Bethesda Announces Elder Scrolls MMO

An anonymous reader writes "Today Bethesda announced that their popular Elder Scrolls series of video games will be getting its own MMORPG. It's planned for 2013, and will be available for PCs and Macs. 'Players will discover an entirely new chapter of Elder Scrolls history in this ambitious world, set a millennium before the events of Skyrim as the daedric prince Molag Bal tries to pull all of Tamriel into his demonic realm. "It will be extremely rewarding finally to unveil what we have been developing the last several years," said game director and MMO veteran Matt Firor, whose previous work includes Mythic's well-received Dark Age of Camelot. "The entire team is committed to creating the best MMO ever made – and one that is worthy of The Elder Scrolls franchise."'

Comments

Just hope...

[Anonymous Coward]

that an arrow to the knee doesn't kill this.

Re:Just hope...

[broggyr]

Funny, I came here to count the 'Arrow In The Knee' references ^^

Re:Just hope...

[jo_ham]

I was going to come here to count the "arrow to the knee" references, but then I took an arrow to the knee.

Re:Just hope...

[overlordofmu]

Arrow IN the knee, not "to the knee". Details, people, DETAILS!

Re:Just hope...

[jo_ham]

I tried to get the quote right, but then I took an arrow in the knee.

Re:Just hope...

[Quiet_Desperation]

Yeah well I (woooosh! *THUNK) OW! Shit, that fucking hurts! This isn't funny!

Re:Just hope...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSDfxde8fSg

Re:Just hope...

[X0563511]

I was trying to take an arrow to the knee, but it seems that I took one in the knee instead.

Re:Just hope...

[synaptik]

I used to make arrow-to-the-knee jokes, and then I took a vagina to the penis.

Re:Just hope...

[shutdown -p now]

I hope it does. I do not want to see "instances" of Red Mountain where parties of 40 players, all named something like "SuPeRW1Z4RD!" raid Dagoth Ur while typing things like "BUFF NOW U FAG".

Re:Just hope...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't play it then, you insufferable cunt.

Re:Just hope...

[datavirtue]

Yo dawg....

Re:Just hope...

[LongearedBat]

I love the irony... =)

This isn't funny!

Then you score +5 Funny.

And then there's the irony of your sig...

As long as it has pandas!

[ZaDeaux]

It will only be widely accepted if it includes pandas!

Re:As long as it has pandas!

[Anonymous Coward]

Pandas are the new dinosaurs?

Re:As long as it has pandas!

[tjlaxs]

[Citation needed]

Smells like money

[Sigvatr]

Established IP + $$$ = $$$?

Re:Smells like money

[GameboyRMH]

Also addictive game * MMO = digital crack

Re:Smells like money

[X0563511]

Shut up and take my money!

Re:Smells like money

[MrZilla]

Indeed. I haven't touched an MMO for many, many years (since I stopped playing Ultima Online), but I am seriously considering giving this one a try.

Lovely.

[Anonymous Coward]

I simply cannot wait to be ganked in the middle of a quest by a 13-year old named XxFusRohDahxX1999

Re:Lovely.

[Adriax]

And after respawning you'll have to wade through the horde of "TheLustyArgonianMaid696969" knockoffs all dancing naked on the mailboxes in the starting city.

Re:Lovely.

[Anonymous Coward]

*Rushes off to make a creepy old Imperial Crantius Colto character*

Re:Lovely.

[Anonymous Coward]

And after respawning you'll have to wade through the horde of "TheLustyArgonianMaid696969" knockoffs all dancing naked on the mailboxes in the starting city.

Sold!

Re:Lovely.

[Issarlk]

Can't wait for this ! Nude Khaajits too please.

AGAIN I CURSE

[__aaeihw9960]

MY STUPID SATELLITE INTERNET. Lag time>500ms = I don't get to play these games. God Damned Stupid Laws of Physics. When I grow up, I'm changing those things.

Re:AGAIN I CURSE

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to play LOTRO with a couple who had 2000ms latency from their satellite connection. No, I wouldn't raid with them, but we would still do instances together. Other than raiding, and playing music (a feature in LOTRO stemming from a scene in The Hobbit), they still had a great time. The music problem was by design, because the devs didn't want someone with a lag spike to suddenly have 8 notes blast from their bagpipes simultaneously when the spike dissipated.

YES! and OMG NUUUUU

[sanosuke001]

ffs bethesda, i don't have time for this...

Re:YES! and OMG NUUUUU

[Baloroth]

Read TFA: despite the /. headline, Bethesda isn't developing this game: Zenimax Online Studios (a different subsidiary of Zenimax from Bethesda) is. Bethesda may be publishing it (I think), but not developing it (or at least not the primary devs).

Re:YES! and OMG NUUUUU

[nedlohs]

Which is good since a multiplayer Elder Scrolls game by Bethesda would be a disaster.

Given they just love the over powered game destroying garbage that is only bearable because you can "just not do that" in single player (Intelligence potion making/drinking cycles in Morrowind as the obvious example).

Re:YES! and OMG NUUUUU

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Ahaha, I have a fine collection of games, even spent last weekend downloading OXPs for Oolite on my thumb drive, and I haven't played a one since 2003. Just haven't the time. I think I keep them for nostalgia's sake, fond memories of when I did have the time. Or possibly there's something wrong with me. :D

Re:YES! and OMG NUUUUU

[Anonymous Coward]

Moreover, they only know how to write a plot with the One Chosen Hero, which doesn't translate to multiplayer. What, now everyone can be the Nerevarrine at the same time? That sounds "awesome."

Re:YES! and OMG NUUUUU

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I was coming to say a similar thing: it seems like Bethesda is downright allergic to game balance.

In addition to the Morrowind case you mention, there was the issue in Oblivion where it was quite easy to 'level yourself out of' practically the entire world if you focused on the wrong skills, or didn't tune your skill increases correctly. In Skyrim, it's harder to totally nuke yourself; but varying techniques for potion and enchantment cycling are back with a vengeance.

They also have an aversion to games that aren't as buggy as they are massively ambitious. If you give them a while to settle down, and install some of the fan patches, they are usually worth the price that you'll pay by the time that they've settled down; but the mixture of bugs, glaringly superior and inferior gameplay strategies, and wildly overpowered skill exploits is the sort of thing that the griefers will eat for breakfast outside of single player...

Re:YES! and OMG NUUUUU

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh that's a load of hooey. It was entirely possible to beat both the main quest and a guild quest in Oblivion while racking up no recorded kills all while at level 1. Leveling wasn't the problem in Oblivion: alchemy was the problem.

Re:YES! and OMG NUUUUU

[Anonymous Coward]

(Intelligence potion making/drinking cycles in Morrowind as the obvious example).

Just make sure not to make a potion of light when you have an effective alchemy score over 500. I had to spend about 2 month in-game-time sleeping inside for that to wear off.

To explain the effect, a light potion makes the drinker into a light source, and the intensity determines how bright the effect is (with a maximum observable intensity on any given surface) and how far the effect goes (as determined by the falloff rate). So my 6000 intensity glow meant that anytime I was outdoors, my PC was attempting to calculate a ball of light about 5 times larger than the planet of Tamriel.

Re:YES! and OMG NUUUUU

[Sir_Sri]

Sure they are unbalanced, but that's part of the fun, it's a single player game, so you let people do crazy things if they want. It doesn't hurt anyone else.

In an MMO though you have to do a very tricky economic dance, and shit has to work. I think bethesda is stepping into the wrong market here, there are other people who are very very good at making MMO's and it's a very saturated market. I can play one MMO, and I can play single player games. But I can't play two MMO's, and what is Elder Scrolls online going to bring to the table? Everyone says their game is going to be the greatest, but EA spent what, 300 million dollars on SWTOR and it's not that good. Trying to enter that market and be competitive is enormously expensive and risky, and frankly not worth it. Not when you can make elder scrolls 6 by putting a turd in a box and make 100 million dollars on it. Trying to go after Blizzard, who have WoW and unannounced 'titan' and Diablo 3, and SWTOR, and Guild Wars 2 and all of the other MMO's out there is probably going to lose the fight for available player time. Not a good move on their part.

Re:YES! and OMG NUUUUU

[Baloroth]

I both somewhat agree. I'm worried, though, that what made TES games fun will be missing when another studio develops it (I'm most worried it will simply be yet another WoW clone). And I personally like the unbalanced nature of TES games: you are a hero, you aren't supposed to be "balanced", you are supposed to be an extremely powerful mage/fighter/assassin/whatever. TES games have usually allowed that. Obviously, that doesn't work in multiplayer, which is another worrisome component (or would be, if I really cared: I have very little concern for MMOs anymore, since 99% of them are WoW with a different skin.)

Re:YES! and OMG NUUUUU

[nedlohs]

Obviously if you stay at level 1 you won't hit a problem caused by levelling up. Are you really stupid enough to think that you would?

And I don't think alchemy was a problem in Oblivion either, they removed the morrowind sillyness.

Re:YES! and OMG NUUUUU

[FrootLoops]

Bugs too. I love TES games, but the last three have been completely riddled with bugs--eg. Morrowind can be beaten in about 4 minutes with the help of Sunder/Keening swaps (to be fair, this got patched). Considering the number and variety of quest bugs, I like to play TES games on the PC so I have access to the console so I can fix/workaround them. I can't imagine the same things in an MMO, it would be disastrous.

Re:YES! and OMG NUUUUU

[Anonymous Coward]

The point was if you can beat the entire game plus one of the guild quest lines with a level 1 character with NO RECORDED KILLS even the most absurdly borked up character should still be viable even with all the so-called leveling issues.

Re:YES! and OMG NUUUUU

[Anonymous Coward]

balance in a single player game? i mean yeah who wants to buy a game and walk around being all badass, thats for losers.

Re:YES! and OMG NUUUUU

[nedlohs]

And how does that make the fact that there are issues with leveling if you don't do that "a load of hooey"? And "viable" means viable for the normal game play which involves killing things.

You can beat Morrowind without abusing the alchemy system, that doesn't mean the issues with the alchemy system are "a load of hooey".

The whole point is that they are fine in a single player game. But having such balance issues is completely game breaking in a multiplayer game.

Re:YES! and OMG NUUUUU

[digitig]

The point was if you can beat the entire game plus one of the guild quest lines with a level 1 character with NO RECORDED KILLS even the most absurdly borked up character should still be viable even with all the so-called leveling issues.

No, those levelling issues do catch you out. I levelled my character up about eight levels in one go and discovered that I could barely go outside a town without getting hacked to a pulp. The enemies all levelled up attributes, weapons and armour. I had only levelled up attributes. That meant that the enemies could rip through my armour like tinfoil whilst I was trying to beat them off with little more than a rolled-up newspaper. Morrowind handled this much, much better. Hardly any of the monsters levelled up, but some locations were more dangerous than others. You stayed in places where you had a chance of surviving, and as you levelled up you could go to more places. In other words, Morrowind rewarded you for levelling up; Oblivion punishes you.

Re:YES! and OMG NUUUUU

[Grygus]

Actually that is not true for non-modded Oblivion. The main quest has level requirements.

Re:YES! and OMG NUUUUU

[rainmouse]

Morrowind rewarded you for levelling up; Oblivion punishes you.

Got to seriously agree with this. I levelled up a pure rogue, non combat approach and its great that you can do this in the game and I ignored the side quest and became amazing at stealing, sneaking and jaw droppingly rich. I decided to try the main quest line and started with the Kvatch part of it where supposedly a few little scamps run out of the portal and get cut down the guards. Because I was a very high level rogue, instead an unending stream of hideous, unstoppable monstrosities poured forth from the gates. The guards vanished in moments and the game was utterly winnable with no escape. I tried the warriors guild, first mission where some thugs are robbing a shop at night. Guy dint tell me the thugs wore full daedric plate with hugely enchanted weapons and armour.

