The issue of Game Informer packed with info on the newly-announced Elder Scrolls MMO is already in some peopleâs hands and, well, if you were hoping for a game that was basically Skyrim only with real people, youâre in for one hell of a disappointment.
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Things start going wrong on the very first page of the story, as ZeniMax Onlineâs Paul Sage says âit needs to be comfortable for people who are coming from a typical massively multiplayer game that has the same control mechanisms, but it also has to appeal to Skyrim playersâ.
A page later? Youâre playing the game in third-person, and its combat centres around hotbars activating skills. Your attacks have cooldowns. In clear terms, that means no real-time combat. It is literally explained as using âWorld of Warcraft mechanicsâ.
You canât do something or go some places in the game unless youâre appropriately levelled up, just like a regular MMO. ZeniMax is âkeeping large areas inaccessible to save them for use as expansion contentâ. Only âsome fractionâ of the caves and other landmarks in the game are waiting completely unmarked and unexplored. You canât own a house because itâs âtoo hard to implement in an MMOâ. NPC characters donât run on the same schedules they do in the main games.
Oh dear.
Itâs not all doom and gloom. Some aspects, like the fact the game has public dungeons (ie, dungeons part of the game world and not separate âinstancesâ) and a system where the faction which controls the Imperial City gets to name an Emperor from amongst the playerbase sound kind of cool.
But overall, my heart, it is sinking. Why, exactly, is this game being made if, a few bells and whistles aside, itâs just another fantasy MMO, and retains so little of what it is people play Elder Scrolls games for? It even looks like just another fantasy MMO, losing much of the refined elegance of Bethesdaâs games in exchange for a simpler style that looks little like the past few games in the series.
If I sound overly negative on this game based solely on someone elseâs preview, well, thatâs because I am. I donât play conventional MMOs because I find their tropes, especially their combat, to be tiresome and artificial. To hear those bones will be propping up this game is all I need to hear to already be more than a little bummed out.
People always wonder why no MMO has ever beaten World of Warcraft. Itâs because the people who want to play World of WarcraftâŠalready play World of Warcraft, and donât need to play something built using the same system. This franchise, like Star Wars: Old Republic before it, was a great chance to try something new, something that can capture the imaginations of the hundreds of millions of people who donât play WoW, not the ten million who do. To hear it wonât be, as a massive fan of the Elder Scrolls series, is disappointing.
Subscribers to the magazine should be getting their hands on the mag over the next few days. Everyone else, info like this will be added to Game Informerâs online hub in the weeks to come.
Elder Scrolls Online [Game Informer]
