What is Elder Scrolls to you?
Elder Scrolls to me means total freedom. Means walking for a whole hour in a straight line and be sure that the only limit to what I can explore is my skill. It means having levels as a way to measure the state of your character development, not where in the world you’re allowed to go. It means creating a blank slate character, and leveling by “doing it”, not by choosing a class at the beginning and the choosing skills on a window.
Recreating 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. (…) The Elder Scrolls Online aims to allow players to enjoy whatever piques their interest, so long as you are appropriately leveled. (…) Zenimax declined to share details on individual classes, though the studio confirmed that the game is class-based instead of using the free-form character progression of Skyrim.
Source: Imgur
That, I believe, is not what Elders Scrolls means.
I am of the opinion that events are the future for MMOs; quests are the past. Warhammer Online, then Rift, then Guild Wars 2, all these games have paved the way to how the next generation of the MMORPG space will look like, and this generation doesn’t have exclamation marks on its head. Previous sandbox-style games usually faced the problem of being so open that the only way for anything interesting to happen is for players to make it happen. This is because on the old game design dichotomy of choosing between quests or freedom. Events are the bridge between those two.
Zenimax is missing on the chance to create a true Elder Scrolls-like experience on MMOs, simply by trying to appeal to MMO players, instead of Elder Scrolls fans.
An Elder Scrolls MMO would be the perfect environment to create a game where Guild Wars 2-style events become the center of all gameplay, but where ArenaNet kept the conservative route of having a single faction where all players are the heroes, the three-faction system of Elder Scrolls Online (henceforth known as ESO) could allow designers to create game-wide events where players would be competing between themselves. The war between these factions is one major event, fed by large faction-wide events, and opening smaller events for players.
A skill system that ties the classic “level skills by playing” system present on previous Elder Scrolls games like Skyrim and Oblivion could be made to work with a skill unlocking system like on The Secret World, without the need for formal levels that limit player freedom but still allow developers to design challenging content that requires a certain level of experience, letting players to overcome this limit through skillful gameplay, not limiting it by arbitrary levels, which is the absolute opposite of how Elder Scrolls games work.
This system would also allow players to design the character they want to play as they play it, instead of forcing players to choose classes at character creating, which is an MMO standard but not an Elder Scrolls one.
Zenimax is missing on the chance to create a true Elder Scrolls-like experience on MMOs, simply by trying to appeal to MMO players, instead of Elder Scrolls fans. I’m hoping they can convince me that I’m wrong along the development cycle, but right now, I’m kinda disappointed.
To me the Elder Scrolls series isn’t just freedom to explore the scenary. But also freedom to imagine the story as I see fit. What I mean by this is that other games tend to shape what your character personal philosophy/stand on the story by their dialog. In an Elder Scroll games there is so little in terms of dialogue said by the player character and most of it is so neutral that it leaves a lot to your imagination on the motivations of your character and what he is thinking about the whole situation.
Another thing is that is the Elder Scroll games set a pretty good base to start with the game. But with mods made by the community the game can become much better than any single company could make it.
I can understand the second part is unfeasible for a MMORPG. But I am disappointed that the other part, the freedom of the game series, might be sacrificed for a more standard MMORPG gameplay.
Oh, well. I will still keep an eye for news on it. But it seems unlikely I will be playing. :/
I agree. The series, specially on their most recent titles has been known for the great flexibility it gave players to play however they wanted and create their own tale, and this very classic-MMO structure of classes, levels and quests sounds like a very bad fit for this game.
I was really hoping for a more free-form game when the first rumors of an Elder Scrolls MMO started making the rounds. Unless Zenimax decide to completely revamp their design roadmap, it’s very likely this will be just another semi-interesting MMO struggling to make a dent on the market, and switching to a F2P model not long after release.
It’s kinda sad, there a lot of potential on this franchise.
I’m very disappointed myself. The last thing I’d wished see was an ES MMO that features WoW style combat and a traditional class system. Oblivion screams sandbox MMO and if only they had taken Skyrim as the big focus instead of 8 year old games, it could’ve been my perfect dram-come-true type of game.
so close. and yet so far.
while I’m at it, a warm welcome in the blogosphere.
It’s really a missed opportunity, to me specially when I think about the new tools and paradigms other MMOs have created, that they could have used to have a “sandbox-like” game without actually giving players absolute freedom to make or break the game.
And thanks for the welcome. ;)