ELDERSCROLLSUPDATE

QuakeCon, hailed as the largest LAN party in North America, kicked off yesterday, and since MMO fans have been clamoring for some uninterrupted Elder Scrolls Online gameplay, ZeniMax chose QuakeCon as the venue to show off its latest addition to the Elder Scrolls franchise. Starting right now (at 1:30 p.m. EDT), Creative Director Paul Sage and other lead designers are livestreaming direct from Dallas, Texas. Our intrepid reporters are watching along, providing a periodic liveblog in this post as well as frequent chatter in our comments. Watch the stream and join the conversation right now!

[Update: The stream is over now, but we’ve collected the important bits beyond the cut, and Larry’s liveblog in the comments is still viewable!]

Notes from the livestream:

Pete Hines, VP of marketing, explains that ESO will allow you to “be what you want to be; play what you want to play.”
Creative Director Paul Sage introduced and begins the actual presentation.
Nick Konkle, gameplay lead, begins showing off the character creator for the Ebonheart Pact.
The demo starts in Deshond in Morrowind.
Mouselook is always on.
Left click to attack; hold down for heavy attack. Right click to block.
The compass sits at the top of the UI, showing POIs.
When you join a guild, you gain skill lines. Each class has three skill lines. Paul Sage: “You can make skills behave the way you want it to behave.”
Game is fully-voiced.
Nick is teleporting to using wayshrines and riding a horse.
Crouch/stealth mechanics and easy weapon swapping demontrated. Any class can use any armor or any weapon.
Paul Sage: “When you discover new things, you get experience for that.”
Easy travel to group in a safe location near your groupmates.
Three skyshards grant you a new ability.
It looked as if you could use a bow and magic at the same time. Weapon swapping really easy.
Game gives the player a heroic feel by fighting multiple enemies at one time.
No fighting over loot because it’s instanced to each player.
Nick is playing a Templar. Roles can be switched by switching weapons. “You play the role you want to play,” reiterates Paul Sage.
NPCs work together. If one NPC drops blue oil, another might set it on fire. They work together against your party.
Soul gems allows you to rez your teammates or rez yourself. Every time you die, your armor degrades.
NPCs can work with your group.
Mudcrabs confirmed 😛
The game is due to release in Spring 2014 on PC, Mac, XboxOne, and Playstion 4. Sign up for beta. And that’s it!

The presentation starts 40 minutes and 49 seconds into the video below.

Zenimax Online confirmed the use of full voice support for its NPC’s in Elder Scrolls Online earlier this year, but is that always a good thing? Blaine Smith of Camelot Post takes an in-depth look at the pros and cons of voiced characters in MMO gaming.

The origins of voice acting in gaming are rather difficult to trace, mainly due to the mixed opinions on what constitutes voice acting. Titles as early as the 1980s used synthesized voices to create additional sound effects but Dragon’s Lair was one of the first titles to feature actual voice actors. As we travel through the complex weaves of gaming history we arrive at a much more advanced era in video-games.

The first ever MMO game to feature full voice acting was actually DC Universe Online, contrary to the belief that it was actually Star Wars: The Old Republic following the Guinness World Records Award for most voiced entertainment product. BioWare revealed that over 300 individual voice actors helped shape the world of SWTOR, including over 1 thousands recording sessions and 200,000 lines of dialogue. So with a rather brief and somewhat inaccurate look back at the origins of voice acting in gaming, let’s get to the point. Is it really worth it?
The Pros Of Voiced MMO Games

The first positive to fully voiced gaming is probably the main reason it ever used in the first place, immersion. When you’re reading a book your imagination creates the characters, creates their voices and creates the world they inhabit. When that is already complete and in front of you in glorious 3D your imagination undergoes subconscious restrictions. The game world was already created, the character was already created, everything around you is the product of another persons imagination. So unlike when reading a book, you wouldn’t image the appearance or behavior of the characters as it’s right there.

