The Elder Scrolls Online

[Threash]

I think i saw someone using a gun.  That looked awful.

[Draegan]

GW2 had terrible dungeons and the class system was dreadful because you got all of your abilities at 20 and then you had 60 levels to go of sameness. Unfortunately traits didn't change my gameplay enough to get my excited.

The MMORPG genre is awful at creating class systems these days and that's the most fun of any development process. I guess all the interesting devs went to making champs/heroes for MOBAs.

[Paelos]

Elder Scrolls launching in April? They better double down on their fixes.

[sam, an eggplant]

The exploration in GW2 was an achievers idea of what exploration should be. 

Well put. That succinctly explains why I liked it so much.

Straining NDA a bit, but April seems... early... for ESO.

[Ghambit]

Eh, any real changes they'd make would essentially be "total redesign" in nature, so April seems fine for this iteration.  Polish is really all they're gonna be able to do as the game right now is what it is. 

[Threash]

Yeah, they are not going to remake the game at this point, it is what it is.  April seems fine for bug fixing and polish, not to make a completely different game that doesn't suck.

[Paelos]

I think they are aware of the issues, as they stated in that letter, the main one of which was highlighted.

I remain skeptical that they can do what they promised in 12 months, let alone 4.

[satael]

Well, ESO was supposed to launch this fall until they decided to do console versions too 

[Mithas]

So we can expect the next WoW expansion to launch right around that time?

[Ghambit]

If by "WoW expansion" you mean Wildstar, yes.

[Ingmar]

I think i saw someone using a gun.  That looked awful.

Hand crossbow.

Eh, any real changes they'd make would essentially be "total redesign" in nature, so April seems fine for this iteration.  Polish is really all they're gonna be able to do as the game right now is what it is. 

Point is, April seems awfully soon even for just polish.

[EWSpider]

I actually really like GW2 dungeons, at least now, after the retuning of most of them. I don't like being forced to do the Story version before the Explorable. That's lame. And a couple are still a bit much. But mostly I enjoyed them.

GW2 hits a very nice spot for me. I can drop in and out of new content. If I like it, I'm there. If it's lame, I'm not. It's nice.

ACTUAL TESO NEWS: PC release date of April 4th.

I like the dungeons as well.  I think people's dislike comes from trying the Story mode at the minimum level in bad gear without a good understanding of their class.  Try some of the Explorable paths again with a level 80 character in decent gear that you're very experienced with.

[Triforcer]

I have always pictured a "true" exploration MMO as being more like Skies of Arcadia, but Internet plus content burn rate probably makes that impossible.

[Senses]

As stated countless times before, people only want the illusion of exploration.  They certainly don't want to march out into the middle of nowhere and find, *gasp,* nothing.

[sam, an eggplant]

Err, yeah, nobody wants a featureless plane, but I have no doubt possible to make exploring compelling without attaching an explicit achievement mechanic to it ala GW2. For example, look to the Timeless Isle in WoW.

Yeah, yeah, it's terrible now. But imagine if the entire world was full of little hidden rewards and events and minibosses to experience, and there was enough of it so it wasn't instantly spoiled and you could keep on exploring, and it wasn't horribly crowded.

[Ingmar]

Animations in that trailer sure are weak, aren't they? 

[Bhazrak]

Err, yeah, nobody wants a featureless plane, but I have no doubt possible to make exploring compelling without attaching an explicit achievement mechanic to it ala GW2. For example, look to the Timeless Isle in WoW.

Yeah, yeah, it's terrible now. But imagine if the entire world was full of little hidden rewards and events and minibosses to experience, and there was enough of it so it wasn't instantly spoiled and you could keep on exploring, and it wasn't horribly crowded.

Probably the thing I miss most from playing Asheron's Call, just picking a direction and wandering.

Trailer was okay, but had some noticeable hiccups. I hope they can get a lot accomplished in those 4 months.

[Ginaz]

Animations in that trailer sure are weak, aren't they? 

