The Elder Scrolls Online

[Morreion]

Moongates were the travel portals placed in widely-spaced areas in UO.

Vanguard did improve after release (mainly performance-wise) but the population never recovered. It has a small but loyal fanbase now. From today's standpoint, the game isn't bad at all- the character models and animations are a bit stiff, but the landscape is fantastic (the draw distance makes for some grand views), the world is huge and varied, and there's a large number of quests to do if you like that kind of thing. You can build a house in the game world at pre-selected lots, or build a boat and go sailing to explore the world.

Vanguard Re-Review (MMORPG.com)

I've gone back to Vanguard every once in a while to play for a bit:

farjourneys.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=vanguard

I may go back again!

[ariesel]

"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."

An in-depth look at everything from solo questing to public dungeons awaits in our enormous June cover story – as well as a peek at the player-driven PvP conflict that pits the three player factions against each other in open-world warfare over the province of Cyrodiil and the Emperor's throne itself."



www.gameinformer.com/p/elderscrollsonline.aspx

[Morreion]

Whoa! DAoC 2? Sounds good!

[Morreion]

Elder Scrolls creative director: We want to make a good game first (Massively)

"We have to make our own game," he tells Game Informer. "We want to make a good game first. Not a good MMO, not a good Elder Scrolls game, we want to make a good game first, a great experience for the player."

Rumor: 100 v.100 PVP, 120 hours to level cap in The Elder Scrolls Online (Shacknews)

A post on the NeoGAF forums reveals a laundry list of features and content to be included in the game, supposedly pulled from the GI article. The game world will be huge, relative to Skyrim, but several areas will be closed off for use in future expansions. Played from a third-person perspective, players will be able to choose one of nine races from the three factions of The Ebonheart Pact, the Daggerfall Covenant and Aldmeri Dominion (but don't expect to play as a werewolf or vampire). Once a player begins leveling, they can expect to spend upwards of 120 hours getting to the level cap.

Bethesda confirms Elder Scrolls MMO, three-faction PvP (Massively)

The dev team is headed up by Matt Firor, known primarily to gamers for his work on Dark Age of Camelot. Like DAoC, the new Elder Scrolls title will feature three-faction PvP.

Respect Your Elder - High Hopes for The Elder Scrolls Online (Ten Ton Hammer)

With a massive and highly detailed environment to explore and quest in, ESO should offer players the experience and feel of the original game, except that it will be enhanced by sharing that experience with others. Come on guys, let’s be honest: how many of us over the years who have loved playing these games have made a comment about how awesome it would be if we could share it with a friend? Looks like we’re finally going to be able to.

The Elder Scrolls Online: The return of public dungeons (Edge Magazine)

“If anybody’s played MMOGs for a long time, they’ll know that the very first generation had public dungeons,” Firor explains, loading up a low-level Daedra public dungeon to demo - a grand series of catacombs with lofty ceilings and walls of rusty brown stone. “Public dungeons were my favourite thing about EverQuest, in fact, and I can’t think of an MMOG since then that’s had them.

"When you think back to the fun MMOG moments in the first generation, it’s standing there, terrified, in an enclosed space, waiting for someone to come along and save you. We can’t do that punitive gameplay that they did in those days, but we can put people together in places where they want to work with others.”

TESO: Evolving or Devolving to be a MMO? (Keen & Graev)

I love MMO’s more than most people, but I won’t pretend for a second that the traditional class system is evolved ahead of anything else out there. The single-player approach, an obvious themepark nature, and looking at how far they’re going to have to alter their winning RPG formula to accommodate the oft clunky MMO mechanics worries me. I foresee a very tough future ahead for TESO.

Hopefully I will be proven very wrong. I won’t mind at all.

The Soapbox: Translating Elder Scrolls Online dev speak (Massively)

In other words, 2007 was a great time to release yet another fantasy themepark. 2013? Not so much. Like BioWare, though, ZeniMax has a money-printing IP on its hands, one that basically guarantees that anything the company puts out there will ride its name recognition and brand loyalty to a certain number of sales.

The Elder Scrolls Online: Reinventing a Franchise in an Online World (Gamesindustry International)

Q: As soon as the game was announced, the biggest concern for Elder Scrolls fans was "how can they be taking this online? They are missing the point of what Elder Scrolls is!" What has always made Elder Scrolls so enthralling for them is that it's this huge, massively single-player game. Skyrim, which sold over 10 million copies, proved that you can still do single player in a world where everything is supposed to be going online. From your point of view, being from ZeniMax Online, what was the conversation like internally with Bethesda about taking this property online?

Matt Firor: You said the thing that is the most important. It is the franchise that we are taking online, not the single-player game. The single-player games are still the single-player games. We're taking the license and the franchise online and doing something with it that hasn't been done before, much like the Elder Scrolls novels. But all of those concerns are valid by the community until they actually see it and play it. We've taken a lot of effort to make the lore consistent and make sure that it's the experience that they expect. The places they can go, the characters they can play and the enemies are all based very much on the world that they know, and that's where it works.