Personally I feel this is why the typical gamer will just skip over the lesser important dialogue, mainly because it’s just read off in a robotic fashion. There’s also a certain talent to being able to read correctly. Obviously you can read or you wouldn’t be here, but there’s something special required to truly put feeling and emotion into words as you read them off a PC screen. With the inclusion of fully voiced actors in MMO games, that skill is no longer required.

Players can instantly hear and feel the emotion the character is attempting to portray. We can hear the urgency in the voice, the sadness, the joy. This allows gamers to truly experience a living, breathing world, not just mindless dialogue.

The second biggest pro to fully voiced MMO games is player choice. Although this hasn’t been officially announced for The Elder Scrolls Online and it’s not always included in games of that type; it has become a vital feature in many titles that utilize full voice acting. Star Wars: The Old Republic, Mass Effect, Dragons Age; these are just some of the games that offer player freedom of choice.

I know what you’re thinking. Plenty of games feature player driven choices without voice and plenty of games feature voice without the choice; but you cannot argue that recent games that feature both have been hugely successful. The two features also aim to provide the same core appeal, immersion. Being able to make a choice that influences the world around you is a vital ingredient that’s made previous Elder Scrolls games so successful.
The Cons Of Voiced MMO Games

I think the level of impact each individual con has is completely dependent on the type of player having the experience. Personally I find the biggest drawback to fully voiced MMO games is grouping up with other players. I remember beginning my journey in Star Wars: The Old Republic; during a time where I had all but given up hope on the genre. I told myself I would enjoy the entire experience, sample the lore-filled world and not just rush through to end-game and although that was always my primary goal, I found I was forced to ignore it during any serious group content.

I was actually kicked from groups a number of times because I was halting the progress of my fellow party members. I spent just a few minutes listening to the story surrounding that particular quest or instance but apparently that was enough to toss me aside. One of the biggest selling points of Star Wars: The Old Republic was the fact it was tackling the MMO genre from a storytelling perspective. Forcing an individual to completely skip that part of the game was a sure-fire way of reducing subscriber numbers.

However, if you’re a player that would happily skip story to progress at a faster rate; that wouldn’t be a problem for you. But by pushing through content as quickly as possible you’ll be one of the first affected by the second major con, development time. Practically every single MMO launch suffers with teething problems and a large contribution to that factor is the lack of content. Developers can spend several years creating a AAA MMO game but players can still get through the entirety of the content in a matter of weeks, sometimes even days. The typical elements still apply in regards to developing content but not every MMO has to deal with fully voiced acting.

Even a small update, let’s say a new town and several new quest lines, would involve far more work than your typical MMO. The developers would still have to create new textures, model new buildings, implement new quests and add rewards, but on top of all of that, every piece of dialogue must be voiced. So those of us that enjoy dedicating our time to the end-game content of an MMO could face more delays than we’re use to. This leads us to the final con, cost.

Publishers rarely provide exact figures regarding costs of development and deployment so it’s usually just guesswork from industry analysts and experts. However despite my complete lack of education in anything financial, even I can see the basic maths involved. More people plus more time equals more cost. Investment that could be spent on creating more actual content rather than just voices. Maybe even advertising to attract more players thus earning more revenue to improve the game. Either way, it costs more to create a AAA fully voiced MMO than the normal AAA titles.

What do you think? Does the inclusion of fully voiced acting influence your decision to buy a game or would you avoid it at all costs? Post a comment below, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

 

With QuakeCon in full swing, Bethesda decided to celebrate the festivities with a livestream of The Elder Scrolls Online, giving those of us who didn’t make it into the closed beta a small taste of what’s yet to come. Those who missed the livestream can find the archived version here, though you’ll want to skip to the 41 minute mark unless you want to see the same trailer over and over again.

