They don't want tamriel, they want game where they play in first person, organize their home shelves by the tiniest detail, while exploring and interacting with a world that is a degree more dynamic and living than what you'd find in the default mmo.
That's why they have Bethesda making open world single player games.
If they focus on the 3 faction PVP then it's an untapped market - most people who are fans of that genre play DAoC or used to play it and gave up on MMOs because they aren't DAoC. You can be profitible without WoW numbers, especially if you own your own IP.
So, assuming it's a your traditional 3rd person non-realtime combat from the shots, which is an assumption; really? Is Zenimax that keen to waste a lot of fucking money?
It'll just go free to play, if not launch with it.
I think that's "Ms. Licky" from Brutal Legend.
Bonus points to this game if I can set people on fire with a guitar.
I'm really on the fence about this one. The MMO genre is so saturated with garbage right now that even the good ones seem to struggle. The community is also the most vile, impatient, picky, self absorbed one I've ever seen.
On the other hand, TES games have all the makings of a sandbox MMO already. Also, like wow, they have a huge pre-existing gamer following.
Either way, considering the amount of press, 2013 is a miniscule timeline for an MMO with no other published details.
The concept art for this looks amazing. The in game art though, looks too similar to things like Guild Wars 2 or Rift (not to say that's bad art, those games look great!)
-Releasing 2013 for PC/Mac
-Developed by ZeniMax Online Studios
-MMORPG
-250 Person Team
-Started development in 2007
-"This time, saving the world from the awakening of ancient evil is only the beginning. What happens when hundreds or thousands of prophesied heroes all think that they should be Emperor?"
-The game is fully voice acted
-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
-Crafting, alchemy, and soul stones will exist in an unrevealed form
-There will be Daedric Princes like Molag Bal, the primary antagonist, and Vaermina, "whose sphere of influence extends to the dream world and the nightmares of mortals", along with some unnamed others
-Constellations will be in the game a la Mundus stones (which work like guardian stones) and also give the answer to things like block puzzles where you step on the blocks in a certain order
-Tons of towns ranging from Imperial City, Windhelm, Daggerfall, Sentinel, Mournhold, Ebonheart, Elden Root, Shornhelm, Evermore, Riften, and a lot more
-Radiant AI will not be present
-There will be mounts, but no flying mounts
-Fast travel exists in the game in the form of wayshrines, which are also your ressurection point, and you can teleport from one wayshrine to any other wayshrine you have already visited
-There most likely won't be dragons
-Sneaking will be in the game, but how it is implemented is undecided
-They're not talking about pets right now
-There will be no player housing
-There will be no NPC romances or marriage
-"It needs to be comfortable for people who are coming in from a typical massively multiplayer game that has the same control mechanisms, but it also has to appeal to Skyrim players."
-Features most of Tamriel including Skyrim, Morrowind, Summerset Isle, and Elseweyr.
-"Not all provinces are included in their entirety; Zenimax Online is keeping large areas inaccessible to save them for use as expansion content. Nonetheless, every major area is represented to some extent."
-As an example, Windhelm is fully implemented, but Winterhold and the mages' college won't be in at launch.
-There are three player factions:
--Ebonheart Pact: The Nords, Dunmer, and Argoninans
--Aldmeri Dominion: Altmer, Bosmer, and Khajit
--Daggerfall Covenant: Bretons, Redguard, and Orcs
-"Recreateing the freedom Elder Scrolls players expect within the World of Warcraft-style mechanics Zenimax Online is using for this MMO would be impossible without changing the way that players interact with the world."
-As such, the game uses a hubless design
-For example, you don't necessarily pick up a quest to do the following, but if you kill all the necromancers in an undead barrow, a shade you free at the end will reward you.
-However, to help you find these events, various NPCs you talk to will tell you where they are happening and put a marker pointing them on your map, which is obviously totally different than receiving a quest.
-Not all quests will have NPCs that indicate where they are
-The game uses MMORPG genre standards such as classes, experience points, and other traditional MMORPG progression mechanics, but they try to present it "around the core fantasy presented by traditiona Elder Scrolls games" such as traveling around and righting wrongs or seeking riches
-The game world is very large relative to Skyrim
-You can explore almost anything you can see
-the game is set 1000 years in the past
-You can't master every discipline
-The imperials are an enemy to all three factions, lead by the noble Tharn family and the King of Worms, Mannimarco, and are hatching a plot to take over all of Tamriel
-But BEHOLD, Mannicmarco is scheming with Daedric prince Molag Bal to take over the world behind the Tharn's back
-Also, your soul has already been stolen by Molag Bal, which is the reason you can come back from death over and over again, and the starting plot is that you're fighting Molag Bal to get your soul back from him
-Hitting the level cap takes about 120 hours
-Each faction has their own leveling content
-An example quest is the story of Camlorn, where you have to stop evil werewolves who have their eyes set on conquest. First, you have to do a "standard MMO kill and collection quest" to sto ghosts from attacking some mages and soldiers. The ghosts are reliving a battle that the werewolf leader was in. You summon a ghost to find out what's going on, and the ghost tells you to wear her dead husband's armor to re-experience the battle he died in. You then get transported hundreds of years into the past to fight this battle. During this battle, you can choose to save the dead man's wife or to pursue the Werewolf leader. ZeniMax chooses to save the man's wife, who then tells you that the Werewolf leader is weak to fire. This information is helpful when you fight him, but you don't actually need to do this quest before fighting the werewolf leader if you don't want to. Basically, you can skip parts of quest chains if you want, but you get some benefit for playing the whole thing. Also, whenever you go back to the town you just saved, everything there hails you as a hero.
-The game features three faction PvP where you fight to take over keeps and use trebuchets and other siege weapons to help do it. At the high end, you can have 100 v 100 battles. There are also farms and mines you can try to take over. Mots of this happens in Cyrodiil where your goal is to take over and hold the Imperial City to get faction wide bonuses for it. If you have played Dark Age of Camelot, this probably sounds familiar. For those who haven't, essentially the entire zone is a giant PvP area will all sorts of points of interest.
