• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Elder Scrolls Online Game Informer Details

bhlaab

Member
its like the elder scrolls, but online! except its in third person, its class and xp based, doesnt have realtime combat, and looks like SWTOR and RIFT and Everquest, and is actually like world of warcraft instead of elder scrolls
 

Mxrz

Member
I died a little inside reading that. Long time ES fan and all.

Nords, Dark Elves, and Argonians being allied is completely fucking ludicrous, and to a lesser extent, Orcs, Reguards and Bretons. After all the effort they've put into the lore and setting, can't believe Bethesda would sign off on that. Twisted thing is this is probably the only way we will ever see Black Marsh or Elsweyr.

Screw you, ZeniMax. Screw you.
 

Sotha Sil

Member
Ah well, I can't bring myself to care. Will probably buy it down the line, explore the world once and never play it again. Damn shame.
 

NBtoaster

Member
-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

UGH
 

Hoo-doo

Banned
Watch them charge 15$ a month as well.
This is simply a project that's stuck in the past, and by now it has too much money invested in it to just cancel outright.

Frow what i'm reading, this is shaping up to be a even bigger joke than SWTOR turned out to be.
 
I will simply repost what I said on Hard forums:

This. If these bankrupt subhuman corporate shitforbrains even THINK of going with ANY of the following, it will suck more cock than Sasha Grey and that is a fact:

1. Low IQ "Kill 10 pigs" and come back and get your little pat on the head for being a good little special ed student who needs his hand held quests. No one likes this, and if they do, who gives a shit.

2. Theme park bullshit. We played TES: Skyrim because we played it the way we wanted to play, a giant sandbox, and it worked. There is no reason whatsorever to have a limp dick, bankrupt theme park-based MMO. WoW is the only one to do it right, stop trying to copy them. People are bored with WoW, and they only leave WoW to get away from WoW-type gameplay. So. Stop. Trying. To. Copy. Them. You fucking retards. Skryim works because it's a SANDBOX.

3. Linear progression. No one wants linear progression where we just follow a fucking walkthrough without actually playing the game. None of us want your typical grindfest where we go through the motions to get a piece of armor. No one. And if they do, as I said before, who fucking gives a shit? TES caters to people who like to do it our way, not some pre-defined path.

4. Shitty graphics. And by shitty I mean don't give us none of those pussy excuses along the lines of "Our new graphics system is very sophisticated and our new "Surealism Anime" character design is an attempt to be more coherent to everyone who hasn't played any of the TES games"....which is nothing more than a corpspeak euphemism "we need this game to run on a computer built in 2003 so we get maximum coverage" grade A bullshit. Fuck you. You know, like what they did with SWTOR where they made it look like George Lucas anal raped Clone Wars?

I love MMO's, and I want to see an TES MMO. But I want it exactly as it is NOW, but with MP and a persistent world. I despise most theme park MMOs with an extreme hatred. SWTOR was ruined because of that for me, every other game the same thing. We want dynamic gameplay and a dynamic world. Skyrim did it, they should be able to do it.

But I am a misanthrope and bitter over how other games ended up after hoping they wouldn't, so here's my prediction which I know will be spot on: they will have all of the above that I listed. They will do this because they are bankrupt and they will play it safe like typical dickless wonders always do. And they will fail after the first few months and if they didn't come out as F2P, they will resort to F2P, and then die out a year later. Watch. Only a few companies actually have dicks between their legs, and this company doesn't even have a bulge showing, let alone letting it all hang out.

I've played so many MMO's over the years, and I see the pattern very well. SWTOR was the last time I ever let my fanboism out. I should have known better. Never again. When I see actuall gameplay footage, when I see the actual details of how the game is going to work, then and only then will I start following it.




So, a BIG fuck you.



Go fuck myourself. SWTOR looks like shit and plays like shit because of the hero engine. Period.



Fuck you dickless subhuman. As predicted. Your NOT appealing to Skyrim players. PERIOD. And the shitheads who do play it will get bored and leave anyways. You either go with WHAT works, AKA SANDBOX mode, or you don't fucking make the game. No one wants to play a dumbed down version of Skrim. No one.

This 1000 times. I'm so glad people are so against this garbage and everyone wanted a sandbox experience since that is what the damn Elder Scrolls games are.

