new elder scrolls online screenshot

[Collossus]

http://geeks.thedailywh.at/2012/05/04/g ... f-the-day/

I don't know what to think of the new elder scrolls online. I seems I am torn between thinking it is a good idea and them just selling out....

are RPGs going away?

[charlemagne]

How do you go from "they'll make an ES MMO" to "RPGs are going away"?

[weemadando]

Because you're a crazy person.

[charlemagne]

Also, judging by the huge smash hit TES has been since Morrowind... how is this "selling out"? Don't tell me you think Beth didn't want to make money before.

On a more serious note: this will be interesting, an MMO is not something mods can "fix" so Beth really has to think a lot more about concepts like balancing, or this will be one really hilariously broken MMO. I heard it will get rid of the classic class-less ES char development, which, while a bit sad, can only be good news for balancing and game mechanics. (On the other hand "Darkfall" had no strict character classes, anyone know how that played out?)

[Alkaloid]

It's less a question of are RPGs going away than are single player RPGs going away, and sadly, at least for big titles, I think the answer is likely to be yes. The fact is that the most successful video game ever is WOW, and MMORPG's are really the best way to get people to keep paying for your product. Small publishers will likely keep bringing out RPGs, we will still get things like Gothic and Torchlight, but if a new Baldurs Gate (not the reskin of the first two, and actual new game in the setting) or Neverwinter Nights isn't a MMORPG I will be very surprised. Such will long quests with satisfying conclusions be replaced with endless grinding and 14 year olds flinging racial epithets.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Beth really has to think a lot more about concepts like balancing

Bit of a nitpick perhaps, but Bethesda itself isn't developing it. A sister company under the same publisher is.

[Vendetta]

First off, it's actually not "Bethesda selling out", it's Zenimax Media making use of an IP owned by their subsidiaries in a new market. TES Online is being made by Zenimax Online, who are completely seperate from Bethesda.

What they're saying at the moment however is not heartening. From what they're saying it's just going to be another click and wait hotkey driven MMO just like World of Warcraft. And this is terrible news for them, because that model is quite frankly on its last legs. (ToR has apparently lost 400,000 subs, 1/4 of its userbase, since February), and only WoW's massive inertia keeps it going.

Click and wait combat is a relic of the poor internet infrastructure of 8 years ago when WoW came out, when you couldn't have an action combat system like that in DCUO, GW2, Tera, etc. because the network infrastructure couldn't do that much sync work. (DCUO has a combo system that's frankly better than any offline/small coop choppy game I've played in terms of weapon variety, effects of moves, etc).

Their quest system might be more interesting, because I hear they're moving away from the "quest log as shopping list" structure (you will probably still have to murder X wolves for a shiny, but now it won't tell you what X is, or even that you're doing it until you've done it).

But without a decent set of underpinning mechanics, it's not going to fly.

[Mr Bean]

It's less a question of are RPGs going away than are single player RPGs going away, and sadly, at least for big titles, I think the answer is likely to be yes. The fact is that the most successful video game ever is WOW, and MMORPG's are really the best way to get people to keep paying for your product. Small publishers will likely keep bringing out RPGs, we will still get things like Gothic and Torchlight, but if a new Baldurs Gate (not the reskin of the first two, and actual new game in the setting) or Neverwinter Nights isn't a MMORPG I will be very surprised. Such will long quests with satisfying conclusions be replaced with endless grinding and 14 year olds flinging racial epithets.

This I disagree with because I don't know if you noticed but we still don't have a WoW killer, Wow is still WoW no matter how successful it was the return on investment is only a great profit maker for a handful of companies and when an MMO goes down the tubes it sucks up a lot more money than a failed CoD clone. The Old Republic and Tera are both making money but not buckets on top of buckets. Yes it's a reliable money stream but MMO's require constant updates in order to keep players and keep profitable. It's not a one and done cash pay-day like something like say CoD whatever where you make a few hundred million in the first six months then a million or so a year for the next year as people snatch up your game on Steam sales a year later for 20$ cheaper and you move an extra 100k units. You need to provide support for about five months and your done.

