Elder Scrolls Online: 9+ Minute Preview

[Memnir]

I love the idea of an Elder Scrolls MMO. I really do. However, I also loved the idea of a Old Republic MMO, and well... yeah. I did not love TOR anywhere close to as much as I hoped I would. For that reason and others, including a current feeling of overall MMO fatigue, I gotta admit - I have been leery as hell about a massively multiplayer experience in Tamriel.

This video has me getting my enthusiasm back. They said a lot of the right things, in terms of maintaining what draws me to the single player games Bethesda makes. Also, they say a lot of the right things to make me interested in it as an MMO.


C L I C K


Now this is a very early promo, and a very broad view of the gametaken as a whole, so I take everything seen and said with as much grains of salt as I take DDO's release notes these days. Time will tell how much of it actually pans out, or works as they say it will. But, I like what I see in that video. I look forward to some of their more in-depth stuff.

It's got my interest, at least for the time being.

[Alaunra2010]

Hmm... you know, I'm eager to see what they do with it, but I doubt it will fit my playstyle with respect to TES games.

I want a witch's broom that whinnies like a horse and lets me fly, so I add a mod.
I want a house, so I add a mod.
I want navigation points for my owned houses, so I add a mod.

I want all weapons to do much more damage per hit, so I make a mod.
I want all spells to do more damage, so I make a mod.
I want to change the dark vision effects to be easier on my eyes, so I make a mod.

The secret sauce for these games has been our ability to amend content and gameplay to fit our individual tastes.

The only lore that draws me in is D&D lore. The lore from the Elder Scrolls does not capture my imagination like D&D does. However, I can adapt the game to fit my playstyle, so it's still cool. Take away my ability to mod a TES game and it is immediately demoted from the game that has my undying loyalty to the "MMO de jure."

*shrug* My two cents. If it's TES and I can't mod it, I probably won't buy it.

PS: Thank you for posting the link! It was really neat to watch.

[RabidKoala]

looks pretty nice. Most of my friends play Skyrim not DDO so if i can get them to join i might just have to try it out.

[Dwarfo]

Personally it looks and sounds like a GW2 with Skyrims' combat style, which got boring after a while. Too slow, too repetitive, too easy to counter attacks. Also, I read somewhere that "every class could get the same exact skills"?

Bleh. I played Skyrim for a total of 35 hours, and by the final hour, I could hardly stand the stupid "swing swing CHOP, BLOCK"

[Artos_Fabril]

They had me right up until "Once you hit level 50, that's where the game really starts to open up."

[Syllph]

Now this looks good.

[BitkaCK2]

The potential makes me all tingly. Here's hoping it doesn't suck. DDO is wearing me down and EvE Online had been closing sockets and nuking my interweb so a breath of fresh MMO air would be just what the doctor ordered.

bitkaCK2

[MeliCat]

Skyrim was beautiful and intricate. I am still not sure why I got bored but I did. As beautiful as this promises to be there was just something lacking that made me switch off.

[Barazon]

I've been playing Elder Scrolls games since they first came out. They have always been way ahead of the curve in terms of world-building. When other people were building dungeons, they were building cities and wilderness areas. When other people built cities and wilderness areas, they were building continents.

Their single-player games have always been huge, and since the advent of MMOs, their single-player games have been bigger than MMOs. I can't wait to see the world they create for an MMO; it sounds like all of Tamriel will be open. Now that other people are building continents, they're building worlds. Unfortunately it looks like the Aldmeri Dominion may only be part of the PVP area.

[MRMechMan]

Looks good. Hmmm, all players on 1 server, that makes sense...

[Grosbeak07]

Looks interesting...

Hopefully they learn from Guild Wars 2 when it comes to character development or the lack there of.

If its half as good as DDO, it will draw my interest.

[Garix]

It was all looking good until around 7 minutes in. The statment "Once you hit level 50 that's when the game opens up" says that this game is going to be more about the destination (end game) than the journey (leveling). That statement alone almost kills the whole thing for me. Still plenty of time yet though so I hope to be wrong. Look forward to more details as and when

[bigolbear]

well it looks stunning, but thats no surprise.

great combat engine - again no surprise.

customiseable characters - the use of the word 'class' bothered me a little for an elderscrolls game, but the talk about mages in heavy armour and weilding greatswords aleviated that concern a little.

My biggest concern reamins - BUGTHESDA...guys if we think turbine is bad for bugs, bugthesda is in a league all of its own

None the less I truly hope its Free to play/ micro transaction and i will check it out if it is. Im also hopeing we get not only pc gamers but also console gamers on this, it would be nice to have an mmo I can play in my living room sitting on the sofa.

[Memnir]

Im also hopeing we get not only pc gamers but also console gamers on this

I was thinking this as well. I'm hoping X-Box has paid attention to how well DCUO did on the PS3. By many accounts, it was more active then the PC servers were.

It would make it a hard call - but I think my wife and family would still prefer I got it on he PC, even if a console version was availible. If the TV were taken up by a lot of Elder Scrolls MMO time, they might get a bit testy with dear ol' Dad. Of course, with my wife and the rest of the fam being Elder Scrolls fans as well*... we may have to get both.


*I was very proud that my kids asked me to pick up Morrowind for them after they played Oblivion; and that even with the dated graphics they both played the hell out of it. They are perhaps more excited then I am that the next Skyrim DLC is going back to Morrowind.

[Doomcrew]

Looks stunning, as with the other folk, will wait and see.

[Musouka]

Yeah... I like elder scrolls, but mostly because it was my own game.

I will probably give this a shot, because of the idea of a mega server, but I am not all that interested in the RvR.

[LOOON375]

One huge fricken lag fest........."all players on one server"

[SniptheShadow]

It looks amazing!

I've had late night talks with other gamer friends years back about this; we pondered an Elder Scrolls MMO during the era of Morrowind. Personally, I always had hopes that Bethesda would gain (if they wanted it) the license to use the Dungeons & Dragons rules (3.5) and the world(s) that it encompasses. If D&D in a video game looked like an Elder Scrolls game...well, I'd just never sleep again, I suppose.

As for what I see in the clip, I have fingers crossed. If looks alone made a video game great...

We know it takes a bunch more than looks to get it right, though.

Now, if we'd just get a solid release date so I can plan my life accordingly, you know. Sheesh.

Thank you for the link, Memnir!

Snip

[Cardoor]

Looks like they passed on glass armor...

This might work as an MMO, but it will be interesting to see how they handle the higher lvls when everyone becomes the same character. I remember starting three or four different types of characters which at high levels were pretty indistinguishable from each other (because you can do everything at that point).

[Musouka]

So I was reading that they did create their own engine from the ground up, but they licensed and used the HeroEngine, which is famously used in Star Wars: The Old Republic, as a basis and a prototype to see what they needed to build a game engine. So it will run similar to the HeroEngine, but that is ok. Look at the direction of Skyrim and the perk trees.