Again its nice that you can play non combat focused characters but expect to be worthless when any form of combat is forced upon you without alternative methods.

Re:YES! and OMG NUUUUU

[TFAFalcon]

The problems started if you DID level up. Staying low lvl meant that enemies were weak. Lvling up with the wrong skills meant that you stayed weak, while the enemies got stronger. So rats could one shot you while you couldn't even scratch them.

But the reverse was also true. By picking the skills you DIDN'T plan on using you could keep your lvl low while building up 'secondary' skills, greatly increasing your combat strength.

Re:YES! and OMG NUUUUU

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure they are unbalanced, but that's part of the fun, it's a single player game

Can't say I agree with that at all. When you can easily win any encounter, the game gets boring quick. It's painful with Bethesda games, they put so much effort into world design and then drop the ball on what should be the easier task of balancing combat.

Here's a good example of one of the more embarrassing flaws in Oblivion combat:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wK9dc_O3pM
The video is for a mod that fixes it:
http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=31882

it's a single player game, so you let people do crazy things if they want. It doesn't hurt anyone else.

When it comes to using mods that are unbalanced, then yeah, I agree that it is up to the individual. But when the base game has unbalanced mechanics, it really hurts the experience for a lot of us. Best case scenario, we end up having to mod the game to hell and back to make it challenging - and most studios are a lot less modder-friendly than Bethesda.

Re:YES! and OMG NUUUUU

[digitig]

The stuff out of the portal is levelled, yes. I'm pretty sure the thugs in Lelle's shop are not -- that's just a hard mission for somebody who isn't a tough fighter.. There are ways of evening the odds, though...

Re:YES! and OMG NUUUUU

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. You must reach level 2 to complete the main quest...

Re:YES! and OMG NUUUUU

[shutdown -p now]

Normally you'd want to buy a game and slowly progress into being all badass as the story unravels. The problem with TES games is that there are obvious exploit-ish (but not really - it's just badly thought out game mechanics) ways to grind your skills sky high, which people get sucked into since getting better skills/equipment is half of the lure of the traditional single-player CRPG.

It's basically like going to a fine Italian restaurant, where, as soon as you sit down, along with the menu, they bring you a Quarter Pounder for free. You can ignore it and go to the menu, knowing that it'll take them half an hour to cook the stuff that you want... or you can just munch at the burger right there and then. If you're hungry enough, it can be a tough choice.

Re:YES! and OMG NUUUUU

[Sir_Sri]

Honestly, I disagree with your assessment. Unless you intentionally do something unbalanced you don't trivialize the content in skyrim or oblivion. You *can* trivialize it, but that's good, because frankly they are long games and eventually they can get somewhat boring. The video you have is an animation sync problem of course, but really, you know you can stand and fight if you want.

I found the last fight in skyrim boring because the boss doesn't do anything, and doesn't try to. I thought this was a case of me being a little too overzealous blowing all cooldowns etc. So I tried it a second time and basically stood there and let him beat on me for a while. Still nothing. That's not 'the player is overpowered' (when you're wearing full dragon plate you expect to be able to take a few hits), it's that they intentionally don't have any great variety of mechanics. Run up and hit/shoot/nuke it a few times and it dies.

Re:YES! and OMG NUUUUU

[Anonymous Coward]

Normally you'd want to buy a game and slowly progress into being all badass as the story unravels.

Nope, that may be what you want, and you can very well do that in Elder Scrolls. In fact you can play the game any way you would want to, and _that_ is why these games are great. I doubt very much that someone who would want to progress the story would waste hours grinding his skills, because it is simply unnecessary to get ahead. Besides the skills will increase all the time either way so you still have the level-up-carrot from traditional games.

Re:YES! and OMG NUUUUU

[Anonymous Coward]

"But having such balance issues is completely game breaking in a multiplayer game."

No argument there; unless you restrict yourself it's pretty game breaking in single player too. As currently constituted any of the TES games would be a disaster as a 'massively' multiplayer game. If they'd just allow for plain old multi-player, say 6 - 18 people you could tolerate some of the game breaking stuff without taking away from the fun of the game though.

Re:YES! and OMG NUUUUU

[Anonymous Coward]

Read TFA: despite the /. headline, Bethesda isn't developing this game: Zenimax Online Studios (a different subsidiary of Zenimax from Bethesda) is. Bethesda may be publishing it (I think), but not developing it (or at least not the primary devs).

I was hoping for the Fallout MMO but I guess Zenimax chose this route instead.

Re:YES! and OMG NUUUUU

[SemperUbi]

"Staying low lvl meant that enemies were weak. Lvling up with the wrong skills meant that you stayed weak, while the enemies got stronger."

OTOH, this is SO much like real life...

In their language, he is "Spiderman"

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA has a nice summary, a few promotional pictures of the new logo...then a big picture of Spiderman fighting a lizard.

Not sure if that is exactly canonical in the Elder Scrolls universe.

Re:In their language, he is "Spiderman"

[GameboyRMH]

Part of a DLC pack I'm sure.

Re:In their language, he is "Spiderman"

[Adriax]

Spider-SpaceCore riding a chainsaw-arm t-rex into battle against a horde of flying laser-sharks. $9.99 DLC pack.

Re:In their language, he is "Spiderman"

[Quiet_Desperation]

Um... deep armor crafting system?

YES YES YES

[Anonymous Coward]

say what u want...but Im IN! Great decision. but please include Vvardenfell.

Interesting and mixed feelings

[santax]

I always found it a shame that such a rich world as the elder scrolls has, was only single player. It seemed to be missing that true interaction at times, while it's still and incredible world. I would applaud this, but I think we all know this will be a paid monthly subscription and they will find a way for micro-transactions. Personally I feel that is a shame for such a rich world.

Re:Interesting and mixed feelings

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's also sad to see some of the best single player games are now falling to multiplayer & micro transactions. Be it MMOs or whatever. Mass Effect 3 being another obvious example where the multiplayer component probably played a role in losing some of the single player stuff. DLC also seems to no longer be "extra" but instead, chunks of the main game are cut out and sold separately for additional revenue.

Re:Interesting and mixed feelings

[Anonymous Coward]

Because multiplayer is hard to pair with rich story. If dozens of guards each taking an arrow in the knee and citizens all speaking about mudcrabs break the immersion, just imagine how being demoted from that special Prisoner to one of hundreds, each one a Chosen One, must feel.

Re:Interesting and mixed feelings

[Anonymous Coward]

> I always found it a shame that such a rich world as the elder scrolls has, was only single player.

I've often felt the same. Sometimes standing on a hill looking out over the country side the world felt very empty.

What I've always felt would have been a killer feature for TES, is a stand alone server and development kit along the lines of the original NeverWinter Nights. Even just to be able to host the main campaign and play through it with small group of friends would be an infinitely better experience than *another* grinding MMO.

Re:Interesting and mixed feelings

[__aaeihw9960]

God Yes. LAN would kick this games complete and total ass. It's not the multiplayer aspect that appeals to me, it's the multiplayer option of playing with a few of my friends, all sitting in the same room drinking and smoking and talking and cursing and having an actual, honest to goodness LAN party with an elder scroll game. Good God, I would sell my first-born child for that.

Re:Interesting and mixed feelings

[santax]

Hi, I'm a modder, your first-born, is it a she and around legal age? I''ll give you my mail, oh wait, doorbell...

Re:Interesting and mixed feelings

[santax]

But to be true, I think you are right, in retrospect, the LAN / play with a couple of friends-thing would be way more awesome!

Re:Interesting and mixed feelings

[Anonymous Coward]

The trouble is that MMOs have a different dynamic to them than RPGs. This is the worst idea ever as it takes something that works and shoe horn it into something it is not. Maybe they could add diablo style multiplayer and that would be awesome. All out MMO is a bad idea.

Re:Interesting and mixed feelings

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, this ensures that when I pick the Morrowind disk from the shelf 20 years from now, it will still be fun to play and I can still relive the story.

Re:Interesting and mixed feelings

[shutdown -p now]

The thing that made the original NWN so awesome when it came to multiplayer was not just the existence of development kit for custom content - it was the ease of use of said kit. You could be a complete newb, technology-wise, when it came to level design, and you could still come up with great stuff with Aurora so long as you had good ideas, due to the unusually large basic building blocks that it had. Sure, it was also somewhat limiting, which is partly worked around by mods, and partly by players using their imagination. But the key part was simplicity. So people with great ideas took the kit, and did great things in reasonable amount of time.

Simplicity was okay back in 2002, though. Today? Creating a world that looks like Skyrim takes a lot of time, regardless of how powerful the tools are, and it requires skilled people to do that. I don't think it would ever have as many custom multiplayer servers as NWN ever had. That time has come and gone, unfortunately.

Re:Interesting and mixed feelings

[JosKarith]

^^ This, a thousand times this. DLC used to be a way of extending the lifespan of a game you loved with content developed after the release, now it's either unbalanced "blag packs" or things that should have been in the original game and were very obvously kept back for post-sale double-dipping. DLC already on the disc, and all you download is an unlock code anyone? . Oh, and let's not forget the "Hose the game resale market" component that's crept into DLC - the current trend of having things like the online component non-transferable are a blatant attempt to destroy the doctrine of First Sale.

Re:Interesting and mixed feelings

[HybridST]

http://www.google.com/m?q=multiplayer+oblivion+mod&client=ms-opera-mini-iphone&channel=new

Multiplayer-oblivion was fun on a vanilla install-perhaps a friendly coder/modder could COBLize it to work with all mods-transferring graphics and meshes on the fly. Or even if the modlist load-order needs to be identical for all players on the LAN. IIRC it could be "configured" to transmit more variables to each computer but it's been a while since i looked at it.

Disclosure: nearly 4000 game-hours spent in Bethesdas Universe-3000 of them in Oblivions Cyrodiil and about 1800 of those hours spent running Oldblivion for game performance on OLD hardware. About 50 hours were devoted to trying out Multiplayer Oblivion Mod but differing mod lists and bashfiles were enough to confuse the mod.

Daggerfall is free online for a legal elder scrolls fix and runs with dosbox quite nicely. Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim often come up for sale on steam and each has its own charms and quirks as well as active mod communities.

Urgh!!!

[rodrigoandrade]

Last thing I want is an MMO in Tamriel.

First, the MMO market is totally saturated and this game just won't get the attention it deservers from fans and the media. As a result, it'll become yet another niche MMO for a few longtime diehard fans of TES.

No, it won't be the next WoW either. The saturation factor alone prevents ANY MMO from being the next WoW, no matter how uber awesome.

Secondly, all TES games are inherently FREAKING HUGE!!!! Huge world to explore, hugely deep lore, lots of side-quests. In theory, this would go hand-in-hand with an MMO concept, except for all the technical limitations imposed by current network technologies.

Case in point: SWTOR. I had EVERYTHING to be a hell of a great MMO, but due to technical limitations, it was watered down to a theme-park-ride MMO. A Star Wars game with on-rails space combat?? Only half-dozen playable races??Seriously??

DONOTWANT TES MMO, TYVM!!

Re:Urgh!!!

[Overly Critical Guy]

Not only is the market saturated, but the cornerstone of today's MMOs is a linear content path regularly updated by the vendor. Elder Scrolls made its name for being a do-anything sandbox RPG. The last time such a thing was tried in a mainstream way, we had Ultima Online which ended up having to create a PK-safe continent.