-The most accomplished PvP player on your faction becomes emperor whenever you take over the capital
-When you take over Cyrodiil, you will be able to adventure in it as a hostile city a la Kvatch
-The game will have raids and heroic modes for its dungeons as end game content in addition to faction PvP
-There is also balanced PvP for people who prefer eSports
-The game will also have high end public dungeons
-Public dungeons are essentially instances that aren't actually instanced, so anyone can be in them, so imagine a World of Warcraft dungeon that featured everyone on the server in the area instead of just your party
-There are standard instanced dungeons as well
-Back on the topic of the skillbar, you have a limited number of skills you can use at any given time, and can change them whenever you're out of combat
-The number of skills is equal to (paraphrase) "a light and heavy attack with your current weapon that take up the first two slots, a few more spells related to your class, and an ultimate in the last slot".
-The ultimate is used once you gain enough finesse, which is earned by doing well in combat
-You also get a bonus loot chest if you're soloing and max your finesse, and you can also build finesse by comboing with other players
-For example, a rogue can put oil on the ground that a mage can set on fire
-A fighter can also spin in the firestorm a mage puts down, which sends out fireballs
-If you've seen Guild Wars 2 videos, the above will seem familiar
-You can't combo with the abilities of enemy players though, so if an enemy faction player drops an oil slick, you can't set it on fire
-The Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood will be presented, but in what form isn't detailed as their contnet is hard to recreate in an MMO setting
-NPCs will try to work together and use player like behavior when fighting you, and (at least to my understanding) have stamina as well
-They want the AI to be good, so instead of enemies in a dungeon sitting around and waiting to be pulled, you will be attacked by the entire room and they will try to react to how you are playing
-The claim was not demo'ed to Game Informer
-You destroy dark anchors to gain reputation with the Fighter's Guild. They are large hooks that fall from the sky pseudorandomly and have Daedric guardians next to them. They are easier to kill with a group, and once destroyed, everyone who participated gets a reputation boost with the Fighter's Guild, and eventually nets you rewards like new skills and abilities.
-The combat model will not be real time due to latency
-The combat is based around a stamina bar which you can use to sprint, block, interrupt, and break incapacitating effects
-Blocking is the primary focus of these abilities, and can do things like stopping the secondary effects of attacks such as an ice spell slowing you
-Stamina also applies to PvP, so stamina management (and wearing down your enemy's stamina) is important, as your crowd control abilities might be on a long cooldown, and if you use them before the enemy player runs out of stamina, they will probably just block the effect
-ZeniMax feels that having the stamina bar will help break down the Holy Trinity as stamina allows you to do things like tank
-However, healing is still a big part of the game
-There is also no aggro mechanic in the game, which is part of the reason stamina blocking and healing exist
I think it's just that you guys have set the bar so high with the elder scrolls games, to use the MMO mechanics everyone's tired of has everyone disappointed. I don't know if the technology level is ready for real time MMO gameplay yet, but regardless of if it is or not, I think that's what everyone was expecting, especially for the game to stand out amongst all of the other MMOs (there's so many of them out there already). Regardless, I wish you guys at Zenimax the best of luck.
-Tho the screenshot quality is bad here, it doesn't looks impressive at all visually
-The environments and the architecture hardly makes me think of the Elder Scrolls universe. |At the moment it looks very generic, as someone said it could be any Korean MMO by those shots.
-Third person wow like combat? Probably the biggest problem for me. I want an FPS realtime combat!
I didn't read the Game informer pages yet but selling this is gonna be complicated by the look of thing just now. 2013, still got time to put the Skyrim staff on it to help make it better!:)
Also, this:
-You can't be a werewolf or vampire
-There most likely won't be dragons
-The combat model will not be real time due to latency
Honestly, Justin. There's being critical, and there's being contrarian for its own sake.
I wish the guys best of luck, but this is the upteenth time now someone has tried to take on WoW's market for the sake of the piece of the pie, using the exact same mechanics rather than doing something new with the genre.
quoted for truth, sorry for the Zenimax Online guys, just don't read this thread.
I don't see the similarity between the observations in this thread and the hateful venomous bile you are going to see on Kotaku and MMO message boards. Yeah, it must suck for people who have worked on this. But chances are they felt this way about it quite a while ago. The designer and art director fucked up here, not the lower level artists. I've not seen a single comment in this thread that I wouldn't agree with.
I don't see the similarity between the observations in this thread and the hateful venomous bile you are going to see on Kotaku and MMO message boards.
Haha, I'm not a kotaku reader though, just exposing some random thought that are not especially serious. This is GD. If exposing what you feel about a game is considered hate Justin, then I don't know what to do.
Regarding the whole "MMO" thing as a tag... when most of the actual gameplay outside of a hubtown is set around 5-10man instances is it really an MMO? At this point it's more akin to any FPS on the market where maps = instances (I guess left 4 dead would be a close comparison).
When you consider those kind of numbers couldnt an experience be built around that be better? Instead of another run of the mill subscription driven game that will die out because its competing with something thats established and people wont move on from because of their investments?
Was diablo II touted as an MMO? Because that is essentially what most MMO's are really offering right? Persistence of characters and small group interaction. Hell, world PvP raids in WoW died out with vanilla and the biggest numbers youre going to get are in Alterac Valley and thats ~80 man which really isnt that bigger than say, battlefield 3.
Regarding the whole "MMO" thing as a tag... when most of the actual gameplay outside of a hubtown is set around 5-10man instances is it really an MMO? At this point it's more akin to any FPS on the market where maps = instances (I guess left 4 dead would be a close comparison).
Have you heard tales of the massive battles in DAoC? There was a 1,500 person all out battle at one point back in 2005. I don't give a crap if it isn't a open world sandbox where you can decorate your house - I want to experience the old war stories you hear former DAoC players share, I missed out on that. You only really hear that from DAoC, Planetside and Eve players. So if they can recapture that magic it will be glorious.
Of course i know of DAoC/Ultima and such but we are talking about exceptions, the current model isnt even close so i'm not sure why you'd get your hopes up about this especially when its already evident that theyre playing a little bit safe with the WoW similarities.
That being said some of the combo skill mechanics sound nice, however ive always had a massive problem with choice for the sake of choice... while its nice to talk about setting rogue oil on fire and spinning around to throw out fireballs its irrelevent unless it has a place in the game.
Of course i know of DAoC/Ultima and such but we are talking about exceptions, the current model isnt even close so i'm not sure why you'd get your hopes up about this especially when its already evident that theyre playing a little bit safe with the WoW similarities.
