The Elder Scrolls Online Catch-All

Agreed. Just a bunch of hacks over there in Maryland. Anyone who buys their broken boring games must have a sub-par intelligence to enjoy such claptrap.

Agreed.

fangblackbone wrote:

A few things:
It is being developed by Matt Firor and several other developers from DAOC and WAR.
There is a quote that it will feature (focus?) 3 faction pvp.

I expect this to be more DAOC 2 than Elder Scrolls.
I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing. Elder Scrolls has the better brand recognition and DAOC is long overdue for a sequel. WAR had a lot of promise that still is being squandered to this day.

Yes, while I am very unhappy that the money isn't being sunk into a full-Tamriel proper Elder Scrolls game (to our knowledge), I will still take this game on its own merits.

It may end up being a great mmo, and I may end up playing it and enjoying it for what it is, but I've been daydreaming for well over a decade of a modern full-blown ES game that runs the full length of Tamriel, and this isn't what I daydreamed of at all.

double-post? moi? How embarassing...

momgamer wrote:
Scratched wrote:

The upside I can see for it is that Bethesda will have to shake up the underlying technical guts underneath the game or it'll be hacked to hell and back, and hopefully give their current Gamebyro based engine the heave-ho.

They already heaved Gambryo. Skyrim is built on the own Creation Engine, which they built in-house.

Also, Bethesda's just publishing it. Zenimax Online Studios is doing the development.

Zenimax = Bethesda

http://www.zenimax.com/

All the same company essentially... but yes a completely different development team than what worked on the existing games (which Is what I assume you were saying)

Farscry wrote:

It may end up being a great mmo, and I may end up playing it and enjoying it for what it is, but I've been daydreaming for well over a decade of a modern full-blown ES game that runs the full length of Tamriel, and this isn't what I daydreamed of at all. :(

I like the idea. It would be cool to open up the entire realm to the player and have an extremely immersive and complex single player experience that you could role play for a long time and get deeply invested in, but, I think the only way they can bring that kind of scale at a reasonable price is to go MMO. It may be just an approximation of the games we dreamed up in our heads, but isn't that always the case.

Lots of questions/concerns around this one. An MMO is a huge undertaken, and honestly, it's a crazy crowded market. It's either $15/month (for which the vast majority are only will to sub to 1 MMO, and most are stuck with what they have, given commitments and friend groups) or FTP (which is incredibly difficult to do outside pure PvP games without potentially upsetting a lot of people).

Given all the issues listed above (ES games are great due to mods; can't all be all-powerful; want real-time combat not wow clone; lore not that thrilling; etc.) I am a bit sad that they're focusing time on this rather than making the next awesome Elder Scrolls single-player game.

StaggerLee wrote:

I am a bit sad that they're focusing time on this rather than making the next awesome Elder Scrolls single-player game.

It's a different studio. The Elder Scrolls Online is being developed by Zenimax Online Studios, and it's probably been in development for years, concurrent with Skyrim's development. Bethesda Softworks focuses on the single-player TES games: they're busy with Skyrim expansions, and I'd imagine after that they'd start on TES VI.

Gravey wrote:
StaggerLee wrote:

I am a bit sad that they're focusing time on this rather than making the next awesome Elder Scrolls single-player game.

It's a different studio. The Elder Scrolls Online is being developed by Zenimax Online Studios, and it's probably been in development for years, concurrent with Skyrim's development. Bethesda Softworks focuses on the single-player TES games: they're busy with Skyrim expansions, and I'd imagine after that they'd start on TES VI.

Unless they do Fallout4, is there room for both simultaneously?

The other thing that's in the back of my mind is how MMOs devour studios, look at how WoW caught Blizzard by surprise and they moved developers over to that, how staff moved within Bioware to make SWTOR. I very much doubt the other studio just copied the TES bible and didn't bother the first studio again.

I bet they are ramping up on Fallout 4 development, unless the game has been farmed out to another development team. The MMO and DLC will likely be the only Elder Scrolls we get for a few years.

I can't wait.

I think I'll start my media and forum blackout now though.

I'm sure this will follow the regular cycle of speculative gnashing of teeth about how fitting the ip is for an MMO, followed by flamboyant hipster indifference and rejection, then outrage over the conflict between expectations and reality when details are revealed.

Someone send me a pm when we're at the point of beta test excitement!

There was another quote on Massively that it has been in development for years.(4?)
And don't forget the part where I hate all you idiots!

Scratched wrote:
Gravey wrote:
StaggerLee wrote:

I am a bit sad that they're focusing time on this rather than making the next awesome Elder Scrolls single-player game.

It's a different studio. The Elder Scrolls Online is being developed by Zenimax Online Studios, and it's probably been in development for years, concurrent with Skyrim's development. Bethesda Softworks focuses on the single-player TES games: they're busy with Skyrim expansions, and I'd imagine after that they'd start on TES VI.

Unless they do Fallout4, is there room for both simultaneously?

Probably not? If Skyrim development didn't begin until their work on FO3 was completed. One-game-at-a-time seems to work for Bethesda, and I'd be happy with either FO4 or TES VI next.

Scratched wrote:

The other thing that's in the back of my mind is how MMOs devour studios, look at how WoW caught Blizzard by surprise and they moved developers over to that, how staff moved within Bioware to make SWTOR. I very much doubt the other studio just copied the TES bible and didn't bother the first studio again.

Probably, but again they're separate studios. Not that I know jack sh*t about game development, but Zenimax and Bethesda are each pretty big studios, so it seems to me that Zenimax can do all the heavy lifting. That's obviously how it's been for however many years TESO and Skyrim have each been worked on (edit: four years, says fangblackbone, so basically simultaneously from inception*), or at least near enough that it hasn't visibly affected Skyrim.