The Soapbox: BioWare, meet ZeniMax; ZeniMax, this is BioWare (Massively)

...If this sounds familiar, it's because a similar tactic was employed by BioWare during the run-up to SWTOR's launch. BioWare spent absurd amounts of time and money to create what is essentially a sequel to Knights of the Old Republic (or 10 sequels, whatever). It tacked on some PvP, a handful of dungeons, and a sub fee, and it marketed the resulting concoction as an MMO.

Nearly two million consumers bought it hook, line, and sinker, while those of us who openly wondered about BioWare's inclination or ability to deliver a virtual world and grandiose post-launch content promises are still wondering almost eight months later.

ZeniMax is treading this same path with TESO, and while at first I chalked it up to tone-deaf developers, I've since realized that it's more like business-related common sense. I don't envy TESO's devs, let me tell you. As I've said before, the game probably seemed like a good idea back in 2007. Now, though, the reason it's being met with eyerolls, yawns, and outright hostility in the MMO community is because we've seen all this before, both the product and the marketing tactics.


I've noticed quite a bit of dissatisfaction with Elder Scrolls Online from MMO fans in comment sections and message boards. There seems to be a rejection of business as usual by a part of the MMO fanbase these days as players tire of hype-building exercises for the next MMO that'll fade away 6 months after release.

[ariesel]

Nice alpha review

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLp0ykvotEI

Ari

[Morreion]

Will be interesting to see what happens with this game!

[Morreion]

Taking us for granted (Skycandy)

The chief complaint is that the game’s setting and mechanics are bland and generic. The videos and screenshots illustrate a fantasy world we’ve already seen in countless other games. The game does the lore no justice. The Elder Scrolls has a base layer of stock fantasy tropes with orcs and elves; it should be working toward pushing past that and highlighting what sets its world apart from all the others. Tucked away in the lore are tinges of Imperial Rome and Britain, a dash of feudal Japan, monkeymen beyond the sea, an interesting take on the Moors, a pantheon of chaotic and meddlesome daedric princes, and on and on. As a commenter reminded me, the games are actually deceptively twisted. The lore has an absurd and bizarre Alice-in-Wonderland quality to it.

All of that appears to be lost in the MMO version of the game, or at least in its marketing to this point, and I wonder whether that isn’t just one more step in the evolution of the series. After all, fans have been lamenting the games’ vanilla flavor ever since Oblivion launched and failed to outshine Morrowind’s unique setting. Sure, it’s hard to follow as original a game world as Morrowind’s, but Oblivion didn’t even try, and neither did Skyrim (they possess mechanics improvements, but the settings are dull as dishwater). Let’s face it: ZeniMax and Bethesda have been trying to mainstream the series since 2007. They were already trying to make the weird and wonderful lore more stock and palatable to Bobby the Bro. The MMO is a successor to those games, not to Morrowind.

And that’s exactly why ZeniMax must stop neglecting actual MMO players and news outlets. Even Blizzard reaches out to fan sites now! It’s part of the PR machine in this age of fierce AAA MMO competition. Right now, we’re all just stewing in mutual distrust for IP-driven games and a general suspicion that ZeniMax doesn’t give a crap about MMOs or MMO gamers because that’s how it appears when you pander to everyone but us in both your game design and your press partnerships. You need to sell your game to us, and we’re not sold right now. Those console frat boys will only make you cocky, just as happened with Star Wars: The Old Republic. This industry doesn’t need another big IP MMO that sells big to Bobby the Bro and then loses a few hundred thousand subscriptions in just a few months because the game had no soul and nothing of substance that would endear it to dedicated MMO gamers in the long run.

Please, learn from BioWare’s mistakes. Don’t take us for granted.

A question of trust: TESO dev answers to VG247′s readers

“Every story has the opportunity to be exciting because people are going to get out there and find things to attach to. There are tons and tons of things out there for people to fall in love with – whether its the main quest of saving your soul from Molag Bal, or the distractionary quests that have you running around or the public dungeons, there’s just tons of great Elder Scrolls Lore in this world for you to find and fall in love with. Trust me.”

Introduction to the Lore of The Elder Scrolls Online (EN)

The Ebonheart Pact is the most extraordinary and fragile of all the alliances in Tamriel. Born out of necessity, it is an alliance forged between three groups whose deep-seated, bitter sentiments and distrust for each other is barely outmatched by their shared animosity for the races they have allied against. But they respect each other as only old enemies can.

The most geographically far-reaching of all the alliances, the Ebonheart Pact spreads across the northern and eastern rims of Tamriel. Though such a large area of control would usually promote discord amongst allies, in the case of the Ebonheart Pact, it strengthens their alliance. Each race has so much territory of their own to deal with that they have no desire to meddle in each other’s lands.