That being said some of the combo skill mechanics sound nice, however ive always had a massive problem with choice for the sake of choice... while its nice to talk about setting rogue oil on fire and spinning around to throw out fireballs its irrelevent unless it has a place in the game.
My hopes are up because of 3 faction PVP being helmed by a large number of Mythic alumni - and the cool end game of letting the winning faction rule crown the best player as Emperor.
I've also seen the game in 2009 and it looks pretty groovy but I can't really talk about that :P, I have been really excited about this game since my first exposure to it.
Congrats on the reveal guys! must have been hard to hold a tight lid on this especially after the success of skyrim!
unfortunately i gotta say after playing SWTOR and WoW im not too pumped for another MMO yeah it has its "uniqueness" buts they just seem like small upgrades from the norm.
Also i was crossing my fingers that it would be first-person and after the reveal today was kind bummed out about the whole thing being a third-person game.
i dont think the Groan from gamers about it being another "MMO" has anything to do with the quality of the game or what has been announced but more to do about everyone wanted a game that is SKYRIM but with Online Capabilities.
Hopefully you guys can prove me and everyone else who has a complaint wrong!
I do agree the art is a bit underwhelming. Especially when we as fans have seen the ES world evolve so drastically from Morrow to Oblivion to Skyrim, it's disappointing when you see something take such a big step backwards, even if you have the tech limitations of an MMO.
Instead of an MMO, just give me Skyrim co-op, dang it! Hell, you have companions in the game so just let a 2nd player control them or something
Well after seeing all this information I guess my position hasn't really changed, not really interested in it. It looks about like what I was expecting, an MMO using Elder Scrolls races. I was going through the screenshots with my wife and initially she didn't know if I was looking at something from Aion or any number of other MMOs. Don't really understand why the armor sets have to magically cut out cleavage for female characters...like every other MMO, and things of that nature.
That being said, I WAS able to see a lot of Tamriel in the environments. Not at first glance, but upon looking through them one by one I was pretty impressed with that. Seems the scale for a lot of things is messed with...probably on account of needing to fit more people, but still that was interesting to see.
I think so far as MMOs go, this looks pretty quality. And among MMOs, it could be great! But...it's still just another MMO with a different name. Part of me wishes they'd have simply given it an entirely different name, because this does not feel like Elder Scrolls to me. Not even because the signs aren't there, or that the content doesn't match the universe...it does. It's just not what I've come to associate with the Elder Scrolls.
Just saw some of the released screenshots... I have to say, meh. It's the same art style of WoW - not something I'm particularly fond of. If the gameplay is the same clunky stat-based kind of combat, this is a pass for me.
Just felt a need to clarify, when I said "The community is also the most vile, impatient, picky, self absorbed one I've ever seen.", I meant the GENERAL MMO PLAYER community, NOT this community. If a dev does one thing, the game's community will rip them apart for not doing another. When a game does everything right, the critique becomes "U didnt do anything NEW!!!" The MMO community as a whole is just never happy.
Any chance that Zenimax Online will take serious notice of this general dissapointment that is spreading as details emerge? Im still holding out until we see some real gameplay, but it seems like the wow mmo cookiecutter has nearly run its course. SWTOR should be an indicator to these folks that reskinning WoW isnt enough to keep most people around.
based on the info weve heard so far are they doing anything different or unique at all? Are they attempting to give the fans what they will so obviously want from an elder scrolls mmo?
No offense to anybody working on the game, this kind of complete disregard for the fanbases desires is dissapointing and a bit baffling.
Just felt a need to clarify, when I said "The community is also the most vile, impatient, picky, self absorbed one I've ever seen.", I meant the GENERAL MMO PLAYER community, NOT this community. If a dev does one thing, the game's community will rip them apart for not doing another. When a game does everything right, the critique becomes "U didnt do anything NEW!!!" The MMO community as a whole is just never happy.
Having experienced what its like to have an mmo community tear your work apart constantly and brutally, I sympathize with this. MMO Dev is hard, unlike a standard game out of the box, you're constantly trying to meet the demands of a community that feels entitled to a say because they are paying you a monthly fee, and to a certain degree you feel compelled to comply.
There are millions of opinions but just a handful of people who are actually in any place to do anything about them, usually none of those people are artists either. I'd be willing to bet that the internal pressures and conflicts at Zenimax are immense :poly122:
So I cant help but feel a stab from the +1 nostalgic dagger of pain for every harsh comment aimed at my dev brothers, who probably want the exact same things as many are mentioning but are in no position to make them happen.
P.S I HOPE there will be Netch's in the game - most satisfying thing to kill in all of the elder scrolls :P
That's why they have Bethesda making open world single player games.
If they focus on the 3 faction PVP then it's an untapped market - most people who are fans of that genre play DAoC or used to play it and gave up on MMOs because they aren't DAoC. You can be profitible without WoW numbers, especially if you own your own IP.
And I get why you're excited about that, DAOC was quite a thing, but elderscrolls is the wrong thing for daoc to consume, it's too important even compared to the pretty groundbreaking world pvp of daoc.
Decorating houses in ultima online was a fortunate side-effect of being able to move items around, drop them on the ground, put them on top of things, they were not limited to loot chests.
Same as in elderscrolls, decorating houses became a side-effect of being able to drop items in the world, and people started doing it, it's too important to turn this into world of warcraft: tamriel edition.
I don't think we have the bandwidth/power to do open world with real time combat in an MMO - not that Elder Scrolls is known for having good combat :P
Darkfall is fully realtime, has melee and ranged combat from first person, it's not the most well designed game and it's not big and popular but it's often hailed as being quite unique compared to the mass of mmo's.
Even the old planetside and the upcoming planetside 2 takes it even further by being first person shooter with massive crowds.
It's hard, but it's no valid excuse to kill the soul of elderscrolls, which had it's origins in ultima, so why not head the same way ultima online wanted to go?
It's disappointing that it can't be set in a more FPS kind of gameplay, and while I do understand dynamic approach is impossible for MMO's, surely, with recent plethora of games like Vindictus, KOTOR, Guild Wars and TERA which go for atleast 'spaced' Dynamic Combat, it surely isn't out of the question?
