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Elder Scrolls Online Game Informer Details

Monocle

Member
The "stories" per se have always been shit, it's the lore and setting that make the games interesting.

That being said if this takes off I don't expect to see another single player game within the next 10 years.
I think Morrowind's story is sufficiently integrated with Elder Scrolls lore that moments like finding Kagrenac's tools and infiltrating Sotha Sil's clockwork city have a gravity that's not so common in video games. The main plot is closely tied to the back story, enough that they blend together in places (like a lot of the business surrounding Red Mountain). When the player is even passingly familiar with the lore, Morrowind's story is really effective on a number of levels. One being that you feel you're experiencing an important time in that world's history, a sense that a lot of games try to evoke but usually can't.
 
I love Oblivion and Skyrim, but nothing in the OP gets me hyped about this announcement. I just hope this doesn't mean we won't get any single-player TES games anymore, like it happened with Kotor.
 
When I read the snippits from GI I didn't believe it.


Art style from Rift / EQ2 ? Are you fucking crazy!??!?! How the fuck did anyone purposely try to replicate the most boring, generic, tasteless high fantasy art style ever. For all EQ2s superiority visually, WoW kicked it's ass with it's superior art style. But that is no wunder feat considering EQ2 basically didn't have a art style. it was just a generic hole in the ground.



Most of all.. most of all, it's just that this is another MMORPG. It's not about wanting it to fail, but the insane assumption that people want more of this. And NON REAL TIME COMBAT? We've just witnessed TERA and GW2, and you silly geese wants to go back to sammy-swam-a-ding-wam-combat?

Silly fools. Skyrim was great because it felt like a virtual world. How on earth could you replicate that in this game? Waste of money and time.
 

BigDug13

Member
Yes, absolutely. I think they'd have some of the same problems there but perhaps it's more manageable and easier to forgive.

In my game I kill the original leader of the Mage's Guild and become its leader. My NPCs greet me as the leader, etc... I go into my friend's game with my character but he's never even been to the Mage's Guild and he can't even get in. Players probably wouldn't mind however I think the immersion factor is ruined a bit.

Maybe some type of "side" content like repeatable quests would fit into co-op nicely. Grinding for materials, to skill up, or to build faction.

Or just let a second player jump into your game as your "follower" using a list of predetermined classes, or simply jumps into the skin of the follower you already have would be a start.
 
How can you know this for sure? Yes, this is being developed by a studio separate from Bethesda, but what's to say Zenimax won't put a hold on further development of SP TES games if this turns out to be a success? Again, there's no Warcraft 4, wonder why...

There's no WC4 because WoW wasn't made by a different studio and required a lot of their manpower. It's not possible for Bethesda games studios to get distracted by a game they're not even working on. Also, WoW became bigger than the mainline series, which this has no hope of achieving.
 

BigDes

Member
There's no WC4 because WoW wasn't made by a different studio and required a lot of their manpower. It's not possible for Bethesda games studios to get distracted by a game they're not even working on. Also, WoW became bigger than the mainline series, which this has no hope of achieving.

Yeah, I mean the only thing we can take away from it is that Bethesda's next game will likely be Fallout 4 rather than ES6

I doubt there will never be another single player Elder Scrolls again
 

Munin

Member
Bethesda is not making this game.

Bethesda is not making this game.

Bethesda is not making this game.

Bethesda is not making this game.


Should be in the thread title or something. There's a huge misconception that this is interfering with the development of Skyrim DLC or TES VI or something.

I meant Bethesda as the publisher. And no, it might not affect development, but they sure as hell won't release a single player TES anywhere remotely near the TES Online release window - so in the worst case, there won't be another single player game for a long, long time.
 
Lol, the official forums are becoming a moron convention now. There are still lots of people stating their massive disappointment over the game info and screens we have but there are many delusional people defending the game with their life claiming all sorts of stupid shit. There was even one idiot that tried to tell me I would have the choice of selecting my class, race, and faction, stating that because of that, the game was a sandbox. That was easy to respond to.

Class = Restricted and forced into the skill set/s the developers want you to have instead of freedom to choose the skills you want to use like the main games.

Race = Yes, you obviously have a choice but.....

Faction = Automatically chosen for you based on race selection. Choose Dunmer, Nord, or Argonian? You are in the Ebonheart Vanguard, no ands, ifs, or buts.

It's just funny how blind people are on official game forums.

Also just came across this gem from Zenimax Online's website.

