Month: August 2013

Last October, I paid a visit to the ZeniMax Online studios in Maryland in order to get some hands-on time with the studio’s upcoming MMO, The Elder Scrolls Online. Well, today at PAX East I got to pay the lands of Tamriel a second visit to see how far the team has come since my first look at the game. Honestly, I was initially dreading writing this because I was sure that I wouldn’t have anything to say that I hadn’t said in my previous review, but thankfully, I was worried for nothing.

The game was hardly recognizable to me because of the sheer amount of attention that’s been given to it since I first played it in its alpha stage last fall. Gone was the functional-but-barebones UI with which I was familiar; it’s been replaced with a sleek, polished interface leaps and bounds above the (notoriously awful) interfaces seen in the single-player entries of the series. On top of that, I got my grubby paws on a different faction, swapping my Dunmer of the Ebonheart Pact for a Breton of the Daggerfall Covenant. After character creation (which, by the way, is insanely detailed with dozens of appearance sliders and customization options), I was dropped into Stros M’Kai, the starting zone for members of the Daggerfall Covenant. From there I was let loose to roam, explore, quest, and fight for a solid two hours.

Let me start by saying that everything I said about the game’s combat system in my previous hands-on still applies. It’s still crisp, responsive, and most of all, fun, which is more than I can say for combat in the single-player TES titles. You won’t find any of Oblivion or Skyrim’s swing, backpedal, swing, backpedal combat here. You have to be on your toes, especially in fights against multiple enemies, unless you want to get your face well-acquainted with the ground. Blocking power-attacks, dodging AoEs, and interrupting enemy abilities are all integral aspects of the game’s combat system, and frankly it just works.

My analysis of the game’s progression and character development system, however, is now null and void. The devs have completely overhauled the previous progression system, and I happen to enjoy the new version exponentially more. In the system’s previous iteration, investing points into the core attributes (Health, Magicka, and Stamina) would unlock a variety of bonuses such as increased run speed and the like. That’s been nixed, and while you still get one point per level to invest in your core attributes, they’re no longer tied to any bonus abilities.

Here’s how it works: Upon each level up, you’re granted a single attribute point and a single skill-point (skill points can also be earned by completing certain tasks within the game and not just via level-up). The attribute point, as previously mentioned, can be used to boost health, magicka, or stamina. The skill point, however, can be invested into any number of skills that you’ve unlocked. In turn, skills are unlocked through a skill-based progression system. If you want to unlock new two-hander abilities, you simply have to use a two-handed weapon, which will slowly increase your skill level with said weapon (ditto for armor and class-based abilities).

For example, during my demo time, I played as a Breton Sorcerer, and thus I began the game with a destruction staff as my weapon. As I played and began to amass more weaponry, though, I decided I wanted to try for a battlemage style of build, so I swapped out my staff for a big honkin’ two-handed sword. Since my Sorcerer had never used two-handers before, he began with a two-handed skill level of 1. After a few quick fights, his skill increased to level 2, unlocking the cleave ability for purchase. Likewise, you increase your skill level in light/medium/heavy armor by wearing armor of that type. The system provides a great deal of flexibility, and by the time my two hours were up, my Sorcerer had gone from a fireball-shooting, robe-wearing finger-wiggler to a heavily armored battlemage who could interweave powerful arcane magic with devastating sword strikes.

I do have one gripe, though, and it’s that I feel the game’s progression is a bit too slow. Even the gap from first to second level seemed to be a bit tedious, made moreso by the fact that you begin the game with absolutely no abilities, so you’re stuck with basic attacks until you unlock your first skill point at level 2. I don’t think that progression should be fast, necessarily, but as it stands, it takes four or five levels for the game to really pick up steam. For reference, at the end of my two hours I was somewhere in the neighborhood of level 7 or so. I think not starting characters off with a couple of basic skills is a poor decision, and it’s really hard to appreciate just how fun the combat really is when you’ve got only basic attacks and maybe a skill or two at your disposal.

