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Elder Scrolls Online Game Informer Details

-"It needs to be comfortable for people who are coming in from a typical massively multiplayer game that has the same control mechanisms, but it also has to appeal to Skyrim players."
-"Recreateing the freedom Elder Scrolls players expect within the World of Warcraft-style mechanics Zenimax Online is using for this MMO would be impossible without changing the way that players interact with the world."
Annnnnnnd I'm out. Doesn't matter what else the game offers, I just can't get in to that style of combat.
 

Sblargh

Banned
All this talk about cloning other MMOs make me think that they should clone Everquest in order for this to work.
 

KAP151

Member
Loved Morrowwind, Like Oblivion, Adored Skyrim...

But this sounds horribly generic and shitty to me. If there is any sub fee this thing is dead before it begins.

Pass.
 

BlueTsunami

there is joy in sucking dick
The way I see it, I don't even play LOTRO right now and it's F2P. Why would I or anyone in the same boat want to experience the same grind funnel? Plus you'd think the WoW vets would be burned out on the formula by the time they truly leave their accounts for good.

MMOs need to evolve.
 
so...it's just another MMO? My dick just got soft.

All I wanted was Skyrim with other people running around to team up with. That's it. It's not rocket science.
 
I am only newly interested in Elder Scrolls with Skyrim being my first experience. I enjoyed it immensely and continue to find a lot of engaging gameplay. Initially I thought that a MMO in the vain of Skyrim would be phenomenal and the world/lore seemed expansive enough to allow for a deep experience. This however... I don't really like what I am reading. I will try to keep up with the info as it is released, but for now I am definitely not interested in ES:TOR.
 
-Third person perspective
-The game uses a hotbar to activate skills like other traditional MMOs
-Visually it looks like other Hero Engine MMOs like SWTOR
-The general art style is kind of like RIFT or Everquest 2
-There will be no player housing
-There will be no NPC romances or marriage
-"It needs to be comfortable for people who are coming in from a typical massively multiplayer game that has the same control mechanisms, but it also has to appeal to Skyrim players."

-"Recreateing the freedom Elder Scrolls players expect within the World of Warcraft-style mechanics Zenimax Online is using for this MMO would be impossible without changing the way that players interact with the world."


-The game uses MMORPG genre standards such as classes, experience points, and other traditional MMORPG progression mechanics, but they try to present it "around the core fantasy presented by traditiona Elder Scrolls games" such as traveling around and righting wrongs or seeking riches

Picked out the key things that make this sound completely dull.
 

Mr Nash

square pies = communism
Seeing that the game's development started in 2007 was about all I needed to know. It's like the company saw WoW's success at the time, and decided to try and hop aboard the MMO gravy train. Now, five years later the game sounds like a fairly uninspired WoW clone that is probably so far into development that there's no turning back now, and ZeniMax has to try and find a way to at least break even on the thing, so will push ahead with it and hope for the best. (Boy, that came off as cynical, didn't it. :p )

In any case, no thanks, not interested. I've had my fill of the WoW model of MMO. I may check out Guild Wars 2 down the road, and I'm curious about PSO 2 (the former because it appears to offer a fresh take on the MMO, the latter because I loved PSO), but that's about it for the genre.
 
Di...did anyone actually want this? It sounds like it's taking out all of the things that make this series enjoyable and adding in all of the things that irk me about MMOGs.
 
It looks like they looked at every single cool thing about the Elder Scrolls series, and instead of incorporating those things into an MMO, decided to make a standard MMO. Unfortunately, it is those very things like owning a house/store and being able to loot PC houses that made this idea so beautiful.
 
1336095443007fdyg3.jpg
 

thetrin

Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
- You can't be a werewolf or vampire
- 3rd person view
- hot bar of skills like every other MMO
- Looks similar to other Hero Engine games

So it's not Elder Scrolls then?

so...it's just another MMO? My dick just got soft.

All I wanted was Skyrim with other people running around to team up with. That's it. It's not rocket science.

