The Elder Scrolls Online - Official site, Concept Art, Reactions

But here’s the secret, guys: you can’t out World of Warcraft World of Warcraft. It’s silly to even try. That game has a what, 10 year head start on any new MMO?

Yeah, right. That's the reason why Netscape Navigator is and always was the #1 browser, eh I mean Internet Explorer, errr Firefox or ….?

The Elder Scrolls games have always been premium quality. The best possible games in the genre that developers can make.

Just died laughing. Seriously - did the guy ever played Redguard, Battlespire or even Oblivion?

Best way to prove you have no clue is to write a bad Op-Ed. Mission accomplished.

"way to kill your brand" is a dumb title too. Game is not going to kill any brand, let's be real here. It's a bunch of hyperbole based on a game that hasn't even seen the light of day yet.

…I wonder if this is portable to my cell phone.

i'll repeat this quote:

"The Elder Scrolls games have always been premium quality. The best possible games in the genre that developers can make."

-I can understand an attempt to show how he was disgusted with an idea of WoW clone … but I am truly disgusted with this sentence. I haven't played Arena, nor Daggerfall. I have played Morrowind, and I was full of criticism about it. Nevertheless I enjoyed this game and I was happy about continuations. Then I have played Oblivion… -the only good thing about it was that I started to love Morrowind. And I haven't got enough strenght to play Skyrim. Simply I have lost faith in Bethesda, and after later comments/reviews (after all this c…sucking) I feel that my fears were right. Bethesda is a master of creating a vast worlds full lost chances, opportunities.

Their complexity fade after few hours, and pearls which truly are existing in these realms are unfortunately overwhelmed by repetitiveness, and REALLY SILLY/SHORT/DULL/OBVIOUS MAIN QUESTS

Originally Posted by Misha
i'll repeat this quote:

" The best possible games in the genre that developers can make."

Saying it was the best game possible that developers could have made is just ridiculous. They couldn't have caught one more glitch maybe? They couldn't have done even one thing better? Yeah that is when I suspected this author might have just read some of the forum rage and paraphrased the various "OMGWTF" they read and spun it into an article. If they know how cable news works, they probably think the way to get people to listen to you is to echo their anger and suspicions back at them.

You can argue over issues of "quality" and whether excellence is impossible without polish, but anyone who calls any game "the best possible" game of its type that could be made is either writing based off a meta-critic score or has either fallen so in love with it that they're not really discussing it as a game but as their wife/husband/6-legged-panther.

Good gods it's hideous.
I'm sick of this cartoony art style.

I know that there is an MMORPG Watch area, so covering this makes sense to a certain degree. I'm not really interested in Zenimax's offering, I much prefer the single-player games of Bethesda. The only way that I'd even try it, is if they offer a bunch of hours free as a trial. That would give me enough time to look around the game and see how they're imagining the lore during the Second Era.

Originally Posted by Sir_Brennus
Just died laughing. Seriously - did the guy ever played Redguard, Battlespire or even Oblivion?

Best way to prove you have no clue is to write a bad Op-Ed. Mission accomplished.

I was thinking the same but more along the lines of Daggerfall. Not a terrible game, but still to this day the buggiest game I've ever played.

Originally Posted by Rzepik
Good gods it's hideous.
I'm sick of this cartoony art style.

What are you talking about? Are you looking at the same pics we are, because they may be a lot of things - "cartoon" is not one of them.

Well they are certainly a lot more colorful and fantastical than Skyrim.

I think any criticism aimed at the visuals is a bit premature at this point. The final product could end up looking a lot different than that.

Regardless, I won't be playing it. I've enjoyed the main TES series, but I have zero interest in an MMO offshoot.

Since they've been working on this for several years now, I don't expect the visuals to change that much at this point. It would be a major undertaking to totally revamp their visual style, as art creation is one of the most time consuming parts of game development.

I wouldn't say they are cartoony but the art direction is different and more stylized than what we've come to expect from the series. Definitely miles away from Skyrim's realistic style. This looks more in the direction of Kingdoms of Amalur.

I suspect the reason for this is to make it less taxing resource-wise for the MMO which will have many more characters on-screen compared to the single-player games. There's not an easy way to handle this issue but I have seen MMOs with much more realistic graphics like Age of Conan. They rely heavily on instancing though which is not always ideal either.

If they keep true to the Elder Scrolls this would be interesting.

Classless system. Free form combat. Real exploration.

What will actually happen is they'll make another WoW clone. Narrowly defined classes. A couple of skill trees. Targeted combat. Boring world. Boring dungeons. Boring combat.

Just another Skinner Box.

Originally Posted by Jtgribs
If they keep true to the Elder Scrolls this would be interesting.

Classless system. Free form combat. Real exploration.

What will actually happen is they'll make another WoW clone. Narrowly defined classes. A couple of skill trees. Targeted combat. Boring world. Boring dungeons. Boring combat.

Just another Skinner Box.

Yes just like every typical F2P or mmo game. TOR is no exception either. It has the same pro and cons.

What does this sentence mean ?

you can’t out World of Warcraft World of Warcraft

I don't understand it.

Originally Posted by himmy
Honest question: Do people on the Internet get money for being cynical know-it-alls, seen-it-alls, or is it more like a hobby?

That's an interestiong observation I'm currently seeing in he DDO forums.

Some people seem to take (even me, sometimes, which surprises me myself !) forums as an outlet of personal anger.
Sometimes perhaps even without knowing.

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
What does this sentence mean ?
I don't understand it.

Basically it's a statement that suggests that you can't out do what World of Warcraft does. If you summarise in your head what WoW is and what it has achieved - then the statement "You can't out World of Warcraft World of Warcraft" means to suggest that you can't beat it at what it does or what it has done.

I don't blame you for not being able to understand it, Alrik - it's not an altogether meaningful statement anyway and arguably not the case if you accept the idea that a formula can be repeated and improved upon.

Actually the statement makes sense considering wow has had over 10 years to perfect their formula (alltho they have regressed quite abit the past few years) so even attempts at improving upon what they have done will be such a massive, time consuming and expensive undertaking that no mmo developer out there has the resources to risk it.
Swtor being the perfect example. All that money and effort into making a shittyer verson of wow instead of creating something of their own.
The smarter route would be to look at wow and instead try to do the things it does not do: Sanbox, player housing, more then 2x factions, expanded crafting and gathering systems etc etc.

Really, something like NWN multiplayer would be nice. It would be nice if you could just group with your friends, completely isolated from the rest of the "community" (i.e. griefers, farmers, and other brats).

I could see virtual real estate being a potential goldmine in one of these games. Players would be able to purchase real estate for real money and then resell it later for in-game money if someone wanted their acreage. If you owned, for example, Breezehome and payed $5 cash for it when the game first came out, you could later sell Breezehome for $30,000 of in-game money or whatever would be comparable value. Owning a home in the trading hub of one of the provinces would be very lucrative when it comes time to sell.

I'd rather not confuse real world money with virtual money. Tends to remove the fun.