Yeah, its so true what people have been saying, that the graphics look like they're from 2003 instead of 2013.

[Venkman]

I can't tell who's being sarcastic anymore. Lost that sense or something. So I'll just take it at face value.

That video looked terrible. It looked like DAoC in Vanguard's engine, for a game brand whose entire heritage is a single player PvE RPG in a highly detailed and beautiful world. I don't know who that video was for. I don't even know if they know. What I played at PAX eight months ago looked a hell of a lot better, so I have no idea what's going on.

Announcing your April launch alongside an open letter that claims combat will eventually be more fun isn't good PR either.

Eh, 55 pages and weeks of NDA slips and the general opinion doesn't seem to have evolved at all. It's not even fun to pile on the hate. It's turning into WAR.

[Nebu]

It's turning into WAR.

They would be lucky if they made it to WAR level by April.   

[Rendakor]

Yea, WAR was great fun for ~20 levels.

[Yegolev]

That video made me actually feel real-world embarrassment for the people responsible.  This is a feat, considering everything that's happened since 1997.

[Falconeer]

Err, yeah, nobody wants a featureless plane, but I have no doubt possible to make exploring compelling without attaching an explicit achievement mechanic to it ala GW2. For example, look to the Timeless Isle in WoW.

Yeah, yeah, it's terrible now. But imagine if the entire world was full of little hidden rewards and events and minibosses to experience, and there was enough of it so it wasn't instantly spoiled and you could keep on exploring, and it wasn't horribly crowded.

Probably the thing I miss most from playing Asheron's Call, just picking a direction and wandering.

That is literally what they want to do with EverQuest Next. If they will be able to achieve that is a different story, but that's at least the plan.

[Falconeer]

That video looked terrible. It looked like DAoC in Vanguard's engine, for a game brand whose entire heritage is a single player PvE RPG in a highly detailed and beautiful world.

For fairness, while the video looks horrible and really makes you wonder who the hell is in charge for these things, the actual game looks much much better. The visuals aren't really the problem.

[Ingmar]

The world looks good. The character visuals are ass.

[Falconeer]

That is sadly true, although it is probably a compromise necessary to manage hundreds of characters on screen at the same time in massive PvP battles without turning it to a slideshow or have too much culling.

[Yegolev]

You can never have too much culling.

[Nebu]

You can never have too much culling.

The original Elder Scrolls game series had the perfect amount of culling.  It culled everyone but me! 

[Samprimary]

A new video,

[Xuri]

Watched the video just now, and it struck me that I have never seen - in any MMO that I've played - two factions line up in battle formations before charging at eachother. Yet marketing teams insist on including such scenes in every damn MMO trailer. The same goes for people having "duels" on the battlefield. Reality of MMO combat is either full out chaos or 5 vs 1 gankfests, not 1 vs 1 duels scattered across the entire battlefield. </minor rant>

Fake edit: Wait, actually, I lie. I have seen two factions line up in battle formation and charging in. It happened in the early UO days, and the factions were identified by the color of their cloaks. Capes. Whatever they were. Oh well.

[Fordel]

It happens all the time in GW2, the forming up and crashing into each other constantly. It's a side effect of their buff/heal system and AE target caps.

[Malakili]

I'm not sure what their target audience is here?  Is it Elder Scrolls fans who thought the games would be better if there were 1000 players?  Is it MMO fans and the Elder Scrolls IP is just because?  Is it people who quit WAR?

Do they even know?

Seriously, if someone showed me that without the map scenes there is no reason to believe this is an Elder Scrolls game.  I know there are some gameplay videos are around of things that look more elder scrolls-y, but...it's just such a bizarre video.

[Lantyssa]

None of those.  Their demographic is a bunch of suits who dream of money hats but don't have any clue about what they're doing.

[Paelos]

The marketing team is going to have to earn their money on this one.

[Nebu]

The marketing team is going to have to earn their money on this one.

They better be selling nostalgia for the old days.  The character and combat animations are TERRIBLE in that video... and that's coming from someone that typically doesn't care about graphics.