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What Elder Scrolls Online Offers Skyrim Fans, MMO Players
firefly2003
Member UncommonPosts: 2,527
Zenimax Online faces the difficult task of appeasing several different sets of expectations from gamers who come from different games and genres. Read on for how The Elder Scrolls Online aims to appeal to several different fanbases.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Seeing more of the world. Haven’t you ever been curious what the Argonian homeland looks like, or what riding through Daggerfall in a game with a modern graphics engine would look like? ESO includes sections of every province in Tamriel, so you can explore many of the locations you’ve only read about in books until now.
Lore. The Elder Scrolls franchise has an enormous body of backstory, and ESO is blowing it out even further. Zenimax Online is working hand-in-hand with the loremasters at Bethesda Game Studios to flesh out Tamriel’s Second Era, so lore nuts should have plenty to digest.
Finding adventure wherever you wander. Isn’t that what Elder Scrolls is all about? The Mage Guild’s gameplay revolves around finding ancient texts and bits of lore and runs throughout the entire game. Unmarked dungeons, ruins, caves, and other adventure-filled areas dot the landscape, so wandering through the Black Marsh isn’t a matter of grinding giant bugs for experience as it is a hunt for lost artifacts of ancient Argonian civilization, even though no NPC has given you a specific task to do so.
Touchstones. Daedric princes, birthsigns, guilds, and many more elements that players strongly associate with the franchise are all integral parts of the game. Some things, like player housing, aren’t making the transition to an MMO because of the constraints inherent to an online game, but Zenimax Online is including everything that makes sense.
World of Warcraft
Working with other players. While WoW’s world design and game rules expect you to fly solo outside of designated elite quests and group dungeons, Zenimax Online is going out of its way to make sure helping someone else out always benefits everyone. For instance, there’s no “tagging” and so helping a random stranger kill a monster results in both of you getting full credit.
That old BRD feeling. Blackrock Depths is often mentioned as a favorite dungeon of old-school WoW players for the sense of exploring a huge, hostile city instead of fighting through a series of corridors. ESO’s public dungeons, unless Zenimax Online badly botches the design, should recreate some of what made BRD special...but hopefully without the painful process of finding a group that wants to accomplish the same subset of goals that you’re looking to do.
Non-instanced PvP warfare. Remember the good old days of open warfare in the Hillsbrad Foothills as huge mobs of players fought over Tarren Mill and Southshore? Expand that to the entire province of Cyrodiil. Take out the server-crashing lag, since the engine can handle up to 200 players onscreen and Zenimax Online has still-under-wraps plans to divert excess population. Forget about lowbie ganking, since everyone’s stats are automatically boosted to level-cap status in Cyrodiil. Oh, and there are things to fight over besides murdering helpless questgivers. Like, for instance, keeps whose walls you can bash down with trebuchets.
Familiar but innovative combat. 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. The addition of stamina for blocking, sprinting, interrupting, and disable-breaking should dramatically increase the moment-to-moment depth of combat.
Star Wars: The Old Republic
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.
Working with other players (see WoW entry, above). Outside of flashpoints, cooperating with other players in SW:TOR is extremely limited in scope. That hopefully won’t be the case in ESO.
Dynamic, large-group combat. SW:TOR did a great job of throwing different types of encounters at players even in its solo content, and ESO is following suit. The baseline solo encounter design has players taking on three enemies at a time, and they work together to bring you down by combining skills like lighting oil patches on fire.
Rift
Public content. Rifts are amazing, and Zenimax Online hopes to recreate the sense of working together with random strangers with the Fighters Guild content (destroying Molag Bal’s randomly appearing dark anchors) as well as public dungeons.
Polish and technical competence. Remember when Rift came out, and we were all blown away at how a team of veteran developers with a whole lot of money behind them could put out an MMO that was solid at launch? Well, ESO has a similar situation – game director Matt Firor was heavily involved with Dark Age of Camelot, creative director Paul Sage worked on Ultima Online among others, and team members at Zenimax Online across all disciplines can boast similar credentials. Anything less than a Rift-like level of stability and polish at launch will be a huge disappointment for ESO.