Another thing that I noticed during this playthrough that somehow didn’t register with me before is just how beautiful the game is. Each new zone brings with it a new and varied aesthetic, and there were more than a few occasions when I simply had to stop and admire the scenery. From
strange, curved Orcish longhouses to massive, towering Redguard fortresses and mysterious ancient ruins, the art style of the game remains true to the source material and brings environments last seen in the old-school Elder Scrolls games (in this case, Daggerfall) to life. The animations, likewise, are fluid and lovely, and overall the game is simply gorgeous. It may not employ the same ultra-realistic style seen in, say, Skyrim, but the balance between stylistic and realistic art is well struck.

As Massively’s Richie noted in his hands-on with the game last week, TESO features certain quests that, if completed (or not completed), will alter your gameplay in the future. For example, the opening questline for Stros M’Kai involved recruiting crewmen for a pirate captain who recently lost her crew to mutiny. You’re given a list of potential candidates, and you have the choice of recruiting one, two, or all of them as you so desire. Depending on how many of them (and which ones) you choose to recruit, there will be some kind of effect in the future. I went through the trouble of recruiting a particularly cheeky rogueish character whom I was sure I would never see again after I got out of the starter zone, but as I was meandering about the second zone, whom do I come across but said cheeky rogue. He proceeded to provide me with a bit of advice and some assistance in my quest, which was very much welcome. I was later informed that if I hadn’t recruited him during my opening questline, he would never have shown up in the second zone. Initially, I thought ths was a brilliant idea, and I guess it still is, but the more I thought about it the more I realized how meaningless it really is (oh, the existentialism).

Look at it this way: TESO is, at its core, a themepark MMO. Sure, it’s set up in such a way that makes the questing feel more organic than rigidly structured, but when it comes right down to it, it still follows the formula of finding a (usually static) questgiver, accepting a quest, completing a quest, turning a quest in. So what does it matter that he wouldn’t show up if I didn’t recruit him? Who wouldn’t? That’s how themepark MMOs work, especially if you’re a completionist (as I am). You follow the questline through the zone until all the quests are done and then you move on to the next area, so there’s really no reason not to recruit said characters, and therefore there’s nothing super special or interesting about the fact that they show up later down the line other than that initial reaction of “Oh, neat.” I think this would be a much more interesting feature if it were tied to some kind of special, out-of-the-way event rather than the main questline that everyone ever is going to complete, but maybe I’m just nitpicking.

Overall, I still think TESO is shaping up to be a solid game that will please fans of The Elder Scrolls’ setting and run-of-the-mill MMO junkies alike. I’m not ready to say that it’s “innovative” or “revolutionary” or anything of the sort, but it seems that ZeniMax is putting enough of a twist on the traditional MMO formula to make the game worth a try whether you’re a fan of the series or not. Now, if we could just get that beta test going…

 

How do you keep character skills interesting and relevant when you’ve only got six slots to equip them? According to the latest series of community answers for The Elder Scrolls Online, the key is what kind of abilities are relevant. The skills on those slots are meant to serve as utility rather than raw damage, with your main attacks serving as your primary means of doing damage. Although a few skills will have added damage under certain circumstances, that’s not the overall goal.

Beyond that, the answers also address the issue of charging attacks and moving, which is both allowed and encouraged. Crowd control can be reliably broken out of with Stamina, but if your Stamina bar is low you can be caught and held for a while. You can also rest easy knowing that there will be no ammunition in the game, freeing archers from the tedious process of acquiring arrows at the worst possible time. Check out all of these answers and more in the full rundown.

 

Want an early look at the first 20 minutes of The Elder Scrolls Online? Get it while you can after the cut, as a lengthy snippet of leaked gameplay footage has made its way onto YouTube.

The clip shows off character creation, nine playable races, and a choice between three classes (Dragonknight, Sorcerer, and Templar). You can also see the UI, skill trees, and various quests at different points in the video. There’s plenty of combat on display, too, both third- and first-person.