Also, the artwork is kinda disappointing, it not even a case if "HURR, I need uber shader and textures in ma graphix to make it look coolz?" I mean I never recall (other then the 90's games) a case where very single armor has to have an open chest piece to show tits.
A few peeps I know just saw the new post and started ranting, I made a quick break down so far on what they're saying (as well as me);
I'm just overall horribly disappointed with what I've seen so far. I just don't understand. Did someone at Bethesda decide it was time to throw away millions of dollars? Or is this their master plan to just kill the idea of a TES MMO once and for all?
I think a decent TES MMO could wipe the floor with other MMOs, yet instead we're getting ANOTHER WoW clone built on the same engine as one of the largest MMO flops in history?
I won't write this game off before trying it, but holy shit. None of this says TES to me. I'm only hearing trainwreck.
It's disappointing that it can't be set in a more FPS kind of gameplay, and while I do understand dynamic approach is impossible for MMO's, surely, with recent plethora of games like Vindictus, KOTOR, Guild Wars and TERA which go for atleast 'spaced' Dynamic Combat, it surely isn't out of the question?
It's not impossible, it just isn't seen as viable, just like minecraft wouldn't have been seen a viable before it was made, eve online, or something like morrowind itself.
The irony is that morrowind which started the modern elderscrolls era was a big gamble and very unlike many rpg games that was out at that time, and the previous attempts and spinoffs from bethesda, which removed essential core elements of elderscrolls, became failures that nearly killed bethesda.
Developers stick with the known formula since any other is pretty unknown, it's not technically impossible these day to have realtime combat in an mmo, it's been fully possible to have items drop on the ground since the dawn of mmo's but it saves down on the bandwidth budget for the mmo to now have it.
An elderscrolls mmo just needs to take that risk that everyone wants it to take, otherwise it just risks playing it too safe and not being what every single fan of the series has come to enjoy in it.
once again, unpolished, flawed, a bit underdesigned, but doing the realtime stuff that an elderscrolls mmo should go for.
3 faction pvp is the only thing to shine the light on really, everything else is standard fair. With Guild wars 2 coming out, which also has 3 way pvp but a progression based 3 server pvp will take it beyond what TES:O is doing right now. I was present for the original DAOC 1000+ man 3 way milegate battles and to say it was fun is a huge understatement, but allot of other factors that were in DAOC made it more fun in pvp over other games, I could go on for hours as to why it's still my gold standard for any PVP game to date but I wont bore you.
I think they need more innovation rather than emulation, people are tiring of WoW-esque mmo's I think Swotor has proven there is still a market for wow-clones (and lets not beat around the bush it IS a wow-clone in space) but I think it's rapidly dwindling. Combine this with the raft of free-to-play MMO's or Freemium MMO's coming in the same genre as TES:O, I just think they have made a error in judgement.
Maybe the idea was totally sound in 2008 when they started (the heyday of WoW no less) but in todays market I think it's a bad decision. But I will forgo my conclusion of what it's like when I get to see it actually running and allot more details rather than some sweeping statements, hopefully it can be saved from the the hum-drum-wow-clone to something allot more innovative and special that we expect from Elder scrolls series.
Just saw some of the released screenshots... I have to say, meh. It's the same art style of WoW - not something I'm particularly fond of. If the gameplay is the same clunky stat-based kind of combat, this is a pass for me.
no man.. it's not the same art style as wow. It's actually quite different. look at the images.
With Guild wars 2 coming out, which also has 3 way pvp but a progression based 3 server pvp will take it beyond what TES:O is doing right now
I also disagree here. Guild Wars 2 has 3 way INSTANCED pvp. Not open world, like they said for ESO (unless I read incorrectly). There's a big difference. I prefer my PVP in the real world, not some side world where everyone is safe. There is a difference. but that's me.
People keep telling me the Dark Age of Camelot guys are enough reason to be excited about this game. People tell me how the large scale PVP is going to be awesome like it was in DAoC. And since I never played DAoC, I can't say I disagree.
But it's still sad to hear, that at the end of the day, a HUGE game like the first TES MMO is announced, and the only thing that keeps making it back to me as it's largest selling point is a PVP system that was in another game from the earlier 2000s.
I'm trying really hard to not hate this game before it even comes out, but it's getting hard.
I have 0 interest in this game, but I'll still spit out some opinions... because it's the internet.
The environments definitely look way better than they did in those first few screenshots... those were pretty rough. Animations, movement, spells, enemies, and combat all look pretty shoddy though. Those are things that Elder Scrolls games have struggled with in the past, but it's more apparent in this title.
I heard the comments of "loads of customization, you can wear dwarven armors, daedric armors... all the things you would expect." So what... like 10 armor sets total? That's awful for an MMO.
However, the one thing that is a huge positive to me is the fact that it's all on one server! That could be a nightmare if it's not supported well, but the goal for an MMO is to have everyone be on one server so you don't have to figure out which one to jump on.
Interesting, I love MMOs personally especially grindfests
Questions I have are to do with balancing 3 faction PVP, this in itself will be an enormous task, one thing that is prevalent in MMOs are whiney bitches that complain about one class or another s way too overpowered and the whole thing soon degenerates into a nerf conquest with you guys tweaking stats trying to keep customers happy so they dont leave but it will ulltimately be futile.
Is the entire world a big PVP zone?
How much of a difference does gear make to damage/survivability ? Some games are totally gear dependent and I think this is wrong, its a tricky thing to balance properly. you can run into trouble when people level too fast gear becomes obsolete too quickly and if the economy is borked you going to have some unhappy campers.
Droprates and the economy, granted you probably wont have any idea how this will pan out until it actually happens but one thing to be concenrned about is the ability of lower levels to earn cash , in some games the economy gets so over inflated that its impossible to peoperly gear a lower/mid lvl char because mats and gear are so expensive.
I like the idea of a champion/emperor it was done in Lineage2 soon after I stopped playing.
Im probably in the minority when I say that 120 hours to max out a characters level is too short, but what do you mean by 120 hours? can a guy solo most of the time and get to max in 120 hours or is most of that time spent in a group to get there?