Either it just won't feel like Elder Scrolls, or it will be too full of griefers to compete with mainstream MMOs.

Re:Urgh!!!

[JosephTX]

I don't know about that. I know it's only anecdotal, but most of the people I used to play WoW with have quit for the same reasons I did (because it got irredeemably bland, repetitive, and unimaginative). And they're not the only people who feel that way; WoW's usership has gone from 11.5 million (May 2011) to 10 million. The Elder Scrolls games are insanely popular for their RPG gameplay, and while BioWare is too, SW:TOR is sci-fi and and comes from developers who already made single-player games with similar combat styles to WoW; so even though SW:TOR's active combat system (no auto-attack, strategic use of energy/force regeneration, etc.) is a huge step up from BioWare's previous gameplay mechanics, many people assumed it would just be a WoW clone.

The Elder Scrolls don't have that same reputation to disprove. And since it's in the same fantasy genre as WoW (whose developers seem to do remarkably little fantasizing for fantasy game developers), it's probably going to appeal more directly to bored WoW subscribers than SW:TOR did.

And on a side note, the space combat missions in SW:TOR are great. If you've played SWG, you should know how boring open-ended space exploration gets after, oh, about 5 minutes of... empty space. It really could use some more races though, seeing as there are like 100 different spacefaring races in the Star Wars universe.

Re:Urgh!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's nice and all, but Skyrim is nothing but linear content. It's basically an MMO without the 13 year olds ganking you in the middle of no where.

Re:Urgh!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

> No, it won't be the next WoW either. The saturation factor alone prevents ANY MMO from being the next WoW, no matter how uber awesome.

Yeah, They said that about EverQuest when WoW was released. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying that saturation factor isn't as big of a deal as you might think...

Re:Urgh!!!

[Skuld-Chan]

You know whats funny about comments like yours - any MMO that competes with WoW wishes they had a million and a half players.

Re:Urgh!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about that. I know it's only anecdotal, but most of the people I used to play WoW with have quit for the same reasons I did (because it got irredeemably bland, repetitive, and unimaginative). And they're not the only people who feel that way; WoW's usership has gone from 11.5 million (May 2011) to 10 million. The Elder Scrolls games are insanely popular for their RPG gameplay, and while BioWare is too, SW:TOR is sci-fi and and comes from developers who already made single-player games with similar combat styles to WoW; so even though SW:TOR's active combat system (no auto-attack, strategic use of energy/force regeneration, etc.) is a huge step up from BioWare's previous gameplay mechanics, many people assumed it would just be a WoW clone.

Actually, many people argued long and hard that it would not be just another WoW Clone.

They were totally and utterly wrong, IMO, but that's another problem. And really, a 1.5 million drop in subscribers? Horrors! There could be numerous reasons for that, ranging from WOTF nerfs to getting too old for the game.

The Elder Scrolls don't have that same reputation to disprove. And since it's in the same fantasy genre as WoW (whose developers seem to do remarkably little fantasizing for fantasy game developers), it's probably going to appeal more directly to bored WoW subscribers than SW:TOR did.

And on a side note, the space combat missions in SW:TOR are great. If you've played SWG, you should know how boring open-ended space exploration gets after, oh, about 5 minutes of... empty space. It really could use some more races though, seeing as there are like 100 different spacefaring races in the Star Wars universe.

I disagree entirely. What it could use is more interesting races it does have. Or rather, more interesting physical appearance. There's options, but they're so bland and boring, it's just not that fun.

Re:Urgh!!!

[bodangly]

SWTOR didn't suck because of any sort of technical limitations. It sucked because of a lack of creative vision. They could have made a non-linear MMO, but weren't willing to take a risk. SWTOR was just a big cash grab. Non-linear MMOs ARE on the horizon. I played the Guild Wars 2 beta last weekend and it was amazing, and definitely not a WoW clone or theme park game.

Re:Urgh!!!

[sandytaru]

I don't know about that. WoW is aging and players are dropping out rapidly because, well, the game is graphically dated and has been copied and improved upon a lot by other games. WoW is the king of MMOs in the same way that Budweiser is the king of beers, and now that all these fancy craft brews are becoming more widely available, people are beginning to realize what relative piss water WoW is. There will always be a core playerbase for WoW so long as the servers are online, same as Everquest and FFXI, but it's already stopped attracting new players because it's just not as shiny any more.

Re:Urgh!!!

[Overly Critical Guy]

If by linear content you mean quests, yes, it has linear quests because quests have a beginning and end. An MMO like World of Warcraft has barely any sandbox qualities. You level through a certain zone, then you move to the next designated zone, and you run specific dungeons designed for your level. Elder Scrolls isn't like that; you can just go out and do whatever and explore, ignoring the entire main quest line if you'd like.

Re:Urgh!!!

[Darinbob]

When I first played Daggerfall my thoughts very early on were that it was really bad as a single player game but felt that it might work as a multiplayer game. This is before I had even touched an online game with many players (this was before MMOs existed, but we did have MUDs). The reasons were the huge number of random quests (just naive and stupid templates that changed names/locations/items), huge numbers of nearly identical towns (seriously what were they thinking?), ability to own a house or ship (both inconvenient to get to), etc. All the drawbacks I hated in a single player game could have worked in a persistent online game.

Single player RPGs and MMOs are vastly different. That is what is going to hurt things I suspect. World of Warcraft worked think because Warcraft wasn't an RPG but a high level overview wargame. MMOs have players who will be logged in for 6 hours a a time alongside players who are there only 30 minutes a week, and both have to be happy. Deep story lines will annoy the typical MMO player. MMOs tend to have lots of micro-managed quests ("please cross the street to give my friend this sandwich") which would drive a single player RPG player nuts. MMOs tend to have incredibly detailed and obtuse game systems designed to keep end game players busy forever getting itemization done, whereas most single player RPGs try to make things simple so you don't need a spreadsheet. MMOs have you repeat the same content multiple times, the boss keeps coming back to life mysteriously, people keep returning hoping for a new drop, etc; you just don't see anything remotely like that in single player games.

Re:Urgh!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Um if you want non-linear sandbox MMO, then you should be playing EVE. I hope you like spreadsheets though.

Re:Urgh!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

If this game requires a monthly fee, I won't even try it out. Guild wars 2 is as awesome as any other MMO, and does not require such a fee.

In my opinion, games that require a monthly fee don't offer enough awesomeness to justify the cost of a brand-new game every 2 - 4 months.

Re:Urgh!!!

[Endo13]

I don't like spreadsheets and I enjoy playing Eve. Spreadsheets are only necessary if you're heavily into the industry side of things, or if you're extremely concerned about maximizing your profits from everything. If you'd rather just play and have fun, you can always just run missions or mine for money, and sell stuff for the immediate value at Jita. Sure, it may not be as much money but it works.

Re:Urgh!!!

[flimflammer]

Skyrim...linear content?

Does not compute. The only linear content in Skyrim is the main questline (if you can mark that as a negative. Could you even have a nonlinear main story?), which can pretty much be entirely ignored, just like any other questline you might not care for.

Re:Urgh!!!

[Endo13]

I know it's only anecdotal, but most of the people I used to play WoW with have quit for the same reasons I did (because it got irredeemably bland, repetitive, and unimaginative).

It may be only anecdotal but that doesn't make it irrelevant. I quit WoW more or less for the same reasons, but for me it was even more extreme than for most players. I'm one of those who still says WoW should have kept the level cap at 60 and expanded sideways rather than upwards with the expansions. It worked well for Guild Wars, I believe it would have worked for WoW. But that's just my $.02. However I'm not one of the 1.5 million who quit since May '11, I quit January of '11.

A few things that would still be relevant and meaningful in WoW if the level cap were at 60:

- All the fun engineering stuff from vanilla
- All the original vanilla dungeons
- Legendary weapons

Every new expansion just seems a little more bland and watered down than the previous one.

All that aside, I was a bit excited about this announcement, but it's too early to really get hyped up about it. It probably won't release for at least another couple years.

Re:Urgh!!!

[geekoid]

"However I'm not one of the 1.5 million who quit since May '11, I quit January of '11."

yes, yes, you where quitting before it was mainstream, got it.

IN other news, man whop plays something gets used to it with time, finds it less enjoyable then when he first playing, news a 11..then 11:30, and once again at 6

Re:Urgh!!!

[lymond01]

I can only imagine he's saying that each quest is specific and most don't tie into one another. That's not true of course -- Civil War and the dragon storyline can overlap in interesting ways; the Dark Brotherhood can go a number of ways -- I wiped the DB out before I really had heard of it: I didn't participate in any DB quest except for "Destroy the Dark Brotherhood".

So yes, the AC doesn't have a point.

Re:Urgh!!!

[Endo13]

You grabbed one sentence of my post, took it completely out of context, and harped on it.

I would still enjoy playing vanilla WoW. Modern WoW, not at all. I don't miss WoW because the game I enjoyed no longer exists.

Re:Urgh!!!

[TFAFalcon]

It isn't even completely linear. It changes depending on the status of the civil war. Which is a completely different quest chain.

Re:Urgh!!!

[TFAFalcon]

The problem is that Blizzard decided to make EVERYTHING accessable to 'casual' players. So a patch comes out, and you get to see the final boss on the same day. There is nothing new to be seen by killing things on higher difficulties.
At least in the past they had a hard mode only boss or boss phase. But with the Dragon Soul patch them made sure that the only thing you get from HC difficulty is better gear. Which will be useless when MoP is released.

Re:Urgh!!!

[Rennt]

While a million and a half subs would be a problem any MMO developer would love to have, some are quite happy making good coin with less. EVE online has been a sustainable success with less then half a million.

Re:Urgh!!!

[Endo13]

The problem isn't so much that they decided to make everything accessible to casual players, it's the way they did it, and the way their endgame in general was structured. But given the structure of their endgame, yes, some of the content should not have been accessible to casual players.

Re:Urgh!!!

[FunkDup]

lol

Budweiser is the king of beers

That's the best joke I've heard all week.

Re:Urgh!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

If it is a good game, it does it's own thing, who cares? It is set to be a prequel so it won't even mess with the existing game plot, avoiding the problem with a future Warcraft 4 game.

That was one of my main two problems with SWOTOR. It looked and felt like the love child of WOW and Mass Effect dressed in Star Wars cosplay. Then it got hyped by marketing and fans for years with high expectations.

Bethesda has actually managed to largely avoid hyping this up. They didn't need to reveal this now, that gives me hope that they were working on it to be a game of their quality. Not one rushed out for marketing purposes near the end.

And I'd argue that Skyrim is effectively a single player MMO as is. Quest tracker, NPCs that don't respect/acknowledge quests you've done (suggesting to your head of the Mage school character that he should go see if he can be accepted as a student at the Mage school), and the dungeons/over world is already setup for instances/phasing with the level scaling system.

Re:Urgh!!!

[thejynxed]

I don't mind casual players seeing the content. What I do mind, is them nerfing content so much that there's no point to playing it if you only have to hit keys 1-5, repeat and win. To make it even more retarded, they added raid/group-wide static buffs on top of nerfing the content, which was ridiculously over the top.

The content in WoW really isn't that difficult, and never was, once you conquered it one or two times and figured out what was going on. Sure, some bosses were more difficult than others, but once you figured them out, you quickly started farming them for the drops you wanted.

I almost wish Blizzard would change how difficulty works in that game, by using methods that dynamically increased or reduced difficulty based on how well your group was performing. I've played games like this, and they are much more fun than the standard "pick hard mode, run it until it's easy". This way casuals would get to see content, but the content was still at least challenging for groups that thrive in tougher situations.

