[Megathread] Elder Scrolls Online

[vizzle]

You're locked into the zones of your faction (plus Cyrodill) so... somewhat less freedom there.

Are you serious? What the hell? Sigh.

[Valeron]

That's rather disappointing to hear that you are locked into your zone of your faction. Seems to go against what an Elder Scrolls game is about.

[Forlorn Vita]

Yes, but Blizzard was the main company that made both Warcraft and WoW. Bethesda is not actually making ESO and will still continue to focus on the SP games. Bethesda Studios and the Skyrim and Oblivion creators aren't making it, Zenimax Studios is. Zenimax is only bother Bethesda with confirmed lore and other stuff and making sure it stays as close to ES as possible, but the creators of the SP games will still be completely focused on SP and not on the MMO unless it actually is a WoW-killer and makes millions and is actually a great game. But unless that happens, the SP games won't be affected at all.

[vizzle]

That's rather disappointing to hear that you are locked into your zone of your faction. Seems to go against what an Elder Scrolls game is about.

Maybe if we complain enough they'll change it before it's too late... we already know that they listen to feedback, so we need to make the internet aware of this... travesty.

Seriously I don't fucking get it. That's one of the reasons that made (imo) SWTOR suck so much -- not being able to explore nearly half of all content, just because of some arbitrary walls that the developer put themselves. Let us play your damn game, honestly.

[Jainzar]

What will make this game actually great is the PvP (or rather RvR - Realm vs Realm) system. The whole concept comes from a game called Dark Age of Camelot, an older MMO which was released back in 2001.

You have thee opposing factions, who fight 1 big war against each other and struggle to gain an advantage over the others. There's no instanced battlegrounds or arenas, but you have one big open world RvR zone where the action takes place. Typically each realm has keeps in its frontier zone, which can be taken by other realms and even claimed by guilds to receive certain bonuses. Also each realm has 1 relic, an artifact of great power which gives every player in the realm a certain bonus (like, for example, 5% melee dmg increased). These relics sit in a special, heavily fortified relic keep, which, of course, can also be attacked by the other realms and conquered. Realms can steal the relics and bring them into their own relic keeps in order to receive the bonus for the whole realm. If you played well and organized, your realm could conquer all 3 relics and thus provide its players with really nice bonuses.

What we've heard so far about the game (ESO), it will use a very similar PvP (RvR) system as DAoC. 3 Factions (Daggerfall Covenant, Ebonheart Pact & Aldmeri Dominion) who are in an ongoing war against each other. Now the difference to DAoC is that the war will take place in one big RvR zone (cyrodiil). In DAoC every realm had a "frontier zone", which the other realms had a teleport keep in and could travel there by using that. There wasn't really one big central zone as in ESO. And that's what will make this even better.

The three factions are geographically located in the west (daggerfall covenant), northeast (ebonheart pact) and the south (aldmeri dominion) of Tamriel. In the middle of Tamriel is Cyrodiil, the big PvP zone where all the action will take place. Each realm will share a border with Cyrodiil, and the areas of Cyrodiil near the border will scenically resemble the mainland of each faction. Each realm will have keeps in Cyrodiil which can be taken by other Realms and also be claimed by Guilds. There will also be Elder Scrolls, similar to the relics in DAoC, which each Alliance has 1 of. I'm guessing those can be conquered as well and give certain bonuses to the faction holding them. In the middle of Cyrodiil theres the Imperial City which can be conquered (we don't really know yet how this is achieved) and the player of the faction holding it who contributed the most (again, not sure yet how this will work) can become emperor.

There will also be RvR dungeons in cyrodiil and lots of stuff to do for everyone. ZeniMax clearly stated that there's stuff to do for solos, small groups, medium size groups and also large armies. I'm guessing it will be similar to GW2s WvW where you can sabotage other realm's supply routes, take small villages and towns and, of course, also raid keeps. Players can use huge siege engines to help them raid a keep, these can be enhanced by player crafting (no details yet on this though).

Now maybe you tried GuildWars2 (so have I) and thought "hey, this WvW thing sounds really good, let's try that" but then quickly realized that there's no real advantage your character gains from doing that. I know, it's kind of the philosophy of GW2, and I'm not saying it's bad. It's just not for me, I want to see and feel how my character gets stronger when I participate in something like RvR. In ESO it will be different: For killing people from other realms, conquering keeps and doing other things for your realm in Cyrodiil you will gain Alliance Points which will translate into 23 "Alliance Ranks", each with an unique title attached to it. There will also be leaderboards and scoreboards, so the whole RvR thing is heavily competitive and definitely "worth it".

What will make this system so great (and already made it in DAoC) is, that you can really participate in the PvP the way you want. You can join a huge army and raid keeps or try to take the other faction's relic, you can do dungeons in cyrodiil with your friends and pvp there, you can form an elite group of players and just roam around and simply try to kill foes from the other factions, ambushing larger groups of people, who maybe are about to take a keep. There's lots and lots of opportunities. The cool thing is, that you will feel attached to your own faction, over the time you will get to know enemy guilds and players on the battlefield and there's this amazing feeling that you belong to your realm and that you fight for it with all the players in it.

