Announcement here.
Disappointing but not unexpected. I am wondering if single player PC games are going extinct.
Any Elder Scrolls game is a good thing.
The big problem with most single player games is that, once you buy the game, that’s it. They don’t get to charge you any more money for it. Everybody’s looking at the huge feeding troughs of (a) monthly charges for NEW NEW NEW content, or (b) paying through the nose for additional content on an as-“needed” basis (DDO, for example).
That’s a damned shame, especially since Skyrim proved that you can make a hell of a lot of money off a single player game.
This really looks like more of a side-project, especially since it’s coming so soon. There’s about a five-year gap between each of the main Elder Scrolls game, so I imagine we’ll be seeing VI in 2016.
I really doubt that. MMOs are voracious for content so they would have to have two completely separate staffs to make two games that cannibalize each others audience. Unless it gets outsourced (and even that is unlikely because, like I said, you would be making competition for your own product), I doubt they make another purely single player Elder Scrolls game.
Of course if the MMO fails horribly, they might change their mind. Hey, I can dream right? 
Cue the inevitable compromises in gameplay so as to satisfy the lowest common denominator in 5 4 3 2 1…
A multiplayer Oblivion/Skyrim/Fallout 3 would be fucking awesome, if it was done right. If. Just as one example, if it was me player houses would be Instances done with proper Bethesda physics and objects. I bet the roleplayers would love being able to invite another player into their home to see what they’ve done with the place.
The thing is, what I like most about Elder Scrolls is the game system. Let’s face it, the setting is basically your average fantasy setting. What makes the games great is they play like few other games. The relatively open class system and the idea that skills get better as you use them is what makes these games different and it’s the system is what will change the most with an MMO.
Just because they are announcing it in May doesn’t mean it’ll be done anytime soon. It might be done in … say, 2014? Most MMOs start the hype quite early.
Also, Warhammer 40.000 MMO just got converted to a single-player game instead, so I kinda doubt it’ll be MMOs all the way down quite yet.
Honestly, I’d be quite happy with it being a conversion of Skyrim that allowed for multiplayer over a LAN. My wife and I would play the crap out of that.
Exactly. As an MMO, it’s just going to be the same boring ass orcs/elves/generic tolkien fantasy bullshit that we always get. Yawn. There’s nothing especially interesting about the universe.
Now a fallout MMO - that might be interesting.
Ultima Online was the first big MMORPG and it had a very similar skill system to the Elder Scrolls series. Skills could be raised from 0 to 100, in 0.1 increments. Characters had a 700 skill point cap to attempt to keep things balanced, there were no character levels. The game is still alive (though unrecognisable) 15 years later. It also had a well established lore that managed to break the D&D mould (no Elves!). So it can be done.
Of course then Everquest was released, sold three times as many subscriptions and became the default template for most MMO developers since. Some games have tried to change things and they get tons of hype but the players just don’t seem interested. Hopefully Bethesda, with their already established fan base, can mix things up a little and succeed.
Anyway, I don’t see why this would spell the end of single-player Elder Scrolls games. An ES MMOG should easily make enough money to fund their own development team. Skyrim sold fantastically and they’d be fools to abandon the series.
Looks like they made the official announcement.
I too am quite unhappy, however this is only assuming that it is their main focus. Now, if there are two different teams, one for TES Online and the other to continue Skyrim DLC and the next true TES game, I have no problem with that I suppose. However, I really don’t see TES Online being too innovative in any sense. As others have pointed out the universe in and of itself is rather standard fantasy. I would MUCH, MUCH rather see a Fallout MMO game, because it would truly bring something new to the table.
Zenimax Online (which is the studio making Elder Scrolls Online) is a *completely *separate studio from Bethesda (which is the studio that made Skyrim).
Eh, no. I’m an MMO player, but an Elder Scrolls MMO runs completely counter to all the things that make the series worthwhile, in my opinion. I play them to
- play a singular character–the Chosen One for the age, basically.
- create the most wildly overpowered, dungeon-crushing, encounter-trivializing character I can.
- customize the game world and mechanics to suit my whims.
- create bizarre and humorous situations by abusing the console commands.
(Not necessarily in that order.)
In an MMO, you’ll be one of a horde (if they’re lucky) of “balanced” (sharply limited) characters. It’s highly unlikely that any modification of the world will be allowed, and the console is right out. At best, I expect it to be WoW with slightly better graphics and a dubious physics engine.
If I can’t ride a wave of cabbages down a mountain, resurrect a bandit and kill him again for pissing me off, and change all the dragons to flying ponies if I feel like it, I’m not interested.
Dammit. I am not mad because I expect production of the core series to slow. I mean Blizzard made WoW, and their production didn’t slow down because they have different teams (in other words, instead of slowing and putting out their other games at a “super slow” pace, Blizzard sticks to their normal “very slow” pace).
I want to get into the content, but I am done with MMORPGs. I don’t have the time or money to devote, and I’m never been a fan of the gameplay, where it seems to be “join a guild, spend hours every weekend raiding.”
At the very least tablets and mobile gaming will have a lot of room for single player.
Same with Mass Effect series and a whole host of other high content story driven games.
I loved City of heroes for about a week and I never played again. I considered it money well spent.
Actually, I prefer to have a game that doesn’t require hundreds of hours of grinding before I can get to the “real game”
Its not the money its the time. Even if I could avoid all the grinding to get to endgame, the raiding time requirements to be in a progression guild is a part time job.
If you read the feature list without any mention of the franchise at all the only reaction would be “meh, another wow clone”. It’s like Elder Scrolls only with hotbar-based not-really-realtime combat, third person camera, classes instead of skill levelling…so basically not Elder Scrolls at all. The only elder scrolls thing about it is the lore, which really means jack squat. I can describe this game for you right now: Quest hub based leveling (go to a quest hub, kill ten somethings, collect the asses of ten somethings, pick up ten somethings from the ground then move to the next place and repeat). Run dungeons until your shoulders are big enough to run hard mode dungeons then run those until you can run raids then run those until you can run hard mode raids. Daily quests, woohoo. Faction/rep grinding. Pvp based around time investment so the people who kick your ass now will kick your ass forever.
Pretty much this. What they ought to be doing is focusing on DLCs for Skyrim, a new Fallout game and the next sequel to the Elder Scrolls series. If they have to do an MMO, then the Fallout universe seems more promising to me, though I think I heard that one is under development and I know there has been a bunch of legal battles between (IIRC) Interplay and Bethesda over it and over the IP rights and such for the Fallout title.
-XT