BINGO

That's all I wanted too.
 
I dont get it, how can developers want to continuously recycle the same MMO gameplay with a different skin, over and over and over and over...

It just screams cash grab to me, i am sorely disappointed by this :( They could have really done something fresh and new by combining ES gameplay with an MMO setting
 

Brofist

Member
They really need to take a look at what went wrong with SWTOR and make sure they don't go down that path. All of the bullet points in the world won't make up for a subpar experience.
 

Boss Man

Member
nc3tN.jpg


All right, here we go.

Old Thread: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=472679

-Releasing 2013 for PC/Mac
-Developed by ZeniMax Online Studios
-MMORPG
-250 Person Team
-Started development in 2007
-"This time, saving the world from the awakening of ancient evil is only the beginning. What happens when hundreds or thousands of prophesied heroes all think that they should be Emperor?"
-The game is fully voice acted
-Third person perspective
-The game uses a hotbar to activate skills like other traditional MMOs
-Visually it looks like other Hero Engine MMOs like SWTOR
-The general art style is kind of like RIFT or Everquest 2
-You can't be a werewolf or vampire
-Crafting, alchemy, and soul stones will exist in an unrevealed form
-There will be Daedric Princes like Molag Bal, the primary antagonist, and Vaermina, "whose sphere of influence extends to the dream world and the nightmares of mortals", along with some unnamed others
-Constellations will be in the game a la Mundus stones (which work like guardian stones) and also give the answer to things like block puzzles where you step on the blocks in a certain order
-Tons of towns ranging from Imperial City, Windhelm, Daggerfall, Sentinel, Mournhold, Ebonheart, Elden Root, Shornhelm, Evermore, Riften, and a lot more
-Radiant AI will not be present
-There will be mounts, but no flying mounts
-Fast travel exists in the game in the form of wayshrines, which are also your ressurection point, and you can teleport from one wayshrine to any other wayshrine you have already visited
-There most likely won't be dragons
-Sneaking will be in the game, but how it is implemented is undecided
-They're not talking about pets right now
-There will be no player housing
-There will be no NPC romances or marriage
-"It needs to be comfortable for people who are coming in from a typical massively multiplayer game that has the same control mechanisms, but it also has to appeal to Skyrim players."
-Features most of Tamriel including Skyrim, Morrowind, Summerset Isle, and Elseweyr.
-"Not all provinces are included in their entirety; Zenimax Online is keeping large areas inaccessible to save them for use as expansion content. Nonetheless, every major area is represented to some extent."
-As an example, Windhelm is fully implemented, but Winterhold and the mages' college won't be in at launch.
-There are three player factions:
--Ebonheart Pact: The Nords, Dunmer, and Argoninans
--Aldmeri Dominion: Altmer, Bosmer, and Khajit
--Daggerfall Covenant: Bretons, Redguard, and Orcs
-"Recreateing the freedom Elder Scrolls players expect within the World of Warcraft-style mechanics Zenimax Online is using for this MMO would be impossible without changing the way that players interact with the world."
-As such, the game uses a hubless design
-For example, you don't necessarily pick up a quest to do the following, but if you kill all the necromancers in an undead barrow, a shade you free at the end will reward you.
-However, to help you find these events, various NPCs you talk to will tell you where they are happening and put a marker pointing them on your map, which is obviously totally different than receiving a quest.
-Not all quests will have NPCs that indicate where they are
-The game uses MMORPG genre standards such as classes, experience points, and other traditional MMORPG progression mechanics, but they try to present it "around the core fantasy presented by traditiona Elder Scrolls games" such as traveling around and righting wrongs or seeking riches
-The game world is very large relative to Skyrim
-You can explore almost anything you can see
-the game is set 1000 years in the past
-You can't master every discipline
-The imperials are an enemy to all three factions, lead by the noble Tharn family and the King of Worms, Mannimarco, and are hatching a plot to take over all of Tamriel
-But BEHOLD, Mannicmarco is scheming with Daedric prince Molag Bal to take over the world behind the Tharn's back
-Also, your soul has already been stolen by Molag Bal, which is the reason you can come back from death over and over again, and the starting plot is that you're fighting Molag Bal to get your soul back from him
-Hitting the level cap takes about 120 hours
-Each faction has their own leveling content