Re:Urgh!!!

[Omegawar]

>

IN other news, man whop plays something gets used to it with time, finds it less enjoyable then when he first playing, news a 11..then 11:30, and once again at 6

That 6:00 report will be bland and watered down when compared with the 11:00 report.

Oh Hell!

[squidflakes]

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY BETHESDA!

Not like I need it, no sir, or exercise or fresh air, or pleasurable companionship.

Re:Oh Hell!

[Moheeheeko]

You have a year or so, stockpile resources. Ive started an Elder Scrolls Online fallout shelter.

Re:Oh Hell!

[NoobixCube]

But will the fallout shelter protect you from Fallout Online when that happens? (and you know it will, if TESO goes well)

Re:Oh Hell!

[Moheeheeko]

......I must redouble my efforts.

Too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

They skipped a small-scale (e.g., local) multiplayer option. This would have been much better news to me.

Re:Too bad

[GameboyRMH]

Don't you know that only pirates use LAN multiplayer? Can't enable those scoundrels...

Re:Too bad

[Missing.Matter]

I agree. I would love to explore the land of Tamriel with my friends. I just don't want to do it with 10,000 other people to constantly annoy me.

Re:Too bad

[spire3661]

A million mod points for you sir

sent from my mac (haha couldnt resist after seeing your sig)

Re:Too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel the same. Right now I have a free subscription to a popular MMO but I really can't be arsed to invest all the time and social drama that's required to make it there, which is quite a shame really, as it has quite a lot of depth. I would really like to play co-op with my friends, but there's also 7 billion other players to annoy us. The side quests are a grind too unfortunately.

Re:Too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

^ This a million times over. _Minimally_ multiplayer online gaming. Me and a dozen people I like and not 1.5 million I don't.

Re:Too bad

[crazyjj]

They couldn't charge you $15 a month for multiplayer.

Boooooring

[Lunix Nutcase]

Another fantasy-setting MMO. How original... *snore*

Re:Boooooring

[crazyjj]

But this could be the WoW killer!!

Re:Boooooring

[geekoid]

yep, it certainly killed any potential of anyone says "Wow! How original."

Not Excited

[Missing.Matter]

For me, the allure of Elder Scrolls has always been the single player experience and the immersion in a different world this provides. As someone who has played many MMOs, immersion has never really been a word I'd use to describe them. From all the immature annoying players, to the terrible meta game of griding levels and petty guild politics, playing MMOs has always been a chore for me (which is I guess why I don't play them much anymore). Elder Scrolls has always been a beautiful fantasy escape, and while I know there aren't any details released about the game at this point, I can't possibly see how they can replicate that experience in an MMO.

I mean, look at the play style that characterizes TES. Vast open environments where you can do practically anything. Now imagine this as an MMO. Imagine walking into town to find EVERYTHING had been stripped out of every building. Shopkeepers slaughtered in the streets, two or three bandits with their pack of mule characters, shipping everything off to a stash... no it wouldn't work. The only reason these sandbox games work is because you're the only one in the game causing this kind of mayhem. So I don't know what TES Online is going to look like, but I have a strong suspicion it will include almost none of the allure of a typical TES game, and will be severely crippled by its MMO status.

Re:Not Excited

[crazyjj]

Not to mention the fact that's it's going to be a little hard to be the Chosen One when everyone else is too.

Re:Not Excited

[Anonymous Coward]

Skyrim already ruined that style of gameplay.

As you may have seen, people were complaining about being unable to kill children in Skyrim. I don't know how they missed it, but actually, around 70% of the people in any town are invincible and unkillable. It's not like Morrowind where you can play genocidally and kill absolutely everyone you meet.

For many reasons, Skyrim just isn't as open-ended as the Elder Scrolls series used to be. Huge numbers of invincible NPC's; doors with unpickable locks; no levitation, jump, slowfall, lock, open, or teleportation spells; inexplicable invisible walls to prevent you from accessing quest areas you haven't asked permission to enter (e.g. Goldenglow Estate); unsellable "quest items" that can't be removed from inventory.

Re:Not Excited

[Darinbob]

So this explains why in Oblivion all the bandits were wearing Daedric armor. Bethesda was just preparing us for player character bandits!

Re:Not Excited

[Darinbob]

"There can be only Ten Thousand!"

Re:Not Excited

[crazyjj]

...Per Server!

Re:Not Excited

[digitig]

For many reasons, Skyrim just isn't as open-ended as the Elder Scrolls series used to be. Huge numbers of invincible NPC's; doors with unpickable locks; no levitation, jump, slowfall, lock, open, or teleportation spells; inexplicable invisible walls to prevent you from accessing quest areas you haven't asked permission to enter (e.g. Goldenglow Estate); unsellable "quest items" that can't be removed from inventory.

Pretty much all of that was true of Oblivion, too (although the Shivering Isles expansion does include a very limited teleportation spell), but that's still a fine game. Yes, Morrowind probably was the best of the series so far, but really the lack of levitation didn't spoil my gameplay at all, except for making me wonder what had happened to it -- a continuity issue.

Re:Not Excited

[Courageous]

It doesn't actually follow logically that an MMO has to be the way you describe, as they could (theoretically, I am being charitable) use spatial indexing technology to do extremely selectively instancing of the entire world, effectively using one base world as the common basis for thousands of delta worlds with relatively few actual human players. Some games have done this already with dungeon instancing. It wouldn't take much of a step to do it with whole worlds. Yes, this sort of undermines the first "M" in MMO, but there is probably a market for this kind of game, and until they say what they've done, you don't know that they haven't done it.

Re:Not Excited

[shutdown -p now]

As far as continuity goes, they did try to explain it in Oblivion, albeit very half-heartedly.

Re:Not Excited

[Mavakoy]

Unless they take the approach the Guild Wars did - communal towns/cities, where there are shops etc, but combat is disabled. Unique instances of the main game world for when you leave town, either with other players, or NPC followers.

You get the MM part of MMORPG if you want it, but aren't forced to put up with annoying people whilst "in game" and can just go it alone if you want.

Re:Not Excited

[digitig]

Half-hearted indeed. The alchemy should still work, and the character doesn't necessarily abide by the law. All the levitation act should do is make it that being seen gets you a bounty.

Re:Not Excited

[elecmahm]

I would actually be really interested to see a TES MMO that made playing as an NPC-type char a viable / fun option. I typically ignore the main questline because the world is far too rich to be limited by that (and the sidequests are more interesting, IMHO).

I don't think it would be THAT much of a stretch for them to make alchemy a bit more challenging and rewarding -- where you could say proudly "oh my character is a level 35 alchemist." A lot of the things that I enjoy doing in the game are fun until they feel like grinding because they are no longer challenging (like alchemy, for example, or archery) -- If they were to build on the tech-trees of Skyrim, perhaps distill them down a *little* bit and then integrate it into the real-world like how Animal Crossing did (with time of day and whatnot, though maybe have different "time zone" servers, so that you can sign onto the one that best fits your play schedule)... it could be legitimately fun.

OH. If they're going to do home ownership then the towns MUST be more flexible and allow new buildings to be created.

Re:Not Excited

[WuphonsReach]

The other big problem with trying to turn a wonderful single-player game into an MMO: The Mary Sue problem.

In a single-player game, all the NPCs telling you that "you're special" and that you'll be the only one who can stop the big bad ugly works, because you are the central actor in the story. There's literally no other player who can do what you can do within that universe.

In a MMO, it rings false. While every NPC is busy trying to tell you that you are the special one, you can't help but notice them saying the exact same things to the dozens/hundreds of other players in the area. (This is a *huge* problem with the story in SWTOR.)

Re:Not Excited

[WuphonsReach]

Heavy instancing is very bad for the "M" part of MMO. Want to help your friends on a quest? Or just quest along side them to be companionable? Can't be done unless you both remain lockstep with each other as you move through the quest chains.

Instancing in WoW's WotLK made the latter zones a solo experience unless you worked and played on the exact same schedule as a few other people.

Instancing in Cata wasn't much better.

Sure, it's fun to see the world change, as if you are having an impact on the world, but it definitely harms the social aspect.

Re:Not Excited

[Anonymous Coward]

I was playing some Mass Effect 3 and thinking how they just can't replicate the awesome epicness of the campaign/single player story in the multiplayer version of the game.

TAKE

[Anonymous Coward]

MY MONEY NOW!

No console, no way

[crazyjj]

I've already watched The Knights of the Old Republic go from consoles (where they had their best sales) to a PC-only MMO. I'd hate to see the Elder Scrolls series leave the console forever too.

Re:No console, no way

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the elder scrolls totally didnt start as pc only then get shitty when it was catored to consolefags. NOPE never happened.

Re:No console, no way

[crazyjj]

Well, not everyone can be as sophisticated as you.

Re:No console, no way

[bloodhawk]

While perhaps a little over the top, he is dead right. Elderscrolls has always been a PC based game where the console ports had to make some serious compromises in dumbing the experience down. would much rather see no console version to hold the game back.

Re:No console, no way

[Issarlk]

If by shitty you mean "Morrowind" then I want shitty watered down console ports of games every day please !

Sick of seeing MMOs

[na1led]

It was fun when they first came out, but now it's just tiresome to see. Unless you have no life, I don't plan on spending years to get to level 50 so I can see everything in the game. Sorry Bethesda, I don't have time for an MMO.

Re:Sick of seeing MMOs

[Darinbob]

MMOs need to break out of their "if we make it they will grind" mindset. They need more depth. I absolutely believe they should dump the outdated levels concept. Start the game being max level essentially, don't waste months gearing up, instead play the game! Too many MMOs treat everything below end game as not worth playing, and they're left to rot when level caps increase. Instead focus on the game world and a story line. Let the new players jump right in without the veterans calling them noobs or ignoring them until they pass a gear check. Don't penalize players for hanging out having fun in less populated zones where they aren't buying expansions; encourage exploration.

Re:Sick of seeing MMOs

[crazyjj]

The problem is that, without long periods of grinding, everyone will blow through all the content in no time and cancel their subscriptions. MMO's aren't about content, they're about keeping you paying that $15 a month--chasing something you can never catch.

Re:Sick of seeing MMOs

[CanHasDIY]

MMO's aren't about content, they're about keeping you paying that $15 a month--chasing something you can never catch.

Been there, done that.

Re:Sick of seeing MMOs

[Endo13]

Guild Wars may not be a true MMO, but it's close enough and it handily disproves all of that. Have to wait and see how GW2 will do, but I'm betting it'll be highly successful as well. Without long periods of grinding.

Re:Sick of seeing MMOs

[geekoid]

Actually, most people enjoy grinding, even if they don't realize it..as long as the get some small unsubstantial reward.

Thanks Skinner!

Re:Sick of seeing MMOs

[Darinbob]

This means that grinding is a design problem! People should not treat this as a necessary evil but as a lack of innovation on the designer's part. Killing thousands of low level enemies to get your reputation higher is not good game play, and it turns away at least as many people from the game as the people who are sticking around. Why not allow replaying of older content to be fun instead of mindless tedium? Or maybe design the game to appeal to a smaller group of players instead of aiming for the mass market blandness?

Re:Sick of seeing MMOs

[Darinbob]

I did like GW1 a bit (I think as a Massively Multiplayer Online RPG, it qualifies as "true" MMORPG). The story line was nice. The fact that it kept the max level relatively low meant that it wasn't a grind to get levels instead you went through the storyline and explored (if you didn't like that you skipped it and went to end game pvp maybe). The real problem with it was the major disconnect between what looked like well designed content and the idiocy of what seemed to be pre-teen player base, lingerie wearing magic users, hordes of non combat pets, and all the other cutesy stuff.

