The recently announced Elder Scrolls MMO has a lot to live up to. If the initial fan reaction is any indication, it’s not doing as well as you might expect in the court of public opinion. Creative director Paul Sage recently stepped in front of the camera to talk at length about the project, and some of what he has to say probably isn’t going to sit well with fans who are concerned that ZeniMax is making a generic themepark MMO out of the much-loved single-player sandbox series.
“We have to make our own game,” he tells Game Informer. “We want to make a good game first. Not a good MMO, not a good Elder Scrolls game, we want to make a good game first, a great experience for the player.”
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Royalkin
“We have to make our own game,” he tells Game Informer. “We want to make a good game first. Not a good MMO, not a good Elder Scrolls game, we want to make a good game first, a great experience for the player.”
This has to be one of the dumbest statements, riddled with PR lawyeresque language I’ve heard in a while. Considering the aspects that make Elder Scrolls what it is, and the audience that enjoys that, the current development path will gut and mutilate every aspect that drew current fans to it in the first place and alienate its fanbase. Seriously, I’m not one for doom and gloom, but this seems cut and dry to me. Why alienate even a small portion of your existing and loyal fanbase? These people are the ones who will really sell the game via word of mouth.
This would be different if it were a new IP with no established fanbase, but it’s not, and it’s riddled with marketing, non-gamer focus groups, and suit logic.
l33tace
Sandbox with lots and lots of dungeons, please. I hate to beta and pre-order, but if they do this, I’m in. Oh, and no f2p 😛
…prolly all out of luck 🙁
Oh yeah, I’ve been a TES fan ever since the franchise started, many 1000’s of hours of play in the series. Fan of all the Bethesda games in fact, my fav studio. I’m also old school mmo, before they were called “mmorpg’s” in fact, where I also played and worked on text MUD’s before then and have worked content on indie games/mmo’s since then. I prefer classic style mmo’s overall, and sandbox style really. Even forced grouping is a draw for me, and with little to no hand holding.
Yeah yawn, but just to say from my perspective (why I wrote all that), ZeniMax could make a really great TES game, the technology is there now, such as instanced NPC’s etc. Of course they need to do exactly that, focus on a great TES MMO, Yeah, these comments are not very encouraging for any gamer, certainly not for TES fans that also play MMO’s. But it’s still early, and yes ZeniMax and Bethesda can work on two TES games at the same time, I just hope they don’t drop the ball here and follow market statistics rather than their long time fans. They could maybe learn something from CCP; it’s not their game but the fans/players game.