Trailers: The Elder Scrolls Online - The Alliances Cinematic Trailer

[Hagi]

that may work with a single player game just fine, but a MMO is based on having a large number of people continuing to play. The kind of people that just go for the newest shiny will be pulled away by the next big shiny thing on the market, while those that are interested in elder scrolls world will be left unimpressed and uninterested

True, but there's no rule or anything that you're only allowed to bring out a single trailer. There will be plenty of promotional material coming in the future as the specifics and details of all the classes and gameplay mechanics are revealed.

Right now they want hype. They want to ensure that they're the current big shiny thing. So that when they release there'll be at least a million people, if not more, buying the game for 50 bucks so that they can get some part of their initial investment back right away.

MMOs need large amounts of people continuing to play. But having a million extra at launch buying your game sure doesn't hurt.

 

[keroko]

Way I see it trailers are to games what covers are to books.

A game shouldn't be judged by it, not even if it's a gameplay trailer, and it's generally in the publisher's best interest to have one that catches the eye easily.

So I guess it's a pretty good trailer with that in mind, nothing special though.

But the entire point of trailers is to sell the product to the audience. Having an underwhelming trailer that fails to define why your game is better than the rest defeats the entire purpose of a trailer.

You should know better than that. This type of trailer might not sell it to you personally, but for the majority of potential buyers it works.

The buyers who want in-depth information like you will look up articles, reviews, previews and reveals anyway, there's no need for a trailer like this to cater to them because they'll search out the information they want on their own.

The buyers who don't want in-depth information are what they're after with flashy trailers like this. For that group it needs to be a trailer that just looks cool, that's it. Failing to provide information or being generic don't really matter, those things aren't cared about enough anyway.

It's not about dept, it's about diversifying. Right now, all we're seeing is the same old, same old. The same stuff every MMO has. From this trailer alone, the guy playing another MMO is going to raise an eyebrow and say "Okay, so why should I get this MMO? Mine has elves and humans too."

But throw in some prominently present Kahjit and Argonians, and you've upped the ante. Suddenly, your trailer screams "We're different!" Sure, it's superficial difference, but as you said yourself, these trailers are superficial marketing to begin with. But they need to be different on that front, because if they aren't, they're not going to attract much attention away from what's already on the market.