The Glade 4.0

I'm not a giant fan of the franchise but the beta signups opened up today: http://signup.elderscrollsonline.com/

Tis a sad day then

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

So tempted to sign up...

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Beta signup launch trailer.



And here's an introduction video that actually has some gameplay footage.

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"I Live, I Love, I Slay, and I Am Content."
- Conan the Barbarian

Oh that does it, I am SO signing up for the beta!

Cancelling any lingering other MMO subscriptions I have, too. I lost interest in EVE and I've been floating from MMO to MMO wasting time and money. This is it. This is what I've been waiting for.

I can't decide if I'd rather be the red-headed elf chick or the black-and-gold armored assassin, though.

I've loved the Elder Scrolls ever since Arena. This is IT!!

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Why are all the good franchises going the mmo route? Warcrsft msy have seen an improvement in the reach of its fanbsde but many others havent/arent doing so well. Personally I'd rshter have another warcraft rts over Pandaria

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

$$$

Subscription fees.

TES has had five installments now, and this is set way back in the timeline, long before the first game. It's time. In a way, TES is going to have a hard time going forward single-player from Skyrim; the storyline advanced so far and changed the setting so much.

WoW is a different story; there were only 3 RTS games in that franchise and the newest is now 11 years old; older by just under 3 weeks than Morrowind. They could stand to put out another game in that franchise now, but for Blizzard, the combo is WoW expansions+ SC2 expansions+ Diablo expansions.

Game companies have to make money. It really isn't so much about what the fans want as what the fans will pay the most for. Otherwise.. that's the end of the franchise entirely.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Nah. The future of MMO's is free-to-play.

I just hope this and DQX are worth it.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Yes, for minimal functionality. To get the whole thing, you pay either monthly or by some other method of "unlocking"...but you pay.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I certainly hope its not a dicked-up mess like Vanguard, but this is not a half-ass company or series and it is not dominated by one guy's vision.

There are some things they mentioned in the video that I think are risky. I hope they do not go the super-hard route of early EQ or the super easy (aside from hardcore raids) route of WoW, but this franchise has produced 3 installments since EQ and its latest and probably most popular just recently. This is not a wild rush into the MMO scene.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Taking Elder Scrolls the MMO route really perplexes me.

I mean, what part of "our series is founded on an open world of exploring the wilderness and the biggest mod community in gaming" says "Hey, I bet making it so you can't move ten feet without tripping over another player doing the exact same thing you are and making mods cheating because it's a multiplayer server is the way to go forward with our franchise!"

I mean, I'm not going to go all doom and gloom and declare they can't pull it off.

But I will go out on a limb and say it'll surprise me if this doesn't have all kinds of negative repercussions they have no idea they should even be expecting.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Most companies go the MMO route because they think they can get mad money out of it. In a lot of cases, they're seeing WoW and wanting a slice of that pie. Hell, Blizzard did it because they wanted in on the Ultima Online and EverQuest money. If you play Warcraft 3, and especially Frozen Throne, you can see how they were setting up an MMO.

The thing about Elder Scrolls is that it's already pretty close to an MMO. The experience I got from EverQuest is about the experience I thought I was going to get from Daggerfall. There were some differences, but on the whole EQ was what I wanted from Daggerfall. I never played Morowind, Oblivion, or Skyrim because I got bored of Daggerfall, and the Elder Scrolls games haven't deviated overly much.

An Elder Scrolls MMO actually looks appealing to me in a way that the single player games haven't. As it turns out, I'm not all that interested in the bugger off of the main story line and do other random bullshit type of gameplay in a single player game. In an MMO, however, that's right up my alley. I didn't really care why we went to the moon in Shadows of Luclin. Ruins of Kunark was some more dungeons to go stomping around in. I didn't give a flying **** about the Burning Crusade, I just wanted to check out rocks floating in the Twisting Nether. Elder Scrolls Online looks like, "We've got some story, but... Here's a dungeon! Go play with your friends." I dig that.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I'm sure there will be unexpected reprecussions, but every MMO has those.

I don't see modding or cheating being any more of a problem than in any other MMO. While the gameplay may be similar to Oblivion or Skyrim, I think they realized that it would not be possible to simply revamp that same underlying engine into a multiplayer version; hence the re-introduction of a fixed class system which has not been around since Arena. Hell, if modding were allowed in anything remotely approaching Skyrim modding it would probably not run at all.

Actually, that reminds me, there was supposedly a project underway to make a mod for Skyrim that would allow multiplayer (on a far smaller scale than MMO). My initial impression was "that'd be great, if it weren't for all the OTHER mods." It might be made to work but with anything other than a bare install I would not have high hopes.

