Trailers: The Elder Scrolls Online - Announcement Trailer

[FFHAuthor]

I know nothing about this game. But Dumbledore seems to endorse it. He's good at trusting things right?

Only afterwards, in retrospect in the book version of the game will it all make sense.

 

[JenSeven]

Bethesda, what have you done? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!!!!!!!!

This is not Bethesda, this is the responsibility of the board of directors at Zenimax (who own Bethesda and the company that is making this game, Zenimax Online). So this is on the heads of:

Robert A. Altman
Chairman & CEO

Ernest Del
President

Jerry Bruckheimer
Jerry Bruckheimer Films

Michael Dominguez
Managing Director, Providence Equity Partners Inc.

Leslie Moonves
President & CEO, CBS Corporation

Cal Ripken, Jr.
President & CEO, Ripken Baseball, Inc.

Harry E. Sloan
Chairman, Global Eagle Acquisition Corp.

Robert S. Trump
President, Trump Management, Inc.

 

[Use_Imagination_here]

*extremely long sigh*

Look bethesda, we allready have half a dozen good mmorpgs to choose from, you were to only one constantly pushing open world western rpgs forward. The best things about skyrim was freedom to do what you wanted and total immersion because the gameworld felt real. This seems like and excellent way to ruin the only things people thought were special about your games. It's a terrible, terrible idea is what I'm saying.

If this is just a cash grab i have to inform you, NO ONE WANT'S TO PLAYANOTHER GENERIC FANTASY MMO, and the amount of fanboys who are willing to buy this just because it's set in the elder scrolls universe is nowhere near enough to justify the investment. I have no idea what the guys behind this are smoking but I want some of it.

 

[The_Lost_King]

Bethesda, what have you done? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!!!!!!!!

This is not Bethesda, this is the responsibility of the board of directors at Zenimax (who own Bethesda and the company that is making this game, Zenimax Online). So this is on the heads of:

Robert A. Altman
Chairman & CEO

Ernest Del
President

Jerry Bruckheimer
Jerry Bruckheimer Films

Michael Dominguez
Managing Director, Providence Equity Partners Inc.

Leslie Moonves
President & CEO, CBS Corporation

Cal Ripken, Jr.
President & CEO, Ripken Baseball, Inc.

Harry E. Sloan
Chairman, Global Eagle Acquisition Corp.

Robert S. Trump
President, Trump Management, Inc.

Fine. Zenimax, what have you done? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!!!!!!!! better?

 

[Strazdas]

Sorry, Bethesda. I can't exactly get excited for this game when my computer can't even run Morrowind well, and I'm pretty damn sure that you're not going to be releasing this on consoles. That said, if you were...

well its really YOUR problem that you took the inferior path.

And sadly this is not going to work. Tamriel has a way to make things very very well, but i doubt they will ever suceed. Altrough knowing Bethesda, they havent dissapointed yet.

 

[centermassmatt]

At first I was SO excited for this game, THEN I saw the GI article and wanted to tear my hair out?! 3rd-Person only?! Traditional MMO combat similar to WoW!? How the hell did they rape this so bad?!

Found this awesome analogy posted on the ESO forums and thought I'd put it here too. basically just change COD to TES and you'll get the idea:

This just in everyone! In light of Zenimax's recent ESO news, ACTIVISION has jumped on the bandwagon:

HYPOTHETICAL PRESS RELEASE EXCERPT:

DOUBLE HELIX GAMES, makers of ?Battleship: The Game? are currently developing a brand new MMO for Activision?s acclaimed, signature first-person shooter franchise: ?Call Of Duty.?

Built upon the WORLDFORGE engine, COD: ONLINE, will feature a new and exciting third-person view from which to control your soldier! Pair that with the same MMORPG mechanics so many veterans are used to, with hotkey, timer-based combat, cooldowns, but in the fast-paced, hardcore military environment of World War One and we can?t lose! The story of CODO will be a pre-pre-prequel to the Call of Duty single-player games, that sees many familiar faces on dead old French people from the first COD WW2 game, as actual main characters that you and thousands of others will control across the theaters of WW1. Why not the core FPS combat of previous COD games? Well because in an MMO that would be technically IMPOSSIBLE! (Don?t google ?Planetside? please).

