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So if anyone has been in the beta so far, odds are you got an e-mail giving you an extra beta code to give out. I have yet to try the beta, but I've got one of those codes to give if someone wants it.

I'd jump at it, but I don't think that my PC could run it.

I have so many beta codes that I don't want.

And no one else wants them either.

Maybe that's why Zenimax is sending out 2 apiece to people now, in hopes they'll get others in.

Ravenpoe said:

I have so many beta codes that I don't want.

And no one else wants them either.

Maybe that's why Zenimax is sending out 2 apiece to people now, in hopes they'll get others in.

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Yeah, I had honestly forgotten I was in the beta.

I should be OK for this weekend. Truth be told I was unable to play the last one more than a few minutes due to RL. I hope to get to LVL 10-15 and check out PVP RvR

I keep getting beta invitations, but the codes don't work.

I have no idea why not, but I'm not excited enough anymore to go find out what the problem is. I'm perfectly content just waiting and then playing the final version on a friend's PC or something to see if I like it.

The first couple of levels are boring then after that it gets really fun

Pretty generic fantasy trailer, well done cinematic though. Other than the Capital making an appearance there really wasn't anything -Elder Scrolls- about it.

Just saw this:
http://i.imgur.com/uQs6TkI.png

What's the fucking point of factions then?

They're just throwing more shit on in the hope of getting more money, not realizing how much it's going to break their game.

Zero Esc said:

They're just throwing more shit on in the hope of getting more money, not realizing how much it's going to break their game.

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ESO: Slightly higher than expected pop numbers to start. Slightly faster plummet of pop numbers in the following months?

Oh well...

MEH

Espy said:

MEH

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I hope that's on the boxart.

"Not as bad as a hernia." -Eurogamer

"Meh..." -Gamespot

Is anyone really looking forward to this? For such a big title, there's a whole lot of meh going around.

Shakey said:

Is anyone really looking forward to this? For such a big title, there's a whole lot of meh going around.

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Well, it was kinda doomed from the get go. "How many people are clamoring for an Elder Scrolls MMO?" "Uhh... zero." "Well... we're making one anyway."

Ravenpoe said:

Well, it was kinda doomed from the get go. "How many people are clamoring for an Elder Scrolls MMO?" "Uhh... zero." "Well... we're making one anyway."

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They'll still make money.

Yeah I know a small group of my friends are planning to play it.

What sucks is the one beta I've been wanting to get into, I have yet to (WildStar).

Jay said:

They'll still make money.

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I'll be very surprised if it doesn't close up/go F2P within a year or two.

I'm certain but I still think they'll make money.

Jay said:

I'm certain but I still think they'll make money.

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If by that you mean "they'll make their development and infrastructure (server/bandwidth) budget back," I'm not so sure.

As of right now the beta servers are up.

I'm updating my game. Gonna be a bit as the connection is slooooow. I'm sitting at 22.9 mB/s and I speedtest at 64 or so.

I finally played about 2 hours of it.

I'm going to pass.

I don't hate it but I don't love it and if I don't love it. I'm not paying $60 + $15 monthly fees.

It's just... not polished enough for me and running around while 100 other people are running around doing your quests doesn't feel very TES to me.

Oh and the combat is TERRIBLE. Particularly when I can run right through enemies but my melee hits "the air" 30% of the time.

Jay said:

They'll still make money.

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The only way this will make money is if they either under invested in development and/or if they go aggressively F2P/Microtransactions within the first year. This is a textbook case of not understanding your audience.

Jay said:

I finally played about 2 hours of it.

I'm going to pass.

I don't hate it but I don't love it and if I don't love it. I'm not paying $60 + $15 monthly fees.

It's just... not polished enough for me and running around while 100 other people are running around doing your quests doesn't feel very TES to me.

Oh and the combat is TERRIBLE. Particularly when I can run right through enemies but my melee hits "the air" 30% of the time.

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Did you use my account or do you have your own key now?

4hrs in and I can already say there are better (more fleshed out and better game mechanics) F2P MMOs out there. This is just a travesty. Which sucks cause I was hoping for more travels in Tamriel.

Going to let it update and give it a go. Skipped the last couple betas to give them some time to get things a bit fleshed out, but I guess we'll see.

