So it looks like Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls series may be hitting the MMORPG circuit!
Or not!
It kind of depends on which rumor you decide to trust, backed by your own longings and fanciful wishes.
We do know that Bethesda — I like to call her “Beth”, we’re on an informal basis — is prepping something for the MMO world, and their own popular IP is as good as any a foundation for one. Face facts, we’re not going to see a Fallout MMO for a good long time, so either they turn to Elder Scrolls or do something completely new.
So what if it is an Elder Scrolls MMO? I’m toeing the neutral zone here, since I intellectually appreciate Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion, but I never got emotionally attached to any of them. It was kind of like those dates where you’re set up by people who think they know you two well enough to say that you’re compatable, but the spark is missing. Oblivion had no spark for me, although I could not deny it was a fantastic game.
Elder Scrolls’ strong suit has always been in letting you customize and grow a character in whatever way you like, indepedent of a strict class-based system. Want to be a thief? Be a thief. Want to murder everyone? Knock yourself out. Create the cure for cancer and be a contestant on American Idol? I… guess it’s possible; I never got too far in Oblivion to rule that out.
This is somewhat more difficult to incorporate into a balanced MMO, as is a world that you can radically impact in Oblivion but would have to share with thousands of other players.
Anyway… that about taps the depth of my interest in this perhaps-project. We’ll see if we hear more soon!
If they do make an MMO, I sincerely hope all the mobs don’t autolevel to match the players’ levels. That was one of my biggest gripes in Oblivion; no matter how much experience I gained, I never really got any more powerful, since all the monsters in the world leveled along with me.
The core IP is…ok. It doesn’t do a lot for me but it seems a suitable basis for an MMO. Really, it all comes down to the design, about which we of course know nothing at this point.
The real distinguishing feature of the Elder Scrolls Series for me has been the “no video game rules” part.
In Morrowind, you could pick up anything that could logically be picked up, and kill everything living.
Enemies wouldn’t always stop chasing you if you ran outside their dungeon.
Drop a sword, and there would be a full-sized sword, sitting on the ground.
NPCs weren’t the only ones capable of making new spells or new potions.
In Oblivion, some more “rules” got broken, most notable of which was that few characters sat put in one place at all hours, waiting for you to talk to them.
Oblivion did add back the “rule” that you couldn’t kill a plot-essential NPC.
The point wasn’t that I wanted to run around as a mass murderer and take everyone’s dishes–I always played nice. But it’s much cooler to choose to play by the laws of the in-game society than to be forced to play by the rules of the game.
An elder scrolls MMO wouldn’t feel like an Elder Scrolls game unless it let me interact with the world in a much more realistic way than a usual MMO. Character customization is less important to me than breaking through the glass walls of “video game rules”
Is this doable in an MMO? Doubtful. I’m not even sure it’s desirable. There’s enough to deal with from my fellow players that I don’t think I want to have to also worry about whether the NPCs approve of what I’m doing.
I definitely felt Oblivion would have been more fun as a multiplayer game. It also would have been more fun if the voice acting wasn’t so very bad… or so limited. (I think they blew their budget on Patrick Stewart.) I loved Morrowind, but by the time Oblivion came out, I was ingrained with the MMO mindset and the world felt empty with such poorly acted npcs and a superficial storyline. Shivering Isles was a bit better, but still…
I don’t know that an Elder Scrolls MMO would bring anything new to the genre and I’m skeptical that the IP is rich enough to drive sales. But hey, I’d probably give it a shot.
I’ve been thinking that what the world really needs now is another generic fantasy-based MMO. Bring it on!
I don’t see how taking a game franchise and making an MMO from it is any sort of natural progression. Oblivion had some nice touches — you could create your own spells — that would be entirely unbalancing or pointless in an MMO. Plus, the entire world scaled to your level so there was really no REASON to level, but alternately, there was no barrier to exploration and nothing to stop you from doing whatever you wanted at any time.
All these things are against the very core of modern MMOs, which are all about stopping you from doing whatever you want at any time, unless you get to the level cap.
To make Oblivion an MMO, they would have to gut everything that made it special, just to tick “made it an MMO” off their list.
I think an Elder Scrolls MMO would need one central tenant from the series; skill based system and not really class based. They had classes only to give you a starting skill set.
Now, getting that to balance just right will be hard. Their tiered skill system might still be useful (Tier 1 skills can level to X, Tier 2 to X – Y and Tier 3 to X – Z).
