My two cents:
They should made it as close as possible as the normal “Bethesda experience”, like Morrowind / Oblivion / Fallout 3 / Skyrim (slanted towards Skyrim especially, as it’s their latest and most successful game ever), instead of doing a WoW clone or a DAoC clone (it seems some people of that game are working in TES Online) or whatever usual MMO fare.
So like always, but allowing a few hundreds players per instance/world instead of having one player (as in the sp), and modifying a bit the design wherever it’s needed to accommodate having several players instead of one, and the world being even bigger and with more content than ever.
But I am not hopeful, it seems this is not being by proper Bethesda but by “Bethesda Online”, which really is an altogether different studio.
I don’t play MMOs either, but I would play this one for the same reason mentioned above – to see the world they built. If the graphics are good in that respect, I think I’d be pretty happy with wandering around in it doing my own thing for a while at least.
People who actually LIKE MMOs are the ones that should sound off about whether they’ll play this one or not. They are the target audience.
You know, if they kept in the tradition of the previous games, it would be an awesome MMO, simply because it would be one of the few that actively encouraged exploration in a non-skypainted tunnel like most other MMOs (WoW aside, actually) do.
If the world got big enough, and interesting enough, it could end up being a great exploration MMO.
I have a feeling that crafting in Skyrim was done to test out systems as well.
The situation with Zenimax/Bethesda is a bit different from the Blizzard of 2005. The Zenimax Online studio and Bethesda are much less integrated that the behemoth that is Blizzard, and producing single-player RPGs is kind of what Bethesda does. You could say the same about Blizzard and RTSes, but things changed dramatically when WoW started making over a billion dollars a year. I just can’t see that happening with this game. I’d be very surprised if Bethesda didn’t continue a cycle of Elder Scrolls-Fallout-Elder Scrolls-Fallout, etc. for several more generations. Sure, there’s a chance this won’t actually happen, but hey, we won’t know for about 6 years anyways, so it’s hard to argue. ;)
I thought the idea here could be: “Let’s make a Elder Scrolls Online which every Skyrim player will run to buy it, except this one will give us an extra $15 per month with each one”
My initial reaction was that I didn’t have much interest in this. However, with Matt Firor’s previous DAoC experience and reading that there will be open-world 3-faction PvP, it has my attention.
… Given it took them five and a half years to make Skyrim, I don’t really think this is an issue. By that schedule, the sequel to Skyrim will be coming out three years after the MMO is supposed to ship.
And Skyrim was a huge success, even though it shipped in the same holiday season as the most widely anticipated MMO since WOW.
So it would be throwing money away for Zenimax to put all their eggs purely into the MMO basket.
Yeah, Skyrim just sold 10 million plus? No way are they gonna stop making single player TES games. Besides, what would Todd Howard’s team do? Just make Fallout sequels (ugh)?
Sorry for all the replies but also consider the following:
Bioware doesn’t own the Starwars IP. Lucas Arts would have to green light further KotOR games and might not choose BioWare as the developer anyway.
They stopped making Starwars games a while back to focus on their own IP.
Bethesda/Zenimax has sole ownership of the TES IP. My point is that it isn’t only about competition. Besides, look at the 38 studios folks – they’re actively pursuing building both MMOs and single player games in the same universe in order to better build out a franchise. I think you can do both without cannibalizing your products.
Sure, it’s possible that this announcement will not affect the release of any new SP Elder Scrolls games, but I think it definitely makes it at least slightly less likely that we’ll see one.
If it bombs big-time, that could make the IP less attractive and cause Bethesda to scrap any plans for a new SP game. (Probably won’t happen, but could).
If it is a huge hit and maintains a large subscriber base, I doubt Bethesda would release a SP game and risk losing subscription dollars to a non-subscription ES product. Or it’s a big enough hit that they want to release a ES Online 2 instead of a new SP game.
There are a lot of scenarios in which ES Online could delay a new SP game. That’s why those of us that have no desire to play an MMO view this as a bad thing. We want a traditional ES game in a few years and this new game probably does nothing to help that happen - and could very well hurt the chances for that.
Everyone calm down. Have no fear, single player TES / Fallout games will continue. Why do you say that crazy internet dude? One word, consoles. Unless Zeni can somehow wizard this MMO onto the next gen console cycle, they absolutely must have a software product for the next Sony Playstation and Xbox consoles.