Hands-On with The Elder Scrolls Online (Ten Ton Hammer)

In the meantime, if I were to impress any one thing upon you based on my hands-on time with TESO it would be this: the game works as both an Elder Scrolls title and an MMOG, and will no doubt appeal to gamers from either background. That said, don’t expect that TESO is going to be exactly like Skyrim only with more players on the map, nor will it be exactly what you’d expect from your standard AAA MMOG. Instead, it represents a true marriage of the two.

Once you factor in the extremely smart design decisions behind the world PvP system (think another worthy successor of DAoC’s RvR), a robust character creation system, and overarching objectives like the mages and fighters guilds, The Elder Scrolls Online has all the makings of a game you’d want to spend time playing over a longer period. I’m excited to see how development progresses and we’ll be keeping you up to speed all things TESO related in the meantime.

Factions of The Elder Scrolls Online (Ten Ton Hammer)

The Elder Scrolls universe is a large and complex thing, currently spanning seven game titles (plus multiple expansions, plus another series of games for mobile devices), fleshed out by a pair of "official" novels by author Gregory Keyes. Anyone who has played an Elder Scrolls game in the last decade knows that the world of Tamriel has a long, rich history - much of it chronicled in the many, many books that can be found everywhere from peasant homes to dank dungeons to fabulous Imperial libraries. The Second Era setting of the Elder Scrolls Online, about 900 years or so before the Fourth Era events of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, is where much of this history occurs.

What is the Target Market for The Elder Scrolls Online? (Ten Ton Hammer)

The PvP aspect of the game has also been the subject of much discussion. Because of the Megaserver technology, this is not World-vs-World or Realm-vs-Realm, but Alliance-vs-Alliance. And it's not the Rock-Paper-Scissors style of 3-sided PvP that we find in other games, because all three alliances have the same character classes (and classes are essentially meaningless anyway), and if history is any indication, racial bonuses won't provide a particularly significant advantage. It will be a game of Rock-Rock-Rock.

The Elder Scrolls Online answers queries about the Daggerfall Covenant (Massively)

The Daggerfall Covenant encapsulates the Bretons, Redguard, and Orcs, and is symbolized by a lion. A significant question is why the Orcs would join forces with the other two races. The devs responded by saying that the race feels inferior to others and is trying to get established as an Imperial province, although it's "an alliance of convenience."

An Elder Scrolls Lore Primer for Noobs (Ten Ton Hammer)

Since so much of the lore can be gleaned from the vast library of books in all of the single-player games, the easiest and most fun way to bone up on Elder Scrolls history and lore is to spend some time in those games. Starting with TES II: Daggerfall, there are readable books everywhere, and they all contain some kind of accounting of the events in history. Of particular interest will be books dealing with the various creation myths, First and Second Era history, nature and the supernatural. Some prime places to hunt for relevant books:

the library in Vivec (Morrowind)
any Mages Guild guildhall
chapels, temples, castles
fully upgraded player houses (Oblivion and Skyrim)


Elder Scrolls Online beta signups now live, six-minute cinematic released [Updated] (Massively)

TESO will make use of ZeniMax's megaserver technology to "avoid the hassle of shard selection." The game will also feature a built-in social network which the company says makes the new MMORPG "one of the most socially enabled games ever created."

The Elder Scrolls Online lead deals with differences between the MMO and single-player RPGs (Massively)

He said that while players won't always be at the center of attention, game NPCs will recognize great deeds and instancing will be used for important moments. One thing that won't happen as in the single-player titles is for characters to become the heads of game guilds (as opposed to player guilds). Firor also hinted that the Emperor of the world will be based on player PvP performance, but declined to give any further specifics.

The Elder Scrolls Online celebrates 1M Facebook likes with new armor concept art and videos (Massively)

The armor concept shows off High Elven, Nordic, and Breton heavy armors.

Ask Us Anything: Variety Pack 2 (TESO)

One of the most tedious things I found in other MMO games was having to read countless walls of text. Being a fan of lore, I'd read them anyway. However, in Elder Scrolls games such as Skyrim, NPCs speak to you so you don't have to deal with all the reading. Are most of the NPCs in ESO going to be voice acted? – By Cody Peterson

ESO is fully voice acted - you’ll hear every NPC. There are a lot of great lore books in the game, too, for those who choose to read them.

Serving you a scoop of Elder Scrolls Online beta details (Massively)

Beta events will begin as smaller, scheduled play sessions (usually on weekends) with a limited play window focusing on something specific. Invitations for the first round of public events will start going out at the end of March, with the tests starting shortly thereafter. Events will become more frequent and last longer as launch approaches, and players can receive separate invites for multiple events.