These fucking failures can't even get their lore right. Why the fuck is Cyrodil not a fucking jungle this time? Why the fuck are Argonians, Dunmer and Nords allies? 5 years in the making already and don't can't get basic shit from their own lore right, that's a great sign!

I seriously can't think of one redeeming factor of this game. Damn near every single possible thing that I loved from the previous Elder Scrolls games is gone completely. Hopefully this is fastest tanking MMO in history because they don't seem to be pleasing anyone with this abomination with Elder Scrolls written on its name tag.
 

BigDug13

Member
This 1000 times. I'm so glad people are so against this garbage and everyone wanted a sandbox experience since that is what the damn Elder Scrolls games are.

These fucking failures can't even get their lore right. Why the fuck is Cyrodil not a fucking jungle this time? Why the fuck are Argonians, Dunmer and Nords allies? 5 years in the making already and don't can't get basic shit from their own lore right, that's a great sign!

I seriously can't think of one redeeming factor of this game. Damn near every single possible thing that I loved from the previous Elder Scrolls games is gone completely. Hopefully this is fastest tanking MMO in history because they don't seem to be pleasing anyone with this abomination with Elder Scrolls written on its name tag.

Yeah that's mind blowing about the factions. They made geographic alliances in a world where these races who were geographically close to one another were NOT allies. This isn't Hybernia, Albion, and Midgard here guys. You can't lump the same things you did with DAoC into ES's geography.
 
1. Low IQ "Kill 10 pigs" and come back and get your little pat on the head for being a good little special ed student who needs his hand held quests. No one likes this, and if they do, who gives a shit.

Wait, what?

"Don't appeal to players that want something".

Fuck you dickless subhuman. As predicted. Your NOT appealing to Skyrim players. PERIOD. And the shitheads who do play it will get bored and leave anyways. You either go with WHAT works, AKA SANDBOX mode, or you don't fucking make the game. No one wants to play a dumbed down version of Skrim. No one.

... okay.
 
These fucking failures can't even get their lore right. Why the fuck is Cyrodil not a fucking jungle this time? Why the fuck are Argonians, Dunmer and Nords allies? 5 years in the making already and don't can't get basic shit from their own lore right, that's a great sign!
That should not surprise any of you.

The lore shitting is unavoidable. MMOs, including the almighty WoW, will always shit on your brand's lore. ALWAYS. From foam lightsabers and "Dark HEALS!", to dumbass Blood Elf lore mangling, you can count on it.

It's funny that many of the biggest franchises in nerd-dom- and even the world- have all entered the MMO market, spent billions of dollars, and we mostly have just a pile of shit as a result of it. Biggest waste of gaming dollars ever.

Star Wars, Star Trek, DC comics, Warcraft, Matrix, LOTR, D&D, Warhammer, Final Fantasy and now Elder Scrolls! yay!
 
Too complicated for the WoW crowd.

Well, they're going to have raiding (yep!), and I can't imagine WoW style raiding in first person unless you like to lose all your situational awareness and fail miserably.

Though what on earth is so amazingly complicated about first person, who knows.
 

Nekofrog

Banned
Was interested until I saw hotbar.

Tera has ruined me. I can not go back, and I WILL NOT go back. Played the original EQ, then dabbled in CoH and played a LOT of EQ2, then various other MMOs for brief periods of time. Tera has brought me back into the MMO fold after 4 years or so gone.

No way can I ever go back to the old MMO style of play. I'm sorry to see they're sticking with it.
 

Aaron

Member
Sounds like they removed everything that makes Elder Scrolls interesting. So why even bother? At least it should do marginally better than Warhammer Online.
 
The only thing that excites me about this is seeing all of Tamriel represented. The areas we haven't yet seen will be cool to visit, and it will be neat to see how they represent places we've already visited in earlier games. Also, the soundtrack (if Soule does it) will probably be great.

Too bad I won't play it since it's an MMO :/
 

Aaron

Member
The only thing that excites me about this is seeing all of Tamriel represented. The areas we haven't yet seen will be cool to visit, and it will be neat to see how they represent places we've already visited in earlier games. Also, the soundtrack (if Soule does it) will probably be great.
You want to see them with the shitty hero engine? I'll stick to Oblivion/Skyrim and my imagination.
 