Holy shit this is taking forever. I'm closing down the update now because ain't nobody got time fo' dat!

Dave said:

Holy shit this is taking forever. I'm closing down the update now because ain't nobody got time fo' dat!

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22 megaBytes/sec is too slow for you? I download shit from steam and cap out at 2 (standard for 16 megabit). C'mon, Dave! Talk about 1st world problems!

GasBandit said:

22 megaBytes/sec is too slow for you? I download shit from steam and cap out at 2 (standard for 16 megabit). C'mon, Dave! Talk about 1st world problems!

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It fell to 4 mB/sec and then when it "finished" it jumped back to 20+, but then went back to 5% finished. It's cycled from 30% to 0% at least 6 times. I started updating at about 1 pm CST and closed it out at about 3:45.

Dave said:

It fell to 4 mB/sec and then when it "finished" it jumped back to 20+, but then went back to 5% finished. It's cycled from 30% to 0% at least 6 times. I started updating at about 1 pm CST and closed it out at about 3:45.

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Ah, so the real issue is that the status bar is a big fat liar (and speeds are inconstant).

Yeah I'm just going to let it go overnight and try it out tomorrow, I think.

Dave said:

Did you use my account or do you have your own key now?

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My own.

Gilgamesh said:

4hrs in and I can already say there are better (more fleshed out and better game mechanics) F2P MMOs out there. This is just a travesty. Which sucks cause I was hoping for more travels in Tamriel.

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Can't agree more.

I just hope this thing doesn't negatively impact Elder Scrolls 6.

bhamv3 said:

I just hope this thing doesn't negatively impact Elder Scrolls 6.

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It already has.

Probably by delaying it for half a decade. I wouldn't expect one before 2018 or so.

Jay said:

It already has.

Probably by delaying it for half a decade. I wouldn't expect one before 2018 or so.

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There's no incentive for one while this game is out. If it's moderately successful, odds are, it'll be even longer.

In all, the whole concept is inane. 20 million copies were sold of Skyrim. 20 million. And rarely that game dropped under $35. If you put a median price of $40 or so to be more on the cheap side, times 20 million, we're talking about sales upwards of 800 million. This doesn't even include their very successful DLCs for the game. AND the game will prolly sell a few million copies more when it starts going on real sales.

This makes TESO absolutely stupid. They'll make money but I think by the end of 2 years, TESO will be said and done. This will cost them more money as they could have been working on a new Fallout, a new TES or heck a new IP.

I think what happened was, Zenimax put together an mmo studio, said "how can we get in on the mmo business?" and threw a dart at the board of properties they own.

Jay said:

There's no incentive for one while this game is out. If it's moderately successful, odds are, it'll be even longer.

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Yeah really. How's Warcraft 4 coming along, Blizzard?

To be fair, Blizzard is still making other games regardless of WoW's longevity. We'll have to see what happens during ESO's life cycle. Also ZM is a publisher, unlike Blizz who doubles as a dev studio.

ZM owns Bethesda, id and Arkane Studios, plus some other smaller devs. So I guess we'll have to see if these other guys crank anything out while ESO is beta and beyond.

Everyone eyes that WoW pie and wants a piece, copying it outright in some cases, not seeing the writing on the wall that that pie is continually shrinking and the old full price + subscription model is slowly dying.

Jay said:

There's no incentive for one while this game is out. If it's moderately successful, odds are, it'll be even longer.

In all, the whole concept is inane. 20 million copies were sold of Skyrim. 20 million. And rarely that game dropped under $35. If you put a median price of $40 or so to be more on the cheap side, times 20 million, we're talking about sales upwards of 800 million. This doesn't even include their very successful DLCs for the game. AND the game will prolly sell a few million copies more when it starts going on real sales.

This makes TESO absolutely stupid. They'll make money but I think by the end of 2 years, TESO will be said and done. This will cost them more money as they could have been working on a new Fallout, a new TES or heck a new IP.

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We already know they have Fallout 4 in the works. It's going to be set in Boston, but an official announcement might be a ways off.

I'd also like to point out that the team working on TESO was brought into the company explicitly to work on this game. It's not the same team that does Fallout or TES games.

