The Elder Scrolls Online

[KallDrexx]

Yeah I'd agree with that.  EQ Next is the only MMO that's really proposing to do anything new, and they have really gotten some credibility with the surprising success of Landmark.

[Venkman]

Agreed; however, I'd class EQ Next as the next "most curious thing to happen to" rather than the "savior of" MMOs.

I also agree that it's been years since any game was positioned as the savior of MMOs. But I don't think that's because nothing interesting has happened. Rather, it's because the medium has long since past the point where a single entry can be on the tip of the tongue for pundents. 'When was the last time most of us thought a single game was going to be for most of us? I would say it was even before AoC and WAR. It might have been WoW.

Tera, GW2, SWTOR, each of these happened for a specific set of players. And even if SWTOR was positioned for all players, we knew even then it was unrealistic, no matter what the marketing plan was.

So I don't saddle any publisher with giving us something we all want. There's just too many people, and so many ideas previously exclusive to MMOs have become standard in so many other genres anyway.

[amiable]

Tried an Imperial Templar this time.  Made it to level 3, and quit when I had to go kill some assassins on a boat, and there was a dozen plus people milling around waiting to kill it as soon as it spawned.  I'll just stick to playing Oblivion, and Skyrim.

I predict this will be voted the Best New Game of 2004.

[Signe]

I like it.  I would like it better if it were a single player game on my 360, though.

[Nevermore]

In that case it's easier to just play Skyrim.  That's what I plan on doing.

Still, I like this game way, waaaaaay more than Wildstar but I also still don't think it's in a state where it's worth paying any money to play.  I'm entertained enough to play it for free, though.  Sadly, it's still the animations in general and lack of combat feedback animations specifically that are the game's biggest problems in my opinion, and I don't see those changing anytime soon.  When has an MMO ever had a big animation upgrade?

[KallDrexx]

I also agree that it's been years since any game was positioned as the savior of MMOs. But I don't think that's because nothing interesting has happened. Rather, it's because the medium has long since past the point where a single entry can be on the tip of the tongue for pundents. 'When was the last time most of us thought a single game was going to be for most of us? I would say it was even before AoC and WAR. It might have been WoW.

Eh, I'd say GW2 was trying to position themselves as the savior of the MMO.  All their hype around "No more trinity!", dynamic questing, exploration, etc...  They hyped it up as the best thing that would ever happen (and of course fell flat).

[Spiff]

GW2 delivered the ingredients of what they promised to a large extent though, it's mostly that the whole mix of those ingredients wasn't quite as exciting as a lot of people wanted it to be.
Apart from all their over-confident bluster about "E-sports pvp", which never even came close to what they hoped/promised/deluded themselves into believing.

Expectations are a lot higher than they once were though, which is only logical as a lot of MMOs have passed by that nailed 1 or 2 things and then just failed or delivered 'meh' on everything else. 
So now for an MMO to be seen as 'The MMO' they'd pretty much have to combine all those things?
So promise Tera combat, with GW2 exploration and open world questing, SWG housing, CoX character creation, TSW atmosphere and world design, ...
WoW had to do a lot less very well to be the pinnacle of polish.

With the games in that list there was at least one interesting thing about each, which made them worth being made and being bought to me.
Wildstar/ESO though; I just can't find a single reason why these games needed to be made and certainly none why I would play them beyond beta.

[Modern Angel]

Weirdly, I felt like GW2's main selling point to me wasn't all of that "changing MMOs" stuff but the subtle "you don't have to play it everyday" vibe. In that sense, the hype that came with it, for me, was like that of a single player game. I still love GW2, I just love it like I would a single player game.

Despite my love for it, having everything revolve around Scarlet Briar has been an enormous fuck up. Terrible Mary Sue character. Just awful and stupid from start to finish.

[Stormwaltz]

Eh, I'd say GW2 was trying to position themselves as the savior of the MMO.  All their hype around "No more trinity!", dynamic questing, exploration, etc...  They hyped it up as the best thing that would ever happen (and of course fell flat).