We have a dedicated, experienced team, who is working very hard to make the best MMOG of all time, and we're committed to the idea that if you want to make a great MMO, you have to "go big or go home". It's a tough, competitive market - but we plan on making a big impact with Elder Scrolls Online, and we're poised to do just that.

"Go big or go home" huh. AKA copy WoW, DAOC, and GW2, slap "Elder Scrolls" on the box and call it a day is more like it. These guys have no clue what they're getting themselves into.
 

inky

Member
This makes me wonder how will the Amalur MMO will turn out. Going by what has been said about it, that one seems to be a lot more derivative AND doesn't have such a strong brand behind it. I always thought it was kind of a foolish endeavor but right now it looks really grim with this game already announced and GW2 on the way. At least that one will have a more actiony combat system *shrugs*
 
"Go big or go home" huh. AKA copy WoW, DAOC, and GW2, slap "Elder Scrolls" on the box and call it a day is more like it. These guys have no clue what they're getting themselves into.

Zenimax Online is a new studio that only has been working on this, right? Anyone know if there are any people working there that actually has any experience in making MMO's, or online games at all for that matter?
 

Valhelm

contribute something
Nobody wants an "okay" TES MMO.

This is the biggest issue. The game doesn't sound like it will be horrible, just uninspired, generic, and average. Major Elder Scrolls releases are all expected to be critical and commercial successes, and have been.
 
I meant Bethesda as the publisher. And no, it might not affect development, but they sure as hell won't release a single player TES anywhere remotely near the TES Online release window - so in the worst case, there won't be another single player game for a long, long time.

Of course not. Do you recall the 5 years between Oblivion and Skyrim? Beth's gonna do the expansion packs, then probably move on to Fallout 4 for the next gen, and maybe we'll see TES VI five years from now.
 

BigDug13

Member
Zenimax Online is a new studio that only has been working on this, right? Anyone know if there are any people working there that actually has any experience in making MMO's, or online games at all for that matter?

The Game Director of this game also did Dark Age of Camelot. I feel a lot of that in this game with 3 factions made of of multiple races fighting over a single continent landmass with siege warfare, etc while maintaining each realm's PvE content. Cyrodiil is the "contested land" that will be explorable by all races, but the rest of the world will be locked into 3 regions only explorable by those races that happen to be in that alliance.

So for example if you are a Nord, you will only be able to explore Skyrim, Vvardenfell, and the Black Marsh and won't be able to go to Hammerfell, Elsywer, etc much like a Midgard character could never explore Hibernia or Albion regions in DAoC.

So for those people who are thinking, "well it might be nice to explore all of the world at once", well not on a single character you won't.

Also, hopefully they don't lock down factions for each server like they did with DAoC. If you chose a Midgard faction race in DAoC, you couldn't also make a Hibernia or Albion race on that same server. In other words, if you choose a Nord on Server A, you can only choose Argonian or Dunmer on any future characters on that server because you are locked into that faction on that server unless you delete every character. If you want to play another "realm" or "faction", you might have to do it on a different server.
 

Darkkn

Member
Zenimax Online is a new studio that only has been working on this, right? Anyone know if there are any people working there that actually has any experience in making MMO's, or online games at all for that matter?

At this point i would be more interested if they said that they had no previous ties to other MMOs and are exited to make their own stab at the idea of what MMO is.

It's a standard PR spiel to say that our team consists of seasoned veterans of MMO development and the result is another boring, uninspired MMO.
 

Derrick01

Banned
I think it's better this thread exists because when I tried to read the article yesterday I couldn't do it. I just kept looking at the screens and saying "this is unbelievably generic looking" and it took away all interest I had in the article.
 

FLEABttn

Banned
This is the biggest issue. The game doesn't sound like it will be horrible, just uninspired, generic, and average. Major Elder Scrolls releases are all expected to be critical and commercial successes, and have been.

It can be good and still has a problem. That being, if you play just like WoW and you're just as good as WoW, what's the motivation to actually leave WoW?

I mean, a WoW type of hit may literally never happen again in the history of MMO's, but if you want a smash success, you need to improve on WoW by the same amount that WoW improved on EQ1. Nothing less will do.

It'll probably have as many players as Rift, assuming it's a pay to play game. Which is great if that is Zenimax's goal. Which it probably isn't. Good luck with that one.
 

BigDug13

Member
Has anyone discussed what this means?