Creative Director Paul Sage begins the demo assuring players that the often despised third person view is viable option for those who want a more traditional MMO experience. Sage also mentioned that none of the classes restrict what armor or weapons you can equip but left it at that. Heavy armor typically comes with some kind of toll for magic users (in most RPGs anyway) and we wouldn’t be surprised to see that in ESO.

Sage went on to describe the fast travel system which involves teleporting to previously visited waypoint call “wayshrines” The developer playing the demo cast a teleport spell to initiate fast travel, but it’s unclear whether you can cast it in the midst of battle.

The rest of the demo showed off ESO’s combat and party systems while exploring an early-level dungeon. Sage described how the enemy AI uses what he calls “pack behavior” where certain groups of enemies will work together to take out your party while others hang back to see how the battle plays out. Loot’s also been instanced, meaning there’s no need to squabble with party members over that enchanted battle axe that you saw first.

The livestream closed with Sage saying The Elder Scrolls Online will available for everyone sometime in Spring 2014, but encouraged those interested to sign up for the closed beta. Maybe then someone could tell me how much horse armor goes for in the online world.

 

The Elder Scrolls Online has come a long, long way in a short period of time. When last we played the MMORPG, it lacked that definitive Elder Scrolls feeling. Its exploration, combat, and nearly everything else was pure MMO in an Elder Scrolls skin – and it was incredibly attractive.

Zenimax Online has gone to great lengths to tune its online role-playing game toward the Elder Scrolls hardcore. Never mind the recently revealed first-person option. Everything in ESO makes sense in a way typical MMOs don’t. Brawling with wildlife works like it did in Skyrim: They’re simply part of the world, and you’ve stumbled into their habitat. Skeleton armies amass in haunted spaces. Quarantine guards go from good to villainous when you uncover their secret ploy to poison a Morrowind city.

The Elder Scrolls Online does not waste time with petty fetch quests, arbitrary conversations, and meaningless empty space. Like Skyrim, there is always something to discover or uncover. It brings a similar sense of Skyrim wonder to a massive recreation of almost everything that defined the untouchable RPG franchise. I played two hours – one in an early area off the coast of Skyrim. The snowy plains, familiar architecture, and soothing, atmospheric music nailed the Elder Scrolls vibe. If not for the other players lining up to unlock chests (an unfortunate consequence of online play, but not one I understand), I could have been convinced this was a Skyrim sequel.

Combat, in particular, has improved dramatically. Not just from the previous single-player Elder Scrolls game, but from the last version of ESO Bethesda let people play. Where Oblivion and Skyrim lacked the ferocity and physicality you’d expect from a melee-centric battle system, ESO brings convincing weight to its heavy hitting. Smash a skeleton with a hammer and it recoils as though it’s just been smashed with a hammer. Throw a spiritual spear into a mercenary captain and she’ll fall to the ground. Fighting in The Elder Scrolls Online doesn’t feel like an MMO in the way Elder Scrolls used to.

A small, subtle improvement that cements ESO’s commitment to the series rather than the genre is the interface. The clunky map from previous demos has been eradicated in favor of a UI nearly identical to Skyrim, complete with the compass bar up top. Quests are more focused, perhaps because of their narrative coherence and relation to a given area, than the more open-endedness of objectives offered in Skyrim or Oblivion. This isn’t to say ESO lacks the sort of alluring freedom to wander aimlessly – it’s simply more concise and features fewer distractions. Not that distractions aren’t there, mind.

Team up, or don’t.

Adventurer camps are fewer and far between, but what you’ll find there is more substantial. Notes about nearby, mysterious fish you can catch which require bait you haven’t yet found. Journals surrounding missing siblings, someone’s issues with authority, or discussions of religious zeal occupied much of my time. Rarely, if ever, will you encounter an arbitrary hunt for a missing book. Mundane quests are dead. Everything in ESO has a story woven through it, comparable to, and arguably done better than, Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Indeed, The Elder Scrolls Online is, at its heart, an MMO, but don’t let that scare you away. ESO manages to make its story content approachable when playing alone while encouraging multiplayer team-ups at later levels. It has no reason to apologize for its MMO-ness, either, because its superb fusion of philosophies. I’ve always found The Elder Scrolls and MMOs equally overwhelming in their grand scope, wealth of options, and liberty to explore. ESO is, despite its gargantuan space scattered across numerous provinces, less intimidating. It eases players into the world and multiplayer by giving them purpose, something to strive for while offering the flexibility to wander tighter areas.

