Elder Scrolls Online's Main Story Will Be a Solo Affair

[John Funk]

Elder Scrolls Online's Main Story Will Be a Solo Affair

There won't be a line to kill the big bad guy.

Speaking with recently-unveiled Elder Scrolls Online [http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/05/17/what-makes-the-elder-scrolls-online-a-modern-mmo.aspx], creative director Matt Firor said that the developers wanted to make the player feel like the hero they were in the single-player games. "You're always the hero, whether you want [to be] or not," he said. "You go out there and kill the dragons. You defeat Mehrunes Dagon in Oblivion. In Morrowind you're up there fighting the Tribunal."

"Those are huge, global, epic things that you don't want to stand in line to do in an MMO," he said. "The last thing you want to do is to have the final confrontation with Mehrunes Dagon as he's stomping across the Imperial City, and you see 15 guys behind you waiting to kill him because they're on the same quest." The TES Online designers were hoping to hit that feeling of "You're awesome, you're the hero" through technology, letting players confront the games' major villains in instanced areas by themselves (or, presumably, with friends).

"We have a whole part of the game that's 100% solo, which is the main story," he said, which would let players be the hero and see the world react to them.

Firor said that the team didn't want the game to fall into MMO conventions - where if you're adventuring in a new area and you see a ruined tower to the left and a town in front of you, you go to the town first so you can get the quests that will eventually take you to the ruined tower. "To me, that's dumb," he said. "In The Elder Scrolls games, if you see something interesting, you go over there and you find something to do ... you get something to do right there, you get rewarded, and then you can go to the town."

"You don't have to do things in a certain order. You can go to the tower, and then you might see an interesting camp of bandits in the distance, so you go there and you have something else to do."

I can appreciate Firor's sentiment, but I do think that if players want content that's "100% solo," the MMO genre may not be for them.

Check out the full interview, including thoughts on The Elder Scrolls Online's endgame and raiding, over at Game Informer [http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/05/17/what-makes-the-elder-scrolls-online-a-modern-mmo.aspx].

Source: Game Informer [http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/05/17/what-makes-the-elder-scrolls-online-a-modern-mmo.aspx]

Permalink

 

[userwhoquitthesite]

News from bethesda:
"our game is terrible, we have no idea what we are doing, please buy it anyway"

The sooner we all ignore this and it dies, the sooner we can pretend it never happened, and go back to giving Bethesda money for good games

 

[Maze1125]

I can appreciate Firor's sentiment, but I do think that if players want content that's "100% solo," the MMO genre may not be for them.

That's a fallacy that MMOG developers have been holding on to for far too long.
There is a large portion of the MMOG player base that likes to solo. That doesn't mean they never want a team, just that sometimes they like to solo too.
There's multiple reasons, maybe they can't find a team, maybe they can't be bother to try and set one up and just want to fight immediately. Maybe they don't like to form teams themselves and like to wait to be invited, and want something to do in the meantime. Maybe they don't like teaming at all, and just like the MMOG's gameplay and story.

It doesn't matter why, the simple fact is that such players exist, and are willing to give their money to a game that satisfies them.

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

So, basically it's just an Elder Scrolls game that happens to need an internet connection?

M'k, glad we cleared that all up, but still, not very sure about this game.

 

[draythefingerless]

News from bethesda:
"our game is terrible, we have no idea what we are doing, please buy it anyway"

The sooner we all ignore this and it dies, the sooner we can pretend it never happened, and go back to giving Bethesda money for good games

bethesda has nothing to do with this game apart from making games from the same IP.

 

[The Forlorn]

BORING.

Not the article, the game. Why the hell would I want to always be the hero? Especially in a massively multiplayer game? It's 1000x more interesting to be anything but the hero. Only kids want to be the heroes. Gamers are getting into their 60's now.

And what the hell is the point of an mmo, if it's all solo? What is the point of an mmo, if it's not specifically designed to be an mmoRPg? You know, encourages role playing and people playing in character with others, since it's multi-player?

These are rhetorical questions.This is an ineffable failure of imagination and game design.

 

[Zaik]

So, what, they saw TOR falling to pieces already and thought, "That looks like a great idea!"

 

[9thRequiem]

So, what, they saw TOR falling to pieces already and thought, "That looks like a great idea!"

And not just TOR - there's been plenty of MMOs where this kind of thing is the standard - MMO with instanced story structure. At this stage, making an announcement to that effect isn't going to make any waves at all.

 

[Sixcess]

So, what, they saw TOR falling to pieces already and thought, "That looks like a great idea!"

I lol'd.

Problem is, that for all the mean things I've said about TOR (and will probably say in the future) I'll still say Bioware deliver a really really good singleplayer experience. Yeah, it's linear as it gets and the gameplay is unremarkable, but it's well written and slickly presented. That's what Bioware do, and they do it well.