Now of course, with the megaserver technology, Cyrodiil will be instanced, there's no other way of solving that issue. Having a few hundred thousand players in that zone would be too much, no game could handle that. What the game will do: it will assign you to a so-called campaign with a few thousand other players and guilds, who then will all be in one instance of cyrodiil. It won't feel like your typicall wow-instanced battleground though, because one campaign will last for at least 2-3 months (don't quote me on that, but I thought i read something like that in an interview with the developers). So a campaign is more like a server really, but with a few advantages: The whole system is dynamic, so when the campaigns are reassigned you get to play against other players in cyrodiil. With the old "server shard" technology that wouldn't be possible.

I'm pretty confident that this game will be worth playing and that it will be tons of fun. Elder scrolls lore is amazing and the 3 factions Realm vs Realm system is genius and makes for great, great pvp. Also Matt Firor is the lead game designer of ESO, and he's the guy that was mainly responsible for DAoC classic and it's first two expansions (Shrouded Isles + ToA). And believe me guys, DAoC was the best game I have ever played, Matt Firor knows what he's doing. The RvR system is amazing, I have never played a PvP game that was so much goddamn fun. I know a lot of you haven't played DAoC, because the whole MMO thing wasn't that popular as it is now and the game was released 11 years ago, but until this day (and a lot of people agree on this) DAoC was the best pvp game that has ever existed. Anyone who played it will agree with me. The system is dynamic, it makes you feel attached to your own faction and there's tons of opportunities and ways you can participate in it.

Now I know that I only wrote about the PvP system, but I hope I could show you guys a little bit how it will work and give you some insight. There's of course a lot of other things we will be able to do in Elder Scrolls online. The combat system, the exploration based questing, it all sounds pretty good to me

Also the opportunity to explore a whole new world, play a whole new game will be nice, I'm kind of tired of WoW at this point. Blizzard did a good job on MoP, and it is fun, but the fact, that we have been playing this game for years and nothing really changes makes me want something new.

[Krothar]

That's rather disappointing to hear that you are locked into your zone of your faction. Seems to go against what an Elder Scrolls game is about.

Whilst I do agree with you on this (You should be able to adventure into other territories and "attack" settlements), from the sounds of the interview video that was posted, faction zones will be huge, as well as the contested zone will be large.
It sucks that we wont be able to go where we please, but the game is only in alpha, there are a lot of changes to make as of yet.

I have to admit though, keeping up to date with this thread and watching the videoes, I've stopped playing Halo 4 and gone back to Skyrim.

[Deleted]

It looks like they are going for the best of Guild Wars 2 (questing system, huge scale pvp etc) while also adding elements of regular MMO's ( end game pve raiding and dungeons)

I liked Guild Wars 2 but they just didn't have enough end game to keep me playing, if Elder Scrolls can find a nice balance between a guild wars 2 system and 'wow' style system then this could be awesome.

[Worgoblin]

What will make this game actually great is the PvP (or rather RvR - Realm vs Realm) system. The whole concept comes from a game called Dark Age of Camelot, an older MMO which was released back in 2001.

^
That's what it all comes down to for me. If they can capture the awesomeness of DAOC style RvR, I will toss my money at them. If however they go the WoW route of instanced PvP, I will have zero interest in it.

[Forlorn Vita]

Yea, I have this idea that if say your guild or faction can receive bounties and whoever kills the person first gets the money. And players can put bounties on other players and whoever kills that player gets money or an item.

---------- Post added 2012-11-10 at 01:28 PM ----------

faction zones will be huge, as well as the contested zone will be large.

Yes, I heard somewhere from a guy who did an alpha test that Cyrodiil's battlezone would be half the size of all three faction zones put together.

[Deleted]

I'm a bit sad that there's no communicating between the factions, hope that changes. Seems kinda pointless to have the whole mega server thing as "you can play with your friends", if you still have to ensure that you roll the same faction as all your friends too.... likelihood of all my friends rolling the same faction on release is slim to none, meaning I still have to make a difficult choice of who to play with, unless that's PvP only... the Q&A from the press weekend purely said "no communication between factions."

[Krothar]

I'm a bit sad that there's no communicating between the factions, hope that changes. Seems kinda pointless to have the whole mega server thing as "you can play with your friends", if you still have to ensure that you roll the same faction as all your friends too.... likelihood of all my friends rolling the same faction on release is slim to none, meaning I still have to make a difficult choice of who to play with, unless that's PvP only... the Q&A from the press weekend purely said "no communication between factions."

This is true, Krothar is always an Orc, so if I were to roll Krothar, he would of course be in the Orc, Breton and Red Guard faction. But the only other person I know who is as hyped as I am for this game loves Dark Elves.

