Bethesda To Have An MMO-Dev Sibling

Gamasutra is reporting the exciting news that Bethesda's parent company ZeniMax has just announced they are opening a new studio dedicated to online games. It's going to be headed by Matt Firor, formerly of Mythic Entertainment. "Firor worked for Mythic for 10 years, serving as the producer for the company's popular MMO Dark Age of Camelot, as well as taking a lead role on all of the studio's other projects. Since leaving Mythic in 2006, Firor has worked as a consultant in the online gaming industry, advising publishers interested in entering the online market ... The studio is expected to continue to take on staff over the next 18 months in order to establish 'an entire MMO-sized team,' according to Firor. Specifics on planned subject and platform for ZeniMax's MMO have not yet been revealed." Fallout's MMOG rights are still firmly held by Activision so ... Elder Scrolls Online, perhaps?

Re:How Many?

[TitusC3v5]

They said the same thing a few years ago when MMORPGs starting making waves. Then World of Warcraft happened.

That being said, I would drop cash in a heartbeart to play a MMORPG with Oblivion-like gameplay. MMORPG meets first-person shooter. Sort of like Darkfall, but with a reachable goal instead of trying to be everything to everyone. Give me fun gameplay, lots of content, and character progression that isn't shackled by that atrocity known as class, and you'll have my $15/mo.

Re:Watch as they hate on thieves

[morari]

Many designers don't seem to appreciate anything that will make soft players cry, such as being pick pocketed or killed by another player. Such popular safeguards only drag MMOs further down into the "waste of time" pit as opposed to elevating them into the "immersing world" category.

Re:Watch as they hate on thieves

[QuantumG]

Yep, that's exactly the kind of nerfing I'm talking about. If it's illegal to kill people, it should be illegal to kill thieves. The "NPC Police" should arrest thieves and make them serve appropriate sentences.. assuming of course that your world works that way. If you use death as the punishment for everything then yeah, your system works just fine. As for flagging people.. that's one of my pet hates. Nothing like sneaking into a house, making sure you're not see, making sure you're wearing an appropriate disguise, grabbing the loot and then discovering that you have been magically tagged as a thief and now everyone wants to kill you.

Oh, and the biggest annoying factor is that often the world designers will make stealing from, say, chests ok but stealing from player inventories not ok. Then they'll fail to provide any advantage or requirement to put stuff in chests. Characters walk around with a million tonnes of stuff in their inventory. As character inventories (including gold) are magically safe from looting, there's no need to lock it up in chests and guard it. Similarly, often these medieval era games have banks.. which is just retarded.

Re:Watch as they hate on thieves

[jdigriz]

In Eve-Online, death is not really death, a can thief will just get his ship blown up if he loses. So the NPC police in this case are just turning a blind eye to one property crime as a result of another. Even if the aggrieved kills the pilot in the escape pod, the pilot has a clone stashed away on a space station which then gets activated, and the game goes on. As for banking, many of these swords and sorcery games are actually set at a tech level similar to the early Renaissance period rather than the medieval Era. World of Warcraft for instance has firearms, crossbows, and full plate armor. It is therefore perfectly reasonable that they have banks, as banking was an innovation of that period in real life, for instance, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugger [wikipedia.org]