-An example quest is the story of Camlorn, where you have to stop evil werewolves who have their eyes set on conquest. First, you have to do a "standard MMO kill and collection quest" to sto ghosts from attacking some mages and soldiers. The ghosts are reliving a battle that the werewolf leader was in. You summon a ghost to find out what's going on, and the ghost tells you to wear her dead husband's armor to re-experience the battle he died in. You then get transported hundreds of years into the past to fight this battle. During this battle, you can choose to save the dead man's wife or to pursue the Werewolf leader. ZeniMax chooses to save the man's wife, who then tells you that the Werewolf leader is weak to fire. This information is helpful when you fight him, but you don't actually need to do this quest before fighting the werewolf leader if you don't want to. Basically, you can skip parts of quest chains if you want, but you get some benefit for playing the whole thing. Also, whenever you go back to the town you just saved, everything there hails you as a hero.
-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.
-The most accomplished PvP player on your faction becomes emperor whenever you take over the capital
-When you take over Cyrodiil, you will be able to adventure in it as a hostile city a la Kvatch
-The game will have raids and heroic modes for its dungeons as end game content in addition to faction PvP
-There is also balanced PvP for people who prefer eSports
-The game will also have high end public dungeons
-Public dungeons are essentially instances that aren't actually instanced, so anyone can be in them, so imagine a World of Warcraft dungeon that featured everyone on the server in the area instead of just your party
-There are standard instanced dungeons as well
-Back on the topic of the skillbar, you have a limited number of skills you can use at any given time, and can change them whenever you're out of combat
-The number of skills is equal to (paraphrase) "a light and heavy attack with your current weapon that take up the first two slots, a few more spells related to your class, and an ultimate in the last slot".
-The ultimate is used once you gain enough finesse, which is earned by doing well in combat
-You also get a bonus loot chest if you're soloing and max your finesse, and you can also build finesse by comboing with other players
-For example, a rogue can put oil on the ground that a mage can set on fire
-A fighter can also spin in the firestorm a mage puts down, which sends out fireballs
-If you've seen Guild Wars 2 videos, the above will seem familiar
-You can't combo with the abilities of enemy players though, so if an enemy faction player drops an oil slick, you can't set it on fire
-The Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood will be presented, but in what form isn't detailed as their contnet is hard to recreate in an MMO setting
-NPCs will try to work together and use player like behavior when fighting you, and (at least to my understanding) have stamina as well
-They want the AI to be good, so instead of enemies in a dungeon sitting around and waiting to be pulled, you will be attacked by the entire room and they will try to react to how you are playing
-The claim was not demo'ed to Game Informer
-You destroy dark anchors to gain reputation with the Fighter's Guild. They are large hooks that fall from the sky pseudorandomly and have Daedric guardians next to them. They are easier to kill with a group, and once destroyed, everyone who participated gets a reputation boost with the Fighter's Guild, and eventually nets you rewards like new skills and abilities.
-The combat model will not be real time due to latency
-The combat is based around a stamina bar which you can use to sprint, block, interrupt, and break incapacitating effects
-Blocking is the primary focus of these abilities, and can do things like stopping the secondary effects of attacks such as an ice spell slowing you
-Stamina also applies to PvP, so stamina management (and wearing down your enemy's stamina) is important, as your crowd control abilities might be on a long cooldown, and if you use them before the enemy player runs out of stamina, they will probably just block the effect
-ZeniMax feels that having the stamina bar will help break down the Holy Trinity as stamina allows you to do things like tank
-However, healing is still a big part of the game
-There is also no aggro mechanic in the game, which is part of the reason stamina blocking and healing exist

And I think that's everything super major. There is still a fair amount about PvP and questing in the article, so feel free to check it out if you're interested in the game.
WVy3E.jpg




Generic meme for generic game. Can't believe they'd brute-force a Nord-Dunmer-Argonian faction like that. I was going to probably bite for the lore alone, even if it was a WoW clone. It looks like they don't even care about that though. I can accept third-person, menu combat, WoW graphics, and fetch quests...but if I'm playing for the lore you can't bastardize that too.
 