My opinion as well. I was more eager for GW2 than I'd been for any MMG since... eh, well, 1999 I suppose. But for all the videos where devs stood before a camera and made earnest proclamations of lofty goals, the end result was not even as enjoyable as LotRO to me. The living world didn't. The personal story wasn't. A crushing disappointment everywhere save the combat (which Neverwinter, IMO, has since surpassed).

Last year I wrung far more enjoyment from games that didn't claim to be The Next Last MMG You'll Ever Want - Neverwinter and Defiance. I went in expecting no more than fun, got fun, and while I did leave both, I left with no rancor and an mind open to later return. Not so with GW2, sadly.

[Der Helm]

I am still baffled that i had more fun in this game than Wildstar 

[Nevermore]

I think it's because one thing this game does much better than Wildstar is hiding the grind.  Even though leveling is much slower in TESO, it's actually more fun to go out and do things since most of the quests have you going out after a particular goal, instead of the Wildstar approach of kill X foozles, then kill Y moogles, etc, etc.

[Falconeer]

I am still baffled that i had more fun in this game than Wildstar 

Same here, although I word kind of like: "I am still baffled I had less not-fun in this game than Wildstar".

[Der Helm]

True. But comparing with the bleak blandness that was Wildstar, I had at least a little bit of fun in TESO.

edit: At least it invoked some emotions. Ok, most of them were negative, but hey. 

[Kageru]

If GW2 wanted to be the "next huge thing" it would have been a sub game. They do things their own way, casual PvE, dreams of competitive PvP and a lot of boneheaded design decisions. I still love the art and world though.

I wonder where Blizzard are with Titan / WoW2. I'd assumed it was being held ready for when WoW started seriously slipping but the last news indicated it was so bad the development process was being re-started.

[Merusk]

Yeah, that was also a year ago. They dumped a 100+ person team down to 30 and redistributed the rest of the people or let them go.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/124406-Blizzard-Restarts-Titan-Project-Wont-See-Release-Until-2016

Conventional wisdom seems to be that they didn't foresee the rise of F2P/ P2W games in 2011 and had to reassess that as well as a lackluster game system. Everyone laughs at the notion they'll have anything by 2018, much less 2016.

[Ingmar]

If GW2 wanted to be the "next huge thing" it would have been a sub game. They do things their own way, casual PvE, dreams of competitive PvP and a lot of boneheaded design decisions. I still love the art and world though.

I wonder where Blizzard are with Titan / WoW2. I'd assumed it was being held ready for when WoW started seriously slipping but the last news indicated it was so bad the development process was being re-started.

GW2's PVE is anything but casual at this point. The hours required to complete the meta-achievements on a lot of their story events are insane.

[Tannhauser]

Yes and that's really disappointing.Love the base game but the patches after SUCKED.Casual solo? GTFO

[Threash]

If GW2 wanted to be the "next huge thing" it would have been a sub game. They do things their own way, casual PvE, dreams of competitive PvP and a lot of boneheaded design decisions. I still love the art and world though.

I wonder where Blizzard are with Titan / WoW2. I'd assumed it was being held ready for when WoW started seriously slipping but the last news indicated it was so bad the development process was being re-started.

GW2's PVE is anything but casual at this point. The hours required to complete the meta-achievements on a lot of their story events are insane.

The past several months every meta achievement can be earned by finishing one easy daily every day, it does not get any more casual than that.

[Nevermore]

Well, except for the part about having to log in EVERY SINGLE DAY.

[Kageru]

... you don't actually, exploring the event gets you most of the way and one daily (the one tied to the event) a couple of times makes it easy to finish off. Much easier if you don't wait till the event is stale and interest has faded though.

GW2 does have at least one designer who dreams of making it a raid game, but they're mostly just winging it erratically and have a natural talent for poor design choices.