Hopefully they would not incorporate the feature where you could cast spells into nowhere (sky, ground, tree, building, etc) and have it slowly level up.
Oh, and Syp, you forgot Elder Scrolls: Arena
Though, it’s hard to tell if that screen shot is from Arena or Daggerfalls. Unless, of course, you are just implying you never played it.
@Tipa: That comment gave me a good smile for today
You are spot on.
Tipa hit the nail on the head for me
At least if they made a Fallout MMO, we’d have a more unique and original setting for the game!
I’d be really up for this if they didn’t make it like World of Warcraft. A non-trinity fantasy VW game would be really fun.
Highpoints of the series for me that I’d like to see make it into a MMO:
- Enchanting
- Exploring
- Secret stuff (using some clever method to defeat third party databases like randomisation or moving rare items around by secret hotfix)
- Item building
- Custom character making (go go wizard in plate with twohander)
- Irreversible and powerful character choices. I remember being hunted by guards when I entered the city. And becoming a vampire – big oops when the sun rose and I melted!
If they work on these aspects then it could be completely different from WoW.
People have been making fun of Anthony Wiener’s name for ages. At least in New York.
Also, if you think you might make political tweeting a regular activity, maybe you’d consider taking the Twitroll off the blog? I prefer not to think that we might disagree substantially about something that exists outside of the internet.
I think you’re looking at it through Theme-Park tinted goggles, lord knows we’ve been inundated with the things lately. Whereas the Sandbox potential of a TES-MMO is simply … staggering. In the words of lolcats everywhere… Do Want.
I’d be interested in seeing a fallout MMO, mainly because I’d like to see how they would do up against Fallen Earth in relation to gameplay mechanics. I’d have a feeling that a fallout MMO wouldnt place such an onus on crafting however which is one of the things which makes Fallen Earth a stand out MMO in my opinion. Lets see
What I loved about Oblivion (haven’t played any other games in the series) was the sense of adventure. You popped out of the sewers and could just..go. Over there.
I’ve played it through twice and have never touched the main story line (the plain of oblivion was FUGLY) but the Dark Brotherhood and Theives Guild sub plots were some of my fav all time gaming moments.
As tipa said, you can’t make Oblivion (and I’m guessing any other Elder Scrolls game) an MMO without taking away everything that made it special.
Wanna go over there? Well you need to do these quests to level up first.
Fancy those lovely glass weapons in that there case? Well, level up to cap to max out lock picking, then grind for 9 weeks for a single use skeleton key that will give you a 7.4% chance of rolling that crit needed to open the case.
Wanna beat the quest providers over the head hours on end so you can pick their pockets whilst they regain conciousness? “That target is not attackable”.
No thanks.
Would love for Beth to tackle an MMO to see how it turned out – just not an Elder Scrolls one. Then of course they could do it, make it perfect and blow everyone away. That would be more exciting.
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The simple fact is that I’ll buy it anyway, because there are fewer big name developers you can trust these days.
A MMO would be a step in the wrong direction. MMO’s aren’t RPGs. An RPG is about building and playing a character, not about grinding for hours, about adventures and stories, not about aquiring rewards.
There is ofcourse something inbetween the MMO and the singeplayer. A proper Partybased Multiplayer. Four people on an adventure together. A mage, a rogue and a warrior, and some argonian in pink pants that has a strange obsession for watermellons.
I Can Picture my Perfect MMO in my head right now!……Now all i gotta do is get a big company to design a game just for me
There will be an MMO To come out like no other shortly…surely.
it would be totally awesome i a oblivion rpg came out , thats if its good.. and if beth really does blow us away wowwww , i cant wait!
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it would be amazing if, in the mmo, the dark brotherhood randomly selected a player with the same level to kill for the dark brotherhood and steal from a certain player in the theives guild
well, I have absolutly no idea how itll work (they deffinatly should keep real time combat instead of theWoW “spell button press 1″ skill trees andstuff.) im in agreement with the people who say making an mmo might be a mistake. youll have to take away everything I Liked abou the game in order to make it workable! But if they can pull it off, Ill be SO EXCITED! i mean, come on! Infinite RELEVANT dark brotherhood and thieves guild quests?! Id be SO EXCITED! only thing is, I really hope the fighters guild (or whatever theyre gonna call it) isnt gonna get snubbed, cause the werwolf was kinda… anticlimactic.