BigDug13

Member
Well, they're going to have raiding (yep!), and I can't imagine WoW style raiding in first person unless you like to lose all your situational awareness and fail miserably.

Though what on earth is so amazingly complicated about first person, who knows.

You're kidding, right? Everquest 1 had 3D graphics, first person view, and epic raid content in 1998. It worked just fine. And this is in a world without voice comms. Raids conducted with with game's text chat interface only. Auctions conducted player-to-player directly with no game "middle man". No such thing as instanced dungeons. If the God of Hate is killed by a guild, it stays down on that server for days. If a dragon is killed, it stays dead for days. None of this instant respawning of huge epic monsters over and over in instanced dungeons.

WoW killed the sense of a community for me. It's funny that the bullet points in this game have to explain what persistant dungeons are and then lump instanced dungeons into a phrase like "normal dungeons like WoW"...that's not F'ing normal!
 
You want to see them with the shitty hero engine? I'll stick to Oblivion/Skyrim and my imagination.

Clarification: I don't want to see this game at all. But it will be cool to see visual representations of places we haven't gotten to visit in the main games, shitty engine or not.
 
So after a few hours I've decided what exactly I'd want from an elder scrolls MMO

1. Look and plays similar to Skyrim

2. Hub cities and towns similar in structure to Skyrim where you would get quest, shop, craft. These areas would be populated by all players on the server. Here you could also party up with friends or randoms.

3. Outside the hub cities you would have a more co-op instances experience where you would see primarily your party as you adventure Tamriel. Other player parties would be visible to an extent, not sure how they would make it work, but I'd want the world to feel inhabited but not over crowded.

4. The dungeons and enemies would go from weak falmer to dragons to giants, to even bigger and harder enemies that would require coordination of your entire 6-10 party members.

5. Classes would be more restricted then Skyrim (skill limitations for example) but more open then traditional MMORPGS

The closest example I can think of, and I tried to come up with others but keep going back to this one, is Borderlands style co-op PvE but meshed with Skyrim's systems and gameplay
 
To quote what I stated in the earlier thread.

Then the game is a waste of space and I hope this tanks faster then SWTOR is just to get the message across. Stop copying WoW! Sick to death of the WoW formula spreading like a plague across every MMO since it's release.

If this turns into another WoW clone with a class base system, heavy restrictions based on the 3 factions, etc. then fuck it, and fuck it hard.

Game needs imo

-Skill based system not classes.

-In depth character customization.

-Incredibly large world that dwarfs WoW, SWTOR, etc. The game needs to have a grand sense of scale.

-Player housing and towns. Would add so much to the game having this stuff. Also be able to set up a plantation or shop of your own, etc.

-No level scaling or hand holding telling you where to go. You accidentally stumble into a Vampire Den to early, tough shit. Not told where to go next? Explore! Live the way you want to in the world.

-In depth crafting system with the ability to actually make something that nobody else has.

-Player driven economy, set up like EvE where you need to go to different systems (in this case parts of the world). Not WoW where the ah in Stormwind miraculously has auctions for shit from the other continents.

-No quick map travel. Keep it as basic forms of transportation like horses, boats, etc. and also have the Mage Guild be a form of going from town to town instantly.

-The illegal stuff in the game such as drugs like Moon Sugar and Skooma. Get caught with it by guards, there are consequences.

-Bounty system and Jail time and have it diminish your skills depending on time spent (which would go by instantly but the penalty would be based on your crimes).

-Real reasons to socially interact with other players. Something along the lines of SWG, it was great going into a cantina to rest and and to start conversations.

-Ability to make a character that isn't combat focused such as an entertainer, farmer, merchant, pure crafter, etc.

I can list more but you can see where i'm going with this. The WoW formula has run dry, WoW itself isn't even that fun anymore. I have played WoW to death and still will probably go back for Mists just for the sake of seeing it but I know damn well it will run dry again in no more then 2 months at best. Quite frankly it's time for MMO's to start regaining the sense of depth they had before the WoW plague spread. Seriously, the only MMO I can think of that has stayed pure and true to what it started out as is EvE Online.

What a massive wast of potential this game is. If there was ever game that was a kick to the balls with the backing of the force of 1000 suns, this is it.
 
ITT: Lots of salty talk about an MMO from people who don't play MMO's.