As to the wide-open sandbox, every MMO I've played has already been a wide-open sandbox in one way or another. As to everyone else doing what you're doing.. well, if you don't like that you probably don't like MMOs at all; those are issues of the style of gameplay, not with the TES setting. I don't see it being a problem just because the other 5 TES games were single-player sandboxes, any more than the issues inherent to MMOs made it a bad idea to export the Warcraft RTS setting to an MMO.

That said, IIRC Kaffis, you and I were 2 of the original founders of Atagenos when Vanguard came out and we all know how that ended up so I certainly understand trepidation. However, reading your comments gave me an interesting thought:

Back in 1999, 2000, that era when EQ was the big kid of MMOs, Morrowind wasn't even out yet, and Velious was new, unexplored territory, I talked about TES with some of my guildies, only about half of whom had even ever heard of Arena or Daggerfall. At the time, the half of us who had agreed that a TES MMO would be so awesome!

Looking back, I'm glad it didn't come out then when Asheron's Call and DAOC were coming out. I'm glad they chose to stay single player with Morrowind. I'm glad they didn't try to cash in on WoW's success and compete with it when it was new, or even when it was 2-3 years old, Oblivion was coming out, and Vanguard was tripping over its own feet. I'm glad they didn't come out with it even instead of Skyrim.

Instead, I would say, it's time. I'm going to make an analogy here some people will get better than others. Some parents are pretty practical about the fact that their teenagers are going to eventually have sex. They tell them "look, just let me know when the time comes and we'll make sure you have some protection". They don't tell them "no, don't" because they know that makes it worse. They may tell them it's better to wait till marriage, but they don't try to force that.

Now this is a very loose analogy for reasons everyone here is smart enough to comprehend, so please don't excessively pick it apart. I think, however, that whether you consider this marriage or just getting ****, TES has definitely not rushed into things, and its using protection. This game has been in development since 2007 and in the meantime Skyrim has come out; a game that's been all-in-all pretty successful. I don't see signs of trying to make a WoW clone, of jumping on the bandwagon, or of abandoning the single player sandbox theme in pursuit of "MMO at all costs". I think this franchise is mature, and it's time for it to break into the MMO route.

I'll be disappointed if this means no TES 6, or if it kills Bethesda or TES, but.. I don't see it happening.

Now, I may be indulging in a certain amount of fanboism here; I hope not to much. If there ever was a computer game series I'd be a fanboi for, this would be it. I am not without concerns. I am not at all sure about the "no shards" idea; that may lend itself to overpopulation. I like the "choose what armor and weapons regardless of class" thing A LOT! I don't think historically, being able to wear heavy armor has been anything like the benefit to a class that developers, even in the PnP realm, have imagined. That said, I worry that either armor will be irrelevant or that there will be one "right" selection and a bunch that are "wrong" once the number crunchers get their grubby mits on the game.

Ultimately, my big concern with this is not anything the developers might do, but rather what the players will do. My biggest worry turning this into an MMO is, frankly, nerds. Not geeks; we're all geeks, but nerds. Stop Having Fun Guys. Once a game goes multiplayer, it is fully exposed to the wrath of people who think online gaming is Serious Business. Up till now, TES has been protected by the simple fact that you enjoy it in all it's glory or horribleness in the privacy of your own home and that's about to change. The game is about to be exposed to the wrath of the whiners of the internet for whom game balance is national security.

That's my big worry, but I think it's time. Like losing your virginity, it won't be the same afterwards, you can't go back, and it might even **** you up for the rest of your life but.. sooner or later you have to do it.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I agree with this pretty strongly, except the getting bored part. As it happens, Daggerfall was the only TES game I ever truely became bored with, and partly because, like EQ, it was **** hard. Not always in a good way, like early EQ (original/kunark, maybe velious) it had a high frustration factor. They cut that back more and more in each successive game, though.

Had the successive games been like Daggerfall, though, I'd probably be in this boat.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Betheseda is leasing the franchise tag and their 6 year old tech to Zenibar on a game that doesnt impact the lore or canon of their game. Pretty sure that makes this free money.

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Setting the game a thousand years in the past was definitely a good idea. World of Warcraft has gotten much flak for what they've done to the storyline. Much of it doesn't make sense, and was shoehorned in for the sake of the MMO and hot PvP action. Later expansions in WoW had the same overall story problem as the Legend of the Five Rings CCG. Each new quest basically nullifies some earlier player accomplishment. The world is more jacked up now than it was during the Third War. It's kinda lame to go down some big bad boss, only it's really one of the major NPCs who actually saves the day.

By setting the MMO at an earlier time period, they don't feel like they have to continue the story from where Skyrim left off. I think that's going to go a long way towards keeping players happy. Your stuff that's going on can actually be about the players.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Good points there. SWTOR is set well in the past too, and that works well for the same reason. While the background of Star Wars is much more fleshed-out than the background of TES, setting things before the movies, and thus not affecting their storyline or that of any of the immense amount of material published afterwards was a wise move.