From the Sommes to Gallipoli, you will march across decimated wastelands and war-torn landscapes to finally fire one round from your bolt-action rifle and be immediately cut down by incessant, AI driven machine-gun fire that will guarantee a historically accurate outcome to the war. Keep in mind though, the rock-paper-scissors of hotkey-based 3rd-person combat! If your opponent uses his ?Mustard Gas? AOE DOT then you counter with your ?Gas Mask? Interrupt and press the number 2 to fire your gun at him. Suck at aiming? Don?t worry, all you have to do is tab target your enemy and you will hit him in the face every time. Battles will be staggeringly huge, sometimes up to 100v100 in the same battlefield! Did we say battlefield? We meant Call-of-Duty.

Also, we?ve decided to approach the art-style with a more cartoony feel to it. Considering the success of games like ?Team Fortress 2? we?ve decided to basically copy that. It?ll be great, you?ll love it. You have to! It has ?Call of Duty? written on it! You don?t want people to think you don?t LOVE Call-of-Duty do you? Think of how bullied you?d get in school, and that cute girl in class would never look your way again without a lifetime subscription to CODO! Since we also own Blizzard, we?ll also be able to do some cross-promotion with you WoW veterans, who will feel right at home in the trenches of WW1 since all the battlefields are basically re-skins of Arathi Basin. You can even earn some new unique gear in CODO that will give your WoW character some new looks like, a German WW1 helmet with that cool spike on the top! Imagine your level 85 Goblin wearing one of those! Badass!

Last thing, the shareholders at Activision have said that if this doesn?t blow away WoW?s lifetime sales in the first week and score at least 103 on Metacritic, they will close the book on all future COD projects, regardless of genre or developer. It?s only fair, since we?ve invested more money and manpower and time into this game than any other COD before. So if you want COD to continue, you will buy this game and subscribe to it. Forever.

Love, your ?bestest pal ever?,?

-Robert ?Bobby? Nicholson J. ?I was in Moneyball with Brad Pitt? Kotick

 

[JenSeven]

Well, I decided to not take this sitting down and complain about it on a forum, I decided to send a mail to Zenimax explaining why this whole this is a terrible idea.
I send it to Zenimax's own mail: http://www.zenimax.com/contact.php
And Zenimax Online's mail: http://www.zenimaxonline.com/contact.php

This is the mail I send, if anyone else wants to send them a mail to try and prevent the release of this game, feel free to use whatever parts you want from my mail.

Dear Zenimax.

I hope this mail will get forwarded to the people that run this company since this message could prevent this company from getting a significant loss.

As I see it, The Elder Scrolls Online will fail and become a significant financial loss to the company and will damage the name of The Elder Scrolls game line as a whole. I will explain this.

The announcement of The Elder Scrolls Online has recently come to my attention and after examining the news and screenshots a very troubling scenario has come to my mind that I have seen before.

From the news I have read the developers have described The Elder Scrolls Online as similar to World Of Warcraft, and will have functions similar to World Of Warcraft to make it easier to play for people that are already familiar with those features.
From what I can understand from this is that The Elder Scrolls Online aims to draw people away from World Of Warcraft and into this game.
This is something that I have seen many times before with MMORPGs and almost all of them have failed, for very simple and understandable reasons.

I'm probably right in guessing that the financial plan for this game is a monthly subscription based payment for players, similar to World Of Warcraft. This means that it is in complete competition with that game.
Now here are the problems with this.

To get new players.

1. TESOnline as I have noticed will look and play similar to WoW, however it is an untested game that hasn't been around for many years, like WoW. People have seen many MMORPGs fail in the past while WoW kept on going. They are not inclined to invest money and time in a new game that is in a field that has seen a great deal of games go bankrupt, many of which have had large names behind them (like Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa). People would much invest in a game that they know will be around in several years.

2. WoW is the biggest game out there, with the largest player base, this is a very attractive idea for many players since there will be people that they can get along with and accept them into their group. There is no assurance that the same can be said of TESOnline.

3. If someone wants to play a game like WoW, they will play WoW. It's like someone who wants to buy a Mars bar. If you let them choose between a Mars bar and a knock-off copy of a Mars bar, everyone will choose the real Mars bar, since it has brand recognition and they know what to expect. This is similar with MMORPGs.

