Elder Scrolls Online (ESO)
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Hi All, has anyone been following this game? they closed beta applications are now open on their website if you are interested. The PVP combat looks amazing a whole zone dedicated to PVP battles for Keeps and siege weapons.. Skyrim on one massive server.
Worth a look at tbh if you are a skyrim fan
Worth a look at tbh if you are a skyrim fan
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I hope it takes MMOs to the next level. MMO's, as the name suggests, needs players and it needs lots of them. As much as I love Wow, it has had a free reign as top MMO for far too long, partly due to it's massive amount of players which other MMO's can't compete with.
Elder Scrolls is very much like Warcraft. It has similar themes, it's in a similar setting, and therefore appeals to the same spectrum of players. Don't forget WoW started off as single player games also. If Bethesda manage to make a decent game, then Elder Scrolls fans will be happy and stay (look at how well recieved Skyrim was). If they price it right, then they will drag players away from WoW and once they've got there and realised it is a better style of game with more involved talents etc. then they will stay.
Hope ESO is better. They seem to be able to listen to what the fans want.
The trouble is an MMO is an MMO. No matter how you try to differ from other MMO's you will always be subject to the same sort of thing. Elder Scrolls games are essentially a single player MMO, you level up, you kill monsters, you get loot, you do quests, etc. etc. Therefore ESO has to be just like all other MMO's as otherwise the fan base would moan that they've changed it too much.
WoW has been top of the MMO's for far too long (and I love WoW). Elder Scrolls is the franchise which stands the best chance of knocking WoW down a peg or two as it not only appeal to the same audience, but also has a rich (if not richer) backstory than Warcraft. ESO just needs to release a mature game to appeal to the people who feel WoW is too dumbed down. By this I mean intricate epic quests, detailed talent systems, a harder end game and balanced PVP.
They really need to take the Mature route.
Its shocking whats happened with WOW.
okay it was never going to be AOC theme but even down to leveling.
I started a monk less than 24 hrs ago shes already level 43 and im not even trying that hard..and still people are moaning its taking so long to level characters.
I don't have issues with the actual content of WoW. I don't mind theres no sex, or bad language. I don't like the fact that everything has been dumbed down.
Talent trees are always going to be a point of contention. In my opinion Everquest and RIFT have made these far too complicated, I know the hardcore won't agree, but the masses don't want too much of a complicated system, and at the end of the day, its the masses that make or break an MMO.
I started playing WoW during WotLK and the talent system at this point was pretty much spot on. 3 trees, and you could choose whatever you wanted, in whatever tree you liked as long as you had the points. Yes there was room for error, yes there were cookie cutter builds, but you could experiment with different things and you'd be rewarded for it. Frostfire mages were a prime example of this.
In Cataclysm this option was taken out, and you had to choose a specialist tree, only speccing into a second/third one once you'd maxed your first one. This killed the vast majority of hybrid specs, as you couldn't progress far enough down the second tree to get to the desirable talents. Mist's of Pandaria has taken this a step further with the total removal of talent trees, and all the player gets to choose from are 3 talents per tier, which all do similar things anyway, and very few which have any meaningful addition to the game. Essentially, even the dumbest of players can play.
You can't fault Blizzard for catering to the masses, but WotLK was when they peaked subscription wise. Many players feel the talent system in Wrath was the best it's ever been and feel insulted Blizzard have removed what little customisation they had.
Its a shame as a true elder-scrolls multi-player RPG in the style of the single player games could be great. They are just making world of warcraft again with an elder scrolls skin.
WoW has had "WoW killers" take it on for years, and there is an MMO graveyard out there in the ether of the internets just filled with so called "sure bets". I wish something would topple it, because the market has stagnated for a while because of WoW being the king.
