Elder Scrolls Online!

I'm not really interested in MMOs, but even if I were I wouldn't want to play this over GW2 or something similar. It looks so generic, like the devs just slapped the Elder Scrolls name on a random fantasy MMO and called it a day. There's nothing "Elder Scrolls" about it.

 

To me, it seemed more like a mix of different styles. Some of the character models and some of the environments really remind me of the Elder Scrolls games (the Morrowind and Skyrim environments for example) and some seem a little bit too cartoonish, like the werewolf model. The Cyrodiil area certainly looked a lot like Oblivion, which itself had an art style reflecting generic traditional medieval fantasy settings, but somewhat more photorealistic than the exaggerated cartoon WoW look.

I'm concerned about how quests will work, whether the exploration aspect will really feel similar to the single player games. Just being able to explore all those huge areas would be great if they are filled with quests, NPCs and locations you can randomly discover the way you can when playing Skyrim. I guess it must be a tall order to try to please both people who like single player games and people who like MMOs.

GW2 looked really interesting to me until I saw the little midget race that controls robots. Those character models looked so ridiculously cartoonish that I don't think I could ever play that game with a straight face.

 

lol midget race.

The art style is the first thing that turned me off about this game. All the character models are exaggerated and cartoonish. The fact that it's not developed by Bethesda also hurts it imo. Elder Scrolls games have always been about an immersive single player experience with real-time combat set in a massive open world. I can't help but feel this is a cash grab based on the Elder Scrolls name. I guess I'll wait for the reviews to see.

 

Great avatar BTW, I'm pretty sure Cyberpunk2077 is going to be brilliant!

 

You do realize that Zenimax = Bethesda and Bethesda = Zenimax? They are one and the same. Just as BioWare IS EA, and DICE IS EA and that Treyarch IS Activision, none of these companies really exist, just a name.

EA, Activision and Zenimax are the ones that make all the decisions and own the IP. They cannibalize other studios to work on these games, so it's not like it will JUST be BioWare or JUST Zenimax Online, they will no doubt have their other "names" work on these games too.

 

Bethesda Game studios isn't developing the game though; they're the ones who make the Elder Scrolls Games. I know Zenimax owns Bethesda Softworks and Bethesda Game Studios, but that doesn't mean it's being developed by the guys who made Skyrim/Oblivion/Morrowind etc.

 

Thank you sir, I'm a huge CD Projekt fanboy lol. They're one of the few devs left that really care about the consumers and not the almighty dollar. I can't wait for some juicy gameplay trailers

Also, Kubrick FTMFW

 

No it's not Bethesda that makes the Elder Scroll games. It's Zenimax that makes the games. They finance it, they own the IP and they make the decisions of how the game will be developed and sold. Zenimax. Bethesda is just a name, the name is just another Zenimax product.

 

Um... Zenimax is a massive company. Bethesda Game Studio has a team of developers that makes games. ESonline isn't made by those people. I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Zenimax has a hand in publishing the games, but the majority of creative control and effort is by the development team, not the overall company.

 

Zenimax is Bethesda is Zenimax. It's not like Obsidian is developing ESO. It's another subsidiary of the same company.

 

But it's not the same people making it. Just because Battlefield 3 and Mass Effect 3 share a publisher doesn't mean they have the same developers. Would it be a great idea for DICE to make a Mass Effect military shooter? They're both subsidiaries of the same company.

 

Actually it is. That was my point above. BioWare had a lot of people on STOR, didn't have enough, so EA moved Mythic to working on that, and eventually just merged the two, now there is no Mythic. That's exactly what these large publishers do. How do you think after Activision lost all their Infiinity Ward employees, the company magically had a full staff still? They just cannibalize other studios and moved them to Infinity Ward. These studios are just names.

The guy who was in charge of the art for Dishonored? Yeah he is in charge of all art direction for ANY Zenimax game now.