Re:Sick of seeing MMOs

[Evil Pete]

But how can you have more depth in an MMO? In single player the game developer can develop deep stories and constrain you somewhat, perhaps via sub-quests, so that you actually experience the storyline. In an MMO you could go to do sub-quest X and discover somebody else has already done that. So you wait for the BadGuy(tm) to respawn and sub-quest to re-initialize. It just isn't the same. "Please stand in the queue to have your unique experience."

I came to TES via Oblivion, which I loved, such a free and open world. I could join the story or not. Skyrim, even better. It would be fun with a couple of friends but not with hundreds of othes.

Re:Sick of seeing MMOs

[Darinbob]

You can instance the important parts of the story line. Guild Wars does this a lot, which actually gives them a lot of ability to change the game world depending upon the player's actions. Ie, the boss stays dead, the types of enemies that spawn in a region will change, etc. Lord of the Rings Online puts some important plot points into instanced areas; you can always redo those quests if you like via "reflecting pools" which provides a rationale that you're merely remembering what you did in the past.

Way back when in Asheron's Call they used to have some major plot activity happening that would affect the game world. An entire city was removed from the game world to be replaced by ruins. Most of those plots only involved max level players though which wasn't so great for me, so I don't really know exactly how they worked. I imagine it was something like City of Heroes when they would periodically have invading aliens and every players of all levels could join in to help fight them off.

Re:Sick of seeing MMOs

[Endo13]

The real problem with it was the major disconnect between what looked like well designed content and the idiocy of what seemed to be pre-teen player base, lingerie wearing magic users, hordes of non combat pets, and all the other cutesy stuff.

You're definitely exaggerating, but I guess I can see your point. It wasn't really an issue for me though. The reason I quit GW had nothing to do with the game itself, and everything to do with the complete lack of account security at the time.

I wish modern MMOs took a page from the GW playbook and used storyline for progression instead of gear. To keep players replaying the same content, you use cool items and/or fluff items as incentives. It's amazing what players will do to get that awesome sword just because it looks awesome, even if it isn't a damn bit better than the plain-jane one they've had for the last 5 months.

woot! Minecraft online

[rfioren]

I love that Notch guy. Can't wait to play Minecraft online!

Re:woot! Minecraft online

[Anonymous Coward]

Well besides the sarcasm of Minecraft not being online, you should try out minetest, which in addition to being online, has a ton of modding capabilities.

Re:woot! Minecraft online

[Anonymous Coward]

WOOSH

Bethesda (creator of the Elder Scrolls series) took Mojang to court over a new game they were releasing, Scrolls, due to trademark infringement. They ended up setting out of court.

While this was going one there was a rash of jokes being made about how absurd the notion was that anyone would confuse Mojang's "Scrolls" with the Elder Scrolls series, just as the grandparent did.

Will be available for PCs and Macs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they mean a Windows version wrapped in Cider or a real, proper OS X version?

Re:Will be available for PCs and Macs?

[Anonymous Coward]

How cute, the MAC user thinks its people...

Re:Will be available for PCs and Macs?

[Anonymous Coward]

How shocking, the troll doesn't know the difference between MAC and Macs.

Re:Will be available for PCs and Macs?

[flimflammer]

That was seriously your retort?

Re:Will be available for PCs and Macs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee I hope they port everything to mac.

Then I can pay twice as much for the same hardware specs to play the same games.

Re:Will be available for PCs and Macs?

[painandgreed]

That was seriously your retort?

Dude. you can't go confusing the brands of a Canadian make up company and an electronic widget vendor around here. You'll seriously confuse most of /.

Re:Will be available for PCs and Macs?

[TyFoN]

Since it is apparently is going to use the same engine as swtor (hero), it will be a single threaded dx9 game. Should run fine if you boot your machine into windows. Might even work in wine!

Re:Will be available for PCs and Macs?

[thejynxed]

They'll be using an updated version of the Hero engine, which will have actual multi-thread support, and from what I've read, full DX10 support. Bioware had to hack in limited multi-threading support themselves for SW:TOR, as well as a very limited subset of DX10 (mostly to deal with particles, reflections, light and shaders on high-end cards).

Hopefully, the developer of the Hero engine will also have fixed the brain-dead way it deals with file caching (it creates a cache file with a base 2 GB size, expands and contracts it, but does the stupid thing of using synchronous reads/writes to the file, so if that file expanded to say, 4 GB for some reason, it will read the entire damned file before acting on what it was looking for).

Re:Will be available for PCs and Macs?

[crypticedge]

I know what you mean, someone asked me to install some software to their MAC and got mad when I asked them when I put the disk in their blush.

Not sure about this

[demonbug]

I've played most of the Elder Scrolls games, but honestly the overall setting and lore has never really been the strong point to me - without the focus on single player achievement and freedom to do as you will to the populace, I'm not sure how interested I'd be in an MMO just because it is Elder Scrolls. Probably about as interested as I've been in every other MMO which has come out, which is to say I might play a little bit during a free trial period but that's it.

So good luck, I guess - I just hope it doesn't distract Bethesda from continuing to make "proper" Elder Scrolls games.

Re:Not sure about this

[spire3661]

Imagine Bioware trying to convince their bosses to fund a new RPG SWTOR single player game after sinking 200 million into SWTOR MMO. Not gonna happen. These MMOs are setup to carry the IP for DECADES. There will be no more TES games as we know them now, just like there will never be a Warcraft 4.

Re:Not sure about this

[N0Man74]

They had a very detailed setting (often in the form of detailed histories found in books), but it is a tad on the dull side. However, a many MMO's have survived a dull back story.

I think the real challenge is going to be in balance. Bethesda's track record has been rather weak in this department. Cheesy skill and power combinations, exploitable mechanics (for either very powerful or just strange effect), and much build min-maxing.

And if they fix all of those things, will it still seem like an Elder Scrolls game?

Re:Not sure about this

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that they are creating a whole new studio to do this. Zenimax is doing this, not Bethesda itself.

Re:Not sure about this

[crazyjj]

ZeniMax Media owns both companies. And you think they're going to waste money developing both a separate stand-alone game and a MMO in the future? Nope. All the resources will go to the MMO from now on. No more single player Elder Scrolls games.

Re:Not sure about this

[Caerdwyn]

There will be another single-player TES game when Bethesda decides they want another few dozen "Game of the Year" awards.

Bethesda wants BOTH markets (single player and multi player) and are not about to abandon single-player (which they utterly own and which is a license to print money) in favor of a market which is proving to be more and more difficult to succeed in. They're not going to abandon their cash cow in favor of high risk... they're simply doing both at the same time. They certainly can afford it. If their TES MMO fails, well, they'll wipe away their tears with the stacks of hundred dollar bills being airlifted in from TES 6 and Fallout 4.

That being said, yes, they're going to have serious problems if they go linear story.

Now, if they had a service in which a guild could pay for an instance of the entire game-world, invite-only, I'd be all about that. 15 a month for the privilege of being griefed by ten thousand man-child jerks? No. I quit WoW over that (and LotRO and AoC and WHO and...). I don't want to play these games with strangers any more, and nobody gets my money if that's the only way to play a given MMO. But I would pay 30 a month (maybe even more) for a quality sandbox game that was instanced that only I and my guild (also paying 30 a month) could access that instance. Or, if it were a Second Life style billing system, I and my buddies would happily pay a couple thousand to create an instance of the world then standard subscription rates, if we could be the gatekeepers and keep the jerks out.

Yeah, I'm not particularly keen on my fellow human beings these days. I will pay good money to not have to deal with most of them. Elitist? Hardly. I don't care if others bring up their own instances, I just want them the hell out of mine (and off of my lawn, too).

Re:Not sure about this

[ArsonSmith]

I've always thought the draw of ToS games has always been the scale of everything. In Dagger fall I remember just heading out into the woods in a single direction for hours, exploring caves and not even making it very far in the world map.

If they continue that type of scale into MMO so it's almost impossible for one person to visit everyplace of interest in the entire game they could spread the adventure out more and still keep some of it's original charm.

Re:Not sure about this

[cyber-vandal]

It would be a bit duller though and you would never have the satisfaction of seeing a total arse lose several months' worth of account and items. However broadly I agree, which I why I stopped playing the PvP servers on WoW as it stopped being fun about level 25.

Re:Not sure about this

[Endo13]

Because MMO developers/publishers never work on other stuff, right? Good to know StarcraftII and DiabloIII are just figments of my imagination.

Re:Not sure about this

[Anonymous Coward]

start a minecraft server :D

Re:Not sure about this

[Jaysyn]

If graphics aren't an issue, everything you described can be done with Neverwinter Nights 1 or 2 & the cost of running or renting the server.

Re:Not sure about this

[Chrondeath]

Final Fantasy had new single-player games after their MMO offering...

Re:Not sure about this

[Omestes]

Diablo and Starcraft are different franchises than Warcraft, thus your point is a bit off. A TES MMO would share the same world as any past or future TES single player game, which is a whole different story.

TES games are known for having a decent developed history within the game, MMOs aren't good at working within an established time line, since they work best giving the illusion of fluidity.

Actually this news makes me sad. TES games were really the last batch of decent PC RPGs, that were fully open. Everything else is getting more and more shallow and scripted, and slowly losing all RPG aspects, becomes straight action games (I'm looking at you Mass Effect). I actually can't think of the last decent open RPG that wasn't at least published by Bethesda. I also am a rarity, and don't like multiplayer. I play games to escape from having to deal with the frustration of dealing with the unwashed masses, so why would I want to continue that experience in my leisure time?

Re:Not sure about this

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to look at what happened to Ultima before making statements like that. Ultima 9 sucked for several reasons, not least because EA transferred most of the team to work on Ultima Online. Ultima Online 2 was cancelled, and any attempt to make a further single player game was killed off after Ultima 9 tanked.

Granted, Zenimax don't seem to be quite as evil as EA were (and are), but I wouldn't be too hopeful about continuing a successful single player series once there's an MMO.

Re:Not sure about this

[Caerdwyn]

Not quite true. You have to have someone write the content, and NWN/NWN2 are primitive compared to anything remotely recent.

I'm quite happy to pay professionals to generate large amounts of good content. (I've played on hobbyist NWN servers.... not impressed.) Server hosting and client engines are only a part of what I pay for.

Re:Not sure about this

[Caerdwyn]

The team for TES has been around for a while. No need to transfer anybody; TESMMO is already fully staffed, and the single-player/MMO teams have already existed in parallel for some time. This is the "secret project" folks attending GDC:Austin and GDC have been hearing Zenimax/Bethesda hinting at for the last four years... during which they also brought out Skyrim.

Yeah, I think they can handle both at once... or, at least, if the MMO fails or the next single-player TES game sucks, it won't be because of cross-team poaching.

Scrolls??

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we talking about that Mojang game? How can we have an MMO announcement if the first game is not even out?

Re:Scrolls??

[Anonymous Coward]

They would have gotten the first game out but Notch took an arrow in the knee.

Re:Scrolls??

[Quiet_Desperation]

Mojang makes games?!

Re:Scrolls??

[Anonymous Coward]

Woulda been funny had this joke not been made several pages up.

Mac Support

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you Bethesda for continuing to support Mac OS. I look forward to playing the game next year :)

Re:Mac Support

[Quiet_Desperation]

Oh, just put a rig together. I'm a huge Mac head, but I have a gaming PC and all three consoles connected to my big TV.

Might stand a chance then....