Is anybody playing this game? I just started and it's fun! (early access) I started a Polycount guild for anybody interested. Add me in game user id: @aajohnny
Imperial edition should be in tomorrow... they screwed up though and didnt have enough early access keys for those who pre-purchased. A shame really. From what I saw in beta though, not going in with a positive impression. Everything seemed sub-par.
I tried reading some of the opinions in this thread, but the generic, stereotypical scapegoat of calling everything a WoW clone is beyond boring at this point, especially coming from those that haven't played the game. It seems as though, for MMO's sake, that any MMO that comes out is immediately called a WoW clone if it has a 3rd Person Camera and you press buttons to do stuff. Completely ridiculous notion, if you ask me, and this sort of analogy really needs to die.
That being said, I'm a huge ES lore buff and I went into ESO not having much enthusiasm for the way it might turn out. When I first heard about ESO, I was disheartened because I figured that it would be some crappy version of an ES game.
After playing through multiple betas and the last 5 days of pre-release, I feel pretty confident that the game is in it for the long haul. The community is extremely mature from what I can see, and the writing and lore is exceptional and there's a lot of it. 2nd Era during this time frame in ES lore has had sparse documentation, and with all the new lore that's been introduced it's as much of a nirvana as I could ever find.
In terms of gameplay, let's all face it - ES games have historically had very clunky, crappy gameplay - and this is no exception. People play ES games for the story. - In this regard, listening to everyone's complaints about it shows that many have not played the game as gameplay is about as far away from a WoW clone as possible. It's slow and methodical, a limited number of abilities, using such abilities is the only way to make them stronger. Crafting actually matters at lower levels, etc.
Disagree about people just playing ES games for the story. I played a ton of Skyrim and really didn't give a shit about lore. I did a couple of the beta tests for ESO and while that's not enough to give a thorough review, it was enough to kill my interest in buying the game. Aside from the intense bugginess (that may have been cleaned up?) a lot of the design choices rendered gameplay pretty boring. My experience was quests that are just clicking through conversations with people in the same room and waiting in a dungeon with 10 other people on the same quest for an npc to spawn and get massacred. I actually was enjoying combat, though not to the degree of Skyrim, but the design of the game was really under-utilizing this system.
Hopefully that would change deeper into the game or post-release, but, hey, there's lore.
Disagree about people just playing ES games for the story. I played a ton of Skyrim and really didn't give a shit about lore. I did a couple of the beta tests for ESO and while that's not enough to give a thorough review, it was enough to kill my interest in buying the game. Aside from the intense bugginess (that may have been cleaned up?) a lot of the design choices rendered gameplay pretty boring. My experience was quests that are just clicking through conversations with people in the same room and waiting in a dungeon with 10 other people on the same quest for an npc to spawn and get massacred. I actually was enjoying combat, though not to the degree of Skyrim, but the design of the game was really under-utilizing this system.
Hopefully that would change deeper into the game or post-release, but, hey, there's lore.
Skyrim was the exception to ES games, not the standard. Skyrim provided a lot of ease of use elements into the ES series, that had otherwise not been in there in any other title. Additionally, all of that -clicking through the boring lore- that you mention is the reason why people play the game. Which makes it sound like that you played Skyrim based around the ease of use features that it provided, and not necessarily because of the reason that ES games exist - again, because of the story. The bugginess, or most of it, especially dealing with some of the major questlines, has been fixed since beta. Then again, the last two betas were stress test betas in which the stated that it was an earlier build of the game.
I know people love the lore, but it seems a weak excuse for sub-par gameplay. Questlines that are entirely conversations with NPCs all standing in the same room and there are no choices being made by the player is not exactly engaging. People are free to enjoy the game and the lore; I'm just saying this for the people who were hoping for akin to multiplayer Skyrim, this game is not that.
My main complaint about ESO is literally just the subscription. It's probably because I'm not a huge MMO player, but if I buy a monthly subscription to a game, then I'm going to feel pressured to play it. While ESO looks and feels like a good game from my minimal experience with the beta a few months back, it doesn't feel like a "revolutionary" game. Huge, genre changing MMOs like EverQuest Next, Archeage, and Black Desert Online are right around the corner, and they're all going to be free to play, so if I were to stick to one that required me to pay a subscription, then I'd probably want it to be as new as either of those three MMOs.
Of course, that's just the opinion of somebody who isn't into MMOs. I wouldn't say I'm a hardcore ES fan either though, I prefer having a linear story and gameplay experience but many people would disagree with my preferences.
Yeah, for the record, I'm being hard on a game because it's so hard to live up to $60 + $15/month. The game could very well be worthwhile if/when it goes subscription free.
Replies
That's why they have Bethesda making open world single player games.
If they focus on the 3 faction PVP then it's an untapped market - most people who are fans of that genre play DAoC or used to play it and gave up on MMOs because they aren't DAoC. You can be profitible without WoW numbers, especially if you own your own IP.
It'll just go free to play, if not launch with it.
I think that's "Ms. Licky" from Brutal Legend.
Bonus points to this game if I can set people on fire with a guitar.
I'm really on the fence about this one. The MMO genre is so saturated with garbage right now that even the good ones seem to struggle. The community is also the most vile, impatient, picky, self absorbed one I've ever seen.
On the other hand, TES games have all the makings of a sandbox MMO already. Also, like wow, they have a huge pre-existing gamer following.
Either way, considering the amount of press, 2013 is a miniscule timeline for an MMO with no other published details.
well, I think 2013 means about 4-5 years of dev-time put into it, about average for an MMO.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=472749
Old Thread: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=472679
-Releasing 2013 for PC/Mac
-Developed by ZeniMax Online Studios
-MMORPG
-250 Person Team
-Started development in 2007
-"This time, saving the world from the awakening of ancient evil is only the beginning. What happens when hundreds or thousands of prophesied heroes all think that they should be Emperor?"