Bit of a nitpick perhaps, but Bethesda itself isn't developing it. A sister company under the same publisher is.

This is the biggest part of the story that gets left out often. It's a Bethesda game and almost none of their people are directly involved with it, so no there's going to be another Morrowind-Oblivion-Skyrim sequel and another Fallout game from those teams while the MMO is a totally different set of Devs. There is bleed-over in lots of little ways but there's a whole hundred other people working on this.

[PREDATOR490]

Going to be shit without fail.
TES is bearable because its tailored for SP with extensive longevity provided by the mod community. Wether it be mods adding completely new content ot fixing what the actual game makers couldnt.
Now your going to have ANOTHER team try to make a game set in the same universe which already needs to diverge significantly from the SP / Sandbox style AND do it all on their own.

Personnally, I might be interested in a Fallout MMO that stayed true to the 18+ nailing people's heads to walls. That would be interesting but ANOTHER point and click / hack and slash game with skill trees, classes and magic BS is beyond outdated in a market filled with them. Might as well call it Diablo 3 because thats effectively what the game will end up becoming.

[charlemagne]

TES Online is being made by Zenimax Online, who are completely seperate from Bethesda.

Didn't know that, interesting.

Anyways, I agree that the same old system under a new skin so to speak is getting old. For all the things wrong with it, the Age of Conan combat system e.g. really was a lot more fun than e.g. LOTRO or WoW, at least for meele. With TEs they could have mixed up things a bit by keeping the action-oriented first person combat.

I do think that it might be worth playing, though, even if only for the main quest. TES has a lot of lore to offer.

[DPDarkPrimus]

Well, it's not like MMOs are completely mod un-friendly, as we all know the first thing people want to mod their Elder Scrolls games for are better UIs so as long as they have Curse support...

[TheFeniX]

Screenshot.... smaller than 640 x 480. What is this, 1996?

All these new games coming out and "screenshots" are almost always under 1024x768 which was a pretty standard gaming resolution back in 2000. Are they afraid we'll see how ugly their game is if they put it at 1900 x 1600 (or whatever)?

Show me what you got so far, not something re-sized to 20% of the original.

[Aaron MkII]

It's an Elder Scrolls game, of course it will be ugly. Even the new Fallout games are hideous.

[TheFeniX]

It's an Elder Scrolls game, of course it will be ugly. Even the new Fallout games are hideous.

That's kind of the running joke though: Beth releases buggy, broken, ugly games. Then the massive modding community fixes them. Hell, you can make New Vegas look half-way decent if you download the hi-res texture pack, which is only..... 7.1 GBs (you know, twice the size of the actual game).

I recently bought Skyrim for PC and my buddy bought it for 360. I feel bad for him as I already have like 30+ mods installed. My only issue is that all the character remodels makes everyone look like porn stars where the more realistic textures and models generally don't get as much support (gee, I wonder why) and are pretty buggy.

But this MMO dev isn't Beth and it's unlikely they'll allow nearly as much access to scripting and source code in an MMO.

All that said, I'm still tired of sub-1024x768 (and in 2012 no one really uses that resolution anyway) pictures being labelled as "Screenshots." The shit is just getting old. I want to see what the game actually looks like right now and fully understand that a game in development will not look like Crysis. The "screenshot" posted, looks like Rift run at low res.

[Sarevok]

It's an Elder Scrolls game, of course it will be ugly. Even the new Fallout games are hideous.

Morrowind was a beautiful game. Not just graphically advanced for it's time too but in terms of art too. The art still holds up today. For all it's faults ES 3 suceeded in creating a believable fantasy land that was not typical LOTR inspired fantasy.

[Stark]

Yeah, Morrowind 'holds up' today. If you're vision impaired - I recommend removing the nostalgia goggles.

[weemadando]

I'd agree that the "art" holds up - still a stunning and different look for the series. The actual graphics are terrible now.