It's a shame though, I thought GW2 had a plan for a casual / exploratory (albeit probably tedious) end-game but it's become evident since launch no one has solved the problem of keeping people interested long term.  Wildstar is happy to copy vanilla wow. I've no idea if TESO even has a plan, let along a novel one. It sounds like the testing was kept to the low level portions of the game (and that's probably where they focused all their attention and resources).

[Modern Angel]

I know a couple folks in the internal test and they speak very highly of most of the higher level stuff. Which surprised me, honestly, but I'm finding that, even now, I'm liking the game much more as I level. The quests are more varied and interesting, the dungeons are actually decent, crafting becomes more interesting, PvP is above average to very good. They put an awful lot of bland suck in the early game and it's going to cost them. Very weird decisions.

[Simond]

Since both of these sound like flops what's the next big hope on the MMO horizon?

There isn't one, and that's a good thing. Maybe people taking stock of where we are now rather than betting on the next Great WoW-killer might lead to more interesting games. Hell, that was pretty much what SOE did with EQN and now look at them.

Despite my love for it, having everything revolve around Scarlet Briar has been an enormous fuck up. Terrible Mary Sue character. Just awful and stupid from start to finish.

There was exactly one good thing about Scarlet, and that was the insane shit-eating grin her corpse has after her "You are too late" death.

[Modern Angel]

I couldn't even bear to finish the Lion's Arch invasion storyline to see her dead, and I really admire the balls on display when they blew shit up, even if it ends up being temporary. Scarlet Briar is the fucking worst. Leave the zany, bad voice acted, Malkavian from 1996 crazy lady back in 1996.

[Miasma]

Played the game some more this weekend and realized maybe half of the reason it didn't have a skyrim feel was my fault (the rest was theirs).  When I played previously, since it's an mmo, I immediately put myself into mmo mode and went exactly where the quest wanted me to until it was finished and I was sent to the next quest hub.  Just brutally efficient "burn through content", don't bother reading the quest text mode.

This weekend I decided to just do my own thing and explore which is much more like how you play skyrim, oblivion and so on.  I found all sorts of neat little areas, treasure chests and crafting mats where the quests don't send you and then I even found a few small quests.  Figured out the crafting system.  It was much better.

Maybe I'll even actually read the quest text when it launches .

[Signe]

I go very slow.  I always go slow.  I read all the notes and books and sometimes I get my kitty cats to act out the different roles.  Maybe that's why I prefer games like this to be single player with multi-player options.  Anyway, I like the whole interact with almost anything style so I'll keep giving it a slow whirl.

[Threash]

Well, except for the part about having to log in EVERY SINGLE DAY.

Not at all, there are plenty of achievements you get just for showing up, the daily ones are to fill in for the harder skill/collaboration/grindy ones.  Obviously playing casually still involves actually playing game, but they've made it as easy as possible without just handing it to everyone the minute they log in.  It really should not be a challenge for anyone who plays a few hours a week to finish any of the metas since they added the daily ones at least four-five months ago.

[Miasma]

It seems like there is a generic bug where if too many people do the same quest (it can happen to any quest) important mobs, items or interactables just stop respawning.  People who played Friday were fine, Saturday there were problems, if you started playing Sunday a good one third of the quests couldn't be done.  They need to fix this shit by launch or implement server restarts every six hours.

[Der Helm]

It seems like there is a generic bug where if too many people do the same quest (it can happen to any quest) important mobs, items or interactables just stop respawning.  People who played Friday were fine, Saturday there were problems, if you started playing Sunday a good one third of the quests couldn't be done.  They need to fix this shit by launch or implement server restarts every six hours.

Heh. Was chat still full of "this is BETA, noob", "lol, this is not the newest build" and "this is why they stress test the servers before launch" ?

[tmp]

Played the game some more this weekend and realized maybe half of the reason it didn't have a skyrim feel was my fault (the rest was theirs).  When I played previously, since it's an mmo, I immediately put myself into mmo mode and went exactly where the quest wanted me to until it was finished and I was sent to the next quest hub.  Just brutally efficient "burn through content", don't bother reading the quest text mode.