These are just a few elements of The Elder Scrolls Online that should appeal to the fanbases of various games. Fans of the franchise have a lot of questions yet to be answered, like how the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood will work in an MMO setting and how Zenimax Online is going to approximate the rich interactions with objects in the world that we’ve gotten used to since Morrowind. Nonetheless, writing off ESO as “just another MMO” or “WoW with daedra” is doing this ambitious project a grave disservice.
Comments
No matter how much Zenimax wants to dress this up they are taking features from games that many people are tired of or don't care for or grew bored with, they are intregrating so little features from the actual TES games , why would anyone want to bother, dressing up another pig with another shade of lipstick is what people want , nor does people want once again another MMO modeled after 1. A so 2007 design forumla (WoW), 2. Story as the pillar (TOR) 3. Bland and uncreative world of (Rift)
All I see is a group of developers who are more interested in trying to make "yet another MMO" instead of making a TES mmo.
Isn't this exactly what Blizzard said they did when they developed WoW. Took the features found in the, then, current batch of mmo's, applied them to the Warcraft lore, and then designed the game around casual play?
And isn't this what every other companies been doing sinse WoW?
I feel like the only frigging person on the planet who looks at the way MMO's have been developed and only sees stale, generic gameplay that's never going to succeed in creating a game that carries any more subs then EQ did in it's prime. If it worked, WoW wouldn't have a 9-10 million subscriber gap in the genre. The mmo population would have spread out more significantly.
Rifts are what? Amazing?
Sorry, but GW2 events are miles above rifts, or the lousy Warhammer public quests. I hope this game gets inspiration there, and not from poorly designed stuff like rifts or PQs.
Respect, walk
Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?
- PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
The thing I don't understand is that Bethseda is known for making awesome games with lots of depth.
Why are they willing to take the risk of making a shallow game that is like every other failed MMO on the market. That has never been their M.O. We expect that out of EA, Funcom, and SOE. They are making a huge mistake just like the others companies did when they tried to clone WoW.
The more information I get about the game the more I'm turned off. That old BRD feeling ? Seriously? There is nothing old or nostaligic about WoW for me.
This is shaping up to be a wow clone plain and simple. Disappointed. They took a look at the WoW model and decided to cash in.
I'm a unique and beautiful snowflake.
Those of us that played Daggerfall saw a whole lot more of the world than you will in the MMO. They should have just taken Daggerfall, added multiplayer and revamped the graphics instead.
Well and put some more work ino the NPCs of course, talking to them were annoying at time in DF, like when I asked one of the masterthiefs in the thievesguild about the guild and she said she knew nothing about it....
I just think that an elderscroll MMO really should be closer to the singleplayer game and further from Wow, DaoC and EQ. Nothing against any of these games but the IP really should have it's own mechanics anyways.
It doesnt look like a wow-clone, more of a gw2-daoc love-child. Who knows for sure though until more details are leaked. I just hope they dont abandon the single player elder scrolls because then they are going to lose a lot of customers and when is this supposed to launch, 2-3 years with a sub? No body likes paying a sub now, why would we want to pay a sub for a game with 2010 graphics and game play in 2014-2015?
Did you read/watch all the info on TESO? From what i got they are taking what elements of TES they CAN to TESO. with in the constraints of an online game. Stamina bar,no quest hubs, more explorable world IE cave/dungeons/bandit hideouts etc etc..
and as I have stated before,you wonder why devs/publishers are afraid to take a gamble...well,community reaction. blame your selves for the non inovation.
IF I was a dev/pub I know I would not want to waste money on a game that could potentially be ripped apart/critisized sooo much by the community that the preconceptions ruined it.
Would you pay 10 bucks to go watch a movie every one tells you is bad,even though none of them have seen the movie.
While trying to read through that, I got sick. And I don't think its just the consequences from bar-hopping last night.
Sounds pretty good to me. Not as sandboxy as I'd like, but it does sound like they are putting in a lot of nice features into the game. Would prefer more action-based combat and free-form skill progression, though.
in simple words:
to harcore TES fans.....an unrecognizable game very losesly based on some of the lore of TES.
to harcore traditinal mmo player......a lame version of WoW, that has been done and redone hundreds of time. oh, and a lose reference to TES games.
