Waiting for Bethesda to come around into making a MMORPG out of its beloved Elder Scrolls series is sort of what is was like waiting for Duke Nukem Forever to be released. You think eventually it’s gonna happen, but your really not quite sure and eventually you give up waiting.
In an interview at the recent PAX expo, Joystiq got a chance to talk with Bethesda Game Director and Executive Produces Todd Howard who commented about a possible Elder Scrolls MMORPG.
I like this kind of game (RPG) better. You know, it’s what most of us are into. I’m not really an MMO guy. I respect them, I look at them, but I don’t play them. It feels more real to me when I’m the hero and it’s crafted for that. A community aspect to it, I recognize a lot of people would want that in a game like this, but it changes the flavor for me.
The audience we have for our kind of thing is big enough that we don’t have to tone it down. We can just do our thing, and it’s kind of grown with each game. So there was no pressure from anybody above me to say ‘Hey, you need to change this.’
So it seems that the guys at Bethesda are more than content with keeping Elder Scrolls a single-player RPG for the time being. However as the MMO genre continues to grow and change, hopefully they’ll eventually come around to the idea of an Elder Scrolls MMORPG, at least I hope they do.