"-Each faction has their own leveling content"

And this:

"-There are three player factions:
--Ebonheart Pact: The Nords, Dunmer, and Argoninans
--Aldmeri Dominion: Altmer, Bosmer, and Khajit
--Daggerfall Covenant: Bretons, Redguard, and Orcs"

And this:

"-The game features three faction PvP where you fight to take over keeps and use trebuchets and other siege weapons to help do it. At the high end, you can have 100 v 100 battles. There are also farms and mines you can try to take over. Mots of this happens in Cyrodiil where your goal is to take over and hold the Imperial City to get faction wide bonuses for it. If you have played Dark Age of Camelot, this probably sounds familiar. For those who haven't, essentially the entire zone is a giant PvP area will all sorts of points of interest."

So what I take from this is that you will only be able to explore roughly 1/3 of the entire landmass of Tamriel that will be allocated as your faction's PvE area, so no Dunmer in Elswyer and no Bosmer in Hammerfell, etc. This is how it was done in Dark Age of Camelot.

Am I correct in that assumption?
 
Just because each faction has their own content doesn't mean you'll only explore 1/3 of the map. Tey'll probably do it so each faction has a unique starting area, then in the global zones, each faction has some different quests, and then there are global quests.
 
Has anyone discussed what this means?

"-Each faction has their own leveling content"

And this:

"-There are three player factions:
--Ebonheart Pact: The Nords, Dunmer, and Argoninans
--Aldmeri Dominion: Altmer, Bosmer, and Khajit
--Daggerfall Covenant: Bretons, Redguard, and Orcs"

And this:

"-The game features three faction PvP where you fight to take over keeps and use trebuchets and other siege weapons to help do it. At the high end, you can have 100 v 100 battles. There are also farms and mines you can try to take over. Mots of this happens in Cyrodiil where your goal is to take over and hold the Imperial City to get faction wide bonuses for it. If you have played Dark Age of Camelot, this probably sounds familiar. For those who haven't, essentially the entire zone is a giant PvP area will all sorts of points of interest."

So what I take from this is that you will only be able to explore roughly 1/3 of the entire landmass of Tamriel that will be allocated as your faction's PvE area, so no Dunmer in Elswyer and no Bosmer in Hammerfell, etc. This is how it was done in Dark Age of Camelot.

Am I correct in that assumption?

Faction based for sure means restrictions. How much is unknown, but I would guess like WoW where if you are Alliance, you can still go to Durotar, there's just nothing for you to do there. The faction forcing for the sake of pvp is a bad idea and just a half-assed attempt at what ArenaNet is doing. Zenimax is doing FvFvF and ArenaNet is going all out with WvWvW and has no faction restriction for races.
 

BigDug13

Member
Just because each faction has their own content doesn't mean you'll only explore 1/3 of the map. Tey'll probably do it so each faction has a unique starting area, then in the global zones, each faction has some different quests, and then there are global quests.

I doubt it. This isn't WoW style where you have a PvP flag or whatever in regular zones. This is 3 provinces per "realm" or "alliance" all contesting for Cyrodiil. So what makes you think someone else's realm will be available for you to walk through?

DAoC had keep gates to prevent you from going from the main PvP area (Cyrodiil in this case) into another faction's realm.
 
This announcement makes me very sad. The Elder Scrolls as an MMO should never have even crossed anyone's mind.

What would have gotten me excited and what I think should have been done is a Diablo esque or Guild Wars 1 style online limited to 4 player co-op with at the very most, lobbies (towns/cities) where more than 4 people could trade/group up/chat. You could also solo the entire game, but grouping up would allow for scaled difficulty and better loot. The open world aspect of hundreds of people running about should have been left out. And it should have been done by Bethesda with the art style remaining the same along the lines of Skyrim.

But that's just my opinion so I wont be playing this. I do hope eventually one of the next in the series made by Bethesda does have 2-4 player co-op someday. That's all I really ask for.
 

Eusis

Member
This announcement makes me very sad. The Elder Scrolls as an MMO should never have even crossed anyone's mind.
The thing is they probably could've made a worthy successor to Ultima Online AND a very distinctive product if they dared to be more bold and basically just make it like an massively online version of a single player Elder Scrolls. The fact they're seemingly going more for a Elder Scrolls flavored WoW makes this infinitely more frustrating.
 
D

Deleted member 10571

Unconfirmed Member
The thing is they probably could've made a worthy successor to Ultima Online AND a very distinctive product if they dared to be more bold and basically just make it like an massively online version of a single player Elder Scrolls. The fact they're seemingly going more for a Elder Scrolls flavored WoW makes this infinitely more frustrating.