For those asking for something like EVE, you need to understand that with that kind of freedom, or even just a taste of that kind of freedom, comes the overpoweringly loud bleating of angry carebears who are not even remotely interested in dynamic events transpiring in their little bubble of a world; all they care about is baking bread and fetch quests. Look no further back than the pre-Wrath of the Lich King event in WoW, where players could spread plague to each other. There was so much whining and bitter tears all over, all because for a short three days of time there was something more unpredictably interesting to partake of in WoW besides watching the shark pop out of the water once again.

EVE works now as the type of game it is because those kinds of players are not what CCP are interested in, not really, and thus don't particularly cater to them. I can guarantee you that Zenimax wants those kinds of players for this game, though, and if they were to just make something like "Skyrim: Online", with the kind of freedom many would expect of such a thing, the gnashing of teeth would be endless until you end up with stupid band-aid fixes like Ultima Online had with Trammel, or what Verant did for Everquest when Fansy began his crusade against the bad guys on the no-rule server.

Yeah, it's a generic-ass bullet point list, but them just hinting at a DAoC style of PVP has me interested. Being an MMO, that also means that design is never locked-down and final like it is for single-player games, but has a bit more fluidity to it, so they could very well add things like player housing and vampires and such, likely as DLC coming from the house that gave us horse-armor.

Just remember, though, that there is a large and loud group of players who want nothing more than to pretend to be elves baking bread, and striking a balance for them and the opposing player-type is not exactly an easy thing to do, even for veteran MMO devs.
 

Aaron

Member
Reading over the bullet points again, it makes sense this was designed in 2007, but I guess with the concept they should not try to do anything remotely new or interesting. Unfortunately for them, it's 2012 and the MMO landscape has changed a lot in five years. Most games following this model have slumped into free to play, while Tera and Guildwars 2 are the new hotness.
 

sp3000

Member
ITT: Lots of salty talk about an MMO from people who don't play MMO's.

For those asking for something like EVE, you need to understand that with that kind of freedom, or even just a taste of that kind of freedom, comes the overpoweringly loud bleating of angry carebears who are not even remotely interested in dynamic events transpiring in their little bubble of a world; all they care about is baking bread and fetch quests. Look no further back than the pre-Wrath of the Lich King event in WoW, where players could spread plague to each other. There was so much whining and bitter tears all over, all because for a short three days of time there was something more unpredictably interesting to partake of in WoW besides watching the shark pop out of the water once again.

EVE works now as the type of game it is because those kinds of players are not what CCP are interested in, not really, and thus don't particularly cater to them. I can guarantee you that Zenimax wants those kinds of players for this game, though, and if they were to just make something like "Skyrim: Online", with the kind of freedom many would expect of such a thing, the gnashing of teeth would be endless until you end up with stupid band-aid fixes like Ultima Online had with Trammel, or what Verant did for Everquest when Fansy began his crusade against the bad guys on the no-rule server.

Yeah, it's a generic-ass bullet point list, but them just hinting at a DAoC style of PVP has me interested. Being an MMO, that also means that design is never locked-down and final like it is for single-player games, but has a bit more fluidity to it, so they could very well add things like player housing and vampires and such, likely as DLC coming from the house that gave us horse-armor.

Just remember, though, that there is a large and loud group of players who want nothing more than to pretend to be elves baking bread, and striking a balance for them and the opposing player-type is not exactly an easy thing to do, even for veteran MMO devs.

So the obvious answer is to take one of the worst engines around, forget the lore, and take all the gameplay ideas from wow because obviously gamers are stupid fools who have no idea how to adapt to anything new.

This is probably one of the most cynical, uninspired cash ins around. It's hilarious that you are trying to defend it.
 

vareon

Member
Many of those bullet points disagree with Howard's vision of Elder Scrolls, no? Let's see how this turned out.
 

evangd007

Member
Really? I think a lot of people like TES specifically because of the world and the lore. Why else would you play it, other than to experience the world? The combat is extremely outdated and lifeless, the loot is boring, there's no balance or difficulty, etc.

We don't want to experience the world. One plays an Elder Scrolls game to influence the world. I never thought that an Elder Scrolls MMO would work because it would denigrate the very features that make the series great: the astounding amount of player agency both in character creation/progression and world exploration. It would be utter chaos if it thousands of players were able to influence the world like that, so instead we get Dark Age of Camelot 2 with an Elder Scrolls paint job.
 

