Elder Scrolls Online gameplay shown
By
Eddie Makuch, News Editor
Zenimax releases nine-minute video showing off environments, combat, characters, and user functionality for new MMORPG.
Zenimax Online Studios has released the first gameplay footage for The Elder Scrolls Online. The publisher posted a nine-minute behind-the-scenes video today (below), and in addition to showing off gameplay for the first time, the trailer reveals more of the game's environment, characters, and user functionality.
One of the most striking departures from other MMORPGs is that The Elder Scrolls Online will not feature shards. Instead, all players will be housed on one server. This has been made possible through Zenimax's "Megaserver" technology.
"All your friends are right there. You just create a character, click play, and you go," said game director Matt Firor. "The game is smart about where to put you. It puts you in gamespaces with your friends, your guildmates; it's a way to be connected with everyone and the game figures out where to put you."
The Elder Scrolls Online allows players to start off by choosing one of nine races and a class. But from there, Bethesda said, every choice players make with regard to quests and abilities will differentiate them from other players.
The Elder Scrolls Online will cover the entire continent of Tamriel, including the lands featured in previous Elder Scrolls games like Cyrodiil, Skyrim, and Morrowind. The game will be set 1,000 years before the events of last year's hit Skyrim and will put players into the world on the brink of demonic assimilation at the hands of the daedric prince Molag Bal.
The Elder Scrolls Online is due out in 2013. Its pricing model has not been announced, though the founder of game consultancy firm Gamesbrief, Nicholas Lovell, believes it will launch with a paid subscription but will eventually become free-to-play. For more, check out GameSpot's previous coverage.
By
Eddie Makuch, News Editor
Eddie Makuch (Mack-ooh) is a News Editor at GameSpot. He works out of the company's Boston office in Somerville, Mass., and loves extra chunky peanut butter.
298 comments
game itself looks awesome
but combat looks HORRIBLE
western devs need to take the combat systems from games like TERA , C9 or vindictus
anyone who didnt check TERA yet , go and do it
but anyway i love elder scrolls , but i can see it right now that the combat in this game will suck
it makes me sad , but oh well , after a year this will go f2p anyway
Why does everyone always say WOW clone as if its a bad thing. For a start WOW sucks big time, Iv played WOW before and I got bored very easily. I played TOR on the other hand, and although the combat system was a lot like WOW I enjoyed the game more because it is not as much of a boring grind fest as WOW is. And Elder Scrolls Online looks nothing like WOW at all, imo it is going to kill WOW off.
@Aaronp2k WOW was a great game and I bet it still is if you are leveling and exploring. And there's no need to kill WOW because it will die in a natural death.
@puukusa @Aaronp2k Elder Scrolls Online is going to be an arpg/mmo combined into one. Realtime combat system :). A game based more on skill unlike wow which is based on tactics and mashing numbers on the keyboard over and over again. I have never liked wow and never will, I think it is one of the most over rated games ever made. Hell I have played FF7 like 20 times, and I am currently playing it again but modded to a higher quality. What does that say about wow, if someone would rather play the same game 20 times than play wow.
@puukusa @Aaronp2k Dark souls is better than wow could ever hope to be. In fact pretty much any arpg is better than the stupid wow combat system. Only reason tor is good is because it has proper storyling with proper dialogue, choices which effect the character and advancement of the story. If it didn't have that it would have sucked just as much as wow. Dark souls does not tell its story very well, can be quite hard and take many playthroughs to understand what is going on. But you don't care, because the gameplay is masterfully crafted. The only bad thing about the game is the small amount of lag glitches people exploit in pvp, which I am sure will not be present when dark souls 2 is released.
First: This game is not WoW, Guild Wars, Eve online or whatever else anyone wants to compare it to, so people need to stop comparing and open their minds. Second: This game is not even out yet, so no one, not even I, can say with 100% accuracy that this game will be good or bad. What I can say is that it is a Zenimax game and I personally trust Zenimax. Why would I not? A long list of some of the best games ever have come from Zenimax and their subsidiaries. Technology has come a long way and Zenimax has a lot of money so I do not understand why they would not be able to make a perfectly playable shard free server. Zenimax is a pretty intelligent company, I think they they will do just fine with this game. I expect nothing but the best from them and I believe they will deliver.
Why do people insist on complaining about another mmo, I'll definitely be getting it. You get more play with an mmo than any other game.
2 Like @Optimus-Lax you get more play with any elder scrolls game than most games anyway. To make it a MMO is sweet. I'll be getting it to. It'll be fun to play for a long time. Some people just like to complain and make their lives hard and complicated and live unhappy lives.
you can allways use you controller on your computer i am going to play the game on my 52in HD Tv so yah just hook up any controller so you wont have troble with the game.
The Elder Scrolls Online will not feature shards. Instead, all players will be housed on one server?
What could possibly go wrong?
1 Like Will either be awesome, or will be terrible, or the so called "megaserver" will crash first day and it will be down for a week until they but out more megaservers. I love elder scrolls but i think this will ruin the series for me so i will probably stand clear
@BurningBen I don't understand how they will pull this mega server off places are gonna be so crowded gonna take for ever to quest. Probably wont last long unless they make channles.
