The Elder Scrolls Online

[Soapy]

Long rumored and much anticipated, The Elder Scrolls Online is finally being unveiled in the June issue of Game Informer. In this month's cover story we journey across the entire land of Tamriel, from Elsweyr to Skyrim and everywhere in between.

Developed by the team at Zenimax Online Studios, The Elder Scrolls Online merges the unmatched exploration of rich worlds that the franchise is known for with the scale and social aspects of a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Players will discover an entirely new chapter of Elder Scrolls history in this ambitious world, set a millennium before the events of Skyrim as the daedric prince Molag Bal tries to pull all of Tamriel into his demonic realm.

"It will be extremely rewarding finally to unveil what we have been developing the last several years," said game director and MMO veteran Matt Firor, whose previous work includes Mythic's well-received Dark Age of Camelot. "The entire team is committed to creating the best MMO ever made – and one that is worthy of The Elder Scrolls franchise."

An in-depth look at everything from solo questing to public dungeons awaits in our enormous June cover story – as well as a peek at the player-driven PvP conflict that pits the three player factions against each other in open-world warfare over the province of Cyrodiil and the Emperor's throne itself.

Come back tomorrow morning for a brief teaser trailer from Zenimax Online and Bethesda Softworks, and later on in the afternoon for the first screenshot of the game. Over the course of the month, be sure to visit our Elder Scrolls Online hub, which will feature new exclusive content multiple times each week. You'll meet the three player factions, see video interviews with the creative leads, and much more.

The Elder Scrolls Online is scheduled to come out in 2013 for both PC and Macintosh.

Source

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:

[Spidey-Bat]

If it has no subscription, I'll get it. If it does, I probably won't for awhile.

[Soapy]

I wonder if they mean there's going to be a screenshot this afternoon or tomorrow.

[Soapy]

Someone on NeoGAF went through and mined all the important bits of information out the article.

Some of it sounds pretty cool, but a lot of it sounds...not so great.

Oh well. I still have Skyrim DLC to look forward to.

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:

