The Elder Scrolls Online

[Surlyboi]

Secret World is still a better game.

That said, mr. Steam reviewer lost me at, "no open world PvP" and "can't level on PvP alone."

[Miasma]

So,

- A lot of people have quit by now so of the people still playing many could be considered die hard loyalists.
- Some people care about vanity pets, a lot (not me, I think they're pointless).
- There seems to be a correlation between die hard loyalists and people who care, a lot, about vanity pets.

Combining these notes we can formulate a sure fire way to piss off the most rabid fans who normally rush to the defense of the game no matter what jaw droppingly stupid mistake Zenimax makes.

- Put the game on steam and then give it a steam-only cute little doggy with a cool name "wolfhound".
- Attach the steam-only pet to the more expensive CE type version of the game.
- Make it "limited time only" for this initial steam launch weekend.
- Make a forums post confirming that there will be no other way to get this pet other than the limited time steam sale.

There are like half a dozen threads about steam on the official forums and they are all about, or derail into, wailing and horror about this pet.  The people who are the most upset are the super fans who just have to have everything.  These are the people who normally think ESO can do no wrong and they are saying they will cancel if they don't get that pet.  In reality most of them will, of course, buy another whole copy of the game just to get their stupid wolfhound.  Oh look, it only came out partway through yesterday and ESO is number three on the top sellers list.

[apocrypha]

Wow. Elder Scrolls Online: The Milkening.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Wow. Elder Scrolls Online: The Milkening.

That was the name from the beginning.

[Draegan]

Wow. Elder Scrolls Online: The Milkening.

That was the name from the beginning.

I call it Roberting.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Reading the steam reviews is fucking hilarious, which makes the metascore of 71/100 even more egregious.  This game is without a doubt going to severely hurt the elder scrolls brand if they don't axe it soon.

[Hawkbit]

I thought that too, but I'm still going to play ES6, regardless of this game. 

Damage to brand matters less if your market will still buy other products in your line.

[Miasma]

I want their next real game to be a new fallout anyways.  If so by the time ES6 comes out no one will remember ESO.

Plus 1-50 is genuinely fun.

[Paelos]

I thought that too, but I'm still going to play ES6, regardless of this game.  

Damage to brand matters less if your market will still buy other products in your line.

There's no way I will buy the next ES game at release after this. While I know they are different games, I have no idea what they will pull at this point. It will have to be way after the kinks are worked out before I trust the studio as a whole again.

And that's key. People that don't buy in at release cost these AAA people money. That's why this game needs to be a distant memory and a whole slew of apologies before the next hype train. They can't have this gimpy thing still lying around when the next game comes due.

[Rendakor]

There's no way I will buy the next ES game at release after this. While I know they are different games, I have no idea what they will pull at this point. It will have to be way after the kinks are worked out before I trust the studio as a whole again.

And that's key. People that don't buy in at release cost these AAA people money. That's why this game needs to be a distant memory and a whole slew of apologies before the next hype train. They can't have this gimpy thing still lying around when the next game comes due.

Bioware Austin, etc. ES6 or FOIV or whatever will still be fantastic, and has nothing to do with the MMO spinoff. If you want to be silly and miss a great game because they used the license to make a mediocre MMO, that's your loss.

[ajax34i]

That's why this game needs to be a distant memory and a whole slew of apologies before the next hype train.

That is the opposite of how business works.  If a product isn't successful, the next hype train needs to happen immediately, or the company goes under.

I haven't been buying Bethesda games on release day for a while.  Skyrim, while visually nice, had a shit UI, lots of bugs, and a combat system that didn't appeal to me.  Also,  you can't play the game without the many bug fixes in the Unofficial Patch, and that's made by the community, so Bethesda really never fixed their bugs.  It looks like they expected this scenario to happen with ESO too, except ESO is an MMO so that can't happen.

[Miasma]

Dulfy's Quakecon summary.

[Miasma]

I thought that too, but I'm still going to play ES6, regardless of this game.  

Damage to brand matters less if your market will still buy other products in your line.

There's no way I will buy the next ES game at release after this. While I know they are different games, I have no idea what they will pull at this point. It will have to be way after the kinks are worked out before I trust the studio as a whole again.

And that's key. People that don't buy in at release cost these AAA people money. That's why this game needs to be a distant memory and a whole slew of apologies before the next hype train. They can't have this gimpy thing still lying around when the next game comes due.

1-50 is good fun.  Also on an unrelated matter what is your steam id?

[Paelos]

I'm in the F13 group under Paelos

[Miasma]

I thought it would be funny to send you a copy of the game but steam's UI is pretty terrible and after fighting with it for a while I realized you have to either know the person's email address or already be friended with them so I gave up.  Probably for the best.  I maintain it would have been funny though.

[Paelos]

I thought it would be funny to send you a copy of the game but steam's UI is pretty terrible and after fighting with it for a while I realized you have to either know the person's email address or already be friended with them so I gave up.  Probably for the best.  I maintain it would have been funny though.

I would have laughed, yes.