 

Last week, I promised you a second round of questions and answers regarding the types of calls Massively makes on which games and stories it will cover and why. Let’s get to it.

Mike9 wrote, “I will play [State of Decay] because it looks awesome, but I never understand why Massively covers it; it is a single-player game, not an MMO by even the loosest of definitions, not unless Super Mario World is also considered an MMO now (well, I guess that did allow two players).”

I assume you’re looking for a better answer than braaaaaiiiiinnnnsssssss!

In a way, this one’s down to the nature of news posts and how there’s not enough room in them for tons of context. State of Decay is indeed a single-player game from Undead Labs. We’ve been tracking it loosely since its earliest days partly because Undead Labs is also making an MMO based on the same world and partly because the studio was founded by former ArenaNet VIPs. In fact, the MMO was announced first but was seemingly set aside temporarily so that the company could focus on the single-player console version, probably because money. The story might make you think of Torchlight II or Kingdoms of Amalur, but let’s hope that unlike the Torchlight MMO and Project Copernicus, Undead Labs’ Class4 MMO actually, you know, happens.

Just remember that we do occasionally cover games that are not MMOs when they have relevance to the genre in some way. And by MMO, I mean the broader term now embraced by the industry. We MMORPG gamers have lost that war, but they can’t take “MMORPG” from us! Just because we’re covering it doesn’t mean we’re fooled. Promise.

Several people wrote, “Why did Massively cover the Elder Scrolls Online beta leak video?”

I don’t like leaks any more than rumors. They’re a pain in the butt whether we run them or not. But contrary to what some commenters apparently believe, we don’t have a formal “no leaks” policy, though you’re right that we’re quick to nuke breaches in our comments where people exaggerate and lie on a daily basis. Traditionally, if someone sends us a leak and asks us to break the story, whether we do so depends on the story. I don’t like NDA-breaking, but if someone leaks, say, screenshots from a defunct game or documents proving that a company has been lying about its microtransaction policies, history shows that we lean toward running them.

The ESO video is its own unique situation. We didn’t break the story; it was all over the internet by the time we got to it. At least one commenter said it was lame to use the “he hit me first, mommy!” rationale, but it’s true: Reporting on an existing, widespread leak is very different from actually doing the leaking. The genie was already out of that bottle. And talking about it was something our readers clearly wanted to do, as evinced by the comment cavalcade.

I don’t agree with those who thought we should have withheld the video because our readers “cannot handle it.” You’d be angry if we sugarcoated anything else! Besides, this wasn’t the first video of the game out there; everyone at PAX saw the game, we’ve had multiple hands-on pieces, and so on. People who want to hate the game are going to hate it no matter what we (or ZeniMax, for that matter) do. That video could have been completely pro with bleeding-edge graphics and showering everyone in the comments with wads of free money baked into chocolate cake and haters would still be hating.

Of course, the “you threw ZeniMax under a bus for hits” stuff assumes you think the game was made to look bad by the video. I don’t. It looks fine to me, and that’s in the crummiest video ever. The editor who wrote about it did so because it looked better than he expected!

You guys are completely entitled to think that posting about an already-uncontainable leak fell into a grey area. We struggled with it too and will no doubt struggle with similar decisions in the future. But we didn’t struggle with it out of deference to a game studio or concern for a few forum trolls who’d already made up their minds on the game anyway. We’ll absolutely keep our word to game studios when we give it, but we don’t work for them. It’s not our job to protect them, their games, or you from their rogue beta testers once they’re loose on the internet.

We’re not kidding about that title. The latest set of answers for The Elder Scrolls Online’s Ask Me Anything is full of lore. Spilling over with lore. Its lore cup runneth over. Do you want to know how old an elf has to be before he’s actually old? 200-300 years is old. Want to know if there will be any Dragonborn running around a la Skyrim? Nope, and shouts are a thing of legend. It’s all the lore you’ve wanted and were clearly not afraid to ask about.