It doesn't matter who works on what game for these large publishers. You think Blizzard cared that Diablo III didn't have any of the major developers from D1 and D2? What about COD? It's a Infinity Ward game, but oh wait, didn't all of Infinity Ward leave? Yeah I think so. That's why the game engine hasn't been changed since they left. The original creators of Mass Effect left BioWare, yet they are planning on another game. Does that matter? Nope.

Who cares if you have the same people working on a game. That's not how most of these games are made now. You have games being outsourced all the time. Duke Nukem was a 3D Realms game, they just had Gearbox Software make it, and this company has I think only 1 original game, all other games they did were just ports.

 

Are you talking about Duke Nukem Forever? That garbage was being developed by 3D Realms until they went under and Randy Pitchford and the guys at Gearbox got the rights to finish and publish it. They had a very small role in the development process, and that shows since the game is such a POS while the rest of Gearbox's stuff is great.

Sebastien Mitton did the art direction on Dishonored. He isn't the art director for all Zenimax games. For example, Matt Carofano was the art director for Skyrim. Dishonored was also worked on by Victor Antonov, the art director of Half Life 2. My point is, it's not the same people working on all these games. Todd Howard (and the rest of Bethesda Game Studios) doesn't have a major role in the production of ESO; he's still working on Skyrim's DLC and probably future Bethesda Game Studios titles. I'm aware that development teams are sometimes moved to other projects during down time and can be altogether merged with other studios, but that doesn't mean every game that a massive corporation like Zenimax or EA churns out is made by the same people.

 

Wrong. 2K Games has the license to publish Duke Nukem and when 3D Realms didn't fulfill the contract, they just had Gearbox do it, even though Gearbox already on 2 projects. Publishers do whatever they want. You are very naive about all this.

Maybe read more current news. Your Sebastian had a promotion.

Most companies do not have all of their studio working on a project. Even with UE4, Epic Games only had a few people working on it. Once they have all the plans and prototype done, that's when they have 100-150 people working on it. Where do these 100-150 people come from? C'mon use your head. You really think these major publishers keep laying off and hiring for every project?

And yeah it does mean the same people are working on the projects. While Skyrim was just in the beginning stages, they probably had them helping with other projects when those studios needed more developers. This is how the industry functions with large corporate publishers.

So yes just about every game this is how it works. It's way too inefficient to have one studio dedicated to one project and constantly laying off 100 people and hiring them back. So yeah, it does mean that nearly every project from these major publishers, you have employees from different studios working and helping with other projects. This is how Blizzard works. This is how Activision works. This is how EA works. This is how Ubisoft works. This is how 2K Games works. Why do you think Zenimax is special and different?

 

I said I'm aware that studios often help on other projects during downtime; read my last post. Not really sure why you're calling me naive when you're the one who says that every single title from every single publisher is made by the same people. That's ridiculous. The creative direction behind these games is mostly relegated to the directors, producers, etc. and those people (like Todd Howard) don't work on every single title from the publisher they work for. Todd Howard et al isn't working on this game; that's why it doesn't look like an Elder Scrolls game. And what "news" are you referring to about Sebastian Mitton? I don't see anything on google about him becoming the art director for 50 games under Zenimax. His Linkedin profile still says he's the art director for Arkan Studios. Maybe you should read the current news.

 

Search harder.

 

lmao great argument. How about you post a link?

like this munchkin http://fr.linkedin.com/pub/s%C3%A9bastien-mitton/3/ba4/877

 

Victor Antonov who played a very important role in developing Dishonored's concept art and visual style has been hired on as the "visual design director" for all content produced by Zenimax Media Inc (which is the parent company of id Software, Tango Gameworks, MachineGames, BattleCry Studios, Bethesda Game Studios, Zenimax Online Studios and Bethesda Softworks, which publishes all the games) but he was hired long after the concept art stages for Skyrim and ESO, so it is not clear what hand, if any, he had in the making of those particular games.