Brofist

Member
Whelp, glad I didn't get excited. No werewolves is terrible, third person is terrible, FACTIONS are terrible. No thanks.

Is there anymore info on how factions will work? Is it gonna be like WoW where you can't play with other factions? Because if so then they really fucked up.

Could be worse. Could be like ToR where you never even see the other faction.
 

Izick

Member
sigh

talk about not what people wanted at all

Besides the dragon thing (I really never thought that was a huge part of the TES series, to me at least) I completely agree.

This is beyond dissapointing. This is basically what everyone was hoping it wouldn't be. It sounds just like another run-of-the-mill MMO, but with TES shit. I will still withhold my full judgement until we see gameplay, but I'm definitely way less excited.
 

The M.O.B

Member
5 years.........................................................

5 Years?........................................

5 YEARS?..................

WTF IS THIS

5 WHOLE YEARS? And this is what they came out with?

At this point I could care less how amazing the game might look graphically, just from the OP details it sounds like a "by the book" mmo that I have played many times before.

................................5 years huh................smh
 

Forkball

Member
Doesn't seem awful like a lot are saying but it does seem.... well, not interesting. The only thing that really stands out is the name, everything else seems by the numbers.
 

bounchfx

Member
- You can't be a werewolf or vampire
- 3rd person view
- hot bar of skills like every other MMO
- Looks similar to other Hero Engine games

So it's not Elder Scrolls then?



BINGO

That's all I wanted too.

same. Seriously just give me 4 player Skyrim. Or even 2 player. fffffff!!
 

Izick

Member
Doesn't seem awful like a lot are saying but it does seem.... well, not interesting. The only thing that really stands out is the name, everything else seems by the numbers.

I think people are disappointed with what could have been, but graphically it doesn't look unique or special by any stretch of the imagination. It looks like some bland hybrid of TOR and a fantasy game. It doesn't have that sharp, semi-realistic style that the other games carry, which is a shame, but it doesn't even really have a unique style either, so it's disappointing both ways.
 

Cyrano

Member
Yo we herd you guys want less Elder Scrolls so we took your Elder Scrolls out of Elder Scrolls and removed some Elder Scrolls and put in some thousand prophesied heroes to make sure you don't feel like heroes.

*sigh*

Why is there no MMO for people who want to live the life of a fantasy librarian? Or lone forest explorer?

People need to stop giving these people money.
 

Bitmap Frogs

Mr. Community
Sigh.

Another generic theme park. Nothing of what makes TES games interesting. I can't believe this - I mean I sorta expected it but was still hoping for something else.
 
ugh, devs! MMO doesn't mean WoW clone! geez
I can't imagine developers actually wanting to create something like this, not without already being constrained to hell and back again by the investors/bean counters.

Their risk-averse formula (Popular license + WoW) will likely make this a bomb.
 
This just sounds so...generic. The TES series has always been a different experience than other RPGs and I just can't see this capturing that at all. Hopefully I'll be proved wrong but I'm pretty cynical of this.
 

Rufus

Member
Doesn't seem awful like a lot are saying but it does seem.... well, not interesting. The only thing that really stands out is the name, everything else seems by the numbers.
Which is, all told, awful. This would have been the franchise to do something other than a WoW clone with.

But I guess five fucking years ago it did seem like a good idea...
 
The graphics don't look bad. It seems much better than SWTOR despite using the same engine, a little like Guild Wars 2. Who knows about the performance though.