There are some other answers in the mix as well. Players will have to guess about the abilities of their opponents in PvP to some extent, since the armor system will not allow you to guess at abilities by appearance. Players can also expect to find puzzles in the game rather than pure combat encounters, although no details are given. So while you’ll find the most meat if you’re looking for lore, even more system-focused players will find some relevant answers in the full set.

 

Many players in my guild are really looking forward to Elder Scrolls Online. Nearly everyone has signed up for beta. I cannot confirm or deny whether some of them might be in playing right now. When I announced that I was taking on the ESO column for Massively, I could feel their questioning eyes burning through the internet: Why would you want to do a column on the Elder Scrolls? You have said that you were burned out on fantasy. Skyrim gave you trouble because of the first-person view. And there are no playable dwarves. They might have caught me on that last one, but the others are partially true, as well. I have played a lot of fantasy games, but TES bends a lot of the traditions of high fantasy. And thankfully, you can play all of Skyrim in third-person view.

There are three major factors that have kept me intrigued with the entire world of the Elder Scrolls. Tamriel is full of deep and rich lore. Granted, most of ESO’s lore is future-tense, but a good chunk can be applied to the current timeline — much as in Star Wars: The Old Republic, my other editorial focus. Secondly, Elder Scrolls Online intends to keep the mechanics and the flavor of the franchise within an MMO setting. This includes a PvP system that pits three factions against each other. Although I usually have a take-it-or-leave-it approach to open-world PvP, I have always been fascinated by how three-faction systems work. Lastly, the community is passionate. I enjoy connecting with people who are looking to connect with each other and share their hopes for a game that hasn’t even been released yet.

Those will be the three main focuses of this column. Let me tell you how it will work.

I’m extremely opinionated when it comes to what I like in MMOs and what I believe works and doesn’t. I do attempt to maintain a reasonable, balanced, and enthusiastic approach to my opinions, but I’m not beyond a bout of insanity every once in a while. Each week, I’d like to touch on an aspect of one of the three major topics I mentioned above. But most importantly, I’d like for you to comment and voice your own opinion about mine.

Today, since we are just diving into this world, I’ll start with an easy one. We all saw the introductory video for the opening storyline. Although I could touch on many different things from that video (Should we be introduced to Oblivion this early in the game? Why are we the great hero again in a game with lots of people? Does anyone else just want to hear Lawrence Schick read a bedtime story?), I’d like to talk about the ultimate facepalm about the story itself: Molag Bal creates his own destruction.

I guess there is no reason to believe that the Daedric Princes are supremely intelligent, but they are supremely powerful. However, I’d think that after hundreds of years of existence, they would know a thing or two, especially that when the Elder Scrolls warn of a thing happening, it will happen.
Imagine that a Moth Priest comes to you and says, “Yo, Mo, when you use those anchors to connect Coldharbour to our plane of existence, some soulless dude’s gonna stop you. Fo schizzle. Peace out.” (I have always pictured that the monks of the Order of the Ancestor Moths were in the hood.) The last thing you would do is create soulless people, right? In fact, I’d lock all my doors and post guards with soul detectors. But no, that’s not what Mo-mo does. He creates an army of the soulless by stealing them from mortals. Facepalm. Now, I imagine that the majority of those souls are from people who are now dead, but it didn’t even cross his mind that one of those bodies would stay alive? I hope the rest of the ESO stories are a little better thought out.

As I said before, I love community building. The Elder Scrolls brings with it an existing thriving community, but since the ESO announcement, more fansites and communities have been popping up all over the place. I don’t think there is any way that I can list all of them, but here are a few I found that are already making an impact on the community:

Fansites: Fun
Troll Scroll: trollscroll.com
Tamriel Foundry: tamrielfoundry.com
Shoddy Cast: shoddycast.com
The Elder Scrolls Roleplay: www.teso-rp.com

Fansites: Lore
The Imperial Library: www.imperial-library.info
Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages: www.uesp.net
Elder Scrolls Wiki: elderscrolls.wikia.com

Each week, I’ll highlight one or more of these communities, but not in an interview type format. I want to pinpoint an interesting topic of discussion or a phenomenal editorial from the community itself. Of course, I recommend that you hop over to the site where the discussion started, but I want to give you the opportunity to voice your feelings about it here as well.