ESO is not a big enough title to tackle it really. Star Wars is a much bigger IP, and it didnt even dent it, now Star Wars is free to play and dying off. Rift, Warhammer, Star Trek, Global Agenda, the list goes on and on with failed attempts. Guild wars 1 did the right thing with just avoiding it, although GW2 is struggling, but it should be fine as it has avoiding competing with WoW with the lack of Subs.
ESO is yet another sub based MMO, which means expect lots of grinding, lots of time spent leveling to better content, and gated content in order to try to drag out as much money as they can. I wish it was different, but it will start with some buzz, then tapper off until the server merges begin and the eventual "free to play" model is brought in to see it off to the graveyard.
WoW has to die sometime. At the end of the day it is an 8 year old game which in gaming terms is ancient.
I agree with you that the term WoW Killer is over used, but it sums up lots of discussion in two words. I said from the word go that RIFT and SWTOR wouldn't kill WoW with a subscription based game and a base cost. I, like many people have invested lots into owning WoW £85 for all the expansions before you even consider the subs. Obviously I've played it a while, so I have time invested too. That is a lot to ask people to give up for an MMO which is more than likely going to fail, especially if you are charging for the game and subs. I would like to see ESO free to own from the get go. Seriously, let people download it for free, and get a character to level 10. Then just charge a monthly subscription if they wish to progress. This way players don't have a massive outlay and are more likely to try it out. Once people are in, that is where you snag them. SWTOR is a prime example of initial greed, £40 for the game and the £9 a month? No wonder lots of people (myself included) let it pass them by. By the time it was cheaper enough to lure me from WoW, there had been a mass exodus and what's an MMO without players?
The fact remains that SWTOR did single player better than WoW and RIFT is a technically better MMO. The issue is they were either priced all wrong, and/or had no fans behind it to threaten WoW.
ESO has a fanbase. Skyrim sold countless copies on PC (mostly thanks to Steam) so thats a whole playerbase there for them to target. This is before you think about the previous games in the series, and how critically acclaimed they were. Bethesda can do RPG's, we know that. MMO's are pretty much a multiplayer RPG, so people have faith in them to release a quality product. You can argue that WoW did so well for the exact same reasons. Blizzard had released some brilliant games, they had the fanbase there already, then when WoW was released they ate it up.
ESO is by no means a guaranteed WoW Killer, but it is packing some very big guns. As long as the pricing structure is right to appeal to current WoW players then it stands more chance than any that have come before it.
Or TItan as its currently named :P
Eldar Scrolls lost a lot of its older crowd once Oblivion came out, and skyrim did little to win them back if I am honest. I personally liked all the elder scrolls games bar daggerfall (which I just never got a chance to play).
Whilst ES is a biggish name in the gaming world thanks in large part to skyrim, its not even close to the huge draw that a star wars title has.
I think the real issue is not the branding or if its even good, but people are becoming wise to the very dirty tricks that sub based mmos are using in order to drag out players into paying for long periods of time for something which isnt really a game anymore. Skinner box and all that, but it does have a strange ring of truth to it.
Subscription gaming is the very worst thing to come into gaming in the last few years, any game that has a need to for player retention is going to play tricks with its players in order to achieve its goals.
The last paid sub MMO I played was WoW towards the end of Cata, and I had been playing it on and off (pvp seasons) since the end of TBC. Now I am happy with single player and no-sub based games that the idea of a paid for game that also wants a subscription plan is pretty shitty idea. More so when on the PC, skyrim is further awesomed by the endless amounts of mods it has.
They need to ensure that they focus the game on the 'Hardcore' gamers and they have that end game content, if that exists on a model that differs from WOW/SWtOR etc i think they will be on to a winner.
On top of this skyrim actually bought many people into the game that before had not even considered it and its still going now with a strong following with mods etc. This will be marked as (Skyrim with your friends) for those folks and the more dedicated fans of the lore/games may look at it as something new and different.
I must say that only SwTOR has recently got me playing an MMO again however all my friends left as the content was just not there for endgame and PVP (so much potential for massive PVP battles etc) i think this game will certainly draw people in and with the diverse game style from what they have released at the moment i think it will keep people for a long while!
