The Elder Scrolls Online Catch-All

Sorry if this has been posted before, but it just turned me completely off of the Elder Scrolls MMO.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/05/31/th...

One line in particular:

Matt Firor (Game Director of the Elder Scrolls MMO) wrote:

“At this point in the evolution of MMOs, every MMO has tried something at one point or another that you’re going to do in your game. There aren’t any more truly innovative features.”

That sounds like a healthy mindset to go into a project with, especially from the game director. That quote doesn't come across as being excited about his own game. (I'm not about to listen to a 20m interview to see if it's consistent) Thinking about it though, it's not as though Zenimax/Bethesda have really astounded me recently with anything.

I think I am going to have to disagree with Mr. Firor there...

This isn't a deathknell for me and I do understand what he is saying. I also will reserve judgment since it is one sentence taken out of context. I just don't agree with it.

I do believe that you can make a fresh mmo experience with proven mechanics with no innovation, however. 10 different people working with the same 100 blocks will not all come up with the same configuration of them. I think genre, theme, style and atmosphere have a lot to do with how successful an mmo is.

Horror, science fiction, wild west, historical civilizations (egypt, china, aztec, maya, greek, rome, persian, assyrian, rennaisance italy), historical figures (da vinci, musketeers, pirates, mongols, zulu, maori, minute men, apaches), religions (hindu, budhist, muslim, zoroastrianism, taoism, jewish)

All of those ideas are underexplored or unexplored in mmos. There is lots of room for innovation outside of actual gameplay. And in fact, exploring some of this may provide spark to new gameplay.

Buddhist MMO with permadeath: race/class choices for subsequent toons are restricted based on karma accrued by previous toons. Generate more karma for access to more powerful abilities (when you reincarnate).

That one's for free, Zenimax.

There aren't any more truly innovative features....

until there are.

Tkyl wrote:
Matt Firor (Game Director of the Elder Scrolls MMO) wrote:

“At this point in the evolution of MMOs, every MMO has tried something at one point or another that you’re going to do in your game. There aren’t any more truly innovative features.”

I imagine at least 5 PR people died when he said that.

I think the devs have been on the defense ever since the game was announced and a fairly large group of people all went "meh" (myself included). Statements like the above sound a bit like someone's sick of hearing the same questions (ie. "now that SWTOR pushed the genre") and reacted defensively.

I wish we could hear all he said surrounding that statement because as it stands it sounds a whole lot like "the acoustic guitar is the end all and be all of music."

Hope I'm not skimming here. (Also, jumping into the thread).

Responding to Gravey from May regarding hero versus everyman and more current news that the main quest is "100% solo":

The overview blurb on the front page of the website seems to sum it up nicely:

Salvation cannot come from one Hero alone...but from Many.

A stolen soul. An undead army rising. A quest to recover that which is uniquely yours. Only you can save the world from the evil machinations of the Deadric Prince, Molag Bal, and the first known necromancer, Mannimarco.

So the world needs you and only you, plus ten thousand others just like you. You're a special snowflake in a blizzard.

I'm a huge fan of the lore and am interested to see what they come up with. Although I can't begin to imagine the gnashing of teeth and wails of despair on the lore forums once so much of the world is nailed down into an MMO package. Not so much because they think the games have to be the only correct vision of the world, but due to all the folks running to ask questions about things that the diehards don't think should even be in there to begin with.

I guess that's any Elder Scrolls game, though. For me, as long as this isn't delaying the next single-player TES game, I'm happy to see what happens with the online version.

I don't see Tamriel being an MMO world as being a problem, just as I can see that Azeroth before WoW was a world in the RTS games, and I could see Azeroth existing after WoW if they make a good enough story to follow on from how they leave it (X hundred years in the future, some human looks at an orc in the wrong way).

I am sure that I will purchase this game and at least play it for the free month.

It is funny that the only mmo's I haven't done that with are the ones with some non-traditional mechanics like TERA and Secret World. And those I would have bought had I not gotten in the beta and found that it just didn't click with me.

Montalban wrote:
Salvation cannot come from one Hero alone...but from Many.

[snip]

Only you can save the world

く(⊙ヘ◎)ゞ

Montalban wrote:

You're a special snowflake in a blizzard.

I get it!

"We are all individuals!"

"...I'm not!"

Hands on...

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/10...

Sounds intriguing... but if its subscription then it will "fail"

Nice to read some fairly in-depth hands on. Finally.

He mentions the game is in alpha. What's the ETA on release? 2014?

Big article on this with three hours of pre-alpha gameplay at mmorpg.com:
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/g...

Nice! Unfortunately I have rehearsal tonight so I won't be able to dive in head first until much later =(

The hands on article at massively sounded really interesting. I hope they really work on the targeting. That could be a game breaker.

From the articles it sounds as though they are taking a lot of lessons from GW2 and Secret World.

Those articles make it sound a bit like GW2. That's a good thing, since my fiancé and I have both remarked how GW2 feels a lot like Skyrim at times.

I think Elder Scrolls Online absolutely must have GW2-style level scaling if it's going to feel like an Elder Scrolls game. GW2 is like Skyrim in that I could wander anywhere I haven't yet been and find adventure. If ESO lets me roflstomp all but 1 or 2 max-level zones then it'll feel way too cramped.

I think the good thing about level scaling in GW2 is twofold.

It is not just that you can go to any place at or below your level and be productive. It is also that you are not bogged down having to fight your way to objectives in the lower level zones.