I don't know much about the storyline of Warcraft prior to the advent of WoW but the need to keep the challenges going in PvE plus the desire to have the ongoing Horde v. Alliance thing has defintiely resulted in all 4 expansions being essentially the same theme. Horde and Alliance discover some new threat and come to a tense truce to address it, which, based on activity in the battlegrounds, doesn't seem to be much of a truce at all. The Burning Crusade, the Lich King, Deathwing, whatever the big deal in Pandaria is.. they keep right on fighting each other while managing to hold these massive threats at bay as well. The trailer to Pandaria is awesome when the human hands the orc a spear so they can fight the panda together, but that truce was no more successful than any of the others.

TESO may experience some of this if the alliance war becomes something that just...can't....die down the road no matter what other dire threat arises, but that day is a long way off indeed. I think they key is to not make the threat all that dire. Re-work it so the goal is to re-direct the new threat against another faction rather than having tenuous truces that don't seem to exist within pvp areas.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

It looks like combat will be based on traditional TES combat, but with elements of Diablo 3. This makes good sense to me; in multiplayer you can't pause the game to switch spells or weapons around from a menu, nor can you stop to scoff down a resist potion, a 2-handed skill enhancement potion, a magicka regen potion, 3 chicken sandwiches, 9 apples, and 250 pounds of mammoth cheese.

It seems essentially that while there will be a lock-on as in traditional MMOs, you don't have to use it to hit something; it's more to keep track of targets, especially in major, chaotic battles. You'll hit things like in Skyrim; left mouse button attacks and power attacks, right blocks, both together bash. You'll be able to block whilst dual-wielding, but I'm not sure how you'll attack with the offhand weapon; possibly it will be utilized only to power attack? Presumably you can now bash whilst dual wielding also? Don't know.

Other than that, you'll have 6 abilities on a hotbar like D3; these will use mana or stamina and be your class abilities/spells. You won't wield spells in a hand like Skyrim, nor dual-cast to my knowledge. They will have no cooldown; the only cooldown is the time to animate the ability. If you have the resource to use it, you can spam it until you're dry. This also means you can always have your weapon(s)/shield equipped and can attack normally when out of magic/stamina. You can switch out hotbar abilities when out of combat.

Power attack will not cost stamina, it will just take longer to execute and therefore be (presumably) more easily interrupted. Blocking will (slowly) drain stamina, as will sneaking. Everyone can sneak, although not everyone will be equally good at it.

That points to the armor thing. Light armor will enhance magic, medium armor stamina, and heavy armor health. I'm not clear on if they'll boost the actual stat, abilities tied to the stat, or both. Light armor also means cloth AFAIK, medium means leather/chain, and heavy means plate - again, AFAIK. You can use whatever kind you want, and mix-and-match, regardless of class.

It appears there are going to be 6 classes; I am not clear if this means 6 per faction or 6 total that every faction uses. During the demo played last year in October at ZOS HQ, reporters were allowed to try 2 classes from Ebonheart Pact; Dragon Knight and Templar. Dragon Knight is a fighter archetype oriented on offense, Templar is fighter/defense. They saw, but did not play, Sorcerer and Warden, both mage archetypes.

I have seen surmised, and I am going, right now, with the theory, that whether there are 6 or 18 classes, they will be grouped into an offensive and a defensively-oriented fighter, mage, and thief archetype; the three traditional categories for TES. This is lore-friendly, and with the ability to choose whatever armor and weapons you want, as well as how much you advance each of your health, stamina, and magic, that you can tailor 6 classes into a near-unlimited number of combinations, especially since you don't pick an armor or weapon type at creation; you can switch out at any time and eventually gain full proficiency in all types.

Right now, only those 4 classes are known. I saw mention of Nightblade, traditionally a mage-thief type in TES, but only once so that's far from confirmed. Again, these classes were shown 3 months ago, and everything about them, names included, may have changed.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The Old Republic has Old Republic lore to deal with ... and trust me, they've done a far worse job of suddenly **** up some well established lore than Blizzard has.

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Well I, for one, approve of the use of more than 4 colors of lightsaber. Sometimes ignoring official canon is for the better.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

I'm not one to gripe about canon in a video game, especially an MMO like SW:ToR. The game would be pretty bland if it had to stick to canon.

My entire guild runs with Magenta lightsabers. I'm personally not fond of the black-core crystals, but the other colors I'm fine with.

Here is the entire spectrum of currently available lightsabers in the game, courtesy of Dulfy.
http://dulfy.net/2012/05/07/endgame-col ... tain-them/
{Edit: this is updated as of patch 1.6}

Did they ever remove the retarded alignment restriction to crystals?

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Holy shitsnacks!

Yea, I think those were removed before I was high enough level to understand what it was all about...