Jb

Member
Nope, not interested. I don't give a shit about the TES lore and I was already bored with WoW style combat back in 2006.

A 4 player online TES à la Borderlands could have been awesome, but from what they've told GI this just seems like a case of too little change and way too late. No doubt there are people who play MMOs anyways who will be interested in this, but I doubt it'll seduce most fans of the series.

Also, what percentage of Skyrim's total sales were on 360/PS3? How are they planning to get that audience to suscribe to a PC MMO?
 

Chris_C

Member
I honestly don't think I've ever seen such a unanimously negative reaction to a major game announcement. I mean there have been tons of dud announcements, but even the Dmc announcement had more positive comments.

I hope Bethesda's listening.
 
You're kidding, right? Everquest 1 had 3D graphics, first person view, and epic raid content in 1998. It worked just fine. And this is in a world without voice comms. Raids conducted with with game's text chat interface only.
EQ raiding doesn't compare, sorry. There is a reason most people at a raid could fall asleep smashing their face into the keyboard bound to their 1 button rotation and win, while maybe 6 people had to really pay attention - if that.

EQ raids were huge catass fests, yes. Difficult, no, except when they were bugged to shit often for months, which is not exactly a raid mechanic you want to be holding up. Or maybe you mean difficult in the sense of "get up at 3 am, sit around buffing for hours, fuck yea!"
 

Keasar

Member
Sooo...this is kinda like every other MMO?
No first person? No real-time combat? Then what is the point of making Elder Scrolls into a MMO?
 
Sooo...this is kinda like every other MMO?
No first person? No real-time combat? Then what is the point of making Elder Scrolls into a MMO?

one-dollar-bill-large.jpg
 
So the obvious answer is to take one of the worst engines around, forget the lore, and take all the gameplay ideas from wow because obviously gamers are stupid fools who have no idea how to adapt to anything new.

This is probably one of the most cynical, uninspired cash ins around. It's hilarious that you are trying to defend it.

Don't mistake me as trying to defend the game. I'm not a big ES fan, and I don't find myself being interested in another WoW clone, but it's too early to judge the game like so many are doing, and I find it particularly irksome to see so many people who don't normally play MMO's throw out these brilliant ideas that in reality have already been tried in some previous MMO only to see it fall flat on its fucking face due to poor implementation or some other reason, sometimes even because players aren't going to play the game as you'd like them to.

Anybody who was thinking they'd get an online copy of an ES game are ignorant, or delusional.
 
I never asked for this.

Anyway, looks like another generic MMO to me so far. I agree with the sentiment in this thread that it won't succeed with a monthly fee.
 

Ledsen

Member
We don't want to experience the world. One plays an Elder Scrolls game to influence the world. I never thought that an Elder Scrolls MMO would work because it would denigrate the very features that make the series great: the astounding amount of player agency both in character creation/progression and world exploration. It would be utter chaos if it thousands of players were able to influence the world like that, so instead we get Dark Age of Camelot 2 with an Elder Scrolls paint job.

You can't influence the world in ES games. You can interact with it, but never change it in any meaningful way. Experiencing the world is exactly what those games are about.
 

akira28

Member
you can't be a werewolf or a vampire.
no dragons.
no player housing.


Definitely, its like they forgot what makes an Elder Scrolls game.

Third Person too? bleh.

Looks like another The Old Republic.

um...

Well I just don't see how they teamed the Argonians with the Dunmer, unless it's understood that the Argonians are enslaved by the Dunmer.
 
When I first read the announcement, I was excited, but only because I'd hoped they'd found a way to revolutionise MMO games and make them essentially like the single player TES games but with hundreds of people running about sorting shit out. Unfortunately, it sounds pretty dreadful, and I have no interest. I hope that eventually a single player game comes out with the whole continent - that would probably be their magnum opus.
 

Ledsen

Member
When I first read the announcement, I was excited, but only because I'd hoped they'd found a way to revolutionise MMO games and make them essentially like the single player TES games but with hundreds of people running about sorting shit out. Unfortunately, it sounds pretty dreadful, and I have no interest. I hope that eventually a single player game comes out with the whole continent - that would probably be their magnum opus.

256px-Elder_Scrolls_Arena_Cover.jpg
 
Top Bottom