experiences have, it's hard to then translate that seamlessly over into a massively multiplayer environment without it causing a variety of issues. It sounds like a great idea, but in practice it's an absolute nightmare.

Yawn. These DOOM and GLOOM threads make me sleepy. Wake me at release.

What he said. Man, Mortal Online sounded like it had promise. Old school UO gameplay, Oblivion interface. End result was indeed a buggy nightmare, and totally unplayable.

Rift is doing quite well. Putting out a huge expansion later this year, tripling the size of the world AND hiring more devs to continue to work on the game. Sounds like it's going pretty well, huh?

And while SWTOR isn't doing as well as I'm sure people thought it was going to do, it still apparently has over a million subs.

And what about Tera? The game just came out and we have absolutely NO numbers based on how well its doing (but even a quick look over on the Tera forums will let you know that it's ALREADY FLOUNDERING)

And GW2 still doesn't have a release date, so I'm confused about how this is even included in the discussion.

I'm looking at GW2 and Tera and all I'm seeing is hype. Rift has been around for over a year and is going strong with its playerbase (a MMO doesn't need 10 million subscribers to be a success -- it is turning a profit for Trion), and SWTOR has at least been out for six or seven months, and it's still pulling in 15 million a month via subs.

Come on The Elder Scrolls as an MMO? That's an automatic success, of course it's going to be modified to fit the online multiplayer experience, most likely won't be exactly the same as TES games but it's Bethesda guys, when have they disappointed us...

I am genuinely interested to know if there is any real enthusiasm for this? Seems to me we have been pretty much drowned in MMOs since the late 90s and little has changed.

The odd one or two keep going for years (EVE online, WoW etc) but there are very few original ideas going around which is probably why those games are still going despite being some 8-9 years old.

I can't see why Zenimax / Bethesda are bothering.

And those games were made by an Idie company, and they're still a heck of a lot of fun. I know there are going to be changes in an Elder Scrolls MMO, however, I expect it to be an ELDER SCROLLS game. This quite frankly, is not.

Heh, it won't be an Elder Scrolls game for me simply because it has other players in it spoling the atmosphere!

Like most people when I first heard this game being announced I was at best cold, at worst kind of angry. It spelt the doom of my favorite video game series as I knew it...

But then I heard that Bethesda was going to continue making their usual games, and a completely separated but related company was working on the MMO...so okay, fine, if you're going to do it then you're going about it the right way. Worst thing that can happen is the new company and the MMO flop but you still make the regular series.

And then I started to see some of the developer interviews, most of the stuff sounds good, so I'm cautiously optimistic. Of course, I was also cautiously optimistic about Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, and The Old Republic and was deeply disappointed in the first two. So we'll just have to see how things play out...I think I'll definitely buy it and try it though. The opportunity to visit many different places in Tamriel vs. just one province is a good one, and really an MMO is the only way to 'package' the entirety of Tamriel in modern day gaming.


This is kind of a silly comment. If the only thing that defines an 'ELDER SCROLLS' game is it has to be a single player RPG then yeah, fine, it's not an Elder Scrolls game and you can go back to the Skyrim forums. By any other measure though, we simply do not know how Elder Scrolls Online will shape up. It's just premature to pass judgment on a game when all we have are a handful of screenshots and developer interviews, solely on the basis of genre.