Yeah. They should have done something like Mortal Online, only with a giant map and quests, but with a lot of free roaming sandboxy stuff.

Man, such a chance just thrown away :(
 

Jac_Solar

Member
It can be good and still has a problem. That being, if you play just like WoW and you're just as good as WoW, what's the motivation to actually leave WoW?

I mean, a WoW type of hit may literally never happen again in the history of MMO's, but if you want a smash success, you need to improve on WoW by the same amount that WoW improved on EQ1. Nothing less will do.

It'll probably have as many players as Rift, assuming it's a pay to play game. Which is great if that is Zenimax's goal. Which it probably isn't. Good luck with that one.

Not sure about EQ, cause I didn't play that for very long, but WoW didn't really improve on any of the MMO's before it. Asherons Call, for example, is still the best game/MMO I've ever played (I've also played WoW for a couple of years.), and WoW isn't even in the same league, or close to it.

WoW is extremely generalized (Nothing niche that appeals a lot to some people, just systems, mechanics that is 'ok' or acceptable to a wide range of people.), and made MMO's very, very accessible. I'm not trying to bash Blizzards game making skills, cause they are obviously brilliant at what they do, and knew what they were doing with WoW.

It's pretty much just like Hollywood. Are any of the greatest hits movies (Typically from Hollywood.) any good? No, pretty much anyone who has seen a lot of movies wouldn't include any blockbuster hits on their top 10, top 20 or perhaps even top 100 list.

Just because it's very popular, or makes a lot of money, doesn't mean it's good/great, it just means it's most likely very generic, cause that's usually the only way to appeal to a large group of people. WoW provided a service that was easily accessible, and appealed to a lot of people -- people could play together with their friends in a game that was somewhat easy to get the hang of, and once they made new friends, it would be quite hard to leave. Just like Facebook, or services like that.
 

Reikon

Member
Not sure about EQ, cause I didn't play that for very long, but WoW didn't really improve on any of the MMO's before it. Asherons Call, for example, is still the best game/MMO I've ever played (I've also played WoW for a couple of years.), and WoW isn't even in the same league, or close to it.

I wish they would do a remake of Asheron's Call. MMOs have been going downhill since the first big three.
 

Jac_Solar

Member
I wish they would do a remake of Asheron's Call. MMOs have been going downhill since the first big three.



It'd be awesome if they made a new Asherons Call game, or even a copy of the original Asherons Call but with an updated engine. However, the new upgrades/additions do not sound that great compared to the older version of AC. It sounds like they have generalized various aspects of it, so I don't think I'd like that to be included. :p

The ultimate remake would probably be the Asherons Call from 2002 or 2003, or any point before they incorporated the Taper magic component system -- the update that changed spell component requirements from many different herbs to requiring 'taper', which you could stack up (Instead of 7 or so different herbs for a spell, you would just need 7 tapers after the patch.). And instead of experimenting with herbs to learn spells, you could (Or had to.) just buy scrolls.

I think I started to really lose interest around the time they introduced that system -- it just felt so generic and cheap, and I don't think I had even rolled a mage at that point. (Not sure.)

Anyhow, I started playing it around year 1999 or 2000 and quit around 2004 or 2005. It did take awhile to adjust to the game and its systems, I suppose, but it was so very rewarding once you got into it. It didn't really have any hard limits on PvP or PvE like most/all modern MMO's (Example: WoW, and all its PvE & PvP content basically.) -- players with full mastery over their characters and the game mechanics could basically solo the high lvl 'raid' dungeons (Dungeons that required 2+ Fellowships of 7 people each and such.)- or, in regards to PvP, 1 very skilled PvP player could solo 5+ other players.

I didn't play Asherons Call 2 at all, cause, I think, most of the Asherons Call 1 community strongly disliked it, and I was so into Asherons Call 1 at that point that I just ignored it, or something along those lines atleast.

PvP was done extremely well in Asherons Call 1 as well, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. But I've disliked PvP, more or less, in all games since Asherons Call. I don't even like Multiplayer.

Anyhow, I'd love to see a 'remake' of Asherons Call, or even a similar game. But games nowadays require a lot more effort for much less - character models, animations, physics, and so on, so I'm not sure if it's even possible to recreate a game like Asheron's Call with modern graphics, or anywhere near what we'd consider to be 'modern graphics'.

However, graphics didn't make Asherons Call -- the universe, extreme amount of customization options and gameplay did. But it's sort of hard to go back to the current graphics of Asheron's Call when I'm used to playing Xbox 360/PS3 games, and I don't really care that much about graphics, or atleast I try not to.