TES on the other hand, whilst known for singleplayer, doesn't have story as its main draw. People don't play TES for 100s of hours for the story, they play it to play around in their sandbox, and TESO is takin away their sandbox. Way to give the fans of the franchise what they like, guys.

I know it's bad manners to judge a game before it's released, but this is going to be terrible.

 

[userwhoquitthesite]

News from bethesda:
"our game is terrible, we have no idea what we are doing, please buy it anyway"

The sooner we all ignore this and it dies, the sooner we can pretend it never happened, and go back to giving Bethesda money for good games

bethesda has nothing to do with this game apart from making games from the same IP.

Okay, fine. "news from consistently related Bethesda affiliate: our game is balls, and whoever made it, it's still bethesda money funding this shitpile"
better? It doesn't matter what codemonkey is tapping on the keyboard because the basic idea came from the money at Bethesda, and the basic idea was a shitty MMO.

Don't get bogged down in semantics

 

[antipunt]

I actually semi-appreciate this. I never like the idea of TES MMO, but this at least makes me dislike it less. The whole reason why I'm turned away from these kind of MMOs is precisely because it -would- remove the whole single player ambiance of TES. So...we'll see about your deliver Beth..

 

[draythefingerless]

News from bethesda:
"our game is terrible, we have no idea what we are doing, please buy it anyway"

The sooner we all ignore this and it dies, the sooner we can pretend it never happened, and go back to giving Bethesda money for good games

bethesda has nothing to do with this game apart from making games from the same IP.

Okay, fine. "news from consistently related Bethesda affiliate: our game is balls, and whoever made it, it's still bethesda money funding this shitpile"
better? It doesn't matter what codemonkey is tapping on the keyboard because the basic idea came from the money at Bethesda, and the basic idea was a shitty MMO.

Don't get bogged down in semantics

i will. because people who work at Bethesda are related to Zenimax online only in the fact that they are both owned by Zenimax. they are totally different teams, do totally different things and totally different ways of doing things. if you wanna insult people, insult the right people. the basic idea came from the people who have Bethesda on a leash, Zenimax. theyre the ones who make these money grubbing decisions. not bethesda softworks.

Zenimax= publisher and decision maker.
Bethesda= talent who does good stuff. also, bethesda has gone on record to say they wouldnt put multiplayer on elder scrolls because it goes against what theyre trying to do.
Zenimax Online= another studio on leash from zzenimax, who does their online products or sth similar to it.

 

[Headsprouter]

This is why I exclaimed "Damn it!" when I saw this game was announced.

It's gonna be a really terrible mix....sometimes a game will only work one way....I can't imagine a MMO missing the point this much.

 

[Charli]

Oh good god they have no idea how an MMO functions. Abort mission, repeat, abort, Bethesda you are not ready for this. Stop now. Before it's too late.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

So it's an MMORPG without the MM?

 

[grandhammer]

Just because its mmo doesnt mean you should have to group to do anything. The world is massive but the quests dont have to be.I solo play every mmo I play. 99% of the time I watch chat and talk with friends while I solo the game . Thats how I play and most of my friends. It's VERY frustrating when we HAVE to group with people we dont know just to do 1 or 2 quests Swtor for instance I completely skipped all the group quests and just solo'd. This comment actually got my attention and has now made me interested in this game.

 

[Senor Smoke21]

These are all things that GW2 is doing: Personal story that you can do completely on your own. "where if you're adventuring in a new area and you see a ruined tower to the left and a town in front of you, you go to the town first so you can get the quests that will eventually take you to the ruined tower." - This is just the event system. No more quest hubs, the game rewards you for exploration.
It's refreshing to see more MMO's straying from the accepted conventions that all previous one's have strived for.
Whether it'll work out or not remains to be seen, I have a feeling that TESO will be little more than a WoW clone than an actual massive multiplayer online Elder Scrolls game. But perhaps we will all be pleasantly suprised.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Just because its mmo doesnt mean you should have to group to do anything. The world is massive but the quests dont have to be.I solo play every mmo I play. 99% of the time I watch chat and talk with friends while I solo the game . Thats how I play and most of my friends. It's VERY frustrating when we HAVE to group with people we dont know just to do 1 or 2 quests Swtor for instance I completely skipped all the group quests and just solo'd. This comment actually got my attention and has now made me interested in this game.

I agree that having significant solo content is a big plus. Living in Japan, I often game at weird hours in relation to my online friends. So it's good to hear about this.

Too bad virtually everything else they have revealed about the game falls under my "facepalm" category.

 

[Ophiuchus]

To be fair, questing from 1-85 in World of Warcraft is very nearly 100% solo these days, so this is not entirely surprising to me. Actually, I really appreciate having that option. I've recently started levelling a new character completely independent of any guild or group - I don't think for a minute that this means MMOs are not for me, it just means that I occasionally enjoy a bit of peace and quiet in a game that I play to kick back and relax.