So say you are level 50 and you run through a level 12 zone. You can stop and fight and participate in dynamic events. Or since you are usually 1-2 levels above the recommended level for the area, you can run past the enemies. And provided that you don't aggro more than 5 at a time, you can ignore them on your way to marking a waypoint or point of interest.

In most prior mmo's you could get killed slowly if the much lower level enemies had something like a snare of nasty poison. Or they would follow you all over the area, missing incessantly. And also in most games you could train a quarter of the zone all over and kill players of the appropriate level.

The recent information reveals about ESO has me feeling the tiniest bit optimistic that it might turn out ok, but I can't shake the disappointment that we're not getting a proper Elder Scrolls single player game covering all of Tamriel instead.

You know that this team is completely separate from the one working on the single player games, right? S any work on ESO does not have to conflict with development for the next ES.

The team is separate, yes (and hopefully so is the budgeting), but I sincerely doubt they're going to cannibalize their own customer base by removing one of the big draws of ESO ("Play across all of Tamriel in one giant game!") via providing the same draw in a different game at the same time.

Farscry wrote:

The recent information reveals about ESO has me feeling the tiniest bit optimistic that it might turn out ok, but I can't shake the disappointment that we're not getting a proper Elder Scrolls single player game covering all of Tamriel instead. :(

My gut tells me that similar to TOR, this is going to be a key reason for ESO to disappoint. There are some single player games that can make the transition fine; Warcraft is a pretty solid example. But that also crossed genres to do it, going from RTS to RPG. With TOR, however, you took a strong single player franchise and built an MMO onto it. While ESO may lend itself somewhat better, given the open world nature of other Elder Scrolls games, I can't help but feel that they're going to go with a more theme park style approach which is going to turn off a great number of their prospective players who don't want that, and like you and I, really just want another single player Elder Scrolls game.

AnimeJ wrote:
Farscry wrote:

The recent information reveals about ESO has me feeling the tiniest bit optimistic that it might turn out ok, but I can't shake the disappointment that we're not getting a proper Elder Scrolls single player game covering all of Tamriel instead. :(

My gut tells me that similar to TOR, this is going to be a key reason for ESO to disappoint. There are some single player games that can make the transition fine; Warcraft is a pretty solid example. But that also crossed genres to do it, going from RTS to RPG. With TOR, however, you took a strong single player franchise and built an MMO onto it. While ESO may lend itself somewhat better, given the open world nature of other Elder Scrolls games, I can't help but feel that they're going to go with a more theme park style approach which is going to turn off a great number of their prospective players who don't want that, and like you and I, really just want another single player Elder Scrolls game.

What drives me crazy is this idea that every property needs to be turned into an MMO. I guarantee that a 4 player co-op Elder Scrolls would make a bundle without all the risk inherent in making an MMO. Otherwise you get a game like Swtor, which probably will never make a good profit.

I know it's been discussed to death, but the reality is that investors see what Blizzard did with Warcraft, and they want a piece of that action. The sooner they get it out of their friggin heads that WoW is an abomination, an outlier, and that not even Blizzard will be able to duplicate that success, the better for everyone.

If you read that hands on preview, you do not get the impression that it is going to be a themepark at all. One of the key points is the fact that quest givers aren't conveniently located in a central hub town. They are found out in the world by exploring.

I will admit that this can be staged in the demo provided to the press in house. But I hope this is an indication of the direction they are going for the rest of the game.

edit: I also think the fatal flaw with people trying to duplicate WoW's success is that they forget that WoW wasn't built in a day. It was grown over years. Anyone that tries to jumpstart that is going to lose a lot of money.

fangblackbone wrote:

edit: I also think the fatal flaw with people trying to duplicate WoW's success is that they forget that WoW wasn't built in a day. It was grown over years. Anyone that tries to jumpstart that is going to lose a lot of money.

The problem is a new MMO isn't competing with WoW as it was at launch, it's competing with WoW as it is today. WoW may have had the luxury of growing over time, but a new MMO has to have a comparable feature set right out of the gate.

This is a big reason why nobody has dethroned WoW yet. It's just plain got an unfair advantage.

Vargen wrote:
fangblackbone wrote:

edit: I also think the fatal flaw with people trying to duplicate WoW's success is that they forget that WoW wasn't built in a day. It was grown over years. Anyone that tries to jumpstart that is going to lose a lot of money.

The problem is a new MMO isn't competing with WoW as it was at launch, it's competing with WoW as it is today. WoW may have had the luxury of growing over time, but a new MMO has to have a comparable feature set right out of the gate.

This is a big reason why nobody has dethroned WoW yet. It's just plain got an unfair advantage.

Again, this isn't happening. WoW's numbers are an anomaly, and not realistic, either short term or long term. Plan for less than a million subs. Budget to that. Hell, budget to half a million. But there's no competing with WoW on any level. Even back when it was new, it was freakish.

Are MMO's even trying to be a "WoW-killer" these days? Comparisons in media and among fans are inevitable because WoW is the 800lb gorilla of the MMO world, but I don't recall any game studios openly boasting like that since AoC or WAR. Most of the recent MMO releases seem to have a (relatively) more humble outlook.

Come to think of it, Bioware was a bit cocky with SWTOR, but I think my point still stands.

WoW doesn't even pretend to be a MapleStory-killer, so really these guys are all just small potatoes.