And that’s where The Elder Scrolls is at its strongest.

 

Zenimiax has confirmed four guilds that will be featured in The Elder Scrolls Online. These four guilds are The Dark Brotherhood, The Fighters Guild, The Mages Guild, and The Thieves Guild.
The Dark Brotherhood

Currently, there’s no information on how to join The Dark Brotherhood.
The Fighters Guild

To get into the Fighters Guild, you’ll have to find and destroy Dark Anchors. Dark Anchors are giant hooks sent by Molag Bal from his Daedric Plane of Coldharbour. Their job is to drag Tamriel into his plane. Defeat the Daedric Guardian that is blocking the anchor, and send the anchor back to Coldharbour to get on the Fighter Guild’s good side.
The Mages Guild

To get into the Mages Guild, you’ll have to search high and low for special Lore Books hidden throughout Tamriel. They can be in the busiest cities, or they could be in the most desolate mines. It’s uncertain if the books will be randomly placed or set in specific locations.
The Thieves Guild

Currently, there’s no information on how to join The Thieves Guild.

 

 The classes

So far, teso has announced five classes, the templar, dragon knight, sorcerer, night blade and warden.
Templar

A templar is a class that can deal weapon damage and use restoration magic to cast healing spells. Healing spells does not have a cooldown so a templar will easily be able to heal himself/herself and his/hers allies. Templars also deal magical damage such as the following spells.

Spells

Sun strike: A templar’s basic spell. Sun Strike looks like a staff of light that attacks enemy and deals damage. The spell does not require much magica.

Rushed ceremony: Rushed ceremony is a healing spell, it allows the templar to restore part of yours, or your ally’s health bar.

Sun fire is a medium ranged attack that allows you to hit your enemy with a blast of sunlight. It looks very similiar to a fire ball. It’s a very good spell for kiting an enemy. Sun fire requires more magica than sun strike, but it is more efficient.

Dragon knight

if you equip a sword and a shield, a dk could become a good tank. If you wish, you could even become an assassin or a ranged damage dealer. It is multipurpose class that is playable with any kind of weapon and armor sets. Dk is good at dealing a lot of damage with different weapons and abillities.

Skills

Fiery reach: It allows you to throw a massive fiery chain that pulls your enemy towards you. Fiery reach also stuns your enemy for a breif time and deals fire damage. It is a perfect abillity to catch an enemy who is trying to escape.

Slam: Slam allows you to stun and knock an enemy down. Slam interrupts the enemies’ spells and abillities. It requires a lot of stamina, and there for cannot be used very frequently.

Spiked armor: Spiked armor is a buff that surrounds your character with spikes adding extra damage resistance and returning physical damage to enemies. It can be very usefull in massive battles.

Dragon armor: Dragon armor is the dragon knight’s ultimate ability. Your character starts to burn. His/hers skin turns into molten rock and lava. All near enemies catch on fire and start to burn too receiving fire damge. Dragon armor is exellent in massive battles for weakening enemies. The dragon knight unocks this spell when he/she reaches 5th level. To fill up the “ultimate” bar, you need to perform well in battle.

The sorcerer

The sorcerer is a powerfull class who uses magical skills to destroy enemies. The sorcerer relies mostly on magic and uses a staff. Thought a staff is the general weapon for any mage, you can use other weapons if you wish. But playing as a sorcerer mage would be a good choise. A sorcerer can learn to master three different magic schools: Dark magic, Storm calling and deadric summoning. These schools all have different spells and abillities, such as summoning creatures or dealing damage. All of the sorceres spells use magica energy. This “pool” is very imortant for the sorcerer.
SPELLS

Teso has not yet announced any sorcerer spells.