[ip_freely_2000]

2013 means late 2014. WoW should be down to level 110 bots farming herbs and a bunch of people that forgot to stop their subscription ( kind of like what Asheron's Call is today ). Might be a resurging market for a fresh fantasy MMO by then, but probably not.

Death of the Franchise

[NoobixCube]

Don't get me wrong, I think an online Elder Scrolls game would be great, but does anybody remember playing Warcraft? No, stupid children, I don't mean "World of Warcraft", I mean "Warcraft", the franchise your beloved time-sink came from.

As soon as WoW became popular, hope of a Warcraft 4 went down the toilet. Blizzard doesn't make games, anymore, they just push expansion packs for World of Warcraft. The exception to this rule being Diablo 3, but it'll be an expansion-factory for the next ten years, too. The Elder Scrolls Online means there will probably never be a TES:VI.

Re:Death of the Franchise

[zzsmirkzz]

I don't mean "World of Warcraft", I mean "Warcraft", the franchise your beloved time-sink came from. As soon as WoW became popular, hope of a Warcraft 4 went down the toilet.

This. A thousand times this. I loved the original Warcraft/Warcraft2, Warcraft 3 was alright but a step in the wrong direction. I wanted (and still want) a proper RTS sequel to them. Perverting it into a MMORPG with the Warcraft name was horrible. I have never played it, will never play it. Although TES is an RPG to start with, it is not a MMORPG, and I cannot see how it being turned into one will make it any better, I can only see it getting worse and tanking another beautiful franchise.

Re:Death of the Franchise

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to forget about Starcraft II. Blizzard waited way too long to make Starcraft II or Diablo III but there is certainly a market. They wrote the engine for Staracraft, now they use it for Diablo III. They like to get their money's worth on engines so I expect we will see a Warcraft 4 in the next few years.

There's a void in this space and I think Blizzard figured that out.

I agree that Blizzard had way to much focus on WoW, but it was a cash cow for a long time and that trend is starting to go away. The next expansion looks incredibly lame, even my wife won't buy it and she's a WoW addict. I stopped playing the game years ago. I liked the original title but it got progressively worse as they attracted the wrong element to it. (gold farmers, 13 year olds, etc)

Re:Death of the Franchise

[NoobixCube]

I'll count Star Craft 2 when I get more than a third of a game for my $90.

Re:Death of the Franchise

[Anonymous Coward]

They could even make Warcraft 4 with inspiration from WoW.
Imagine if instead of having 1 to 4 hero units that can level up, your entire army levelled up with use and resource expenditures. And each one could have a name inspired by the horrible user-names of the MMO. I just might spend $50 for that game, where I get to send waves after waves of virtual noobs to their deaths while playing the Onyxia Wipe Animation on loop in the background.

Re:Death of the Franchise

[metalgamer84]

I have all my Warcraft cd's still. The only downside to Warcraft 1 was having to build everything next to roads, I hated that.

Re:Death of the Franchise

[Wraithlyn]

Bethesda isn't making this though... ZeniMax Online is, a sibling company to Bethesda (ie, also owned by the parent ZeniMax Media) built from the ground-up to focus on online gaming. Presumably, this has been specifically done so Bethesda can continue their single-player focus. So there's hope.

(More info on ZeniMax Online: http://www.zenimaxonline.com/faq.html)

Re:Death of the Franchise

[geekoid]

Not a real Scotsman, eh?

Ignoring the fact that you can still play any of the class, there are just two addition sets of maps and stories. They could have gone the DLC route.

You know what they should do? They should make a Diablo 3. but since they don't make games anymore I guess that will never happen~

And was, I would enjoy a new Warcraft game, but to say all the do is make WoW addons is ludicrous.

Re:Death of the Franchise

[cbhacking]

The *only* downside? Lack of Fog of War meant serious cheese with scouting once. Demons and Water Elementals were ludicrously powerful. The inability to play more multiplayer than 1v1 matches was sad. The lack of defensive structures except for multi-player-only walls was unpleasant, especially given the awful per-unit AI.

Don't get me wrong, WC:O&H was a great game for its time, but but even leaving aside the things which I assume to have been due to technical limitations (the low-res graphics, the 4-unit-selection limit, the terrible unit AI, the snap-everything-to-a-square engine) or due to not having the time to implement features that weren't viewed as important at the time (the lack of any kind of map generator or editor, the lack of TCP or UDP play, the lack of air or water units and also of the ability to build or destroy bridges), there was plenty of things that they could have done better.

I actually thought the road system was clever, except that they could have improved on the implementation. First of all, allow multiple town halls, or allow long-distance roads so you can build expansions. Second, allow faster unit movement on roads for a defensive advantage (or offensive, if you know where the enemy is and want to shorten your logistics at the risk of also shortening theirs in the case of a counterattack, or economical, so late-game wood and gold harvesting sucked less). Third, seriously, allow bridges (make them cost 100G per square and required to be build by peons directly adgacent to a road or other bridge, but allow player to make and possibly destroy them).

Dammit, now I want to go make a mod of Orcs and Humans with modern multiplayer, decent graphics, UI improvements, and better roads. Maybe tweak the balance a bit, but otherwise leave things as-is except possibly to fix the tile system slightly (break it down to much smaller tiles, give units a multi-tile collision size, etc.) Throw in a map editor and a proper spell editor, leave the current campaigns but add some new ones, and maybe also add some more units (possibly including water and air).

Yes, I'm aware that that's about 60% of "re-write WC2"... but WC2 has its own long list of things that needed fixing, and this is already a long post.

Re:Death of the Franchise

[madhi19]

I think anybody naming Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 to say that Blizzard is not overly focused on WoW is disproving himself or herself. Because it took more than a decade to get from Diablo 2 to 3! By now if Blizzard had not been coasting on WoW success for the last 8 years we would have Diablo 6, Starcraft 5 and Warcraft 9.

Re:Death of the Franchise

[madhi19]

You think if the MMO is a success ZeniMax Media won't shy away from telling Bethesda to drop any work on another TES game to produce content for TES:O.

Oh FFS, headline is wrong

[Baloroth]

No, Slashdot, Bethesda didn't announce this. It is being made by Zenimax Online Studios (owned by Zenimax, which also owns Bethesda). I don't know if anyone from Bethesda is working on it or not: it certainly doesn't sound like it, since they say it's been in development for a few years and Bethesda has been working on Skyrim during that period.

It sounds like Bethesda Softworks (the publisher) is involved, though, just not the actual development studio that made the other TES games.

Re:Oh FFS, headline is wrong

[crazyjj]

They're not independent of each other. ZeniMax Media owns both companies. And where do you think all the resources will be going from now on?

This means we'll never see another stand-alone Elder Scrolls game. Deal with it.

Re:Oh FFS, headline is wrong

[Baloroth]

It is being made by Zenimax Online Studios (owned by Zenimax, which also owns Bethesda).

(Quote mine, emphasis also mine, I left off the "Media" but it was strongly implied).

Point is they are different development studios, which means different people doing the development, which almost inevitably means different styles and quality of game. Skyrim and other TES games were all developed by Bethesda Games Studios, not Zenimax Online. And Zenimax Media has owned Bethesda for a while now (13 years or so). We certainly can and probably will see another stand-alone Elder Scrolls game.

For those who are wondering, the difference is that between Fallout 3 (Bethesda) and Fallout: New Vegas (Obsidian, and an extremely buggy, sometimes even unplayably so, mess). Different studios naturally produce different end results.

Re:Oh FFS, headline is wrong

[crazyjj]

We certainly can and probably will see another stand-alone Elder Scrolls game.

Have you seen any Warcraft or Knights of the Old Republic stand-alone games recently?

Re:Oh FFS, headline is wrong

[flimflammer]

Neither of those are particularly convincing examples. Blizzard doesn't pop out a new game every year. It took them what, 12 years to go from Diablo 2 to Diablo 3, 12 years to go from Starcraft to Starcraft 2, and 6 or 7 years to do Warcraft 2 to Warcraft 3?

As for KOTOR series, did you just pull that out of your ass because it had an recent MMO? Was there ever any expectation there would be more? There hasn't been a new one since 2004.

Re:Oh FFS, headline is wrong

[Moheeheeko]

Can't blame Bioware for Kotor, they started Kotor 3 and EA cancelled it very early in development. As for Warcraft they tied the story too much into WoW, so while having a new RTS engine to use, if we see a new Warcraft RTS, it wont be off of the current story.

Re:Oh FFS, headline is wrong

[Jaysyn]

Wasn't WH 40k getting single player & MMO games at the same time?

Re:Oh FFS, headline is wrong

[cbhacking]

To be fair, given how long it took Blizzard to go from WarCraft 3 to StarCraft 2, we really won't be overdue for another Blizzard RTS for at least another five years. That's leaving aside the fact that the RTS team is currently working on SC2 expansions.

I have some hope of seeing a WC4 (though it'll be the first one where I haven't played all the prequels through before starting it). Of course, if they cripple it the same way they did SC2 (I'm sorry, but I like my single-player and LAN games to be playable without an Internet connection, TYVM - I actually still use this "feature" in SC1 when traveling).

Re:Oh FFS, headline is wrong

[Omestes]

For those who are wondering, the difference is that between Fallout 3 (Bethesda) and Fallout: New Vegas (Obsidian, and an extremely buggy, sometimes even unplayably so, mess). Different studios naturally produce different end results.

But Fallout: New Vegas was a better game (i.e. it felt like Fallout), and Fallout 3 was also a horribly buggy mess on release (i.e. it was made by Bethesda).

Also, are people forgetting that Zenimax was founded by the same guy who founded Bethesda, that they are pretty much the same damn thing when it comes to Bethesda titles. Zenimax is Bethesda's publishing arm, or Bethesda is Zenimax' development arm, they aren't 100% separate. This isn't like Vivendi owning Blizzard.

Back to New Vegas, it helped that Obisidian has a lot of people who were with Black Isle, and thus shares a lot of the talent who actually originally made Fallout. New Vegas is Fallout 3, just like how Torchlight 2 is Diablo 3 (Runic is mostly comprised of ex-Blizzard North people, the people who made Diablo 1-2).

Re:Oh FFS, headline is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Making TES games is about all Bethesda does. They're not going to stop just because a different developer is also making one.

Another one bites the dust

[milbournosphere]

"I used to play Elder Scrolls games like you, but then i took an MMO subscription to the knee."

Seriously, though...the ES games excel at making you feel like the lone hero in an immerse world. A bunch of heroes running around would kill the mood, not to mention ruining any ability to make long lasting effects stick based on player actions (permanently killing NPC's, etc.). If they want to do an MMO, fine; but the Elder Scrolls have too rich a world and lore that is too extensive to be left to an MMO. Bethesda, I understand that you want to cash in on this MMO goodness, but please keep making single player Elder Scrolls games.

No immersion -- No TES

[Shoe Puppet]

One of the main strong points of the TES games is, in my opinion, that they allow for quite a lot of immersion. Well, about as much immersion as a fairly buggy PC game can give you. I cannot imagine that they will be able to carry that over into an MMO full of 13 year old kids called "FusDoRahPorn131888".

A broken mess

[Anonymous Coward]

>"one that is worthy of The Elder Scrolls franchise."
Ah, so it'll be a broken mess?

Please not another MMO

[Wattos]

Can we please stop with the MMO's already? Im already playing a MMO where I am just another guy (like everyone else). It's called life.

Re:Please not another MMO

[Anonymous Coward]

What level are you?

Re:Please not another MMO

[Anonymous Coward]

LFG Your Mom

Re:Please not another MMO

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of us don't have a life, you insensitive clod!

Re:Please not another MMO

[geekoid]

Yes, it's far better to sit alone ranting on /. and watching TV then it is to be with a group of friends gaming together.