Funny, I would have put microtransactions and 'pay to win' at the top of my list as the worst thing in gaming.
In the last few years? EverQuest, the first recognised 3D graphical subscription based MMO, launched in 1999, that's hardly recent.
You and me both and that comes from someone who started playing text MUDs on the internet in the 1990s when you could hand over money for just about any kind of game modification and "pay to win" ability, specially in Iron Realms games like Achaea.
As for ESO, I've signed up, I like Bethesda games and they have a good team involved in this game. However, it won't be a WoW killer any more than another other game touted as such was. WoW is, and always has been, an anomaly on the MMO gaming front, largely due to the massive subscription numbers it pulls in from the Asian market and should be treated as such.
If the game developers were given the opportunity by their money makers to just get on and create the best MMO they could instead of trying to find a "WoW killer" then Warhammer Online, Rift, SWtOR and the like would have been fine. Warhammer Online was a brilliant game in closed beta, three sides fighting it out ala DAoC as was originally intended and nothing like the WoW clone it ultimately became. Such a crying shame.
I was talking about the rise of subscription based gaming, not its inception. Of course its an old model, older than gaming even, but in the last say, 5 years its started to really take off.
I was cutting chops back on amiga work bench so I am not new to gaming either. Subscription gaming and micro transactions are all part of the same thing in recent times, a way to increase income from a game.
Now whilst I am not against something like DLC as a concept (its just like the old disk based expansions), but its moved to needless crap which again, not a real issue over because its just cosmetic.
But now its becoming the go to concept in order to increase income, and games are being made with this in mind, making ir harder or more of a grind if you dont pay extra.
Take the Dead Space 3 crap, who the hell pays extra money to skip parts of the game?!
"yes, I would like the a new album. can I pay extra for you to remove some of the tracks as I want to get through it nice and fast please".
It makes no sense, yet younger gamers are eating it up (younger not in age, but in coming to gaming in general).
Since the success of WoW, and then the mental success of the CoD games, the business side of things got the notice of the big players. Now its about getting the most sales and appealing to as many people as possible.
Follow that up with options of purchasing character slots/bag slots etc and similar things such as this and bring regular content they will capture the audience. I do not think that any other MMO will be able to survive as subscription for too long any more without pressure of then moving to F2p
I also don't have an issue with micro transactions as long as they are purely cosmetic. If someone wants to pay for a different skin/pet/mount then fair play to them, but as soon as you get into paying to level, or paying for gear then it becomes questionable.
I've said this before but Runescape has a pretty perfect system in place. You can play the game for free but it's limited so much and features so many adverts that any hardcore gamers would upgrade in a heartbeat. So not only are Jagex able to claim millions of players, despite the vast majority being free to play, but they get revenue from advertisers and still are able to charge to play the full version. If something is free, then people will play it, regardless of how bad it is. If you are talking about a good game, which ESO is bound to be, then allowing people to play a limited, ad supported version for free from the start will snare people early and they will soon pay a subscription to unlock more features and higher levels. Not only that, but allowing free play makes the servers look full, a full server is crucial to the success of an MMO.
I'd disagree that subscription gaming, especially in the MMO world, has changed at all since the concept began with EverQuest, in fact the monthly price for an MMO sub has hardly changed in 12 years. My first EQ monthly subscription was something like £5 a month, my DAoC one was £7, my WoW one £8 and my latest (played and subbed) one for both Rift and SWtOR was £8.99.
What I would agree with though is that DLC has become the main money making model away from a fixed monthly charge in which everything is included and then you pay for expansions.
I was the same with GW2, and I am still not sure why. It just seemed to lack that certain something which turns an also run into the 'WoW killer'. SW:ToR was another one.
Don't get me wrong, I love WoW but some as good would be awesome.
And that's not even a certainty. WOW could last another decade...