AFAIK, it is very unusual for a publisher to have someone in a role like that, working on the content side of things for all their games, and certainly, apart from consulting on the lore or perhaps liaising on some design cues, the people who work at BGS probably don't have very much involvement at all with the MMO.

failwheel was not stating necessarily that Todd Howard has absolutely no input at all into the process, simply that the team of employees at Bethesda Game Studios have a specific set of skills and a lot of experience developing very immersive open world single player RPGs. The team working at Zenimax Online Studios does not have those specific skills or that experience, in fact, BGS is probably the only group of people in the world with experience making such a massive open world RPG like Skyrim, Fallout 3, Oblivion or Morrowind from the ground up. (Obsidian did a great job with Fallout New Vegas, but they used the existing Fallout 3 engine developed by BGS). And on the flip side, Todd Howard and Bethesda Game Studios have no experience making MMOs.

 

What differentiates the projects developed under these different studios are the people leading the creative direction of that project. ZeniMax Online Studios and Bethesda Game Studios are two very different teams with very different goals for their games lead by very different designers. Saying that Matt Firor and Todd Howard are one in the same and have the same ideologies concerning game design, because the same publishing company signs their paychecks, couldn't be further from the truth.

ZeniMax Online Studios and Bethesda Game Studios have their own employees working on their own projects. People who play Elder Scrolls games are apprehensive about this MMO for the fact that it seems to be just another MMO with the Elder Scrolls name and setting slapped on without the elements that define an Elder Scrolls game and make them unique. ZeniMax Online Studios will try to emulate what makes an Elder Scrolls game into their online version, while Bethesda Game Studios will continue to innovate their formula. This is why concerns are raised, emulation versus innovation. How well they emulate what makes the series special remains to be seen, and for that reason my judgement is on reservation until I can actually play the game.

I think most people who are somewhat educated with the game industry understand the concept of crunch time and what publishers do to meet the demands of their titles during this period, such as bringing talent from various studios under their ownership to assist with tasks that need to be completed in different areas of the game. This doesn't change the fact that the overall design of the game remains the same, that the same vision from the project leads, directors, and producers aren't going to be massively influenced because a bunch of animators, artists, modellers, or programmers from company A came to help with company B's project. A certain author wrote a book, that doesn't mean the printers, book binding machines, or distribution method that brought it all together are going to change the experience that book brings.

 

I already seen this, in my opinion, its going to be a huge failure. The way the combat is made, will just result in so many bugs and glitches, along with it, will be very messy during fights. The only thing I will approve is possibly 2-4 player co-op.

 

This thing will fail, unless it will be free to play.

 

As I said before and will continue to say, I'll reserve judgement until people get their hands on this and know more about it. That being said, I came across this video and thought that anyone here interested in ESO might like to have a look.

 

Hot key skill bar is confirmed, so expect generic hot-key spamming combat system vs traditional Elder Scroll fully-real-time combat.

 

Well just the fact that here is a skill bar does not mean this exactly. There are a few different factors that result in the repetitive MMO-style hotkey rotations combat.

1. auto-targeting, no hit detection
2. mouse click or tab button to lock target, then press hotkeys in rotation pattern
3. most effective hotkey rotation pattern is always the same regardless of enemy

We know that ESO uses hit detection, as there is a crosshair reticle and you must aim in the right spot, however it has some sort of "soft lock" on your target, need to actually try the game to learn more.

Left mouse click is attack with weapon (hold button for charged weapon attack), right mouse click is block (hold for power bash), there are separate sprint and jump movement keys, like the TES single player games, and then there are four other special attacks you select and equip outside of combat from the list of all your available abilities. You can play a mage who decides to focus on using swords, or a warrior who uses a healing staff, etc.

You can only equip six of your abilities at any given time, and many of them have different secondary effects when used in certain situations, or in combination with abilities used by other classes, so hopefully there is no boring one-size-fits-all rotation pattern.

 

I am not playing it.

They are scarifying the graphics to make it go online.

 

Yeah I watched the video and the mention of auto aim turned me off from considering the game.

Sent from my GT-N7000

 

WoW was popular because many people played it and many people played it cause genre was kinda new.
Then there were other good MMOs that either werent as huge as WoW or people simply decided not to commit.
Atm i doubt lots of people will jump onto new MMO unless its something huge and unique. And if people wont play it it will never be fun because MMO cant be fun without many people playing it.