This week, I want to point you to Shoddy Cast. An article posted there in November last year has recently been revived as many of the original questions are (finally) being answered. The article and video talk about the hopes and dreams of The Elder Scrolls community. Specifically, the author addresses how to keep ESO an Elder Scrolls game and not a generic MMO with Elder Scrolls slapped on it. Check out the video, then let me know your thoughts. What will it take for this game to be Elder Scrolls for you?

I read all the comments on every one of my columns. I don’t always respond to them for a number of reasons, one being that I like for readers to engage with each other first. That doesn’t mean I think they are less important. To illustrate how important I think it is for you to not only read what I say but to engage with other readers, I will highlight one thoughtful comment or question each week, then I will follow that up with another question that I’m interested in reading the community answers.

Since this is the first week, we don’t have any comments, but I can pose a question to you. I’ll keep it simple this time. Which faction will you join? Why is that faction important to you or why haven’t you chosen one yet?

The Elder Scrolls Online’s Tamriel hosts many races that are generally segregated from each other. Nords of Skyrim usually stick to their northern frosty mountains. Argonians settle in their Black Marsh. Khajiit rest in Elsweyr. But we know from playing other Elder Scrolls games that individuals of all races most definitely move around the map, mostly adventurers like our possible TESO characters. It is very possible from a canon perspective that my Redguard will wander through Morrowind. Unlike other faction-based MMOs, TESO has an interesting plan for those players with wanderlust.

For today’s column, I’ve found a community member who explains some of the implications of factional divides for us. I’m also interested in how you will personally handle some of these factional issues.

Like many of you, I choose the races that I play because I enjoy the history or the implied personality of those races. Sometimes that racial choice means that I will have a different starting zone from the other races. Lord of the Rings Online and World of Warcraft are examples of what I mean, but ultimately (and usually quickly) the races converge. Star Wars: The Old Republic and RIFT don’t differentiate the starting zones by race. SWTOR allows your class choice to determine that, and RIFT has one starting zone for each faction and that’s it.

Although we don’t know the specifics of the racial divides in TESO, we do know that your racial choice determines not only determines your starting zone but the faction you join as well. This means that as you level your Breton, you will not be able to visit Windhelm. However, once you hit level 50 (the level cap), you can quest in one of the other factions’ zone, but unfortunately, you can not officially join that faction. Or at least we haven’t been told you can. Even though your Dunmer might be friends with an Altmer, when you both step into Cyrodiil, it’s on!

I’m an altoholic by admission, but many people I know play only one character. They like to be able to explore every aspect of the game, but they don’t like to regrind a new character to max level. Although I don’t understand why they wouldn’t want to explore another storyline, I can respect that they want that character to be the best it can be. ZeniMax probably had those players in mind when it created TESO’s exploration system.

I had my reservations when TESO was first announced. I thought it might have been a quick way for Bethesda to cash in on the MMO market, but perhaps ZeniMax is making a real MMORPG after all. Sure, the company wants to entice existing Elder Scrolls fans, but the exploration system appears to be designed to attract MMO players as well.

When I started this column, I knew that Massively’s Richie Procopio had played TESO at PAX East and at ZeniMax Studios. He’s a huge Guild Wars 2 fan, and his Tyria Talk videos are extremely insightful. But what I didn’t know is that he also has a series of YouTube videos called Tamriel Talk. I don’t want to make this section of the column to be about promoting other Massively employees, but Richie does not get paid by us to do this series, so I’m cool with highlighting him today.