-Releasing 2013 for PC/Mac
-Developed by ZeniMax Online Studios
-MMORPG
-250 Person Team
-Started development in 2007
-"This time, saving the world from the awakening of ancient evil is only the beginning. What happens when hundreds or thousands of prophesied heroes all think that they should be Emperor?"
-The game is fully voice acted
-Third person perspective
-The game uses a hotbar to activate skills like other traditional MMOs
-Visually it looks like other Hero Engine MMOs like SWTOR
-The general art style is kind of like RIFT or Everquest 2
-You can't be a werewolf or vampire
-Crafting, alchemy, and soul stones will exist in an unrevealed form
-There will be Daedric Princes like Molag Bal, the primary antagonist, and Vaermina, "whose sphere of influence extends to the dream world and the nightmares of mortals", along with some unnamed others
-Constellations will be in the game a la Mundus stones (which work like guardian stones) and also give the answer to things like block puzzles where you step on the blocks in a certain order
-Tons of towns ranging from Imperial City, Windhelm, Daggerfall, Sentinel, Mournhold, Ebonheart, Elden Root, Shornhelm, Evermore, Riften, and a lot more
-Radiant AI will not be present
-There will be mounts, but no flying mounts
-Fast travel exists in the game in the form of wayshrines, which are also your ressurection point, and you can teleport from one wayshrine to any other wayshrine you have already visited
-There most likely won't be dragons
-Sneaking will be in the game, but how it is implemented is undecided
-They're not talking about pets right now
-There will be no player housing
-There will be no NPC romances or marriage
-"It needs to be comfortable for people who are comign in from a typical massively multiplayer game that has the same control mechanisms, but it also has to appeal to Skyrim players."
-Features most of Tamriel including Skyrim, Morrowind, Summerset Isle, and Elseweyr.
-"Not all provinces are included in their entirety; Zenimax Online is keeping large areas inaccessible to save them for use as expansion content. Nonetheless, every major area is represented to some extent."
-As an example, Windhelm is fully implemented, but Winterhold and the mages' college won't be in at launch.
-There are three player factions:
--Ebonheart Pact: The Nords, Dunmer, and Argoninans
--Aldmeri Dominion: Altmer, Bosmer, and Khajit
--Daggerfall Covenant: Bretons, Redguard, and Orcs
-"Recreateing the freedom Elder Scrolls players expect within the World of Warcraft-style mechanics Zenimax Online is using for this MMO would be impossible without changing the way that players interact with the world."
-As such, the game uses a hubless design
-For example, you don't necessarily pick up a quest to do the following, but if you kill all the necromancers in an undead barrow, a shade you free at the end will reward you.
-However, to help you find these events, various NPCs you talk to will tell you where they are happening and put a marker pointing them on your map, which is obviously totally different than receiving a quest.
-Not all quests will have NPCs that indicate where they are
-The game uses MMORPG genre standards such as classes, experience points, and other traditional MMORPG progression mechanics, but they try to present it "around the core fantasy presented by traditiona Elder Scrolls games" such as traveling around and righting wrongs or seeking riches
-The game world is very large relative to Skyrim
-You can explore almost anything you can see
-the game is set 1000 years in the past
-You can't master every discipline
-The imperials are an enemy to all three factions, lead by the noble Tharn family and the King of Worms, Mannimarco, and are hatching a plot to take over all of Tamriel
-But BEHOLD, Mannicmarco is scheming with Daedric prince Molag Bal to take over the world behind the Tharn's back
-Also, your soul has already been stolen by Molag Bal, which is the reason you can come back from death over and over again, and the starting plot is that you're fighting Molag Bal to get your soul back from him
-Hitting the level cap takes about 120 hours
-Each faction has their own leveling content
-An example quest is the story of Camlorn, where you have to stop evil werewolves who have their eyes set on conquest. First, you have to do a "standard MMO kill and collection quest" to sto ghosts from attacking some mages and soldiers. The ghosts are reliving a battle that the werewolf leader was in. You summon a ghost to find out what's going on, and the ghost tells you to wear her dead husband's armor to re-experience the battle he died in. You then get transported hundreds of years into the past to fight this battle. During this battle, you can choose to save the dead man's wife or to pursue the Werewolf leader. ZeniMax chooses to save the man's wife, who then tells you that the Werewolf leader is weak to fire. This information is helpful when you fight him, but you don't actually need to do this quest before fighting the werewolf leader if you don't want to. Basically, you can skip parts of quest chains if you want, but you get some benefit for playing the whole thing. Also, whenever you go back to the town you just saved, everything there hails you as a hero.
-The game features three faction PvP where you fight to take over keeps and use trebuchets and other siege weapons to help do it. At the high end, you can have 100 v 100 battles. There are also farms and mines you can try to take over. Mots of this happens in Cyrodiil where your goal is to take over and hold the Imperial City to get faction wide bonuses for it. If you have played Dark Age of Camelot, this probably sounds familiar. For those who haven't, essentially the entire zone is a giant PvP area will all sorts of points of interest.
-The most accomplished PvP player on your faction becomes emperor whenever you take over the capital
-When you take over Cyrodiil, you will be able to adventure in it as a hostile city a la Kvatch
-The game will have raids and heroic modes for its dungeons as end game content in addition to faction PvP
-There is also balanced PvP for people who prefer eSports
-The game will also have high end public dungeons
-Public dungeons are essentially instances that aren't actually instanced, so anyone can be in them, so imagine a World of Warcraft dungeon that featured everyone on the server in the area instead of just your party
-There are standard instanced dungeons as well
-Back on the topic of the skillbar, you have a limited number of skills you can use at any given time, and can change them whenever you're out of combat
-The number of skills is equal to (paraphrase) "a light and heavy attack with your current weapon that take up the first two slots, a few more spells related to your class, and an ultimate in the last slot".
-The ultimate is used once you gain enough finesse, which is earned by doing well in combat
-You also get a bonus loot chest if you're soloing and max your finesse, and you can also build finesse by comboing with other players
-For example, a rogue can put oil on the ground that a mage can set on fire
-A fighter can also spin in the firestorm a mage puts down, which sends out fireballs
-If you've seen Guild Wars 2 videos, the above will seem familiar
-You can't combo with the abilities of enemy players though, so if an enemy faction player drops an oil slick, you can't set it on fire
-The Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood will be presented, but in what form isn't detailed as their contnet is hard to recreate in an MMO setting
-NPCs will try to work together and use player like behavior when fighting you, and (at least to my understanding) have stamina as well
-They want the AI to be good, so instead of enemies in a dungeon sitting around and waiting to be pulled, you will be attacked by the entire room and they will try to react to how you are playing
-The claim was not demo'ed to Game Informer
-You destroy dark anchors to gain reputation with the Fighter's Guild. They are large hooks that fall from the sky pseudorandomly and have Daedric guardians next to them. They are easier to kill with a group, and once destroyed, everyone who participated gets a reputation boost with the Fighter's Guild, and eventually nets you rewards like new skills and abilities.
-The combat model will not be real time due to latency
-The combat is based around a stamina bar which you can use to sprint, block, interrupt, and break incapacitating effects
-Blocking is the primary focus of these abilities, and can do things like stopping the secondary effects of attacks such as an ice spell slowing you
-Stamina also applies to PvP, so stamina management (and wearing down your enemy's stamina) is important, as your crowd control abilities might be on a long cooldown, and if you use them before the enemy player runs out of stamina, they will probably just block the effect
-ZeniMax feels that having the stamina bar will help break down the Holy Trinity as stamina allows you to do things like tank
-However, healing is still a big part of the game
-There is also no aggro mechanic in the game, which is part of the reason stamina blocking and healing exist