-The game is fully voice acted
-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
-Crafting, alchemy, and soul stones will exist in an unrevealed form
-There will be Daedric Princes like Molag Bal, the primary antagonist, and Vaermina, "whose sphere of influence extends to the dream world and the nightmares of mortals", along with some unnamed others
-Constellations will be in the game a la Mundus stones (which work like guardian stones) and also give the answer to things like block puzzles where you step on the blocks in a certain order
-Tons of towns ranging from Imperial City, Windhelm, Daggerfall, Sentinel, Mournhold, Ebonheart, Elden Root, Shornhelm, Evermore, Riften, and a lot more
-Radiant AI will not be present
-There will be mounts, but no flying mounts
-Fast travel exists in the game in the form of wayshrines, which are also your ressurection point, and you can teleport from one wayshrine to any other wayshrine you have already visited
-There most likely won't be dragons
-Sneaking will be in the game, but how it is implemented is undecided
-They're not talking about pets right now
-There will be no player housing
-There will be no NPC romances or marriage
-"It needs to be comfortable for people who are coming in from a typical massively multiplayer game that has the same control mechanisms, but it also has to appeal to Skyrim players."
-Features most of Tamriel including Skyrim, Morrowind, Summerset Isle, and Elseweyr.
-"Not all provinces are included in their entirety; Zenimax Online is keeping large areas inaccessible to save them for use as expansion content. Nonetheless, every major area is represented to some extent."
-As an example, Windhelm is fully implemented, but Winterhold and the mages' college won't be in at launch.
-There are three player factions:
--Ebonheart Pact: The Nords, Dunmer, and Argoninans
--Aldmeri Dominion: Altmer, Bosmer, and Khajit
--Daggerfall Covenant: Bretons, Redguard, and Orcs
-"Recreateing the freedom Elder Scrolls players expect within the World of Warcraft-style mechanics Zenimax Online is using for this MMO would be impossible without changing the way that players interact with the world."
-As such, the game uses a hubless design
-For example, you don't necessarily pick up a quest to do the following, but if you kill all the necromancers in an undead barrow, a shade you free at the end will reward you.
-However, to help you find these events, various NPCs you talk to will tell you where they are happening and put a marker pointing them on your map, which is obviously totally different than receiving a quest.
-Not all quests will have NPCs that indicate where they are
-The game uses MMORPG genre standards such as classes, experience points, and other traditional MMORPG progression mechanics, but they try to present it "around the core fantasy presented by traditiona Elder Scrolls games" such as traveling around and righting wrongs or seeking riches
-The game world is very large relative to Skyrim
-You can explore almost anything you can see
-the game is set 1000 years in the past
-You can't master every discipline
-The imperials are an enemy to all three factions, lead by the noble Tharn family and the King of Worms, Mannimarco, and are hatching a plot to take over all of Tamriel
-But BEHOLD, Mannicmarco is scheming with Daedric prince Molag Bal to take over the world behind the Tharn's back
-Also, your soul has already been stolen by Molag Bal, which is the reason you can come back from death over and over again, and the starting plot is that you're fighting Molag Bal to get your soul back from him
-Hitting the level cap takes about 120 hours
-Each faction has their own leveling content
-An example quest is the story of Camlorn, where you have to stop evil werewolves who have their eyes set on conquest. First, you have to do a "standard MMO kill and collection quest" to sto ghosts from attacking some mages and soldiers. The ghosts are reliving a battle that the werewolf leader was in. You summon a ghost to find out what's going on, and the ghost tells you to wear her dead husband's armor to re-experience the battle he died in. You then get transported hundreds of years into the past to fight this battle. During this battle, you can choose to save the dead man's wife or to pursue the Werewolf leader. ZeniMax chooses to save the man's wife, who then tells you that the Werewolf leader is weak to fire. This information is helpful when you fight him, but you don't actually need to do this quest before fighting the werewolf leader if you don't want to. Basically, you can skip parts of quest chains if you want, but you get some benefit for playing the whole thing. Also, whenever you go back to the town you just saved, everything there hails you as a hero.
-The game features three faction PvP where you fight to take over keeps and use trebuchets and other siege weapons to help do it. At the high end, you can have 100 v 100 battles. There are also farms and mines you can try to take over. Mots of this happens in Cyrodiil where your goal is to take over and hold the Imperial City to get faction wide bonuses for it. If you have played Dark Age of Camelot, this probably sounds familiar. For those who haven't, essentially the entire zone is a giant PvP area will all sorts of points of interest.
-The most accomplished PvP player on your faction becomes emperor whenever you take over the capital
-When you take over Cyrodiil, you will be able to adventure in it as a hostile city a la Kvatch
-The game will have raids and heroic modes for its dungeons as end game content in addition to faction PvP
-There is also balanced PvP for people who prefer eSports
-The game will also have high end public dungeons
-Public dungeons are essentially instances that aren't actually instanced, so anyone can be in them, so imagine a World of Warcraft dungeon that featured everyone on the server in the area instead of just your party
-There are standard instanced dungeons as well
-Back on the topic of the skillbar, you have a limited number of skills you can use at any given time, and can change them whenever you're out of combat
-The number of skills is equal to (paraphrase) "a light and heavy attack with your current weapon that take up the first two slots, a few more spells related to your class, and an ultimate in the last slot".
-The ultimate is used once you gain enough finesse, which is earned by doing well in combat
-You also get a bonus loot chest if you're soloing and max your finesse, and you can also build finesse by comboing with other players
-For example, a rogue can put oil on the ground that a mage can set on fire
-A fighter can also spin in the firestorm a mage puts down, which sends out fireballs
-If you've seen Guild Wars 2 videos, the above will seem familiar
-You can't combo with the abilities of enemy players though, so if an enemy faction player drops an oil slick, you can't set it on fire
-The Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood will be presented, but in what form isn't detailed as their contnet is hard to recreate in an MMO setting
-NPCs will try to work together and use player like behavior when fighting you, and (at least to my understanding) have stamina as well
-They want the AI to be good, so instead of enemies in a dungeon sitting around and waiting to be pulled, you will be attacked by the entire room and they will try to react to how you are playing
-The claim was not demo'ed to Game Informer
-You destroy dark anchors to gain reputation with the Fighter's Guild. They are large hooks that fall from the sky pseudorandomly and have Daedric guardians next to them. They are easier to kill with a group, and once destroyed, everyone who participated gets a reputation boost with the Fighter's Guild, and eventually nets you rewards like new skills and abilities.
