Well, you know it had to happen eventually — The Elder Scrolls series is going MMO in 2013. Not exactly a shocking move, considering the Elder Scrolls games are pretty much just single-player MMOs to begin with. Really, the only shocking thing is that it took this long to happen.
The game is being developed by ZeniMax Online Studios, which was founded way back in 2007 but has yet to release a single game. It’s probably safe to assume the studio has been spending most of the past five years toiling away on The Elder Scrolls Online in secret.
Early today Bethesda released a short teaser trailer for The Elder Scrolls online, which you can check out after the jump…
Not exactly brimming with information, but that’s one hell of a narrator they have there. There are also some screenshots of the game floating around, but I’m not posting ‘em — they were lifted from Game Informer and I’m sure my overlords would prefer I don’t get Uproxx sued. For the curious, Google’s your friend.
A few details about Elder Scrolls online — it will take place a millennium before the events of Skyrim, with players being able to join one of three factions, each of which consists of three races. The first-person perspective of previous Elder Scrolls games will be ditched in favor of a more typical MMO third-person view, and it seems like the world will mostly be made up of re-used environments from Morrowind and Skyrim.
So yeah, I’m not a big MMO player, but this definitely sounds like the biggest threat to World of Warcraft’s dominance to date. Any MMO players out there? What do you think? How about Elder Scrolls fans? Are you on board for the new MMO direction?
via Ars Technica & XBIBY Games
![[avatar]](http://p.uproxxcdn.com/photo/3998/thumb)
![[image]](http://cdn.uproxx.com/wp-content/thumbnails/130/110/2013/05/gammasquaddestiny-150x150.jpg)
![[image]](http://cdn.uproxx.com/wp-content/thumbnails/130/110/2013/05/gammasquaddyinglight1-150x150.jpg)
![[image]](http://cdn.uproxx.com/wp-content/thumbnails/130/110/2013/05/Xbox-Next-Gen-2013-Xbox-One-All-in-One-Experience-150x150.jpg)
![[image]](http://cdn.uproxx.com/wp-content/thumbnails/130/110/2013/05/shaq-fu-2-150x150.jpg)
“Watch Your Back World of Warcraft”, isn’t WoW dead already after announcing the new Pokemon expansion?
Because nobody likes or buys Pokemon.
Miss the point much?
One of the best parts of the Elder Scrolls, at least on PCs, is the fan-made expansions. There’s no way they’ll allow that on a multi-player game, but other than that, sounds awesome!
I’ve been an MMO player on and off for the last 15 years. Every MMO that comes out now that claims to innovate really just makes slight modifications to an existing successful formula and puts their brand and art design on it. To me, personally, nothing has ever felt as original as the original EQ. That’s not to say EQ was actually entirely original, but when I played it I never felt like I was playing anything else. When you load up a game like RIFT, it often feels like you’re playing WoW with different art.
The Elder Scrolls games always feel very unique because of their level of immersion and the open world. And because they’re single player games, it never feels out of place that you quickly rise to the a level of god-like power. You almost always feel like the center of the world. MMOs by design need to keep players weak compared to any level-appropriate content. So the idea that you’ll be in a TES world but not feeling quite the way you do while playing a TES game might be a bit jarring and I’m not sure how they plan to get over that hurdle. My big concern is that it will be a very typical fantasy MMO with the Elder Scrolls brand and art slapped on it.
I really hope they do this right. No more point, click, and do a rotation for god sakes that WoW has seemed to set as a standard. I know this existed before in Everquest but it never had the fan base or following WoW has so i use that as its familiarity. Hell it was taboo mentioning that you played EQ in my day of 56k bliss >