At first the notion that they might not be didn't even occur to me. But then I got to thinking about who's producing this game.

Matt Firor was the lead on Dark Age of Camelot. For those not in the know, DAoC also had 3 "provinces" (Realms). Midgard, Albion and Hibernia. A player from Midgard could not enter Hibernia or Albion, and so on. Each of the 3 realms met to do battle in their three respective Frontiers. This is where the Realm vs. Realm/PvP took place.

ESO has 3 realms with 3 factions. It's being made by the same guy who did DAoC. Have they actually said anything specifically about travel between the provinces? I know the notion of not being able to sounds bad, but RvR in DAoC was amazing, and the realms were huge enough to keep you busy for a long time.

This is honestly something that hasn't come up or been mentioned by Matt Firor or anyone else at ZeniMax Online. It's a possibility ESO may be going a similar direction in regards to PvP that DAoC did, but at the same time I'm hesitant as this is a TES game. One of the core pillars of TES is to go wherever you want and limiting exploration based on faction would put a damper in that well-established core element of TES.

I never played DAoC personally, but from my understanding that was mainly a PvP-only MMO. Since ZeniMax Online is also focusing heavily on PvE, that may be something they had considered while in development and could have potentially modified the DAoC model. It's honestly just something we don't know and we'll need to hear confirmation from the developers. Hopefully the GI podcast will ask this question in regards to exploring Tamriel.

Actually DAoC had a very nice PvE aspect as well. It's PvP was just so famous that it might have people thinking that there's all there was. You're right though about that sort of restriction going against your typical TES game. But it's something to think about!

The German cover story from June says you won't be able to visit the other provinces, only the ones of your faction. I hope they will answer this in more detail in the podcast, though.

wich is weird since we got a screen of a Breton in Black Marsh.

i think you can visit them but cant do quests for People or something along those lines.

We'll see. It's a possibility ZeniMax Online wants to leave all the provinces, besides Cyrodiil, strictly for PvE. I can understand the rationale as there would be a fear of enemy faction gank squads coming to enemy provinces to say "hello" to newcomers. This was certainly an issue in MMOs such as Darkfall Online and made it hard for the game to bring in newcomers. That being said, it would still feel strange having to make different races just to see all of Tamriel. Heck, it wouldn't be a bad idea if perhaps ZeniMax Online could at least make instanced pvp zones in the different provinces just so we could at least explore most of the game. We'll just have to wait and see what exactly they did.

Though it doesn't seem like people of opposing factions will be able to venture into eachothers' respective realms, they'll probably have a "Co-op" server like they did in DAoC, where everyone could go to every realm and play together, quest together, etc. There was no PvP on this server, so it was widely known as the "care-bear" server. Personally, I never played there.

My guess: A number of large cities will be more involved in the whole "civil war" thing than others. For example, Ebonheart and Daggerfall, since we know that pacts and treaties were first signed there. These cities will attack those not part of their faction on sight. Other cities and smaller towns that just don't care will let those from other factions in. It only makes sense to, because the races have never been truly separated by their borders (In Skyrim we see Bosmer, Khajiit, Argonians and all the other races), and to throw out those of different race that have lived there all their life, or to not let in merchants or travelers would be bad for buisness and the war effort. Though the pocket guide mentions that Alinor used to be a "forbidden city", so other factions probably won't be able to go to Alinor.

That's a nice suggestion of just setting up city defenses to ward off exploring marauders from other provinces. The issue of course still arises that newcomers to the game would be at risk of death in their own province if enemy players were about exploring. At least from the tone and rhetoric ZeniMax has suggested, it seems like they are going to focus PvP just in Cyrodiil.

An old MMO I played, Warhammer Online, had it so that in "open PvP" servers, anyone not in your factions could be attacked all the time, anywhere. In normal servers, though, you could only be attacked if you flagged yourself for PvP. You were automatically flagged if you went into a PvP area. It might be the same with TES:O, with hostile citites (as I mentioned in my above post), Cyrodiil and near the Cyrodiil borders flagging you for PvP, but elsewhere being safe unless you're on a PvP server.

This is definitely a possibility, and assuming enemy players could invade another faction's province, I would definitely prefer a PvP server rule set. This is assuming of course ESO will have servers with different rule sets.

Not being able to explore the entire map would be a disaster. I expect them to implement a pvp-flagging system where, upon entering hostile areas, you (and only you) become flagged for pvp, which means that you can explore at your own risk.
Having a map the size of TES, and being limited to a portion of it, would be unacceptable.

So we get a game covering all provinces of Tamriel, but you can only visit four of them per character? Now that would svck a lot.

Correction, three for the Daggerfall Covenant. Orcs don't have their own province.

It's not as bad as it sounds, for the people who played DAoC, you understand why, if not, it would be hard to explain on paper.

You make a good point but I just don't feel that they would do that , they said specifically they aren't gonna block off content from a player based on a decision they made a long way back e.g. when they were lvl2 but now they are are lvl 37 and have to reroll to see that other content so I don't think they are cutting us off from other places , well hopefully anyway o.0

That's not what they meant by not cutting players off from certain content.

I am guessing that we will be able to traverse the entire map but pvp will only be allowed in Cyrodil. Factions outside their own zone will not receive quests within foreign zones but might receive quests in their home zone that requires them to venture into foreign zones. DAOC is still my favorite mmo so I am fine if TESO uses a similar homeland/frontier zone system but I can understand the desire of many people to be able to travel over the entire map.

As we've seen in most of the TES games, no province (except maybe Summerset?) is wholly populated by a single race. Even Morrowind, full of the racist Dunmer, was home to free Argonians, Bretons, Bosmer, etc.

So why shouldn't a Breton be able to walk freely among the Nords or Argonian homelands? Shouldn't there be a mix of each race in every province? It is far too unrealistic to assume "1 province = 1 race".

As long as a character doesn't actively advance the cause of his/her faction in the 3-way war, how could the indigenous population be aware that the character is a member of an opposing faction?

I hope it's like WoW's system. I Played on a pvp server back in burning crusade and the ability to have world pvp anywhere at any time was really fun.

I can see them justifiying this by saying this was before Tiber Septim united all of Tamriel, and moving to another province wasn't common back then.
Not that I would agree with that, but it might be their position ...

Before even the first Empire though, Humans, Elves and Bretons lived together mostly peacefully before Ysgramor came along. If that's there excuse, it's a weak one.

I'm pretty sure the Reman dynasty, or the Second Empire, was able to bring all of Tamriel (or most of it, sans Morrowind) under imperial rule. . .

"Reman's own dynasty lasted for two hundred years, and in that span it conquered all the kingdoms of Tamriel except for Morrowind." - 1st PGE

One only needs to look back at our own Roman Empire to see the huge influence it had on the migrations of various cultures/tribes across three continents.

We know the Aldmer loved to migrate across the continent (giving us the various races of mer) and so did the humans.

Or it could be that the Breton was not in Black Marsh propper, but rather on the Cyrodiil-Black Marsh border. Which would explain the fortress we saw in the screenshot. Some have said that it doesn't belong in Black Marsh because of the architecture. So it does make sense if it is still within Cyrodiil borders but on the edge of Argoninian lands. Cyrodiilic architecture within Argoinian geography.

I believe this game takes place before the whole "Reman" empire thing tbh