-The combat model will not be real time due to latency
-The combat is based around a stamina bar which you can use to sprint, block, interrupt, and break incapacitating effects
-Blocking is the primary focus of these abilities, and can do things like stopping the secondary effects of attacks such as an ice spell slowing you
-Stamina also applies to PvP, so stamina management (and wearing down your enemy's stamina) is important, as your crowd control abilities might be on a long cooldown, and if you use them before the enemy player runs out of stamina, they will probably just block the effect
-ZeniMax feels that having the stamina bar will help break down the Holy Trinity as stamina allows you to do things like tank
-However, healing is still a big part of the game
-There is also no aggro mechanic in the game, which is part of the reason stamina blocking and healing exist
http://elderscrollsonline.com/
And it is developed by Zenimax Online Studios, not Bethesda. Thanks for the words guys.
-Tho the screenshot quality is bad here, it doesn't looks impressive at all visually
-The environments and the architecture hardly makes me think of the Elder Scrolls universe. |At the moment it looks very generic, as someone said it could be any Korean MMO by those shots.
-Third person wow like combat? Probably the biggest problem for me. I want an FPS realtime combat!
I didn't read the Game informer pages yet but selling this is gonna be complicated by the look of thing just now. 2013, still got time to put the Skyrim staff on it to help make it better!:)
Also, this:
-You can't be a werewolf or vampire
-There most likely won't be dragons
-The combat model will not be real time due to latency
quoted for truth, sorry for the Zenimax Online guys, just don't read this thread.
I wish the guys best of luck, but this is the upteenth time now someone has tried to take on WoW's market for the sake of the piece of the pie, using the exact same mechanics rather than doing something new with the genre.
I don't see the similarity between the observations in this thread and the hateful venomous bile you are going to see on Kotaku and MMO message boards. Yeah, it must suck for people who have worked on this. But chances are they felt this way about it quite a while ago. The designer and art director fucked up here, not the lower level artists. I've not seen a single comment in this thread that I wouldn't agree with.
Oh really? this sounds like Kotaku gold
When you consider those kind of numbers couldnt an experience be built around that be better? Instead of another run of the mill subscription driven game that will die out because its competing with something thats established and people wont move on from because of their investments?
Was diablo II touted as an MMO? Because that is essentially what most MMO's are really offering right? Persistence of characters and small group interaction. Hell, world PvP raids in WoW died out with vanilla and the biggest numbers youre going to get are in Alterac Valley and thats ~80 man which really isnt that bigger than say, battlefield 3.
MMO is a stupid fucking buzzword.
Have you heard tales of the massive battles in DAoC? There was a 1,500 person all out battle at one point back in 2005. I don't give a crap if it isn't a open world sandbox where you can decorate your house - I want to experience the old war stories you hear former DAoC players share, I missed out on that. You only really hear that from DAoC, Planetside and Eve players. So if they can recapture that magic it will be glorious.
That being said some of the combo skill mechanics sound nice, however ive always had a massive problem with choice for the sake of choice... while its nice to talk about setting rogue oil on fire and spinning around to throw out fireballs its irrelevent unless it has a place in the game.
My hopes are up because of 3 faction PVP being helmed by a large number of Mythic alumni - and the cool end game of letting the winning faction rule crown the best player as Emperor.
I've also seen the game in 2009 and it looks pretty groovy but I can't really talk about that :P, I have been really excited about this game since my first exposure to it.
*giggle*
unfortunately i gotta say after playing SWTOR and WoW im not too pumped for another MMO yeah it has its "uniqueness" buts they just seem like small upgrades from the norm.
Also i was crossing my fingers that it would be first-person and after the reveal today was kind bummed out about the whole thing being a third-person game.
i dont think the Groan from gamers about it being another "MMO" has anything to do with the quality of the game or what has been announced but more to do about everyone wanted a game that is SKYRIM but with Online Capabilities.
Hopefully you guys can prove me and everyone else who has a complaint wrong!
Cheers,
Arman
Instead of an MMO, just give me Skyrim co-op, dang it! Hell, you have companions in the game so just let a 2nd player control them or something
That being said, I WAS able to see a lot of Tamriel in the environments. Not at first glance, but upon looking through them one by one I was pretty impressed with that. Seems the scale for a lot of things is messed with...probably on account of needing to fit more people, but still that was interesting to see.
I think so far as MMOs go, this looks pretty quality. And among MMOs, it could be great! But...it's still just another MMO with a different name. Part of me wishes they'd have simply given it an entirely different name, because this does not feel like Elder Scrolls to me. Not even because the signs aren't there, or that the content doesn't match the universe...it does. It's just not what I've come to associate with the Elder Scrolls.
based on the info weve heard so far are they doing anything different or unique at all? Are they attempting to give the fans what they will so obviously want from an elder scrolls mmo?
No offense to anybody working on the game, this kind of complete disregard for the fanbases desires is dissapointing and a bit baffling.
...sigh.
Having experienced what its like to have an mmo community tear your work apart constantly and brutally, I sympathize with this. MMO Dev is hard, unlike a standard game out of the box, you're constantly trying to meet the demands of a community that feels entitled to a say because they are paying you a monthly fee, and to a certain degree you feel compelled to comply.
There are millions of opinions but just a handful of people who are actually in any place to do anything about them, usually none of those people are artists either. I'd be willing to bet that the internal pressures and conflicts at Zenimax are immense :poly122:
So I cant help but feel a stab from the +1 nostalgic dagger of pain for every harsh comment aimed at my dev brothers, who probably want the exact same things as many are mentioning but are in no position to make them happen.
P.S I HOPE there will be Netch's in the game - most satisfying thing to kill in all of the elder scrolls :P
And I get why you're excited about that, DAOC was quite a thing, but elderscrolls is the wrong thing for daoc to consume, it's too important even compared to the pretty groundbreaking world pvp of daoc.
Decorating houses in ultima online was a fortunate side-effect of being able to move items around, drop them on the ground, put them on top of things, they were not limited to loot chests.
Same as in elderscrolls, decorating houses became a side-effect of being able to drop items in the world, and people started doing it, it's too important to turn this into world of warcraft: tamriel edition.
Darkfall is fully realtime, has melee and ranged combat from first person, it's not the most well designed game and it's not big and popular but it's often hailed as being quite unique compared to the mass of mmo's.
Even the old planetside and the upcoming planetside 2 takes it even further by being first person shooter with massive crowds.
It's hard, but it's no valid excuse to kill the soul of elderscrolls, which had it's origins in ultima, so why not head the same way ultima online wanted to go?