tl;dr - It seems like a very standard MMO dressed up with Elder Scrolls trappings.

[ComicStripCriti]

Meh. i'm not interested in this. If I want Elder Scrolls MP, I'll download a mod for it like Titanis. Then play with my friends in a small party.

[Soapy]

First screenshot.

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:

It's a shame they chose that one. It is easily my least favorite of the bunch.

[The Squirrel]

Ew.

[geetard]

From the game descriptions, it sure sounds like another MMO...

[Spidey-Bat]

It IS an MMO

[Soapy]

I think he means it sounds like your standard run of the mill WoW clone. Which it pretty much is more or less.

[Wolfwood]

Meh, doesn't sound all that fun so far. I think what I'd rather have is just the ability to invite my friends into my Skyrim game and have them be able to exist there.

[Soapy]

VIDEO-CLick to Watch!:

ZeniMax Online Studios details the world, combat, character customization and PvP structure of massively multiplayer online role-playing game The Elder Scrolls Online.

The PVP stuff they show towards the end looks pretty fun.

[Destructus86]

It looks fun and interesting. But two things would stop me from playing it...

If it has a subscription fee

If the quests are your basic, traditional quests.

[Vote-Survey]

same here, one time buy ill play it, subscriptions then no. And defo not Free2Play those are pretty scammy trying to get money out of you, and once you start you feel you need to continue spending money.

[Soapy]

New CG trailer.

Also, beta sign-ups are open.

[ThePhantasm]

I hate the idea of an Elder Scrolls MMO. Call me when they come out with another single-player game.

[masterthehero]

I always wanted co-op in my Elder Scrolls adventure, this wasn't exactly what I was looking for.

I do love the world of Elder Scrolls though, thinking about re-visiting Morrowind sounds like an awesome time for me. I want to be excited for this, but again, it's an MMO and there are just way too many of those available right now.

[darthcoolness3]

Sign Up for beta testing at this link: http://signup.elderscrollsonline.com/

[Lord]

Seems like just another MMO, nothing new, been thinking and maybe if they had the same type of FPS gameplay the rest of the series had it could bring something new

[Benstamania]

At least they're not making the MMO a numbered part of the series, unlike Sqaure with FF. That being said... as long as it isn't a grind game where you have to dedicate every spare minute to it...I'll give it a try.

[Lord]

Seems like the game may be much better than what it seems from the screenshots

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8luBc0X3vIg

[The Squirrel]

If there's one MMO that should be solo based, it should be this one. Hopefully the group PVP is not the main meat of the game.

[Soapy]

Originally Posted by Lord

Seems like the game may be much better than what it seems from the screenshots

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8luBc0X3vIg

I saw that too. What he's saying sounds cool, but I'm very skeptical of its accuracy.

[Cosmic]

I think the video footage looks awesome.

One big, "mega-server" sounds very interesting.

The focus on stamina sounds intriguing. They sound like they're really trying to give you the freedom to play your character however you want to play.

I'd like to hear something about roleplaying various alignments, as opposed to everyone playing as heroes out to save the world.

I'd like to have the option to have an actual home. Maybe this could be a feature they can implement, but would rather save for a future expansion, or premium content?

[NickNitro]

I dont know if anyone hasn't seen it yet. Rivals the Blizzard cinematic trailers in my opinion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IzSkymiYcA