They don't even work in the same place. The Bethesda studio has nothing to do with it.

You think they'll make a new TES game while TESO is still around? You'd be mistaken if you think so.

Jay said:

You think they'll make a new TES game while TESO is still around? You'd be mistaken if you think so.

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Making one would limit what they can do with the story in TESO, which is the same reason Blizz doesn't make Warcraft games. It's not that they can't.

I think we're all on the same page here, really.

I don't need the main story to move forward; I don't care about that. I just want to explore Tamriel and have little stories and wandering, BY MYSELF.

Zero Esc said:

I don't need the main story to move forward; I don't care about that. I just want to explore Tamriel and have little stories and wandering, BY MYSELF.

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You won't, unfortunately. I know I am getting to be a broken record here, but nobody wanted TESO, and 90% of us don't give a shit about the overarching "Lore" of Tamriel (if you hadn't used that word in your post, I would have had to google to even remember what it was called, really). We like TES games because of the immersiveness, the "making our own story in a populated, living world" thing. Nothing breaks immersion more than massive multiplayer. My exact quote has been something like, "I didn't want a TES MMO, I wanted 2, maybe 4 player co-op TES. Like Borderlands but in Skyrim. That's all."

Shakey said:

Making one would limit what they can do with the story in TESO, which is the same reason Blizz doesn't make Warcraft games. It's not that they can't.

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ESO takes place WAAAY before Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind, Daggerfall and Arena.

They can do whatever they want.[DOUBLEPOST=1393869087,1393868813][/DOUBLEPOST]Either way, it's still going to be years yet for another Elder Scrolls game proper. There was over 5 years between Oblivion and Skyrim.

Frank said:

There was over 5 years between Oblivion and Skyrim.

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And I'd say it was justified, really. That's a long dev cycle, but even with its warts, it's still pretty much the best game, full stop.

Frank said:

ESO takes place WAAAY before Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind, Daggerfall and Arena.

They can do whatever they want.[DOUBLEPOST=1393869087,1393868813][/DOUBLEPOST]Either way, it's still going to be years yet for another Elder Scrolls game proper. There was over 5 years between Oblivion and Skyrim.

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If it wasn't for TESO, it might have only been five years and we'd be nearing the halfway point in a month. Now it's likely to be much longer.

GasBandit said:

You won't, unfortunately. I know I am getting to be a broken record here, but nobody wanted TESO, and 90% of us don't give a shit about the overarching "Lore" of Tamriel (if you hadn't used that word in your post, I would have had to google to even remember what it was called, really). We like TES games because of the immersiveness, the "making our own story in a populated, living world" thing. Nothing breaks immersion more than massive multiplayer. My exact quote has been something like, "I didn't want a TES MMO, I wanted 2, maybe 4 player co-op TES. Like Borderlands but in Skyrim. That's all."

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I know you're right, but I really wish you were wrong.

GasBandit said:

And I'd say it was justified, really. That's a long dev cycle, but even with its warts, it's still pretty much the best game, full stop.

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Morrowind had worse gameplay but a much better world to explore. As such, Skywind is probably going to be fantastic.

As for Lore... that pretty much went out the window with the Warp in the West, which made the several, contradictory endings to Daggerfall all canon.

Yeah, Skyrim could have improved upon a couple small things like:

1) Better ai (what video game couldn't benefit from that though?)
2) Better resolution to story points

Skyrim was a great game despite itself. There are so many things that are so bad, but somehow it still works. The combat and magic are flawed and simplistic, the weapons are somewhat boring, but somehow not. The skill tree seems lifeless. Yet the game itself is so damned addictive and amazing. I don't get it.

Necronic said:

Skyrim was a great game despite itself. There are so many things that are so bad, but somehow it still works. The combat and magic are flawed and simplistic, the weapons are somewhat boring, but somehow not. The skill tree seems lifeless. Yet the game itself is so damned addictive and amazing. I don't get it.

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Like I said - the immersion is a large part of it. It's a living world that tries to engage with and react to you in a believable fashion, with your actions making changes to that world.

Plus, throw in a bit of the ol' treadmill addiction, what with every single action you do filling up some bar or another just a little bit more.

Also I think the modding community really bolstered it.

