The Elder Scrolls Online

this came out awhile ago but i hadn't heard about it till now

http://pc.ign.com/articles/122/1224248p1.html

ive got mixed feelings
my favorite part of games like skyrim is how you feel like your actually changing something
but i do love me some elder scrolls so maybe this time
it also won't replace the current game line like WoW did (where they cant do another wc because WoW drives the story now--this one takes place lots of years before skyrim)

I cant see this being good
MMOs suck at telling story
Starwars the old republic did it best with seamless instances but i dont think that could work for elder scrolls because everything would need to be instanced and at that point it wouldnt really be an MMO

It would be awesome if they decided to just make the world all 1 thing, no instances, and let people do w/e they want like in the single player games

For example, if a town gets destroyed it would be destroyed for everyone even if they werent part of w/e caused its destruction
And then after its destroyed the surviving NPCs would rebuild for a couple months of real time until the town was back, players could help the reconstruction if they wanted to speed it up, maybe give the players who are helping the ability to design buildings or parts of the town the way they want depending on how well known they are in that area or if they have influence with whoever is ruler of that town
Obviously during the towns destruction anyone nearby would get the quest to stop it from being destroyed, or help it to be destroyed if they want to be evil

But they wont do that because something like that could only happen once or twice every couple of months, unless they want towns to be destroyed all the time, but that would make it stupid
Which means that only a lucky few players would actually be able to play that part of the game and they wouldnt want that
The same would go for any world changing quest
And doing a main quest would be impossible if the world was the same for everyone, unless they came up with something that no one has thought of before to resolve it

Also how will they do combat, if its like skyrims, but balanced, it would be cool
But i feel like they will lean towards a more traditional MMO combat system, maybe make a hybrid of skyrim and hotkeys

Its way too early to judge it but my expectations are incredibly low


EDIT:
Some details came out:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=472749

From that it looks like it will be like any other MMO and will suck
The PvP sounds like it will be ok, none of it sounds like an elder scrolls game
It uses Hero Engine, which is the same thing the old republic uses, so expect it to be that with an elder scrolls theme
You might be thinking "just because it uses the same game engine doesnt mean it will be the same, it could be different, look at all the different unreal engine 3 games"
Well no, Hero Engine is specifically designed to work the way it works, its the reason the combat cant be in real time because hero engine isnt designed for real time combat, its not because of latency like they said



EDIT (2/6/14):
It is possible to make real time combat in it (the old republic did it very recently with galactic starfighter) so maybe (hopefully) they changed it in the elder scrolls online

And the stuff i said about town destroying events, guild wars 2 does stuff like that (kindve) every 2 weeks, so something like that would be possible, so maybe it wont be so bad

I still dont really have high expectations of this game, but im willing to give it a try
Its going to have a monthly sub ($15 a month) and a $60 box so i probably wont play it when it comes out, at least not until it goes f2p (if the old republic went f2p this probably will too)

You can get a key for the beta weekends from here: http://www.curse.com/betas/teso-beta-key-giveaway
You can use the key from that to play this weekend, and there is a mac version so anyone can play
They may be out of keys by the time you read this though

Ill make a post about it on sunday after ive played for a while, but i wont mention specific things or post screen shots since theres an NDA

its kinda funny that im the only TeS fanboy here but also one of the only ones who won't have gotten a chance to play the beta. by funny i mean

i guess i can go onto the official beta forums so maybe ill just live it vicariously

I was trying to think of a way to talk about my thoughts on the game without breaking the NDA, the post i started ended up being so vague that it basically said nothing unless you already played the game, so instead:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upE802rZl7Q

The stuff he says at the end of that video pretty much sums up the post i would make if i had the ability to make a post without breaking the NDA

Just to add to what he says at the end

Hes exaggerating the price of mounts in the video, though his point about them being expensive is still valid

I dont agree with what they said about the world being empty
In every beta event like this where there are tons of people in the same areas the enemies tend to get killed constantly since there are just so many people there to kill them so what they said about walking forever only to kill 1 thing is only true because of the beta event and isnt the games fault

He said the loot was plentiful, i cant say what ive been getting since it would break the NDA but i disagree with what he said about the loot

Everything else he said is stuff i wouldve posted though
Especially the stuff he says about this being the best f2p game to exist if it was f2p, even if it was a 1 time purchase, like gw2, it would be great, id buy it, but with a sub im not going to


I really wish i could talk about the crafting system, i dont think he really got into the crafting because what he says in the video just makes me think he barely looked at it
Heres an article that talks about it: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/821/feature/8203/Diving-Deep-Into-ESOs-Crafting.html

Theres another beta weekend for this coming up this weekend starting on the 28th

And i have a spare key for this weekends event if anyone wants it, i dont know if i will play or not though, i probably wont



Also theres going to be a monkey infestation as everyone in the beta gets an exclusive monkey pet