Warden and Night blade

There is no current information on Warden or Night blade.

Player-versus-player (PvP) support will be included and should prove substantial. A lot of time is being spent to ensure that players are able to be self-sufficient, but team-based strategies will also play a major role in conflicts. The game’s engine is actually designed to handle grand battles with teams consisting of as many as 100 members apiece, though it’s possible that such numbers will change ahead of the game’s eventual release.

Unfortunately, due to online latency, the combat system will not be the same real time combat the Elder Scrolls games are known for. The Stamina Bar will be the main focus in battles. Use the Stamina Bar to Sprint, Block, Interrupt, and break Incapacitating Effects. All these effects will vary by class.

TES Online gives players a lot of control in battle to break away from what is known as the “Holy Trinity” in MMOs (Tank/Healer/Damage). The intent is to have players form small groups to clear most content without the use of Aggro. That’s right, there will be no Aggro in TES Online. Each player is responsible for their own selves.

 

It appears there are new developments surrounding the ongoing court battle between Bethesda and Interplay over the Fallout license.

Website Duck and Cover reports Bethesda is looking redact the statements found in the preliminary injunction hearing transcript regarding information surrounding a secret “World Of Warcraft” type MMO, which has reportedly been under development since 2007. The report also claims Bethesda has spent “tens and tens of millions of dollars” on the project, with “close to a hundred people” developing it.

UK website VG247 claims to have source saying the project is indeed an Elder Scrolls MMO-based title that is “very close to reveal by now.”

This would jive with ZeniMax Online Studios’ “Elder Scrolls Online” project the team has rumored to be working on since the publish purchased the domain name.

When asked for comment, Bethesda say it isn’t read to announce anything just yet.

“We don’t comment on rumors,” a representative from Bethesda told IGN. “We haven’t said what the folks at ZeniMax Online Studios are working on. When they’re ready to talk, we’ll let everyone know.”

According to Tom’s Guide, Bethesda and ZeniMax Studios are poised to announce an Elder Scrolls MMO this May.

The report cites three separate sources, all unnamed, and claims that the game will be set in the Second Era, well before the other games in the Elder Scrolls timeline. One source also claims that there will be three playable factions, represented by “one of three animals: A lion, a dragon, and a bird of prey (either a phoenix or an eagle, we aren’t sure)”.

There’s a lot of credibility to this story despite the unnamed sources. An Elder Scrolls MMO has been widely rumoured since shortly after Oblivion’s release in 2006, and Bethesda and ZeniMax have been openly hiring staff for an MMO previously presumed to be part of the Fallout series.

If this information is accurate, we can expect to see the game at this year’s E3. We’ve reached out to Bethesda for comment – more updates as we get them.

 

Update: The first screenshot for The Elder Scrolls Online has been released.

After much speculation, the MMO version of The Elder Scrolls role-playing series has officially been announced. Developed by ZeniMax Online Studios, The Elder Scrolls Online will allow players to quest across the entire continent of Tamriel 1000 years before the events of The Elder Scrolls V, which includes the provinces of Cyrodiil (where The Elder Scrolls IV was set) and Skyrim (setting of The Elder Scrolls V).

No screens or video have yet been released, but more information will be made available through Game Informer, as the reveal is part of their June 2012 cover story.

Not many specifics are available yet, but according to Game Informer you’ll be able to play as one of three factions, take part in open-world player versus player combat in the province of Cyrodiil and vie for control of the throne of the Emperor.

The Elder Scrolls Online is currently scheduled to be released in 2013 for Mac and PC. Be sure to check out additional details in the Elder Scrolls Online Wiki.