The Elder Scrolls Online

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Category: Giskard's Blog

Last Updated on Sunday, 06 May 2012 12:49

Written by Giskard

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I have seen a few screenshots of the Elder Scrolls Online and from what I can see the game already looks dated and is not due out for another year. Being a person that likes multiplayer and single player but dislikes my single player games being dumped down for multiplayer, I am kind of sitting on the fence with this one.

One thing the game has going for it is Bugsada is not making it. So it should be pretty stable.

I have heard the same OMG they are going to destroy our favorite single player game by making it an MMO in many communities, including Egosofts X series and one thing I learned is this. A game sold to a single player fan base, attracts mostly single player gamers. To then turn around and ask for hardened single player fans to give an MMO a try is very much like asking a wall to move out of your way. Its not going to happen, its going to continue to block your path because the wall likes staying exactly where it is and does not want to move.

MMOs need to be sold to Multiplayer fans, not single player fans in order to work so turning a single player game in to a multiplayer game usually ends badly. 

The other thing is this, The Elder Scrolls and Fallout under Bethesda has a terrible reputation as very buggy games and an MMO cannot survive such a reputation. In this case its not Bethesda making the game but how many players out there will notice this when the Elder Scrolls series is associated with Bethesda so heavily, and when Bethesda turns out not to be the people doing it, how many people are going to think "Cash COW" and take a dim view of it.

Then we have the graphics, MMOs have to work on a wide range of systems and rarely take advantage of the latest tech, so any Elder Scrolls MMO is going to look older than Oblivion. Those who enjoy the single player games are going to see the multiplayer version as a very dumped down affair.

Personally I think MMOs have their place in the gaming world and providing your not forced to play one style because all the kiddies play it and the games is balanced for multiple styles of play, I see no problem what so ever with them.

But just as Stargate Universe was a nice show on its own with little or nothing to do with the older Stargate series and should have been given a totally different name to reflect that very thin almost forced connection with the original Stargate series. What we are hearing from the Elder Scrolls Online so far seems to indicate it will have even thinner connections with the Single Player Elder Scrolls games, making it a TES game mostly in name only.

The setting for the game for example is between the Empires, when Warlords and Kings Ruled, around the time Tiber Septim rose to power after serving a Colovian king that later became known as Emperor Zero. It was a time of petty wars and struggles between kingdoms with the dying embers of the Reman Empire fading away. Hundreds of different factions competing for power.

Yet the Elder Scrolls Online is only going to support 3... opps lore breach.... did they do their home work... I think not. This is an era of kingdoms and dying empires. A power vacuum exists and I would argue that it should feel more like Game of Thrones than the Elder Scrolls if they did it properly for that period, according to known lore from that time.

Which is why I think the Elder Scrolls Online will have little or nothing to do with the Elder Scrolls single player experience and will in fact just be based in the same world and not subject to its lore or background story or rules.

It might be good, it might even be worth playing, but somehow this all smells like a Cash Cow event to me. Another attempt to squeeze every ounce of profit from a series of games that has become increasingly buggy and unplayable.

When this happens the existing fans are usually the first to be swept aside in the rush to the bank.

The other thing they are forgetting is The Elder Scrolls Lore and games are really not that great, Arena and Daggerfall where never that good compared to other games around at that time. We only remember them today because Morrowind was good. 

Also without the mods to back them up and I believe Skyrim is the last Bethesda game many people will try and mod due to bugs. Then most Elder Scrolls games become a flash in the pan because its the mods not the games that kept people playing them for years. The Elder Scrolls series on its own is just not that interesting.

Bethesda and even the new developers of the MMO have repeatedly failed to understand the nature of their games or its appeal to their fans. If they did understand it they would not have pissed off so many fans with Skyrims release and all the issues that came with that game.

So entering in to an MMO with little understanding as to who plays the Elder Scrolls games and why they keep playing them strikes me as a great way to lose a lot of money quickly.

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