The Elder Scrolls Online serves up a stack of answers about combat (Massively)

At the moment, the trinity setup is not vital but is certainly helpful, as tester groups without a dedicated tank have managed to clear content (albeit with some difficulties). The soft lock system is based more around offense than defense, as healing abilities are not targeted. Players can also feel free to join in when they see other players fighting things, as all players who participate gain the rewards of fighting as in Guild Wars 2.

[Regolyth]

I'm really looking forward to playing this. Although I'm worried that the PvP will be really bad.

[Morreion]

Hands-on with The Elder Scrolls Online (Massively)

Since ESO is an MMO, there are some aspects of combat that differ from its single-player predecessors. Double-tapping a direction key will cause your character to dodge and avoid attacks. There's also an action bar, which is used to slot in various active abilities. The first class ability I selected was Mages' Fury; it allowed me to call down bolts of lightning from the sky to damage my foes. It was a great finishing move as it did extra damage against enemies with less than 20% health. The second ability I chose was Unstable Familiar in the Daedric Summoning skill line. This allowed me to summon a blue imp pet that was good at scooping up aggro from monsters and making unseemly gurgling noises.

ZeniMax's Paul Sage on The Elder Scrolls Online's endgame, PvP, and crafting (Massively)

In ESO, you choose one of three alliances, each with different zones, quests, and stories to explore. Once you hit level 50, you can choose to journey to another alliance's territory and experience a more difficult (and rewarding) version of those areas. After you complete the story within in the second alliance, you can travel to the third faction and complete the content there.

PAX East 2013: Hands-on with The Elder Scrolls Online, round two (Massively)

Upon each level up, you're granted a single attribute point and a single skill-point (skill points can also be earned by completing certain tasks within the game and not just via level-up). The attribute point, as previously mentioned, can be used to boost health, magicka, or stamina. The skill point, however, can be invested into any number of skills that you've unlocked. In turn, skills are unlocked through a skill-based progression system. If you want to unlock new two-hander abilities, you simply have to use a two-handed weapon, which will slowly increase your skill level with said weapon (ditto for armor and class-based abilities).

Hands-On with the Orc Sorcerer in The Elder Scrolls Online (Ten Ton Hammer)

On the exploration front, I was pleasantly surprised to find plenty of interesting content while out scampering around the island a bit off the beaten path. In one case I stumbled across the corpse of a dead pirate that had washed up along the shoreline. Emptying its pockets I found a note that sparked a new quest in the area. A bit further up the beach I came across a message stuffed into a bottle that was half-buried in the sand. At first the message seemed to be little more than a riddle to me; it was only later on that I realized it was actually a clue that would help me decipher an altogether different quest.

Ask Us Anything: Combat 2 (TESO)

You will be able to block with all weapons, though a shield is the most effective. Blocking doesn’t block all damage and is far less effective if you are out of Stamina. Ranged physical attacks and spell projectiles can be mitigated with a block, but all other magic will go right through. You have the chance to interrupt some magic spells, though.

Ask Us Anything: Variety Pack 3 (TESO)

You mentioned that there will be permanent character choices that affect the phase of an area—for example, saving a village or not saving a village. Let's say I did save the village and my friend did not. We are not in the same phase; how will we be able to play together in that specific zone? – By Pavle Vivec

In some areas, phasing (or “layering” as we call it) is not based on a choice, but on whether or not you’ve done a certain thing yet. In this case, separation from another player would be temporary. In other areas, it can be based off of a choice you’ve made. Those choices tend to come at the end of the activity for an area, reducing separation.

Ask Us Anything: Alliances at War (TESO)

It has been mentioned multiple times that players can invade areas surrounding enemy keeps in order to starve them of resources. What kinds of resources are these, and how will they affect gameplay? – By Eric Duey

The three resources around a keep (lumber mills, farms, and mines) fuel its upgrade process. Lumber mills help make keep doors stronger and allow them to repair themselves automatically. Farms make keep guards tougher and stronger, and mines help reinforce the walls, making them harder to destroy and allowing them to repair themselves over time as well. Taking control of resources around keeps also shuts off various patrols in the vicinity, so it’s always advantageous to take resources before laying siege to the keep itself.

First 20 minutes of Elder Scrolls Online gameplay leaked (Massively)

...a lengthy snippet of leaked gameplay footage has made its way onto YouTube.

The clip shows off character creation, nine playable races, and a choice between three classes (Dragonknight, Sorcerer, and Templar). You can also see the UI, skill trees, and various quests at different points in the video. There's plenty of combat on display, too, both third- and first-person.


The video has been removed, but I imagine it's out there somewhere. Check out the comments, it seems that there's a lot of heated debate about this.

[Regolyth]

I'm liking what I'm reading. The only game I'm more excited about right now is Camelot Unchained, but I have a few years to wait on that one.