Elder Scrolls Online Story "100% Solo," Says Firor

[jeffredo]

My best moment's in WoW and LotRO were solo. This is welcome news. I don't mind the social interaction and player economy but I hate feeling shoe-horned into grouping to advance main storylines. I hate the fact they're even making this thing, but with a strong solo campaign I might give it a look.

 

[alvine]

i hope it will not be like the star wars mmo where you would walk in into your quest area room and dissapear infront of other players

 

[officeguy]

The team of 250 at Zenimax Online wants the player to feel awesome, that he or she is the hero

. I slay the dragons, orc and other filthy creatures. I fight for truth and justice and protect the people from harm. Then my girlfriend yells at me saying she want to go somewhere 🙁

 

[d_kuhn]

The soloable aspect and sp storylines are what drew me to SWTOR... I played through one of the storylines and it was a lot of fun, not TOO much grinding, and an interesting story. I didn't do it totally solo but probably 98% solo until I got to endgame content.

I think the makers of SP RPG's who want to go MP need to look beyond the current MMO recipe... which makes me like what I'm reading about TES. It's VERY difficult to have a rich story for a player and support a bunch of other players doing the same thing... how many hero's does a realm need? I really like the idea of having each player be the "hero" of their own story, and they can recruit friends to be companions on instances or quests... or maybe there's a "mercenary" mode where you hire yourself out for pay. Use instances to isolate primary quest areas. So you can have people wandering around the world and you can interact with them... and maybe they can help you when you get attacked by a bear on the road... but when you go to fight the dragon you won't have a line of people in front of you - just you as the hero and whoever you've brought with you (as companions). They get exp for their time but only you move your storyline forward.

The current approach (everyone is the hero) works fine for the simple plotlines of current mmo's but I don't think it'd work for richer one's like the TES or Witcher stories.

 

[twelch82]

[citation][nom]gel214th[/nom]Yes, well the problem with every game that ever did that is this : What do you do when there are no players left to fulfill the "villain" side? Games which are 100% PVP represent a niche market. And they are available out there for you to play.The Facts are that the majority of players do not like that gameplay. Argue against them if you want to, but those are the facts. So therefore you MUST have PVE systems and the relevant mechanics in place. If you want, in your mind, change the name from MMO (since I am assuming that you will argue about what is "true" MMO as compared to something else). Companies will make your definition of "True" MMO...EVE Online is a prime example that would fit your definition of player run worlds and player developed storylines.I hate the gameplay style of EVE online. Looking at EVE's subscription model against the popularity of the whole Freelancer/Wing Commander space combat genre and you can tell that many other people don't like the gameplay style either. If the developers of EVE were to present their same assets, graphics, sound everything but with a PVE oriented playstyle their subscription numbers would double. But they have made a decision to keep their game within its niche. The market for the "theme park" or "theme park/sandbox" hybrid MMO is much larger than the PVP oriented Sandbox variety. I'm glad that Elderscrolls Online seems to favor the PVE oriented model.However I feel that if they aren't bringing anything really new to the marketplace, their customer base would have been better served by adding LAN/Internet based Co-Op to Skyrim and whatever comes after.[/citation]

EVE online understands what being an MMO is about, but the gameplay is very slow, and the learning curve is fairly extensive. There is a place for games like that, but there is also an unfilled place for games that are faster paced and easier to get into, but that are also unashamed to be MMOs.

 

[dreadlokz]

I just hope you get bonus or something when in group, or maybe harder quests and stuff, the hole thing about online is to play with others, if they want something like that, they should release some offlive version ofthe game! To me, this looks like a mix of wow/SWTOR/elder scrols, I had many hopes for ESO, but I'm not liking it so far =s

 

[Guest]

The solo main quest, on one hand, sounds fun. On the other hand, so much of the defense for this game has centered around it being completely separate from the single-player series. I wonder if this won't take down TES if it flops really hard.

At this point, we know it won’t be a good Elder Scrolls game — there’s simply less immersion and less freedom in a virtual environment shared with thousands of players. What remains to be seen is whether it will be a good MMOG. Nothing shown so far gives any hope in that regard. The graphical style looks a lot like the other massively multi-player online games out there, the combat and interfaces are likewise indistinguishable from, well, let’s just say it: World of Warcraft.

I don’t see any path to making this a good Elder Scrolls game, the multitude of other players just makes it impossible. But it -could- be a great MMO, if Zenimax Online took pages from EVE and Ultima and made a massive world with tons of detailed interactions. ES:O won’t flourish by directly ripping anyone off, but nothing the size and scope of EVE has been done in a high fantasy setting and you can bet your smallclothes there’s a market for just that. Ultima’s detail would take the edge off of the lack of immersion from MMO-ification. Of course, Ultima Online is still up and running, so they’d have to do it better for it to matter.

If Zenimax Online doesn’t do these things, the pressure from existing games will sink it. And that’s not to mention upcoming MMORPG titles like Amalur, which will probably survive its financial troubles.