In MMOs like World of Warcraft and RIFT, the different factions cannot communicate with each other. Supposedly, this is to create a sense of loyalty within a player’s own faction. Personally, I’m not sure that that is a legitimate reason to cut off interfaction communication. ZeniMax could create a system like SWTOR’s in which spatial chat is open but players of opposing factions cannot send any other type of communication to each other. I believe that makes things more confusing, but at least they can talk to each other.

In his premiere episode, Richie talks about the implication of cross faction talk or the lack thereof. Watch his video, then let me know what you think. Do you believe cross faction communication helps or hurts the overall feel of the MMO? How does that apply to TESO? Do you trust ZeniMax to do it right? (My loaded question for the day.) Talk to me in the comments.

Last week, I asked which faction you planned to play when TESO launches and why. And nearly all the answers in the comments revolved around the races associated with that faction. I’m on board with that. But why are players loyal to that race?

Bree (Massively’s Editor-in-Chief), Derrick, and LotOfSize expressed loyalty because that they have always played their chosen races in other Elder Scrolls games. Alexis summed it up simply: “Altmeri Dominion, definitely, because I am playing a Wood Elf. I’ve always played Bosmer archers since Morrowind.”

Others stick to specific races because of the way they look. Orcs get Boinya’s juices flowing, apparently: “I’ll be an Orc, with sexy Orcish plate mail and a sexy orcish greatsword, with a sexier Orcish name (Ravar gro-Vhash).”

Infiniteduck1’s obsession with Khajiit started with the racial abilities these cat-people were given in earlier games. “Khajiit assassin/thief. Always and forever. Actually I first decided to play one because they have night vision and I could use the darkness to my advantage against bandit camps at night and in caves; instead of needing a light source, I could just hide in the shadows. Now it’s just more along the lines of tradition and has followed me into other games,” the web-footed one said.

This week, I want to know how your race will affect your guild choice. Are you going to hunt down an all-Argonian guild so that you can hiss at each other all day long? Will you try to find a guild before the game launches, or is that something you do after you’ve played for some time? If you’re in a guild already, how are you compromising with players who might want to play a different faction because of the races they want to play?

 

ZeniMax scooped up all of the questions that fans had after seeing The Elder Scrolls Online’s crafting and exploration video, and answered several of the most pressing of them in a new post.

TESO will feature five crafting professions: weaponsmith, armorsmith, enchanter, alchemist, and provisioner. Of these, players are able to train in two fields so that a robust economy will develop between crafters. While there aren’t any recipes in the game, players have multiple avenues to combine ingredients and make the same item. The studio indicated that those who have played previous Elder Scrolls games might have an advantage in knowing familiar plants and crafting ingredients and how they interact.

Other topics in the AMA include fishing lures, how big your library can get (there’s no limit, basically), the use of Mundus Stones, and the difficulty of lockpicking. “Your lockpicking will automatically improve as you level, gradually making chests that were once very difficult to open a much easier prospect. Though your lockpicking skill will increase as you level, the chests you encounter in higher level areas will also be more difficult,” ZeniMax explained.

 

We haven’t had a knock-down drag-out battle royal between two heavyweight MMOs on Leaderboard in quite a while. And hey, there’s no time like the present, amirite?

Let’s say that in one corner we have WildStar, NCsoft’s sci-fantasy darling. And let’s say that in the other corner we have The Elder Scrolls Online, ZeniMax’s attempt to take the mega-popular single-player RPG series online.

Which game do you see being more successful? Which game tickles your fancy the most? In short, WildStar or ESO? Vote after the cut!

Ever wish that you could put to rest a long-standing MMO debate once and for all? Then welcome to the battle royal of Massively’s Leaderboard, where two sides enter the pit o’ judgment — and only one leaves. Vote to make your opinion known, and see whether your choice tops the Leaderboard!

Leaderboard: WildStar vs. The Elder Scrolls Online

WildStar	2200 (56.4%)
TESO	863 (22.1%)
Both	504 (12.9%)
Neither	334 (8.6%)