To call it a WoW clone might be a little unfair. It looks more like they're copy and pasting the exact elements from all the more recent MMOs together and then applying a TES Paint Job.
I just really don't think The Elder Scrolls can be made into a typical MMO. A sandbox route feels like it would have been a closer adaption than a themepark route, but I'd still rather have had them attempt to make their own game if they were going Online.
well i for one WILL try it out...
but then again im not expecting anything great because NO title out there or yet to be released offers anything amazin fresh or new to the genra..or old for that matter
and the people on their high horse talking about gw2 like its the next holy trinity of game makes me lol ...sure its gonna sell a hell of alot of boxes ..but youll soon see it in the bargin bin along with everybody elses "this is new / but not rly new" title that scores a quick buck
im not tooting my horn saying that TESO is better than this or that...but i will try it out before gw2 because it doesnt have the pressure like gw2 is faceing and who knows..something could come good from it...sometimes you find good things from less hyped games
the BLAH BLAH going around on this sight and other sites about how its gonna kill the edler scrolls series is aslo funny ...they will still make great titles on xbox / pc ..they are not revamping anything ..relax fan-boies..its just another title..i know its prolly NOT what you want...so just wait till beth. brings out the next new elder scrolls..it will be what YOU want and what your used to...just not a sandbox mmo..maybe a co-op online but thats prolly it
but i guess it has become the norm for EVERY title soon to be released with the reaction of ZOMGWTHBBQISZTEHBESTEVAR ...then followed with wow..just woooooow its bad on soo many lvls
From the announcement I had little hope for it to turn out something to get excited from but this thread just confirms my feelings. First off trying to appeal to so many different crowds mixing and matching from the current trend of mmo games is destined to fall flat on it's ass. Secondly, a TES game that isn't sandbox is a depressing thought. More so than anything else I've seen, this just shows how doomed the genre is when a TES game goes for a themepark casual type of mmo. Finally I'm moving along as there currently isn't much to see here other than the same old promises, the same old delusions of WoWesque grandeur and all that other crap we've seen far too many times already.
ESO offers this long time TES and MMORPG player NOTHING.
The only TES game that should be made online is a TES that can be played with others, we wanted that so much WE the FANS made a multiplayer mod for Skyrim. To make it an MMORPG is to bastardize the series for the sake of money and that should not make even one single fan of the TES games happy...not ONE of them.
TES is TES, its not just a world. Its not just a story. It is a series of games with beloved GAMEPLAY and OPEN CLASSES.
Did they not see the fans outrage over their dropping the spell system from previous games with Skyrim? That was the biggest issue fans had with the game...that they were limited to 2 active spells and all of them were WEAK compared to melee. Bethesda stating it was meant to be that way because the game was taking place in the frozen north...where magic was not prospering and was frowned upon by the natives.
Did that matter to the fans? NO. You could still play the other races...and even if magic was not in use by many there it should not effect its POWER or usage at all.
And yet they think they are somehow going to be able to completely change every aspect of the game and please fans just because its the "world" and "story" setting?
How removed from reality can you get...
This isnt about the fans. Its about taking a known series and whoring it for money.
I hope we shall crush...in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomes Jefferson
Did Bethesda really state that magic was supposed to be weak? Wow.
If I recall correctly, enemy mages used leveled spells, which allowed them to reach stupidly powerful levels.
Yep, stated and unbelievable...even that the first magic mods made for the games where "kept low" as to not undo what Bethesda created. Wasnt until the creation kit was released that things finally got worked out.
BTW, if Midas is reading this...I love you. you will know who Midas is if you have been a major part of the TES community
I hope we shall crush...in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomes Jefferson
I think it's dissappointing that they even think they need to change the gameplay style to turn a single player RPG into an MMORPG.
Sure, obviously some things need to chance because you can't hit your 'rest' key and rest for 8 hours or hit your fast travel key and make a 10 km journey in the time it takes to load the new area whilst the rest of the world goes on around you at normal speed. Apart from solving those issues, they really didn't need to change much.
Of course, they've pretty much lost me already. As soon as I heard there was no open-world PvP and this ridiculous instanced "everyone is maxed out" PvP in a single area, it pretty much put this game in the 'nice try but you're not attracting my gaming dollar' basket for me.