It's right up there with Red Dead as far as world immersion goes.

Espy said:

It's right up there with Red Dead as far as world immersion goes.

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I really, really, really wish Red Dead had come out on PC.

Espy said:

It's right up there with Red Dead as far as world immersion goes.

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This game cannot be praised enough. Holy hell it was worth buying PS3 for.

I think the problem with Red Dead though... is where do you go after that? I'd suggest Red Dead Revolution, but a big part of the game is taking part in a Mexican revolution. Maybe something really early on in the West?

AshburnerX said:

I think the problem with Red Dead though... is where do you go after that? I'd suggest Red Dead Revolution, but a big part of the game is taking part in a Mexican revolution. Maybe something really early on in the West?

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Red Dead Online, apparently, if every other RPG is apparently setting the precedent.

GasBandit said:

Red Dead Online, apparently, if every other RPG is apparently setting the precedent.

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Except that would almost work if the world was large enough and it had enough factions. It's not like TESO where are decades of lore and world building to do. You'd just set it somewhere in the American South West near Mexico and hand out guns. Maybe let people make claims and mine/pan for gold. Maybe farms and herds and...

Jesus, why hasn't someone made this yet? This would actually be good and have tons of stuff to do.

AshburnerX said:

Except that would almost work if the world was large enough and it had enough factions. It's not like TESO where are decades of lore and world building to do. You'd just set it somewhere in the American South West near Mexico and hand out guns. Maybe let people make claims and mine/pan for gold. Maybe farms and herds and...

Jesus, why hasn't someone made this yet? This would actually be good and have tons of stuff to do.

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I'd buy it.

GasBandit said:

I'd buy it.

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As others have said, the studio developing TESO isn't the same one that has made the rest of the games, so I expect the impact of one on the other to be not much.

And again, as others have said, TESO takes place a number of centuries before any of the other Elder Scrolls games. Think Old Republic. So they are both constrained by what happens afterward, but the people making later games are not constrained by the MMO. They most they'll do is harvest a bit of the "lost events" that happened in the MMO into core TES games later. This is in complete contrast to WoW, where they continue the Warcraft story. So their "warcraft" games, if they make any more ever again, are either going to happen in parallel to WoW, or WoW will have "another cataclysm" and to find out what happened, play WC4. Actually I'm a bit surprised that's not what they were planning with Cataclysm, but hey. Either way, not an issue with TES & TESO.

I agree with the co-op thing. We wanted 2-4 player co-op, not this. But it could be good. It was fun, though different than other MMOs. Really lacking in some other ways unfortunately. We got spoiled by the "omg it's better than most games released" type of beta that Rift had. Super-smooth. I can think of at least 4-5 betas that were more finished and less buggy than TESO is right now. Then again, I'd say it's less buggy than most TES games! The difference is that TES games can get patched by the community. This can't!

Eriol said:

As others have said, the studio developing TESO isn't the same one that has made the rest of the games

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Just in case anyone wasn't clear, TESO is being developed by Zenimax Online, a studio put together by Zenimax to create MMO's, headed by the former lead designer of Dark Age of Camelot. Bethesda studios is not involved at all, though I imagine their name will still be attached due to name recognition.

Matt Firor is a great numbers guy. DAOC's "behind the scenes" dicerolling formula was probably best of industry. Guild Wars 2 was a great illustration that even if you take DAOC's RvR concept and implement it, you still have to get the numbers right or it just devolves into a population contest (as in, the side with the most players wins). Maybe TESO will do this better. I see in gameplay footage they do seem to be doing seige RvR in it.

That said, the footage I've seen also couldn't be less like a TESO game if it tried.

Even if it's another studio, with different people, in a different Age, we won't get another TES game as long as ESO is live. Because they know they'd be their own biggest competitor.
I don't know where the 20 million units Skyrim sold came from, but let's assume it's true. let's say 2 million people even try out TES - the hardcore ES Lore fans who can live with the MMO part, and a bunch of MMO fans who want to give another world/game a shot. Maybe 1 million will remain after 6 months - and honestly, that's some very positive numbering there.
The "MMO fans" will more than likely move on to another MMO fairly soon- though the steep up-front price might "force" them to stick around a bit longer to justify the investment, I think most MMO hoppers will simply skip this game because of it.
The TES Lore fans will practically all move on to TES6 the moment it comes out - probably better gameplay, the next step in the story, better visuals, better AI - you know how it goes. Who'll be left? The TES Lore fans with a bad addiction problem? Huzzah.