Re:Please not another MMO

[Sepodati]

I get enough experience to level up once a year on the same day. Currently level 36.

Re:Please not another MMO

[RivenAleem]

Pfft, you're suck a slacker, I've been playing this MMO for only 30 years. Sure for the first 18 I noobed about a bit, but then I got into this hard-core 'work' that raids 5 days a week, officially, but ofc I grind on the weekends too.

I'm almost lvl 55 now. You should check out my epic mount.

Re:Please not another MMO

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we please stop with the MMO's already? Im already playing a MMO where I am just another guy (like everyone else). It's called life.

Hey, companies discovered fewer people are paying for single-player RPGs today, copies of those games are getting pirated left, right, and center, more people are paying for MMOs (and/or games with microtransactions or subscriptions), and those people are willing to pay more for them.

Don't go whining to the developers. They need money, we're not giving it to them, other audiences are. Basic business. Quite frankly, our piracy-happy culture brought this upon itself.

Re:Please not another MMO

[Anonymous Coward]

You should check out my epic mount.

Does your wife know you call her that?

Re:Please not another MMO

[Evil Pete]

You should check out my epic mount.

Is she that good?

Re:Please not another MMO

[RivenAleem]

She?? LOL ROTFL You think I have time in my busy schedule for female interaction?!? You need to get with the program!

Level 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Break out of prison...

Th'umm Griefers

[Tekfactory]

So there I was minding my own business and Th'umm there goes my sword.

ARGH!

[Anachragnome]

I want to strangle some of these bean counters.

We don't need another MMO to replicate Skyrim--We just need MULTIPLAYER.

(and by multiplayer, I mean IP to IP connections that don't rely on your fucking servers)

Re:ARGH!

[CanHasDIY]

I want to strangle some of these bean counters.

We don't need another MMO to replicate Skyrim--We just need MULTIPLAYER.

(and by multiplayer, I mean IP to IP connections that don't rely on your fucking servers)

In the name of all that's holy, THIS!

Fetch me my LANsword, Ho!

Re:ARGH!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dedicated servers please. I'm happy that the time of having to explain friends how to open ports is behind me. And the shitty lag caused by incredibly low upload speeds.

Re:ARGH!

[zoward]

I want to strangle some of these bean counters.

We don't need another MMO to replicate Skyrim--We just need MULTIPLAYER.

(and by multiplayer, I mean IP to IP connections that don't rely on your fucking servers)

Where's the money in that?

Re:ARGH!

[tool462]

Absolutely. I'm old now. I don't have the patience to make nice with a bunch of teenagers calling everyone f@gs and saying they took an arrow in the knee. But I would like to play with friends. Especially if we can do it without a monthly fee. Something more like SC2 on Battle.net rather than WoW. They can monetize with downloadable content for new quests and such. Monthly fees will kill it for people like me who can burn a bunch of time on one weekend, but then can't play for another 6 weeks.

Re:That's great and all but...

[Quiet_Desperation]

Settle down! I looks like they are creating a whole new studio for this, so Bethesda Prime will still be doing what they are doing.

Oh boy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't see this one coming.

Re:Oh boy.

[CanHasDIY]

I thought I saw it coming... 'til I took an arrow in the knee.

Re:That's great and all but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Where's FALLOUT 4!?

It's in a vault somewhere.... 13 I think. The one that's missing a waterchip.

No Mods No Fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Who would want to play Skyrim without my Giant zero-g boobies mods, and my leather catsuit clad slut follower and my summoned demonic succubus of love... I mean I play the game for the storyline elements like these that would be lost in a vanilla MMO...

Must have

[Quiet_Desperation]

The ability to capture the souls of other players in black soul gems.

I'd also like a deep, deep, deeeeeeeep crafting system. I can get lost in a happy OCD haze for hours with that shit.

Gotta start the game as a prisoner, except with an MMO, it can be a mass prison break. Ha! :-)

Pony mods. No, I'm serious.

Re:Must have

[Hythlodaeus]

No catching players in soul gems, probably.
Part of the premise is that player characters are people whose souls have been captured by Molag Bal - justifying respawn.

Mods?

[Riddler Sensei]

Yes, but can I loli rape mod it? If not then it's dead in the water for the PC TES community.

Possibly the first real WoW killer

[sandytaru]

A lot of games have claimed to be WoW killers over the years, but none have really had both the fan base and the development skills to get it right. (Poor, poor FFXIV. So pretty, so utterly broken. I'm crossing my fingers for their 2.0 reboot next spring.) TOR was almost there, but also failed. Tera? Not quite. Maybe, just maybe, Bethesda will manage to strike the proper balance of fun, interaction, storyline, pretty art, and awesome.

Re:Possibly the first real WoW killer

[crazyjj]

Many have tried. All have failed.

Re:Possibly the first real WoW killer

[Anonymous Coward]

If LOTRO and SWTOR can't kill WoW, then no MMO can. I'm sorry, but TES is too niche for that to happen. Compare it to the level of exposure and fandom of Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, and you'll see my point.

Re:Possibly the first real WoW killer

[Anonymous Coward]

Guild Wars 2 might make a dent in it, though I have no illusions about it killing WoW.

Re:Possibly the first real WoW killer

[Endo13]

I'm pretty sure ArenaNet also has no expectations of it killing WoW. And the irony is, that might be exactly what makes it a WoW-killer. Blizzard, for example, didn't set out to make WoW an EQ-killer. They just looked at what was out there, found ways to improve (by their standards) everything, and made a fun game that they wanted to play. Not surprisingly, lots of other people also wanted to play it and it became much more successful much more quickly than they ever imagined.

I think the lesson here is not to try to compete with what's out there, but to make your game, make it fun, and make it accessible.

Re:Possibly the first real WoW killer

[Endo13]

The Warcraft brand was a lot more niche before WoW than TES is now. It's a lot more about the game than the existing fanbase. The vast majority of WoW players past and present never played another Warcraft game. If the game itself hits the right notes, the players will come.

Re:Possibly the first real WoW killer

[Fned]

If the game itself hits the right notes, the players will come.

The "white note"?

lets make a non-crappy single player version first

[Anonymous Coward]

"and one that is worthy of The Elder Scrolls franchise" Because sure as hell the utter crap that was Skyrim was definitely NOT worthy of being released. I don't think I've played 6 hours into a RPG only to completely abandoned it without a second thought.

Re:That's great and all but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fallout 4 should be set in Detroit. They could use the real city as inspiration. (a run-down shithole filled with savages) A few nukes would actually improve it.

The end of the SP TES experience?

[Anonymous Coward]

If history is any indication with KotOR and WoW. This may signal the end of the single player TES games. I doubt Zenimax will pour money and resources into both a full MMO and SP TES experience. I understand that it's a business and MMO's is where the money is if successful but this news leaves me very sad. I'll place TES: VI next to Warcraft 4 and KotOR 3. I hope I'm wrong but I'll be surprised if I am.

Bethesda makes quality games.

[DeadboltX]

Despite everyone's gripes about the MMO genre, Bethesda makes quality games, and I believe they will make a quality MMO.
Whenever I play a Bethesda game I never feel like im grinding, I'm always immersed in the story and the environment around me. I don't feel like I'm trying to rush to the end. I'm more interested in the story and the adventure that goes along with it.

MMO lately have been missing this immersion (for me at least). They may be full of story but it doesn't touch or interest me, and it seems like it was all thrown together haphazardly for quest filler. (Although SWTOR suffered from the opposite problem. The game was 100% story with lackluster gameplay that made me cringe.) Most of the time it feels like the quests were not designed around the story, but rather the story was designed around the quests (and just how much story can you pump into a "kill 10 bears" quest).

I for one am hopeful that Bethesda will breath new life into an over-saturated MMO market and I am looking forward to enjoying the genre once again.

Re:Bethesda makes quality games.

[cyber-vandal]

Seriously buggy games are not quality games.

Re:Bethesda makes quality games.

[Jaysyn]

Bethesda isn't making this.

Re:Bethesda makes quality games.

[Omestes]

Can someone please actually look up the relationship between Zenimax and Bethesda?

ZeniMax Media was founded in 1999 by Bethesda Softworks founder Christopher Weaver and Robert A. Altman. Weaver's vision was to use Bethesda Softworks as a hybrid-media company which would create cross-media properties for a diverse range of different platforms. Weaver brought Altman on board as CEO, contributing his stock in Bethesda Softworks so that the new shell company, named ZeniMax Media, would be able to obtain funding. Weaver moved to a non-operational role in 2002.

As I stated here earlier (sans an added bit of flamebait), Zenimax is not to Bethesda what Vivendi is to Blizzard. Zenimax and Bethesda are pretty close to being the same thing. Bethesda is Zenimax' development arm, or Zenimax is Bethesda's publishing arm.

I wouldn't be surprised if many of the people who make TES games for Bethesda were transferred over to the new MMO arm.

Re:Bethesda makes quality games.

[Jaysyn]

They've been working on the MMO since 2007 & I doubt they had devs working on both games (& Skyrim's soon to be released DLC) at once.

Re:Bethesda makes quality games.

[Omestes]

They can shuttle people back and forth, it is a rather common thing. Making DLC for Skyrim isn't a very labor intensive process, so much of the staff (barring other unannounced projects) is idle, and has been since the major work on Skyrim was completed (a couple months or more before release).

I'm not saying this is true, or agreeing with anyone, I just feel that a lot of people here have been confused about Bethesda's and Zenimax' relationship. For all I know Bethesda is busy at work on TES VI (please remake/update Daggerfall, thank you), and they're using new people to hack out TES Online.

DAoC

[CosaNostra Pizza Inc]

Wow! I remember Dark Age of Camelot...good game for its time.

Re:DAoC

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out Guild Wars 2 when it gets released in a couple of months (or look for videos). It manages to not only recapture the great parts of RvR but improve upon them. Of course, it is in beta so that could change but so far it is a great improvement to the model DAoC started.

A different kind of MMO?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I make a suggestion to MMO developers? Perhaps its past time to to shift gameplay mechanics and overall user experience in to something that much more compatibable with a modern schedule. The most appealing part of LoL (aside from the free to play bit) is how you can pile on a few games over 6 hours, not touch your account for 3 months, and pick things up again exactly where you left off next time you get the urge to play. The least appealing potential part of an ES MMO? Replacing the 12,789 npcs programmed with fetch quest for a subscription fee and the 12,789 entitled idiots currently on your server treating the world like its their very own sand box. No thanks......

Re:A different kind of MMO?

[Shados]

Guild Wars 2 is pretty good on that front. Save for a few dungeon crawls, "raids" are largely replaced by what they call "dynamic events", that just randomly (or sometimes not so randomly, after a string of sub events) happen around you. Everyone can just jump in on those, and everyone gets rewarded according to their contribution. You work with each other even if you're not partied.

Even large epic boss fights work that way. They happen and everyone around the area just jump in for the fun, then leave. No commitment, if you get bored you leave and no one gets pissed. You can jump in mid fight too if you missed the beggining. Baby's crying and need to be fed? Go take care of him/her, and come back when you can, and you'll still get some reward.

PvP in it is the same way. Large scale 2 week long (or something) wars where you just jump in and leave at your leisure, and you get scaled up to max level no matter your real level.

Its not perfect by any mean, but for those who want the MMO experience without needing to give your heart and soul to the game, it seems to be the best middle ground so far.

MMORPG nastolgia

[CosaNostra Pizza Inc]

Anyone remember the original Everquest? It was fun, unless you lost connection or server crashed while you were on the boat in the middle of the ocean. Then you drowned.