[rk47]

Waiting for F2P

[Ingmar]

Someone got me a Steam card and curiosity to see where it is at these days almost got the best of me, but then I remembered that they never added a centered 3rd person view. Crisis averted.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Someone got me a Steam card and curiosity to see where it is at these days almost got the best of me, but then I remembered that they never added a centered 3rd person view. Crisis averted.

Wait.....wait......wait......WHAT?!  Oh god.  This is not hyperbole but I simply cannot play 3rd person games where it's not centered on the player, it's so damn jarring. 

(I know you can play first person too but that generally seems a bad idea for an mmo with pvp.)

[Rendakor]

I keep forgetting about that; it's a deal breaker for me too and the reason I stopped playing the beta.

[Miasma]

It only does that if you are zoomed quite far in, it assumes you want an over the shoulder type view.  At the camera distance that most people play it looks centered.

Still stupid though.

Edit: This video shows the differences.  Mute the sound.

[Paelos]

Yep, that's not playable in my mind.

[Ozzu]

So, I picked this up on one of the many CDKey selling websites for $25.

First impressions? Well, I'm only level 8, but coming from Wildstar, the questing seems an order of magnitude more interesting. The combat? It's alright. It doesn't feel nearly as responsive as the combat in Wildstar, but I'm still getting accustomed to it. On a couple of other notes, I like the look of the game and there seem to be lots of people running around. I've yet to do any group content, but I guess I'll get around to that in the next couple of days.

[Falconeer]

All chuckles aside, there's a lot of good in this MMORPG (for a MMORPG). Too bad it gets overshadowed soon (if not immeiately) by the not-good.

[Miasma]

The European megaserver will actually be moved to, of all places, Europe - on Wednesday.

[Numtini]

I got a message that noted I was a beta tester who didn't buy the game and would I like to fill out a survey as to why. It was sent yesterday sometime in the afternoon. Just clicked on it. Survey's closed.

Which pretty much sums up why I'm not playing.

[Paelos]

I got a message that noted I was a beta tester who didn't buy the game and would I like to fill out a survey as to why. It was sent yesterday sometime in the afternoon. Just clicked on it. Survey's closed.

Which pretty much sums up why I'm not playing.

Same thing. It's pretty hilarious. I'm sure their responses were enlightening.

[Miasma]

Large patch today, update 3.  The cost to respec has been reduced from 100g a point to 1g but only for one week, so if you were thinking of making some changes do it soon.  Most of the changes seem like good fixes or additions.  We'll know more about any new bugs introduced in a day or two.

[Miasma]

There were a bunch of changes to guilds in this patch.  People logged on and everyone but the guild leaders had been demoted to the lowest level, so no one else can invite/promote/bank.  A lot of guild leaders are no longer playing so if they can't fix/revert this a tonne of guilds are going to be screwed.  Still not clear if every guild is affected or just some.

Edit: They have now disabled the entire guild system.  They have done this before to get around bugs but it confuses the hell out of people who don't know that because you log in and everything is just gone so they panic thinking they've been kicked out of all their guilds.

[Paelos]

I love that you're sticking with this Miasma. The updates are great.

[Tannhauser]

Agreed.  Way to jump on the grenade there Miasma.

[Falconeer]

This game is not half as bad as people seem to think. It just had too many quest bugs at launch and doesn't have any retention power in this day and age (especially with a fucking subscription!) but what new MMORPG does?

In before the "Oh it's actually a pretty good game now!" that will come in a year with the obligatory free2play. I mean, people still play crap like SWTOR and claim it's good, right?

[Tannhauser]

SWTOR is a pretty good game when it's f2p.  If I have to spend $15 (and you kinda do with their restrictive f2p model), then it suddenly becomes not so good.  As for TESO, the same thing goes; I'll certainly play it when it goes f2p but not at $15 a month.  Sorry they should have made a more compelling game if they want a monthly from me. 

[Lakov_Sanite]

This game is not half as bad as people seem to think. It just had too many quest bugs at launch and doesn't have any retention power in this day and age (especially with a fucking subscription!) but what new MMORPG does?

In before the "Oh it's actually a pretty good game now!" that will come in a year with the obligatory free2play. I mean, people still play crap like SWTOR and claim it's good, right?

The whole guild system got disabled, great game.

[Miasma]

It's back, they got it working again a couple days later.

The only things I liked about SWTOR were the class story line, one or two of the planet story lines and for some reason I found the ship fighting pretty fun even though most people hated the on rails nature of it.  If you like story line and quests ESO is way better than SWTOR.  At least launch SWTOR I don't know about the changes since f2p.

If ESO hadn't launched with so many bugs, bad inventory, bad auction house system and bad Veteran system it would have been well received.  The core questing is some of the best I've ever seen.  Exploration is amazing, there is something hidden around every bend.  The skill system is pretty good 1-50.  Persistent PvP in cyrodiil.  If you liked the elder scrolls or fallout you should love questing in ESO so long as you don't freak out about there being other people around.  I would highly recommend the game to those people when the next steam sale has it at at least half price, just go through either Ebonheart or Daggerfall 1-50 and then quit.

I really feel like they got halfway to an amazing mmo and then made a bunch of stupid rookie mistakes that ruined it.