Also, the artwork is kinda disappointing, it not even a case if "HURR, I need uber shader and textures in ma graphix to make it look coolz?" I mean I never recall (other then the 90's games) a case where very single armor has to have an open chest piece to show tits.
A few peeps I know just saw the new post and started ranting, I made a quick break down so far on what they're saying (as well as me);
I think a decent TES MMO could wipe the floor with other MMOs, yet instead we're getting ANOTHER WoW clone built on the same engine as one of the largest MMO flops in history?
I won't write this game off before trying it, but holy shit. None of this says TES to me. I'm only hearing trainwreck.
I tried very hard to read the writing on your image but its a mess.
It's not impossible, it just isn't seen as viable, just like minecraft wouldn't have been seen a viable before it was made, eve online, or something like morrowind itself.
The irony is that morrowind which started the modern elderscrolls era was a big gamble and very unlike many rpg games that was out at that time, and the previous attempts and spinoffs from bethesda, which removed essential core elements of elderscrolls, became failures that nearly killed bethesda.
Developers stick with the known formula since any other is pretty unknown, it's not technically impossible these day to have realtime combat in an mmo, it's been fully possible to have items drop on the ground since the dawn of mmo's but it saves down on the bandwidth budget for the mmo to now have it.
An elderscrolls mmo just needs to take that risk that everyone wants it to take, otherwise it just risks playing it too safe and not being what every single fan of the series has come to enjoy in it.
once again, unpolished, flawed, a bit underdesigned, but doing the realtime stuff that an elderscrolls mmo should go for.
[ame="
I think they need more innovation rather than emulation, people are tiring of WoW-esque mmo's I think Swotor has proven there is still a market for wow-clones (and lets not beat around the bush it IS a wow-clone in space) but I think it's rapidly dwindling. Combine this with the raft of free-to-play MMO's or Freemium MMO's coming in the same genre as TES:O, I just think they have made a error in judgement.
Maybe the idea was totally sound in 2008 when they started (the heyday of WoW no less) but in todays market I think it's a bad decision. But I will forgo my conclusion of what it's like when I get to see it actually running and allot more details rather than some sweeping statements, hopefully it can be saved from the the hum-drum-wow-clone to something allot more innovative and special that we expect from Elder scrolls series.
no man.. it's not the same art style as wow. It's actually quite different. look at the images.
I also disagree here. Guild Wars 2 has 3 way INSTANCED pvp. Not open world, like they said for ESO (unless I read incorrectly). There's a big difference. I prefer my PVP in the real world, not some side world where everyone is safe. There is a difference. but that's me.
But it's still sad to hear, that at the end of the day, a HUGE game like the first TES MMO is announced, and the only thing that keeps making it back to me as it's largest selling point is a PVP system that was in another game from the earlier 2000s.
I'm trying really hard to not hate this game before it even comes out, but it's getting hard.
The environments definitely look way better than they did in those first few screenshots... those were pretty rough. Animations, movement, spells, enemies, and combat all look pretty shoddy though. Those are things that Elder Scrolls games have struggled with in the past, but it's more apparent in this title.
I heard the comments of "loads of customization, you can wear dwarven armors, daedric armors... all the things you would expect." So what... like 10 armor sets total? That's awful for an MMO.
However, the one thing that is a huge positive to me is the fact that it's all on one server! That could be a nightmare if it's not supported well, but the goal for an MMO is to have everyone be on one server so you don't have to figure out which one to jump on.
Questions I have are to do with balancing 3 faction PVP, this in itself will be an enormous task, one thing that is prevalent in MMOs are whiney bitches that complain about one class or another s way too overpowered and the whole thing soon degenerates into a nerf conquest with you guys tweaking stats trying to keep customers happy so they dont leave but it will ulltimately be futile.
Is the entire world a big PVP zone?
How much of a difference does gear make to damage/survivability ? Some games are totally gear dependent and I think this is wrong, its a tricky thing to balance properly. you can run into trouble when people level too fast gear becomes obsolete too quickly and if the economy is borked you going to have some unhappy campers.
Droprates and the economy, granted you probably wont have any idea how this will pan out until it actually happens but one thing to be concenrned about is the ability of lower levels to earn cash , in some games the economy gets so over inflated that its impossible to peoperly gear a lower/mid lvl char because mats and gear are so expensive.
I like the idea of a champion/emperor it was done in Lineage2 soon after I stopped playing.
Im probably in the minority when I say that 120 hours to max out a characters level is too short, but what do you mean by 120 hours? can a guy solo most of the time and get to max in 120 hours or is most of that time spent in a group to get there?
That being said, I'm a huge ES lore buff and I went into ESO not having much enthusiasm for the way it might turn out. When I first heard about ESO, I was disheartened because I figured that it would be some crappy version of an ES game.
After playing through multiple betas and the last 5 days of pre-release, I feel pretty confident that the game is in it for the long haul. The community is extremely mature from what I can see, and the writing and lore is exceptional and there's a lot of it. 2nd Era during this time frame in ES lore has had sparse documentation, and with all the new lore that's been introduced it's as much of a nirvana as I could ever find.
In terms of gameplay, let's all face it - ES games have historically had very clunky, crappy gameplay - and this is no exception. People play ES games for the story. - In this regard, listening to everyone's complaints about it shows that many have not played the game as gameplay is about as far away from a WoW clone as possible. It's slow and methodical, a limited number of abilities, using such abilities is the only way to make them stronger. Crafting actually matters at lower levels, etc.
Hopefully that would change deeper into the game or post-release, but, hey, there's lore.
Skyrim was the exception to ES games, not the standard. Skyrim provided a lot of ease of use elements into the ES series, that had otherwise not been in there in any other title. Additionally, all of that -clicking through the boring lore- that you mention is the reason why people play the game. Which makes it sound like that you played Skyrim based around the ease of use features that it provided, and not necessarily because of the reason that ES games exist - again, because of the story. The bugginess, or most of it, especially dealing with some of the major questlines, has been fixed since beta. Then again, the last two betas were stress test betas in which the stated that it was an earlier build of the game.
Of course, that's just the opinion of somebody who isn't into MMOs. I wouldn't say I'm a hardcore ES fan either though, I prefer having a linear story and gameplay experience but many people would disagree with my preferences.