Also, I just watched a 5 part Asherons Call review on youtube (MMO To Play Asheron's Call part 1-5) cause of all this Asherons Call talk. Quite a good review.
 
Not sure if anyone's paying attention anymore, but GI has a video of Matt Firor discussing the game for a few minutes here.

Just watched it. Really deceiving footage throughout that vid seeing as the combat won't be a thing like the previous games. Also sounds like a confirmation that Cyrodiil is not going to be a Jungle seeing as they want direct familiarity to the previous games for those that don't know jack shit about the lore. Also laying it on thick that Tod Howard himself is green lighting every decision they make.

Best thing from that whole vid was the Morrowind music.
 

Darklord

Banned

ESO has lock-on targeting and a hotbar, but it shakes up quite a bit within that framework. Limiting the number of available skills to a handful (currently six, but that number could change) but making each ability awesome sounds great.

YEAH! Like WoW but with way less skills and abilities so...err, innovative. :|

Edit:LOL out-sourced music. This isn't even close to an Elder Scrolls game.
 

Jac_Solar

Member
"More fully voiced story. Does anyone want to go back to walls of text after Bioware showed the world how it’s done with Star Wars’ dialogue and story? No, no we do not. And we won’t have to in order to play ESO with its full voice acting."

http://www.gameinformer.com/games/t...ls-online-offers-skyrim-fans-mmo-players.aspx

What are they doing? Most of the decisions they've announced for the game sounds bad, but this decision is just ridiculous.

Haven't the Star Wars TOR players already announced their distaste for voice acting, and the extremely long development time it requires?

And now they are going to fully voice an Elder Scrolls online MMORPG. Bioware said the development time was extreme for voice acting quests.

And it's very expensive and time consuming; focusing on 'all voice acting' for an MMORPG is absolutely WRONG, pointless and it should not be done. It's a waste of money, time and potential for a good game. Instead of spending money on voice acting, spend it on perfecting the world, hire more artists/get the artists to do more art, animations, music, gameplay, mechanics, graphics, physics,.

Focusing on all voice acting will put an extreme limit on the amount of quests as well; instead of 3000 quests, there are 30 or 300 fully voiced.

Star Wars TOR cost 200 million dollars to make. I haven't played it, and I'm not interested at all, but there have been some talk about how the 'all voice acting' policy worked out -- content patches are very, very slow to come out, and when they do, it's very little content compared to other mmo's. People have said, I think, the game suffers from performance issues, the world is bland, graphics are bland, animations are stiff, etc. Not necessarily cause of voice acting, but, if not, where did they spend the 200$ million dollars -- that is something many people wonder about I believe.


And the decision to offer full on voice acting for a game like TES MMO is ridiculous. A game like this depends on TONS and TONS of content, just like the single player games (If they plan on doing something different, they might as well make a different game under a different name.) -- Skyrim offered full voice acting more or less, but it's a single player game. An MMO TES has to be atleast 10x the size of Skyrim, and once the game has been out for awhile, they have to start doing monthly content updates.

They also said they'd feature most of the world ingame, and you'd be able to explore it, which actually sounds nice, but I have very low expectations -- to the point where I don't really care. TES MMO game sounds like a bad idea, and it would take a lot to sway the opinion to get onboard with the idea -- but most of the ideas and 'features' announced so far are "out there ridiculous", totally going against everything that is TES, copying the WoW formula with no attempt to hide it.

Why are they even calling it TES? The TES world is basically normal with magic/fantasy added, and there aren't many good/great plot lines or large stories. It doesn't really make sense to risk botching up a brand, and putting a game in a premade world with its own laws, reasons, logic, stories puts a restriction on possibilities/stories/creative freedom -- but, what is the reward for this? A generic fantasy world with a decent/mediocre storythread.


The reason for wanting it in the TES gameworld can't possibly be a strong argument. The gameplay and gameworld in the single player games is what makes a TES game, not the story or lore.

How can the developers of this project defend against claims of taking advantage of the TES name just to make a quick buck?
 

bill0527

Member
Finally got my game informer today and read through this.

All I can say is ...uh good luck with this.

You're about 5 years too late to try and ride WoW's coat tails.

The genre is stale, played out, and in dire need of some serious innovation.

This ain't it.
 

Dresden

Member
full voice acting is pointless when you have shit writing and most of the voices are going to be about how you'll kill fifty rats for the Balmorran Sewing Circle
 
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