It also strikes me that in most Elder Scrolls games, even when there is conflict between certain factions within certain races, there are still members of these other races that still intermingle, live in the same villages, etc. I think it'll feel very unlike an Elder Scrolls game if all the NPCs within a village are made up of 3 races, instead of a mix of all the races.

[mvaliz]

After seeing the new video put out by Beth, I have a bit more hope for ESO. Glad to see the gameplay going more towards ES and less from WoW. ^_^

---------- Post added 2012-11-10 at 09:53 PM ----------

So you just can't go to opposing Faction's zones at all? Just your own faction's "starting zone" and Cyrodiil? I guess there could be invasions or something to other faction zones, but..

If you can't visit those areas at all, it makes the world feel so much smaller..

That's the only drawback I'm not liking.

Yeah, if you play any of the Ebonheart Pact (Nord, Dunmer, Argonian) then you can only play in the four zones of Skyrim, Morrowind, Black Marsh and Cyrodiil, and none of the other 2 factions can visit Skyrim, Morrowind or Black marsh.

While I understand why they're doing it (to give you a true feeling of community within your faction)... I'm still not certain I will like it... particularly as I'm a one-character kinda player. This means to see everything I'd have to roll 3 different characters, and that's just a lot of time I don't have.

I'm also fearing that since Morrowind and Skyrim have brought a MASSIVE influx of players to the ES universe (Skyrim is what brought me to it) - I'm fearing there might be a HUGE population imbalance of players wanting to stick with their familiar/favorite zones.

[Deleted]

Watched Jesse's video and...that's a lot of promises to fulfil.

I love the idea of a giant server instead of many and how the actual world pvp with objectives would work, as you won't have servers where one sides dominates the other in all wpvp due to outnumbering them.

I also love it that Bethesda is moving away from making the player need 100000000 keybinds, and just focuses on few keybinds, putting more accent on the player's actual skill at playing the game and not his skill at remembering 100 keybinds and watching buffs and debuffs.

Also love the factions, guessing I'll roll Ebonheart Pact cause I like argonians, and it comes as bonus that also nords are in it.

Yep, looks EXTREMELY promising right now. If the devs make due on what they promise, it will blow wow right out of the water.

[Deleted]

I'm a bit sad that there's no communicating between the factions, hope that changes. Seems kinda pointless to have the whole mega server thing as "you can play with your friends", if you still have to ensure that you roll the same faction as all your friends too.... likelihood of all my friends rolling the same faction on release is slim to none, meaning I still have to make a difficult choice of who to play with, unless that's PvP only... the Q&A from the press weekend purely said "no communication between factions."

And suddenly this game starts to sound less and less appealing.

I don't understand why they don't allow people from different factions to talk. oh, not letting them talk in Cyrodill since it's a world PvP zone? Sure, I can understand that. But in general? no. Rift has already showed that it works, people are not asshats to others from the other faction just because they can speak to them.
Some people will still be jerks, cross-faction communication or not, but most will not.

[vizzle]

It's annoying when it's just design choices that make the game seem unappealing. God damn. It's like chefs putting rocks in their food just to piss off their customers.

[Deleted]

It would have similar drawbacks to the game as SWTOR had. Sure, the faction maps could be HUGE but...if everyone could go everywhere you suddenly had a much BIGGER map for everyone. Try as you might, it will always be developing power which could be spent to affect everybody. And don't tell me about teams within the devs, we're talking about the same parts here - like environmental design. And people want to play one character for the most time, not twink more to see everything. ( generalizing - I know there are a lot of altoholics out there)

[Deleted]

Am I right in believing you can't play as Imperial? Or are they a race that crosses all factions? That just seems really odd.

I was hoping that all this talk of an MMO was just that, talk. We don't need another fantasy based one, I'd much prefer if they went with the fallout universe. That has so much more potential.

I also think it looks pretty naff. After being spoiled with the glorious visuals of Oblivion and Skyrim were back to Morrowind days in terms of visuals. My favourite race, the argonians, look so bland and unappealing now.

[Throren]

Am I right in believing you can't play as Imperial? Or are they a race that crosses all factions? That just seems really odd.

I was hoping that all this talk of an MMO was just that, talk. We don't need another fantasy based one, I'd much prefer if they went with the fallout universe. That has so much more potential.

I also think it looks pretty naff. After being spoiled with the glorious visuals of Oblivion and Skyrim were back to Morrowind days in terms of visuals. My favourite race, the argonians, look so bland and unappealing now.

Imperials are not a playable race they are, you could say, with the bad guys.

Also Fallout having more potential than The Elder scrolls? Your joking right? There is waaaay more lore and history and interesting stuff in general about Tamriel over boring post-apocalyptic earth.

[Seiz]

I just hope it does very well, like modern day MMO like Rift has done, I really love Elder Scrolls and have high hopes for it.

And my question is are they still going with the Hero Engine for graphics?

[inboundpaper]

The way they are grouping the races up is still absolutely adhorrent lore-rape though, can't get away from that.

Word.

But I am excited for this game after seeing the intro video, Morrowind feeling Morrowind, shutupandtakemymoney.jpg.