[Grumman]

I'll be extremely surprised if this game does not suck. Nothing to do with the art style, but everything I've heard about it says that the things a TES fan would want from a TES online game just aren't there. You can't even own a player house, because something achievable with 1990s' gaming technology is apparently beyond these clowns.

[Aaron MkII]

It's an Elder Scrolls game, of course it will be ugly. Even the new Fallout games are hideous.

Morrowind was a beautiful game. Not just graphically advanced for it's time too but in terms of art too. The art still holds up today. For all it's faults ES 3 suceeded in creating a believable fantasy land that was not typical LOTR inspired fantasy.

Was.

Skyrim is good looking too, especially the sub arctic areas, from a distance.

[PREDATOR490]

It's an Elder Scrolls game, of course it will be ugly. Even the new Fallout games are hideous.

Morrowind was a beautiful game. Not just graphically advanced for it's time too but in terms of art too. The art still holds up today. For all it's faults ES 3 suceeded in creating a believable fantasy land that was not typical LOTR inspired fantasy.

Was.

Skyrim is good looking too, especially the sub arctic areas, from a distance.

Which is enhanced massively by the Mod community to the point the hi-res mods are anywhere from equal to tripple the size of the game depending on how far your go.
An MMO is never going to allow that or be able to accomodate including the kind of graphics that require significant investment in high end machines to play or horrific issues with quality control.

Skyrim looks nice but the engine is still pretty fucked with issues that have lingered since Morrowind wether it be NPC followers being pretty stupid or the god awful combat system that revolves around backpedaling or circle strafing. Apparantly its going to be released in 2013 no less... so thats 2 years development time to supposedly make a game that is going to encompass such a massive IP with three factions worth of content.

Star Trek Online went to utter shit because they pushed it out too early with 2 years development time with 2 factions. Not seeing how TES Online is going to somehow manage anything remotely interesting in the same period. Instead... they will bring out a shit product in 2013 that they will then charge people for... then maybe after 2 years it will finally have the content it should have had when it actually launched. Pretty much exactly like Star Trek Online.

They claim its being done because fans want TES Multiplayer... to which they jumped to an MMO off the bat rather than go the easier route with a sequel to Skyrim that adds Single play co-op or a limited MP game I.E Old Style Diablo 1 / 2 battlenet. Ironic that there is already one mod actually made for Skyrim by fans that is attempting to add this functionality on their own.
The only thing I can possibly see saving a TES MMO is if they include the ability for the modding community to get in on the action. Wether that be providing basic tools to make new enemies, missions and dungeon combinations or handing out a full construction set.

Although I imagine massive blacklisting of a TES MMO across multiple countries when the inevitable nude / sex mods or graphic blood mods keep appearing.

[Sarevok]

Yeah, Morrowind 'holds up' today. If you're vision impaired - I recommend removing the nostalgia goggles.

The graphics are very mediocre today but still playable. The art is however awesome and will remain timeless. The newer ES games do not have the same art direction. Nothing like Silt Striders,Dunmer cities or strange otherwordly Daedric architecture. ES 3 is going to remain pretty unique in how it looks unless Betheseda decide to go to Akaviri or some other non human land again similar to Morrowind.

[SilverWingedSeraph]

The closest any Elder Scroll's game has come to the art direction of Morrowind was Blackreach in Skyrim. That really felt completely unlike any other part of the game, and you actually sort of felt like you were in an alien land, of sorts. Pity it makes up such a small part of Skyrim and most of it is fairly generic fantasy setting, albeit much better than Oblivion.

[charlemagne]

I think that going back to generic fantasy for one game would've been fine, Tamriel was still nice, and the expansion brought plenty weirdness (in a forced "hey look how wacky"-way, but still). But they really shouldn't have gone Skyrim with TESV, Skyrim, apart from the Dwemer ruins and Blackreach, is just Tamriel with more blizzards. They really should have shown another province, like Blackmarsh, or the Wood Elf province, instead of going to another human-dominated province.

[SilverWingedSeraph]

Black Marsh, Elsweyr or Valenwood would have all made pretty fantastic settings for games, yeah. I'd also like to see a future Elder Scroll's game set in Akavir or something.