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

We won't be covering the TES Online permanently but it's worth touching on a few things before we move on.
The official site is open, offering an announcement trailer that sets the scene (no gameplay footage), Joystiq thinks they've found some art and Digitally Downloaded was quick to get an Op Ed online - Way To Kill Your Brand, Bethesda:

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? Here’s my ultimate concern with the idea of an Elder Scrolls MMO: The Elder Scrolls games have always been premium quality. The best possible games in the genre that developers can make. The Elder Scrolls MMO will not be that.

I’ve got no doubts it will be an OK game. It’s being directed by the guy behind the eternally decent Dark Age of Camelot. It’ll find a community of fans. I’ve got no doubts about that. I also don’t think it will replace World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Starcraft or any other online game as the king of owning people’s time. And in doing so it’s going to be a shadow, when it’s a series that’s used to casting the shadows.

That doesn’t help your brand, Bethesda. It dilutes it. And for what? To cave into the idea that games have to have multiplayer to be worthwhile now?

More information.

Another One Bites The Dust!

Burning Down the House

Yup. Nice work Zenimax suits. Nice work.

Wait nobody knows by now the future will be F2P and online games only right? The signs are already there.



Edit: Above post is sarcasm anyone taking it seriously it's there own fault.

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? Here’s my ultimate concern with the idea of an Elder Scrolls MMO: The Elder Scrolls games have always been premium quality. The best possible games in the genre that developers can make. The Elder Scrolls MMO will not be that.

Yeah, unless you are guaranteed to be the first, the best and the only one, the one that puts all the rest out of business then it is stupid to even try.

Thanks for the blurb now get back to real RPGs.

Is this going to have merging DLC with modern warfare 3?

Another good summary at Kotaku.
Nothing more to see here.

Yow, what's up with the voice over in that video?

Did they think the same thing about Redguard and Battlespire? Bad or unsuccessful spin-offs don't kill valuable brands on their own; this tends to happen when combined with poor financials or juggling of projects and employees within the same studio.

I can see thinking this will be a disappointment or a mistake; I don't think this one is looking any more interesting than those I've played and been bored with before. STill, unless it bankrupts Zenimax I don't think there's much reason to presume this will cause anything as significant as ending the brand. I have seen a lot of people listing off extremely different situations with franchises they may be nostalgic about. That only really seems to be a predictive pattern if you ignore specifics like the financial status of those companies at the time, or that the series was actually planned to be ended when it did by its creator, or the structure and ownership of those companies.

Sorry, refuse to be too down On a game that hasnt even gotten a serious play by anyone yet

Oh come on, lets all pile on it in multiple threads like knee jerk reactions are good.

My opinion is that its very possible for WOW to be unseated as EQ unseated UO and WOW unseated EQ. Time has passed and players could be ready for something different.

Now I dont think its likely by any stretch but I don't think it will be impossible. Having said that I still don't care and will not be purchasing it unless it has offline possibilities.

yeah - it'll get killed by Everquest. Everything else is a met too to EQ. Nothing can take that franchise down. Also, I hear Meridian 59 is still suing Ultima Online but even better: Ubliette is back up - as an Android game!

well this is proof positive that Multiplayer is possible on an Elder Scrolls game. They should just add that and let the players host their own mods.

Originally Posted by Lucky Day
well this is proof positive that Multiplayer is possible on an Elder Scrolls game. They should just add that and let the players host their own mods.

That would be a waste of time and effort on their part that would better be spent on the single player game - particularly for a feature which, from how you suggest it, would only be of much use for about 25% of the people who purchase their games. At least this isn't allocating team members, designers, and time away from the single player games like that idea would; better for their parent company to set up a separate studio to experiment with an MMO than to have BGS shoehorn a complicated feature in that would probably mean some more bizarre bugs.

It should probably be noted that this proves nothing at all about being able to add multiplayer to their existing games. The group doing the MMO licensed the Hero Engine for that - so I guess it proves that an engine designed for MMOs can be used to make an MMO and that you can call it anything you'd like. This engine would be an asinine and economically non-viable choice for a primarily single player game though - particularly for something like TESVI.

I'm not interested MMO-crpgs.

Left 4 Dead and Call of Duty are my favorite online games.

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? Ever since this game was a rumor, everybody knew EXACTLY how similar it will be to WoW, exactly what the effects on the single player series will be, exactly how the lore will be butchered etc. Most of the accusations are so far-fetched (basically, people pretend this game will, through its very announcement, kill single player games forever), that I feel compelled to defend MMOs, a genre that I haven't really played that much anyway.

Regarding this article in particular, those of us who remember back when WoW was still in development, can probably recall the "you can't roll with the big boys" theory that was pushed about every new MMO, including WoW, back then. And what is with Blizzard games that makes people put them on such a high pedestal, that every game that is remotely in the same genre has to be described, or mocked, using the term X-killer (WoW-clone, Diablo-clone etc), anyway?

Originally Posted by himmy
And what is with Blizzard games that makes people put them on such a high pedestal, that every game that is remotely in the same genre has to be described, or mocked, using the term X-killer (WoW-clone, Diablo-clone etc), anyway?

In general it's just overused shorthand to describe taking down a product that is dominant in some position. I suppose comparing less related games differes by being lazy overrused shorthand. It's easy to call something "the next *insert popular thing here*" than to actually explain something about it. What you describe is mostly a variation on that.

With Wow though it's actually a little more descriptive and telling of a phrase than it is in other cases. This is probably a lot to do with it:

http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-1.png

It makes a degree of sense to say that any new subscription based MMOs are in competition for at least some of the same limited pool of available subscription money out there. In one year I might buy Skyrim, Portal 2, and The Witcher 2; but I'm sure as hell not going to subscribe to WoW, TOR, and ESO at the same time (okay, realistically none of them). If enough of those subscribers out there are ones who will only pay for one subscription at a time, then you basically do have to kill WoW to get anywhere near its success. Unlike selling Portal 2 in may and maybe Skyrim in November where you don't think of them as battling it out on the shelves - if you want to launch a large subscription based MMO in 2012 you're still competing with WoW because you want some of those subs to give you their money instead.

"Way To Kill Your Brand, Bethesda:"

Isn't it Zenimax's brand and game, technically?