In 2009, I went looking for evidence that Bethesda was planning on creating Elder Scrolls Online. I saw that Zenimax Online Studios had been formed and I had a pretty strong suspicion that TESO was on its way. In the meantime I went looking for a game that was similiar in playstyle to Oblivion, and after looking at all the mainstream MMO's, I eventually found a game called Darkfall. I've been subscribed to that game for nearly 3 years non-stop.
IMHO, Darkfall provides a closer gaming experience to traditional TES games than TESO will.
TESO is kind of like taking TES and making an RTS based on it (which would actually be a pretty cool game if it was based in TES lore properly) - a completely different gaming experience to something like Oblivion, Morrowind or Daggerfall.
When Blizzard decided to take their RTS and make it into an MMO, they needed to drastically change the gameplay style. But now Zenimax Online Studios is making an MMORPG, they're taking something (a really good something) that doesn't need drastic changes, and making drastic changes anyway (but hey I guess Bethesda has been doing that since Daggerfall so they can appeal to an increasingly retarded audience - I'm pretty sure TES6 will just be a first person shooter with spells).
I guess the saying "Why fix something that isn't broken?" is highly applicable here.
OP
1. I will not play an Elder Scrolls game in forced 3rd person view...peroid.
2. I will not play an Elder Scrolls game that is 'class based' (yes I know some TES games have classes but they are not class based).
3. I will not play an Elder Scrolls game which requires me to quest to progress my character in any meaningful way.
4. Having cinmantic quests is a turn off but its not a deal breaker.
5. so far the graphics are a turn off but its not a deal breaker.
6. so far having 'factions' in what is supposed to be an open ended game is a turn off.
7. silly reasons like 'its not possible as players want them' when referring to housing is an extreeme turn off.
Without 1 -3 changing under no circumstance what so ever will I play TES online. People can write articles telling me what I like, what I should like, what is realistically possible, how much people dont want some features in all clever forms and different fashions but the bottom line will remain the same. I will not play the game if 1-3 exists. peroid.
YES I will play other games with 1-3 but not TES
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Please reread your post, and then look at the reaction to ESO currently.
No, I will not pay 10 buchs to play an ES mmo that playy, and has more in common with WoW then the ES games. Because I only play the ES games based entirely on the gameplay that it offers, not the title on the box.
All it seems to me is they're making poor excuses as to why they can't take elements of TES into TESO.
Which elements from TES can't they take exactly? And why can't they take them?
It seems they've just said "We can't do that" and expect us all to go "Oh, okay that's a shame" and not mention it again without them giving us any real explanations why.
Player housing is probably the first one that comes to mind. Plenty of other MMO's have player housing.
A decent skill/magic system is another. Instead we get 5 buttons to mash (most skills could be context sensitive anyway).
First person gameplay with player-skill based combat is the major one. It didn't matter how high your Marksmanship skill was in Oblivion, if you couldn't hit a moving target, it didn't matter. The same applied to aimed spells.
Of course I guess its much easier to make a cookie-cutter MMO and attract the regular crowd who'll subscribe until the next best thing comes along than to create a unique MMO which appeals to existing fans of the series who'll subscribe for years.
Those things are not things that people who played skyrim liked. Are they.
Where is the free form combat - gone.
Amazing Graphics a staple of all elderscrolls games - gone
classless system - gone
Huge world - gone you wont even be able to visit your favorite places in skyrim, oblivion or daggerfall becuase there just taking little bits of both.
Player Housing - no in as well as blinging up your house obviously.
Joining any faction you want by playing ayway you want - too choose between 3 roller coasters and sit it on for the theme ride.
What have then done. taking parts of everyother game and put them in sky rim. thats not what fans want.
take in mind I did not what swtor clone in elderscrolls clothing. I liked swtor but becuase I new what it was from the begininh.
This is no way shape or form an elderscrolls game except for name.
This sounds kind of boring... /sad
Enter a whole new realm of challenge and adventure.
know ones going to know anything til a later date..all this blah blah blah smack talk is just the usual. EVERY MMO since oh lets say {cough} WoW, has the same thing happen...lol mite as well copy and paste the forums of all MMOs that have come out in the last 7years. and they will all read the same.