@feared4power @BurningBen EVE-Online has 1 server for the enter player base. I see 55000 players connected at a same time without any problem.
@feared4power @BurningBen consider tho that eve online have done it for years, and they have over 50,000 players online usually.
Also fallen earth has everyone on one server to my knowledge, so its definitely doable, but I do think that they will definitely have problems at first, since every online games developer always underestimate just how many people will try to get online on day release
@zibafu @feared4power @BurningBen You can get 12-core retail pcs nowadays. So I am pretty confident it would be no hassle at all to put together a mega server, especially with a company that large aswell. I think they will do it no problem purely because they cannot afford to make a mistake. Elder Scrolls Online is something many many gamers have longed for, if they pull this off then the game will be huge and probably the best mmo of all time. Of course, companies have a habbit of biting off more than they can chew so this all remains to be seen. But I believe they can do it, I believe it is possible, and I am confident it will happen.
1 Like is this really necessary? most people i talked to just want a co-op mode like they have in diablo 3 or borderlands. this is like SWTOR all over again.
if it plays like skyrim oblivion and it handles armor/weapons, and skill trees like those games it has promise. if they essentially make it into a theme park where you get pigeon holed into a role and you have to grind the same content over and over agina kind of game then it will suck.
they should make this game similar to what swg was since that is fitting to the kind of game elder scroll games are on console. I just do not want there to be people looking for group to do x dungeon for the 100th time to get gear. that is not very elderscrollish. I hope this does not focus so much on gear where that is the only progression. I hate those types of games since you never really get to top level and have fun.
1 Like If Bethesda can't handle developing a game for consoles with next to no bugs, I fear for their MMO. I can only imagine the mess this is going to be.
@Drkr_Zen the game is not being developed by bethesda its being developed by ZeniMax. Bethesda is only publishing. Either way this game will most likely disappoint
1 Like Color me a doomsayer, but I've got to say this: Goodbye Elder Scrolls 6. Think I'm wrong? Look at KOTOR 3, and Warcraft 4. Oh, wait, you can't because there isn't any!
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! For a moment I misread the title to read '...gameplay SOON'!!! Too much cruelty!
I'm not interested in 'MMO' naturally but this looks good, the detail is amazing for a massive multiplayer game like that. I hope Jeremy Soul has done this music for it, sounds nice.
I don't like the fighting bits though, they look very wooden and cheesy.
Well, Skyrim's fighting today is an ancient way of combat. They should've done it more like GW2, but take it to the next level (what GW2 was actually aiming for)
YES! at last Dark age of camelot 2... with Elder Scrolls name to sell more copies,
if its anything like DAoC1 it will be a great game.
More importantly can you use 360 controller and play in first-person? Still I've been spoiled by fun Korean mmos like Tera and upcoming Bless so it's hard to play something that doesn't have beautiful human/elven female characters that I can get gorgeous armor for...think I'll stick to solo Elder games
@shadowfox1994 @ChunkyDrawers Think he means can he plug in a wired 360 controller and play this with it in first person... not that hard to understand. He used English, lol.
But yeah to the controller thing, probably not to the first person view. I like the third person view, but they really should have worked that into the single player series... I think TES is played better third person than first. Sad that TESV is really the first game that it works well in and even then its clunky.
Not sure why they wanted a MMO of this. Most people probably want another game from the main series rather than a MMO....
If I can not make crazy powerful equipment and spells to make the game fun then way bother?
This comment has been deleted
2 things:
This game shall be an elder scrolls mmo experience, not an mmo with the name elder scrolls on it, like happened with resident evil.
Free to play, ok, but don't use a gold coin system, they force you to pay more than an average mmo, a 15 dollar fees becomes 20, or even more.
Fulfill this, in you have my sword...........
2 Like As a single-player-only fan, basically, I read and watched the vid to see what I won't be playing.
not a huge fan of this idea but some of it does look pretty cool like the pvp....I'm just afraid of it being nothing like The Elder Scrolls.....which in that case it would just ruin the lore and the solidness of the series....I really think they should have made a legit installment build around local and small group online coop before going anywhere near this idea...that way the game could keep it's Elder Scrolls feel and make sense....the only way an mmo would make sense imo is if the whole story was driven by a crazy war zone story line that took place on pretty much a giant battlefield...so all the players crowding the world would make some sense...the games have a realistic tone even though they are fantasy and mmos are NEVER realistic...the world is meant to be appreciated which is limited when playing an mmo...same reason a flower garden would look like hell with a bunch of people walking around in it...the sense of detail is killed...maybe they will prove me wrong
Pls, they have to just take Skyrim and put it into MMORPG, thats what I suppose we all want. For sure make it possible to play in 1st person. Just dont make another crapy WoW bro.
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6 Like Oh, and I don't want to pay any more subscription fees. Just part of the reason I still play Guild Wars 2 and probably always will.
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The Elder Scrolls Online
- Publisher(s): Bethesda Softworks
- Developer(s): ZeniMax Media
- Genre: Role-Playing
- Release:
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