I also wanted to point out that they said this:
-There is also balanced PvP for people who prefer eSports

for anyone who thinks they are actually serious about any DAOC plans. They don't get it.
 

davepoobond

you can't put a price on sparks
well, it doesnt really sound like elder scrolls, but i kind of didnt expect the traditional gameplay of the series to work in an mmo-form.

especially because then it would be "competing" against their own games that they release.
 
Not sure why people are complaining about 3rd person perspective. There's no way around that in an MMO. (Or a RPG for that matter.) This is only coming from people who'd never play an MMO anyway, so why bother commenting?
 

Izick

Member
Not sure why people are complaining about 3rd person perspective. There's no way around that in an MMO. (Or a RPG for that matter.) This is only coming from people who'd never play an MMO anyway, so why bother commenting?

Because people are sick of playing the same old generic MMO with the detached 3rd person camera, and detached hotbar controlled combat. People were expecting it somewhat mimic the main Elder Scrolls games at least a bit. They were expecting something different.
 

bounchfx

Member
Not sure why people are complaining about 3rd person perspective. There's no way around that in an MMO. (Or a RPG for that matter.) This is only coming from people who'd never play an MMO anyway, so why bother commenting?

disagree. I played EQ for 6 years and first person all the way.

then again, their third person camera blew, but... ya know. I still want a new MMO to come out that supports a first person view better again.
 

Khrno

Member
Why oh why oh why do MMO developers think this is a good idea?

Because it is. Full voice acting made TOR so much more enjoyable than if it had text-only during quests and cutscenes. But I guess there's people like you that don't like voiced cutsices since they just want to skip them and get to killing those 10 crabs quick.
 
Yo we herd you guys want less Elder Scrolls so we took your Elder Scrolls out of Elder Scrolls and removed some Elder Scrolls and put in some thousand prophesied heroes to make sure you don't feel like heroes.

*sigh*

Why is there no MMO for people who want to live the life of a fantasy librarian? Or lone forest explorer?

People need to stop giving these people money.

There are, they just won't be big budget ones. There are tons and tons of different MMOs out there of varying sizes and playstyles.
 
Because it is. Full voice acting made TOR so much more enjoyable than if it had text-only during quests and cutscenes. But I guess there's people like you that don't like voiced cutsices since they just want to skip them and get to killing those 10 crabs quick.

There should at least be an option to turn it off if that is your prerogative.
 
There should at least be an option to turn it off if that is your prerogative.
You can skip it in TOR.

The only problem with full voice acting is the effect it has on content generation. So far BW's done fine in that department though, probably because of extensive planning ahead.
 
Not sure why people are complaining about 3rd person perspective. There's no way around that in an MMO. (Or a RPG for that matter.) This is only coming from people who'd never play an MMO anyway, so why bother commenting?

People wanted Elder Scrolls online. It's simple. The same gameplay and the same art direction, just with other people in a massive world.

This is not that.
 

Coal

Member
This game (just from the details in the OP) looks to me like a giant pile of shit.

Give me Elder Scrolls 5 on PS4/Durango pls k thx
 

Khezu

Member
Because it is. Full voice acting made TOR so much more enjoyable than if it had text-only during quests and cutscenes. But I guess there's people like you that don't like voiced cutsices since they just want to skip them and get to killing those 10 crabs quick.

It also means content is going to take longer to create and be much more expensive. This is a terrible combination for an MMO.
 

sangreal

Member
Because it is. Full voice acting made TOR so much more enjoyable than if it had text-only during quests and cutscenes. But I guess there's people like you that don't like voiced cutsices since they just want to skip them and get to killing those 10 crabs quick.

I enjoyed the voice acting in TOR (at first), but it slows down development, makes it more expensive and less flexible.
 

spirity

Member
disagree. I played EQ for 6 years and first person all the way.

then again, their third person camera blew, but... ya know. I still want a new MMO to come out that supports a first person view better again.

Same here. The only time I went to 3rd person in EQ was when I was bored during medding. It was 1st person all the time.
 
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