As for post-launch, with MMO veterans at Zenimax-the-studio, Zenimax-the-publisher must have a clear plan for how the work will be handled.

*Edit edit: Or maybe earlier since Skyrim started when FO3 finished, i.e. 2008, and Zenimax Online was founded in 2007.

TrashiDawa wrote:

I can't wait.

I think I'll start my media and forum blackout now though.

I'm sure this will follow the regular cycle of speculative gnashing of teeth about how fitting the ip is for an MMO, followed by flamboyant hipster indifference and rejection, then outrage over the conflict between expectations and reality when details are revealed.

Someone send me a pm when we're at the point of beta test excitement!

You must suffer through the pre-release doldrums with the rest of us. No free rides!

Michael Zenke's The Elder Scrolls Online

Now there's a game I'm going to play. Woo!

I know there's a certain magazine article to be released, but what does TES bring to the MMO party, that hasn't been done already? Is there that big a hunger for DAOC PvP that will make it work?

Game Informer cover story scans:
http://imgur.com/a/fO9Ty#0

Just read the whole text of the GI cover story. The game has "World of Warcraft-style mechanics". These are implemented in MMO games (this is my own statement) because it is the best known system that can deal with the inherent issue of latency when thousands of players can be anywhere in a single game world. I don't like it either, but Zenimax won't risk the many millions of dollars they are spending on this game and the Elder Scrolls name to experiment with new game mechanics that most likely will not work in an MMO.

This is the same conclusion Bioware came to when developing TOR. I'm unhappy with it too, but that's the ugly truth. They have some ideas for implementing a Stamina bar similar to how Elder Scrolls games have had where it is consumed by sprinting and blocking and stuff. It seems they hope this will alleviate some of the issues with "WoW" combat being boring. They also want it to be possible for any group of five people to be able to do five man content. They do not want groups to rely on "healers" and "tanks" completely as they are in most games. This is supposedly going to be possible because of the things you can do with Stamina.

Zenimax Online is a team made up of a lot of people from Mythic's old Dark Age of Camelot team and some Ultima Online people too. There seems to be a big PvP focus going into the game with the entire province of Cyrodil (Oblvion's game world) being the game's endgame PvP zone.

Also, public dungeons and everything will be fully voiced. The game is also using the "Hero Engine" I've heard. This is the same engine TOR was made on.

This game will not set the MMO world on fire with innovation nor will it be able to stay 100% faithful to the expectations we have of Elder Scrolls games. Accepting these facts I can now begin to hope to at least enjoy the idea of exploring the entire world of Tamriel and experiencing all kinds of Elder Scrolls lore.

Welp, that article pretty much destroyed any shred of interest I had in this.

I was going to play the Elder Scrolls MMO but then I took an arrow to the knee.........

damn dp

I cant imagine this being f2p. Plus if it's not skill based and sandbox oriented it'll not feel like Elder Scrolls or Skyrim.

"You may be doing it from a third-person perspective and using a hot bar to activate skills..."

No thanks. I'll pass.

Man, they should take a hint from Tera's combat. It would be much closer to Skyrim then that.

So going for this

and everything will be fully voiced

I surely hope that someday soon people will realize that this is incredibly expensive for the return and pigeon holes players down limited paths. It typifies burst fun and mmo's are marathons not sprints even if you play only the free month.

fangblackbone wrote:
and everything will be fully voiced

I surely hope that someday soon people will realize that this is incredibly expensive for the return and pigeon holes players down limited paths. It typifies burst fun and mmo's are marathons not sprints even if you play only the free month.

Perhaps, but Elder Scrolls games have been fully voiced for two games now. It would be strange to transition from a fully voiced game like Skyrim to an MMO released two or more years later and not have fully voiced dialogue and all.

I feel like the same could be said for other things like good graphics or a massive game world. It is true that games have only so many developers and only so much money and time to develop with, but the industry standards for AAA MMOs are shifting. Zenimax probably feels the need to compete with the likes of TOR in whatever aspects make sense for an Elder Scrolls branded MMO.

I could go back to the days of Morrowind or before and read paragraph after paragraph if they wrote text worth reading, but Elder Scrolls games are too big now to do that.

Just out of interest, does anyone know how much TES4/5 and the expansions brought in? Although they're supposedly big hits, I'm trying to see this from the bean-counter point of view, in terms of the cost of creating a world you sell for a one-off price versus an ongoing (hopefully) revenue.

I have just been made aware that The Elder Scrolls Online can be abbreviated to TESCO.

agemyth wrote:

The game has "World of Warcraft-style mechanics".

Do people make money off these kind of projects? The only two healthy MMOs that I'm aware of are EVE Online and WoW. Did the other reskins of WoW fail but in a profitable way?

agemyth wrote:

Game Informer cover story scans:
http://imgur.com/a/fO9Ty#0

Non-scan screenshots: http://www.computerandvideogames.com...

I know it's just static pictures of a video game, and usual disclaimers not representative of final product, not what gameplay will look like, etc, but there's nothing about those screens that really grab me. I know to a certain extent TES follows generic fantasy, to me it just comes across as playing it too safe, that will be to the detriment of the game. Besides the brand name I can't see any reason to be even vaguely interested.

Caddrel wrote:

Do people make money off these kind of projects? The only two healthy MMOs that I'm aware of are EVE Online and WoW. Did the other reskins of WoW fail but in a profitable way?

Those are probably 2 of the more successful mmo's, but they are hardly the ONLY successful ones. LOTRO is doing pretty well last I heard, and there are a number of other f2p titles which are doing decent numbers.