Thank You Zenimax for Letting Me (and Everyone) Know Elder Scrolls Online Will Suck

I’d just like to take the time to thank the developers and PR team behind Elder Scrolls Online for letting me know ahead of time that it’ll be horrible, and that I don’t need to waste my time, nor get my hopes up.

It seems Zenimax is taking a page out of BioWare’s playbook, but didn’t realize BioWare’s lost the game. Fully voiced NPCs, solo story-line, typical MMO tab-targeting combat system, and a separate zone for PvP; can someone please alert Zenimax to tell them they’re making a horrible mistake? This design formula is the expected ruler (the measurement one, not the monarchist one) by the market for the industry. What makes the “next WoW’ is something that bends the ruler to make another, different formula.

What’s even worse is that game director Matt Firor just did an interview with Edge-Online talking about public dungeons as if they were some ancient game mechanic that hasn’t been seen in MMORPGs for years.  Non-instanced dungeons!? Geez, this sounds like the greatest MMORPG ever made (/sarcasm)! Is he serious? There are literally dozens of MMORPGs that released in the last few years without instanced dungeons.

From a team made-up of some ex Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot developers, I can’t believe how horrible ESO sounds so far. They don’t even have a hook yet. What separates ESO from the pack? Is their big selling point, “Hey, it’s an Elder Scroll MMO“? I haven’t heard one thing that’s unique yet; and in this market, the first impression is everything.

Having been an Elder Scrolls fan for over a decade – I only missed experiencing TES 2 – my excitement for this title shot-up through the roof, only to plunge down within minutes of reading the details; but at least they’re upfront about it. So again, thank you for letting me know that ESO will suck, Zenimax.

18 Comments

  1. All they had to do was take an elder scrolls title and add multiplayer to it. -_-

    I’ve only played Morrowind and Skyrim in depth (all I did in Oblivion was run around knifing people) and if either of those had multiplayer to them, I’d never play another game again.

    Well way to screw it up guys.

  2. uh Im just curious what are these dozens of games without instanced dungeons?

    If ESO will be like WoW, Rift and SWTOR and the like then yeah sounds pretty damn dumb.

  3. I’m sure others can add to the list, but here’s a few from the last few years. Tera, Perpetuum, FFXIV (not sure if they still do with 2.0 on the horizon), Mortal Online, LOTRO, Fallen Earth, Darkfall. There’s a lot of games that do both, for instance Lotro, although it’s been a while since I’ve played it. I think Warhammer Online also did both.

  4. lol Yeah so nothing really that doesnt have a dungeon without being instanced tho? If it has a dungeon its instanced.

  5. TERA has some dungeons that aren’t instanced, as does Mortal Online. The interview was about “public dungeons” not necessarily whether or not they are instanced. I made the leap to instances, only because non-instanced dungeons are all public.

  6. It reminds me of SWTOR pre-launch, they devs acted the same :))

    Keep spreading the word of decline Mike:)

  7. Lineage 2 has non instanced dungeons. You walk in and sit at the entrance waiting to get a group together. It was a pretty fun system because when you got to that point in level you could almost ALWAYS find people that were running through the dungeon at that time. The bosses(not raid bosses but just regular bosses) had fairly resonable respawn times so if someone had just cleared the place you could just sit there and wait and waste time killing nearby respawning trash.

  8. yeah let’s make a elder scrolls mmo! ok wat’s important? first person yeah great idea let’s delete it. No class system, that was a huge improvement let’s add some classes. let’s replacce our awesome graphics with runescape/wow graphics!! okay now the most important thing: LET’S DELETE SANBOXING!!!! wait the best thing just popped up in my mind let’s delete the dark brotherhood and the thieves guild WEEEW! and no consequences of dying! this mmo is goingt to be great it’s like the best mmo ever and no one has done things like this before(exept every other mmo)! not only the best mmo this is also the best elder scrolls game ever made!!!!!!!!!!!

    and that’s how the developers think of it

  9. Guys, there is no need to play ESO. I search the internet for negerive feedback (which is a good way to improve a game and in general) but I can not find any. All I found is relative and ofc nothing specificy, because the game did not even when to Beta… You just want another sinlge-player Skyrim, WOW,SWTOR like game because you are narrow minded. Open your eyes enjoy the world and please give better feedback. No matter how much you will struggle the came will became even better. Actually the more you struggle the better it will became!!!

    Thanks.

  10. All they had to do was take an elder scrolls title and add multiplayer to it. -_-

    I know, right? Instead they’re taking WoW, GW2, SWTOR, and adding a TES face to it.

    Locked races? Get outta here. I’ve already ran into many people who’s groups of friends can’t agree on races — lots come from Oblivion/Skyrim. Sure, it’s to keep with lore. But going back 1,000 years? Not that all prequels are terrible, but give me a break!

    Tab targeting? FU. Even if you still need your reticule, you can’t dodge projectiles reliably, and that means no real projectile physics. I understand that coding hit-detection is tricky, but FFS, that’s part of the heart and soul of TES. Of course that’s the sacrifice these sell-outs are willing to make for the sake of having a MegaServer, even though this idea isn’t new, and technically hit-detection can be made reliable in such servers.

    It would have been awesome to see private/public servers, heavily-modded, that could hold 200+ people, with great hit-detection and classic TES stories and action. Instead it will be a huge MegaLag Server, that parses people into micro worlds, and groups players into the Be Emperor Palpatine PvP Map. So instead of making a ground-breaking achievement, by allowing friends into a persistent TES world and solving the issues with conflicting quests, we’re instead given an already-been-tried MMO clone — that’s slightly updated — with a TES paint job.

    I’m betting F2P in one year after release…

    tl:dr — Not going to play a typical MMO clone with a TES face lift.

  11. Another thing I’d like to point out is that since Zenimax owns Bethesda, they are basically forcing them to make this game. Zenimax is stupid, but I’m all for Bethesda. Also, if this MMO turns out to be successful (or at least will balance out), that will give Bethesda all the more reason to delay the next Elder Scrolls video game.

  12. It is going to be the Justin Bieber of online RPGS! HAHA! NERDS! BLIZZARD DOES A LOT BETTER THEN BETHESDA! WoW isn’t so gayish! ESO combat looks really gay.

  13. All they had to do was take an elder scrolls title and add multiplayer to it. -_-
    I’ve only played Morrowind and Skyrim in depth (all I did in Oblivion was run around knifing people) and if either of those had multiplayer to them, I’d never play another game again.
    Well way to screw it up guys.

    Shut up faggot Dan.

  14. I generally don’t like MMOs, to be honest. I wasn’t one of the people who wanted TES Online. People will still be playing this game far into the future, but I don’t think it will be successful like Skyrim, good luck though.

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