To draw away player from other MMORPGs

1. People do not play multiple MMORPGs at once, they usually stick to one game and keep playing it. They do not switch between games easily and certainly won't keep up with multiple MMORPGs.

2. People have invested a major amount of time and money into a game such as WoW, they are not inclined to throw all that time and money away to start over in a new game completely from scratch. That is why WoW is so successful, players keep playing and paying since they don't want to see all the time and money they put into the game as a complete loss, so they will keep on playing that game.

3. To draw away players, you'll have to offer a significant difference or improvement over the game they are playing now. Creating a WoW clone does not offer much of a difference or improvement over their current game.

4. People that play MMORPGs have their friends, guild and clans in these games. They have a community there. They are not inclined to switch to different games because of their ties to that community and their friends. They rarely leave their groups, since they create a familiar setting and place for those players to which they will stick. They might rarely leave their community to try out something different, however this usually is only for a short time and then return. The only way in which you can keep those players in your game permanently is to draw in the whole clan/guild/group and due to the other reasons, this is highly unlikely to happen.

Drawing in Skyrim fans.

1. Skyrim was a massive hit, and quite probably something that draw a lot of new players into The Elder Scroll series. People that would want to play TESOnline are expecting it to be like a Skyrim Multiplayer game. TESOnline is not that. The playstyle, artstyle and everything else is much more like WoW than like any Elder Scrolls game. This is not what Skyrim fans want to play.

2. Skyrim is a one time money investment, like all of The Elder Scrolls games, people that play those games are much less likely to accept a monthly subscription fee. They are much more likely to buy Guild Wars 2 than play TESOnline as it stands now.

3. People that play Skyrim almost always explore that world with one companion that they attracted in the game (or several ones in case of a few very popular mods), a world like TESOnline is now showing does not seem very appealing and is a huge break from their normal experience while playing Skyrim. A system like Guild Wars uses (instance based) seems much more in line with the way they experience Skyrim.

Well, those seem to be my points. I hope people will read these and understand my points and the consequences of the current designs of The Elder Scrolls Online. I do hope things can still be saved since it seems like a good plan, however as it is now a very badly thought through and executed one.

I thank you very much for reading, and I hope to see that the people in charge can see my points and reason.

I think this is a pretty good mail, I hope this will also inspire other people to send their own mails to the company to prevent the release of this game as it is now.
I hope we can get a game out of this that honours the Elder Scrolls name and does justice to that game line, and not some cheap WoW knock-off.

 

[dpixie]

Unless this is going to be the first MMO to come out of consoles my reaction is a mix of 'meh' and 'dammit!' because 1) more resources are going to go towards this rather than the next elder scrolls game and 2) by not playing I'll end up missing out the story unless someone youtubes it.

 

[Akisa]

Unless this is going to be the first MMO to come out of consoles my reaction is a mix of 'meh' and 'dammit!' because 1) more resources are going to go towards this rather than the next elder scrolls game and 2) by not playing I'll end up missing out the story unless someone youtubes it.

First MMO to come out of consoles? What about FFXI?

 

[JenSeven]

Unless this is going to be the first MMO to come out of consoles my reaction is a mix of 'meh' and 'dammit!' because 1) more resources are going to go towards this rather than the next elder scrolls game and 2) by not playing I'll end up missing out the story unless someone youtubes it.

Actually, this game is not made by Bethesda. It's being made by the sister company Zenimax Online.
So I doubt any of this will be canon.
And if there is a financial concern, if this bombs, the only ones that are going to lose money is Bethesda's parent company Zenimax.

 

[dpixie]

Unless this is going to be the first MMO to come out of consoles my reaction is a mix of 'meh' and 'dammit!' because 1) more resources are going to go towards this rather than the next elder scrolls game and 2) by not playing I'll end up missing out the story unless someone youtubes it.

First MMO to come out of consoles? What about FFXI?

Oh yeah, I totally forgot about that game. Okay I amend that statement to 'unless this is going to be one of the rare MMO's to come out on consoles'

 

[Dr. Mongo]

Oh, great! Another beloved one-player title that gets transformed into another online-multiplayer-wow-clonish... thing.

Meh.

 

[Jaeke]

As epic as the music for the trailer was, I couldn't get over the evil Uncle from Harry Potter voicing over...