Re:MMORPG nastolgia

[geekoid]

DO you know why WoW is so successful? because EQ wasn't fun.

Re:MMORPG nastolgia

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone remember the original Everquest? It was fun, unless you lost connection or server crashed while you were on the boat in the middle of the ocean. Then you drowned.

To progress in WoW, you had to sticky tape down a few keyboard keys.

To progress in EQ you had to give up your family and your full-time job.

Re:MMORPG nastolgia

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh EQ was more than 5 years old when WoW was released. Also playstyle-wise classic WoW is very much like EQ.

Re:MMORPG nastolgia

[Anonymous Coward]

WoW was successful because it catered to the lowest common denominator (mainstream audience).

also

[sixtuslab]

"It will be extremely rewarding financially to unveil what we have been developing the last several years,"

Bugs

[WrecklessSandwich]

Bethesda decided that they simply can't have enough game-breaking bugs while working within the limitations of a singleplayer game. The next logical step was to move to an MMO format because they needed more things to be able to break.

Re:Bugs

[BigSes]

Exactly this! I put 125 hours into my savegame, have two trophies to go, and find out that my quest to complete the Thieves Guild chain is broken (with no plans of of them patching it). PS3 version, the PC has work arounds and a community that may be able to mod a fix (yes, yes, I know, thats why you play on PC, not the point here). No way will I start over, but I just feel let down. Came so close, just for the game to not allow me to complete it to my standard.

To save on server overhead...

[XiaoMing]

All NPC's such as quest givers and merchants will be removed from the game, and replaced with players whose characters have taken arrows in the knee.

Well, about time!

[Life2Death]

I'm tired of playing with myself all the time!

torn

[Tom]

I'm torn here.

I've always wanted multiplayer in Elder Scrolls. But I was looking for cooperative multiplayer, as in playing with your SO, a few friends, something like that. 4, maybe 8 players max. (1-3 parties).

MMO? Really not sure about that. It will depend on how it's done, of course.

Bethesda actually has a good chance...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if they take what made other MMOs good and leave out what made other bad, they stand to make a good chance of the title.

Thing is, in TES you're never grinding and the world is actually developed. Encounter a book somewhere? You can read it. Encounter an item you want somewhere, you can get it (but there might be consequences). No preset paths are defined, you are completely free to go where ever you want.

But, PLEASE make a quality user interface which actually works on the PC.

Just keep...

[Anonymous Coward]

Marc Jacobs and EA away from it, and you might have a chance..
once either of those two parts come in contact with the MMO, it will FAIL. EPIC TOA FAIL!

great

[geekoid]

now we can all enjoy bugs and repetitive dialog together!

HeroEngine

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't expect an open world as in Oblivion or Skyrim. They are using the same sub-par game engine SW:TOR is using:

http://www.heroengine.com/tag/bethesda-softworks/

Re:That's great and all but...

[Anonymous Coward]

/me clinically nods, adds a mark to the tally board, and gets out another "spoiled trust fund waste of life" label to staple on the AC

Re:That's great and all but...

[Kelbear]

I hope that new studio has better QA than the old one.

With a release date of 2013, the game will probably be playable in 2014 given their track record. Their games are beloved for an amazing scope, but they have a history of releasing games filled with game-breaking bugs that players tend to forgive for having attempted to achieve so much. Hey, you can always just enter cheats or download mods to fix the problems right?

This time it's an MMO, and when the game-breaking bug stops your main questline in it's tracks, or empties your inventory, or resets one or more of your stats to 0, etc. etc. etc. You can't hit the command line to fix it.

I'm excited about the game for sure, but I have absolutely no confidence in them to release a stable MMO. I'll wait a few months or a year after release and let other people deal with the bugs first.

Late...

[matt007]

The funny thing is that when i was playing The Elder Scrolls Arena on my ooold PC years ago (1995, that game came as NINE floppy at the time.), I was already seeing a near future with loads of players online in the same "world" and I was impatient.
few years after that in 1999, I was playing Everquest.

So they missed the window of opportunity by about a decade. Well done.

This made me fall through the floor laughing.

[Anonymous Coward]

This made me fall through the floor laughing.

Re:That's great and all but...

[X0563511]

You can't, but the "moderators" (game masters or whatever) should be able to.

Did someone....

[Anonymous Coward]

..steal your sweet roll?

R.I.P. Elder Scrolls

[DragonTHC]

Bethesda just took something we love and now they're going to make us pay out the ass for it.

Think if skyrim were an mmo, how long would it take for you to play? How many months would you have to pay a subscription fee?

How many modders would continue to offer stuff up on skyrimnexus?

No thank you.

Re:R.I.P. Elder Scrolls

[xhrit]

To be fair, there are mmo games that have active mod communities. Word of Warcraft has tons of mods, I myself have created a UI mod for Fallen Earth, and the Firefall community has been hard at work creating mods even tho the game is not yet released. It all really depends on the attitude of the developers towards the community, and how much control the devs have over the project. The developers at Red 5 and Gamers 1st studios know they key to making good games is involving the community in the design process and giving the fans what they want.

Also, two out of three games I mentioned are 100% free to play. Not buy to play, not pay to play, but 100% free, as in if you want to right now you could go download and play them from start to finish for free without buying anything. That is better then Skyrim - the main reason I have not yet played Skyrim is that I am too busy playing free mmos like Firefall and Fallen Earth.

An elder scrolls online done right would be the best mmo ever. It could have everything the fans love about the single player game, but with more people playing. It could be classless, it could have 1st person view, it could be moddable, and on top of that it could be free. They could have made the greatest fantasy mmo ever. Unfortunately they decided to instead clone the greatest fantasy mmo ever, World of Warcraft. I think they really dropped the ball on this one.

"I felt a great disturbance in the Force ...

[kava_kicks]

... as if millions of wives suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced"

I suspect 2013 is going to be a bumper year for divorce lawyers.

Re:That's great and all but...

[WrecklessSandwich]

Part of the problem is that Bethesda as a publisher forces the studios to commit to a release date at the start of a project. It's not necessarily poor QA, the games just end up getting pushed out the door before they're ready.

Re:That's great and all but...

[shutdown -p now]

I think it's called Wasteland 2.

Hope There's a Single Player Version

[Greyfox]

I'm sure it'll be an awesome game apart from all those... people... you have to deal with. SWTOR did a pretty good job of hiding them but you'd still occasionally go through some guys you needed to drop who weren't in an instance. Then you get this Disneyland rope line going of people waiting to kill those guys. I was all like "Fuck, I won't have time to run back to the spaceport and fly my ship to the fleet!" Then I realized that driving to Utah takes slightly less time and that's a bit more fun. Costs about $40 in gas, but you get what you pay for.

The Vanilla Wow Players crowd is quite vocal

[Anonymous Coward]

But they are also thinking they're more important than they are.

Reality is: You wouldn't play that, you just think you would, because you're nostalgic for it. If you went back to it, you'd be saying "Ah hell, I remember why I hated this crap!" and demand all the fixes and improvements Blizzard has put in, not just the graphic ones, but tons of other.

Nostalgia, it makes people think they want the good times, but blinds them to the bad.

I hope...

[MBraynard]

I hope they asked themselves the question before they got started, "What things can we do that will make ours better than what else is out there?"

Re:That's great and all but...

[Lanteran]

Actually, I was in a discussion about this very thing the other day. It was decided pretty unanimously that Detroit would probably have been one of the biggest cities in the pre-War US, both due to a lack of cultural shift away from manufacturing jobs and its point right on the border of annexed Canada. It'd be pretty awesome to have such an urban jungle style fallout setting.

Also, have you ever actually been to Detroit?

SWTRO was not let down by technical issues

[Shivetya]

It was let down by a poor design and execution. It was let down by being shoved out the door before it was ready. It was let down by lack of content and any real effort to balance classes, let alone factions.

If not for the Star Wars IP it would have burned out in three months, instead it will linger but its chances at long term big numbers are blown. Even many of the most rabid fan sites for the game have little real posting traffic anymore. (reddit is a prime example)

subject

[Legion303]

"set a millennium before the events of Skyrim as the daedric prince Molag Bal tries to pull all of Tamriel into his demonic realm."

Spoiler: he doesn't succeed.

Will it have TES combat, or WoW combat?

[Nerdorable]

The fact that this MMO has been in development for the last five years makes me extremely apprehensive about the yet-to-be-revealed combat system. The business world gauges the success of an MMO by it's popularity and one key element to popularity is accessibility. World of Warcraft modeled itself after EverQuest, but achieved much greater success by making everything more accessible to even the most casual of gamers. Nearly every Western MMO made within the last five years has copied the stereotypical fighting mechanic of hitting tab to select a target, mashing an optimal rotation of buttons, and landing skills based on a hit rating statistic (not player skill or aim). The most recent example (or casualty) of this archaic combat system was Star Wars: The Old Republic, which gave players an even more simplistic combat system than the WoW model it so transparently copied (despite having a $200m budget). It is exciting to imagine that this will be an MMO version of Skyrim complete with player housing, fully customizable classes, and combat that is dependent on aiming, positioning, and reading enemies that aren't automatically targeted with the click of a button. But I'm already setting my expectations for this pretty low.

Re:That's great and all but...

[ifrag]

You can't, but the "moderators" (game masters or whatever) should be able to.

Except even then, the point stands anyway, playable in 2014 is still the target. "Game Masters" or whatever the hell are probably going to be horribly understaffed, not have good tools on their end, and also be completely flooded with requests for the first few months.

Once the game starts bleeding out subscribers, at that point the support will be ramped up, and you'll finally be able to chat with support staff in times less than hours, and they'll probably even be able to fix your problem.

I guess my problem is I keep trying to get in on MMOs during launch. It's the absolute worst time to actually try playing it. I'll hit max level and get bored with it before any serious amount of fixing is done, or if it's particularly terrible quit even before that.

Sad... I won't be able to do it my way..

[modi123]

That was always they joy of the last few Elder Scrolls games - I could make a character *MY* way. So I was a thunder bolt wielding master thief that was crazy proficient with his greater enchanted long sword who didn't know blocking was an option until level 24 and didn't pick up a blacksmith hammer until level 51. I go through phases while playing the game to find a character with a skill balance that *I* make work... not some damn tree to pick from or idealized party of tank/healer/ranged classes. Maybe the DLC will keep me going!

Selective multiplayer option

[ShAkE_a82]

What i would like is single player game with a multiplayer option where one or more friends (or random people that i can invite) can join in with their characters into my game and play difficult areas with me that are of especially hard difficulty.

Stealth characters

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the greatest aspects of the game that really made TES unique for me was the possibility to do an effective, and enjoyable stealth characters. The illusion branch, combined with the stealth mode and the leveling system made the game the only RPG that could be played without the need to blindly kill hordes of enemies. Now, I can't imagine how all this could translate into a MMO. Every player will have a detect life spell (which is horribly cheap), and the system will probably wont allow you randomly steal objects from people (oh, look, 1000 thieves pickpocketing and burglaring the countess).

MMO? Not with that UI

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweet, I've always wanted to play an MMO where I need to access a menu every time I need cast a different spell, use my weapon, or see what buffs I have. Also, how cool would it be to have your level one questgiver NPC ganked by mobs all the time? Well, at least he or she will respawn, I guess.

Fix your UIs or at least give us the ability to mod it, ffs.

WHY?? so depressing

[Fabkilljoy]

all i can say is that it really bumms me out that all mmo games are for PC and MAC thus i cant play them i have a xbox 360 and it would take to much money and time for me to get every thing to convert my pc to a gameing pc anyway :(