Bethesda Announces Elder Scrolls MMO

An anonymous reader writes "Today Bethesda announced that their popular Elder Scrolls series of video games will be getting its own MMORPG. It's planned for 2013, and will be available for PCs and Macs. '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."'

Interesting and mixed feelings

[santax]

I always found it a shame that such a rich world as the elder scrolls has, was only single player. It seemed to be missing that true interaction at times, while it's still and incredible world. I would applaud this, but I think we all know this will be a paid monthly subscription and they will find a way for micro-transactions. Personally I feel that is a shame for such a rich world.

Not Excited

[Missing.Matter]

For me, the allure of Elder Scrolls has always been the single player experience and the immersion in a different world this provides. As someone who has played many MMOs, immersion has never really been a word I'd use to describe them. From all the immature annoying players, to the terrible meta game of griding levels and petty guild politics, playing MMOs has always been a chore for me (which is I guess why I don't play them much anymore). Elder Scrolls has always been a beautiful fantasy escape, and while I know there aren't any details released about the game at this point, I can't possibly see how they can replicate that experience in an MMO.

I mean, look at the play style that characterizes TES. Vast open environments where you can do practically anything. Now imagine this as an MMO. Imagine walking into town to find EVERYTHING had been stripped out of every building. Shopkeepers slaughtered in the streets, two or three bandits with their pack of mule characters, shipping everything off to a stash... no it wouldn't work. The only reason these sandbox games work is because you're the only one in the game causing this kind of mayhem. So I don't know what TES Online is going to look like, but I have a strong suspicion it will include almost none of the allure of a typical TES game, and will be severely crippled by its MMO status.

Will be available for PCs and Macs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they mean a Windows version wrapped in Cider or a real, proper OS X version?

Re:Too bad

[Missing.Matter]

I agree. I would love to explore the land of Tamriel with my friends. I just don't want to do it with 10,000 other people to constantly annoy me.

Possibly the first real WoW killer

[sandytaru]

A lot of games have claimed to be WoW killers over the years, but none have really had both the fan base and the development skills to get it right. (Poor, poor FFXIV. So pretty, so utterly broken. I'm crossing my fingers for their 2.0 reboot next spring.) TOR was almost there, but also failed. Tera? Not quite. Maybe, just maybe, Bethesda will manage to strike the proper balance of fun, interaction, storyline, pretty art, and awesome.

Re:Urgh!!!

[sandytaru]

I don't know about that. WoW is aging and players are dropping out rapidly because, well, the game is graphically dated and has been copied and improved upon a lot by other games. WoW is the king of MMOs in the same way that Budweiser is the king of beers, and now that all these fancy craft brews are becoming more widely available, people are beginning to realize what relative piss water WoW is. There will always be a core playerbase for WoW so long as the servers are online, same as Everquest and FFXI, but it's already stopped attracting new players because it's just not as shiny any more.

Re:YES! and OMG NUUUUU

[Sir_Sri]

Sure they are unbalanced, but that's part of the fun, it's a single player game, so you let people do crazy things if they want. It doesn't hurt anyone else.

In an MMO though you have to do a very tricky economic dance, and shit has to work. I think bethesda is stepping into the wrong market here, there are other people who are very very good at making MMO's and it's a very saturated market. I can play one MMO, and I can play single player games. But I can't play two MMO's, and what is Elder Scrolls online going to bring to the table? Everyone says their game is going to be the greatest, but EA spent what, 300 million dollars on SWTOR and it's not that good. Trying to enter that market and be competitive is enormously expensive and risky, and frankly not worth it. Not when you can make elder scrolls 6 by putting a turd in a box and make 100 million dollars on it. Trying to go after Blizzard, who have WoW and unannounced 'titan' and Diablo 3, and SWTOR, and Guild Wars 2 and all of the other MMO's out there is probably going to lose the fight for available player time. Not a good move on their part.

Re:That's great and all but...

[Kelbear]

I hope that new studio has better QA than the old one.

With a release date of 2013, the game will probably be playable in 2014 given their track record. Their games are beloved for an amazing scope, but they have a history of releasing games filled with game-breaking bugs that players tend to forgive for having attempted to achieve so much. Hey, you can always just enter cheats or download mods to fix the problems right?

This time it's an MMO, and when the game-breaking bug stops your main questline in it's tracks, or empties your inventory, or resets one or more of your stats to 0, etc. etc. etc. You can't hit the command line to fix it.

I'm excited about the game for sure, but I have absolutely no confidence in them to release a stable MMO. I'll wait a few months or a year after release and let other people deal with the bugs first.