This weekend I decided to just do my own thing and explore which is much more like how you play skyrim, oblivion and so on.  I found all sorts of neat little areas, treasure chests and crafting mats where the quests don't send you and then I even found a few small quests.  Figured out the crafting system.  It was much better.

Maybe I'll even actually read the quest text when it launches .

Yeah, I suspect my experience with it was pretty pleasant precisely because I spent lot of my time bumbling about between the main storyline quests, and running into things at own lazy pace. Similar to how my Skyrim experience went.

And their quest texts were so short, it wasn't really a problem to read it either. I did however presume the book stuff was 90%-to-all copy-pasta from the previous ES titles, so just clicked through those.

[Miasma]

It seems like there is a generic bug where if too many people do the same quest (it can happen to any quest) important mobs, items or interactables just stop respawning.  People who played Friday were fine, Saturday there were problems, if you started playing Sunday a good one third of the quests couldn't be done.  They need to fix this shit by launch or implement server restarts every six hours.

Heh. Was chat still full of "this is BETA, noob", "lol, this is not the newest build" and "this is why they stress test the servers before launch" ?

Yes...

Much faith in the miracle patch it seems.

[Nevermore]

It seems like there is a generic bug where if too many people do the same quest (it can happen to any quest) important mobs, items or interactables just stop respawning.  People who played Friday were fine, Saturday there were problems, if you started playing Sunday a good one third of the quests couldn't be done.  They need to fix this shit by launch or implement server restarts every six hours.

Heh. Was chat still full of "this is BETA, noob", "lol, this is not the newest build" and "this is why they stress test the servers before launch" ?

Pretty much, yes.  If not verbatim, then in spirit.  But my favorite was how many said that the quests were disabled by the devs so people wouldn't be spoiled. 

[Bhazrak]

Fun weekend, managed to get the next tier of dungeons completed with a couple friends, think I liked Darkshade caverns the most as you got to fight some boss dwemer automatons. The last boss in Elden Hollow took us about an hour to beat as the three of us couldn't output enough damage for once. The sewers in Wayrest were kinda boring as they were fighting mostly people in cramped sewers, although it did have a Rat Whisperer.

Right now their main focus needs to be getting the mega server issues sorted out as quests are breaking left and right all over the place, at least in Daggerfall land. Same thing with Dark anchors. I'm pretty positive they won't be able to though, so launch is going to go as swimmingly as ever. And while I didn't PvP at all this time, I also hear the lag pains in Cyrodiil are quite present in the huge zergathons.

[Numtini]

Much faith in the miracle patch it seems.

It's widespread to the point where I wonder if it isn't being intentionally spread. I have some Facebook friends. They're gamers, but not quite as jaded and industry savvy as people here, and they've heard about this miracle patch and they don't actually follow games enough to know this is a common meme for a failed game about to launch, so they're taking it at face value.

[Signe]

GMG emailed me this:

The Elder Scrolls Online is only 3 weeks away, and now you can get $12 off the Imperial Edition or $9 off the Standard Edition with the vouchers* below! So if you still haven’t got the most anticipated MMO in recent times, then now’s your chance.
$12 off Imperial: CE1WXQ-2PQZSH-UDJEQS
$9 off Standard: S8JTAB-9MR960-R9PKJR
Ready yourself for Tamriel by pre-purchasing now and receive a whole raft of bonuses including early access!

if anyone is interested in getting it. 

Do they have an actual beta or have they always just been beta weekends for anyone who has a code?  I'm also not sure what good early access is in a game like this.  Is there any benefit?

[Draegan]

All the beta weekends are over, but there is still an internal beta that codes won't get you in.

Early access is beneficial just like an other MMO. Jump in and get ahead of the crowds of people. One of the faults of the megaserver tech is that so many people and so many phased areas of the game fuck quests up so they might bug out. But if you're ahead of the curve you could avoid the clusterfuck.