If they do announce TES6, it'll be concurent with the scrapping of ESO. TES6 would've been 5 times more profitable, but oh well.

I don't prescribe to that line of thought at all but I also don't believe a new TES game is anywhere near either way. That team is bogged down in Fallout 4 wicked Bwahstan style.

Bubble181 said:

Even if it's another studio, with different people, in a different Age, we won't get another TES game as long as ESO is live. Because they know they'd be their own biggest competitor.
I don't know where the 20 million units Skyrim sold came from, but let's assume it's true. let's say 2 million people even try out TES - the hardcore ES Lore fans who can live with the MMO part, and a bunch of MMO fans who want to give another world/game a shot. Maybe 1 million will remain after 6 months - and honestly, that's some very positive numbering there.
The "MMO fans" will more than likely move on to another MMO fairly soon- though the steep up-front price might "force" them to stick around a bit longer to justify the investment, I think most MMO hoppers will simply skip this game because of it.
The TES Lore fans will practically all move on to TES6 the moment it comes out - probably better gameplay, the next step in the story, better visuals, better AI - you know how it goes. Who'll be left? The TES Lore fans with a bad addiction problem? Huzzah.

If they do announce TES6, it'll be concurent with the scrapping of ESO. TES6 would've been 5 times more profitable, but oh well.

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I think parallels can be drawn to The Old Republic, a shorter running, but still incredibly popular, single player rpg with a rich (and licensed!) lore that made the jump to MMO. It had a pretty big early bump in subscribers, and then petered out to about half a million regular subscribers. Now, to any sane MMO producer, this would be a success (EVE Online certainly survives just fine with those sort of numbers) but because of the sheer amount of money sunk into the project, it was still deemed a failure. Because they expected it to make WoW kinds of money, without realizing that MMO's don't make that sort of money, and WoW is an outlier. Maybe if they hadn't botched the Free2Play model and made it so mean spirited (seriously, you have to pay to do dungeons more than once, pay to do battlegrounds, if you find purple level loot, you even have to pay to equip it!)

I foresee ESO following the same path.

Bubble181 said:

Even if it's another studio, with different people, in a different Age, we won't get another TES game as long as ESO is live. Because they know they'd be their own biggest competitor.

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This is a false assumption. The kind of people who play TES and the kind of people who play MMOs have some crossover, but it's not 1 for 1. You are never going to convince all the TES people to go to the MMO, especially since the gameplay is going to be so fundamentally different. Therefore it would only make sense to make another TES even while the MMO is active, if only to get the players who aren't playing the MMO. Besides, a standalone TES game doesn't cost the company millions a month to keep running.

AshburnerX said:

This is a false assumption. The kind of people who play TES and the kind of people who play MMOs have some crossover, but it's not 1 for 1. You are never going to convince all the TES people to go to the MMO, especially since the gameplay is going to be so fundamentally different. Therefore it would only make sense to make another TES even while the MMO is active, if only to get the players who aren't playing the MMO. Besides, a standalone TES game doesn't cost the company millions a month to keep running.

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I know - I explicitly stated they were very different. But from amongst the MMO crowd, the only ones they have a chance of capturing for the long run are the TES fans. Most MMO fans I know are either fairly faithful to one "big" MMO (WoW, mostly, but Guild Wars, LOTRO or EVE can take this spot as well, or some competitive esport-style - and CoH and CoV were this for many people as well), with occasional short forays into other games, or are game-hoppers who like to rush through every new MMO for 6 months or so and then abandon them. The second group accounts for part of the big early "bump" most big MMOs get. The second group is mostly already settled. EESO doesn't have anythign big or special enough to really lure people away.

Honestly, I just don't see Bethesda throwing away another 20 million units potentially sold just to make chump change on a F2P game. They would simply just make more money selling a TES game with DLC to a few million people every few years than making a few bucks off of the 10% who actually buy stuff in F2P games.