 

Out of the 14-16 million + people who bought Skyrim (14 million retail copies and who knows how many Steam digital downloads), there is a super dedicated TES fan base of at least around 500k - 1 million who may not have a lot of experience with MMOs but are inclined to buy any TES game. As long as they work hard to make those folks happy, I imagine they'll have a critical mass of people playing. Probably similar situation to the number of Final Fantasy fans who played the FF MMO.

 

Dedicated playerbase is good but its not what makes or break games. Most recent mmos failed because they didnt have anything to do after initial month of playing.
And you wont get same feel in tes mmo — you ll never be alone in a cold and hostile world, exploring ancient mysteries and stuff. Instead you ll have 12 years kids running around telling stupid jokes and gibing you with insane epics which they got after playing 24/7 for a month. And the whole process gets boring pretty fast for just about everyone.

Casual players cant play casual because game is evolving faster then they do and hardcore players dont have anything to do, because they ate all content for lunch, so they destroy casuals out of boredom.

Thats what usually happens at least.

 

Rift completely trashed WoW honestly. I'm looking foreward to ESO myself, simply because it's finally an MMO that isn't about the grind. SWTOR had a good questing system, but they slacked off too much on bug fixes and end game, otherwise they had some amazing ideas, expecially with questing.

 

Except people want that. It's what creates synergy among team work. If not you just have a whole lot of rambo.
- It's why squad based FPS games are using that same model, it forces people to work together, if you need heal, you need a medic/healer. If you need more ammo, need someone with support skills. In MMO, you need someone who can tank etc, in FPS, maybe an actual tank.
- It's also how LIFE works. If everyone is the same and can do it all, than you become stagnant. It's when you have different people with different skills and ideas, that you continue to evolve and improve.

As for the grind? Yeah people like that and want that. That's where you get most of your achievements. MMO is for the long term, so people like getting rewarded for the time spent. It's not like a 10 minute match where you get e-peen for skill.

Just saying, this is not a WoW killer for the reasons above. If you want to kill WoW, you have to do it better than WoW. Other games have tried to follow the model, but they didn't put enough time and effort as Blizzard does in rewarding players, giving them reasons to continue to raid, and grind the arena. They didn't make the synergy among classes as good. Even in PvP with Arena the class synergy is essential.

 

Beta signup page is live: http://signup.elderscrollsonline.com/

Also, new trailer:

<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/0jNT5cMwxw0?&hl=nb_NO" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width='853' height="480" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true">

 

I personally think this MMO is guaranteed to fail and will be as laughable as SWOTR is, but whatever, signup for this future fail.

http://signup.elderscrollsonline.com/

 

Yeah im definitely not thinking too highly of this game, it just sounds like a bad idea (turning an RPG to an MMO) the Elder Scrolls should be left alone the way they are. But anyways i still signed up for the beta as I am still very interested

 

Pretty sure they are just making a MMO around the lore. They should be no excuse for no new content, though the setting kind of remind me DnD (dragon, demon, undead, you name it), which is already made into a MMO ARPG.

 

What do you mean by "no excuse for new content"? I would imagine there will be a lot of new content, otherwise no one will be interested in playing the game.

 

Honestly when I saw the gameplay I was very disappointed.

It looks like every other mmorpg that I've already seen, with the typical 3rd person view and typical quirky animations.

Characters in full armor doing frontflips a'la'wow is not something that I was looking forward to in something that had the potential to have a more immersive feeling to an mmorpg.

I would have loved if they kept the first person view aspect that we love of the Elder Scrolls series, even if it meant having shards with less people in it, sharing a more private but much more immersive online rpg session.

Immersion is the one thing that is really missing from mmorpgs and for good reason. A mmorpg is meant to be more social to make it more popular, however I believe that the Elder Scrolls has enough of a reputation that it could have gone more towards a smaller shard/less intrusive ui/immersive 1st person view online experience and still gotten a huge success.