I noticed how there is a severe lack of interaction with the developers of this game, esspecialy compared to other popular (and premium priced) mmo's. I find this worrieing because i think that alot of the suggestions and complaits from fans go unheard. Yes, it's probably the most unthankfull job in the gaming industry to be the main spokes-person on twitter or so for a game and directly interact with the often pretty...critical customers, but it's also very important to have that direct feedback if you are truly commited to your product. At the moment it feels like this forum is just a glorified fan-forum, instead of the official channel to talk about ESO. Sure, the moderator's keep it clean and offer some insights when possible, but it requires a bit more to adress issues like the inventory-management and group-loot system. Let alone things like class\ race balance once the game is actually played on max level. I've made some tweets to ESO's twitter account to adress these issues, since that was the only way i could think off (outside of beta testing feedback) that would even reach them and maybe if other people share these concerns and tweeted them aswell there might actually be a response.

This is a fan forum Nothing glorified about it, the only difference is that it's the temporary official one.

Once the game goes live there will be an official forum where community managers will be picking up stuff for the devteams to focus on. For now most complaints here are things that cropped up after last beta and can be put to good use in the next one. Collect, and report during the next one.

Most of the max level class/race/skill balance is pure theorycrafting and remains to be seen ingame.

The game hasn't gone live, and there's no "open beta". You're not going to see much (if any) developer communication on a product still in closed beta.

They've had 13 "ask us" sessions and 58 "developer question of the weeks". This is a temporary forums until they get the other ones up and running. Right now the developers are probably working their butts off to get everything ready for launch.

To be fair... those "Ask Us" and "Dev Questions" roundups cherry pick questions, and are pretty ambiguous in their responses. But then too, it's still more information than I would expect from a product still in closed testing.

This.

The developers are working on an unfinished product at the moment. Their job is not to respond to every speculative question they get from people who don't know anything about the game.

This is where you are so wrong, check how wildstar developers are handling it and then you can see the difference. The developers post videos of themselves playing the game, the developers appear on fansite twitch channels to give interviews, and last but not least they developers invite owners of fansites to participate in extra activites like playing team fortress 2 etc. Not to mention anytime they hold an AMA on reddit , carbine answers questions directly onto reddit and not a cherry picked AMA like we see here.And that game is under closed beta as well but there are 100s of twitch streams of fans playing the game because its a consistent closed beta and not a weekend affair.

So play Wildstar.

I'm judging this game based on what we're told and how it accurately reflects what I experience in beta. I don't particularly care if I can personally relate to the developers, but if that's important to you, play a game where the devs are people you want to have a beer with.

I received quick and detailed messages from devs for every problem I reported in game. I have been impressed.

Yep this.

I don't need a Dev blowing smoke up my back side and making me feel special every week with a super duper new vid or goofy little cartoon. All i need is them to keep making the game so come launch day its the game we all want and will play for a long time.

I followed Warhammer online from announcement to launch and their Devs were very chatty even having forum accounts and talking with posters on a daily basis. Well the game ended up flopping. So how much the Dev communicate during the Dev process means nothing as far as the quality of the game.

And how many times have the devs been verbally attacked, accused of lying outright, being lazy, being foolish, or otherwise being corrupt money grubbing individuals?

Gosh. I can't imagine why they don't post every single day.

If, the Divines forbid, one of the devs talks about some feature or mechanic that is in the current build of the game they are playing, and it doesn't work out and has to be removed, the OMG THE DEVS LIED ranting starts.

When *anything* changes someone manages to be upset or outraged about it. They updated the information on what you get and when you get it for pre-orders; result? Zenimax is screwing over people who didn't order whichever edition.

I can't tell you how many time there has been a dev post, and someone manages to turn a simple statement into whatever it was that they wanted to see/read. And again rant against the devs when it is pointed out that they never really said that.

If the Wildstar devs haven't experienced that yet, good for them. I hope it continues.

I should have added a "any successfully product" qualifier to my previous statement. Sure, with some game projects, developers spend a lot of time communicating many details while in closed testing and development. But those also almost always result in a flop.

Easiest way to destroy an online game? Give the players too much influence over the design.

Should spend less time playing TF2 and more time making their game not svck, because Wildstar svcks.

There are always going to be unreasonable people who vent their frustration in an absolutely silly manner. From what i have seen on this forum , majority of people are relatively older gamers and roleplayers and that is the crowd i think ESO is aiming for. I think thats a big plus for this game. Bar a few people i dont think the devs would get that sort of response on this forum.Not communicating though will act as negative marketing in this age of social media and i think that will be far worse.

I plan on subscribing to both games and i have already pre ordered the imperial edition. Every game does certain things right and wrong. If new games can learn from their predecessor's mistakes , that would just make for an enjoyable experience for both the developers and gamers .

They don't wanna hear whining about the subscription fee.

I think you may be forgetting what happened on the Skyrim forums every single time new information was released. Players are people, so they're individually smart and collectively a bunch of idiots.

The developers should have some kind of communication with players once the game launches, but pre-launch communication is pretty pointless. It just serves to muddy the waters as players often misinterpret what the developers say, or they make unreasonable assumptions about what can be done with a game during development.

That sounds like pageantry to me. I don't see the appeal. *shrug*

I think people blow the subsicroption fee way out of context. If a game has regular content updates which dont just involved piling on more achievement points and doing meaningless tasks which are not fun (GW2 living world comes to mind ) then by all means the sub fee is worth it .

If these kinds of things are more important to you than the actual product itself, I don't know what to tell you.

I don't care if I ever in my life see a dev pop up on the forums or on Reddit or anywhere else. I just want a good game. Just because they're not on here answering the same questions being asked over and over does not mean they aren't reading the forums. It just means they can't give us an answer publicly.

Devs have answer more direct questions from the fans -- been on Shoddy Cast, TF forums, Twich Video site and they asked hard detail questions about the game. They did a good job telling about the game and why and why not they are doing certain actions. I been very impress how interaction the Devs and listen to us fans. Now I think the fans are going in two many directions and I hope do not listen to us for a while now -- in other words, to much theory crafting with out seeing the big picture.

I have follow some games on the Bioware forums -- when they made the game project public info to the real release of the game and they never directly talked to the fans like ZOS has.

ESO has employees here on the forum every single day reading and occasionally posting on the forum with one of their jobs being to keep the devs and other ESO employees aware of our concerns and issues.

Let the players misinterpret what the developers say pre launch. The most important thing is the final product. If the final product feels complete , then good things about the game will automatically spread through word of mouth or social media and more people will play the game. But MMOs are massive and ESO is even more massive than most MMOs. I know there are probably "closed closed"beta testers somewhere out there. But there is no way a few hundered people can help sort out or give feedback on all the bugs and gameplay issues. The fact that so many of us experienced loads of quest bugs and falling through stairs is reflective of that. I am not saying develoeprs should listen to every single thing and let fans shape the game. But the more feedback they get from the devoted fans on a consistent basis pre launch especially when it comes to bugs and a number of cumbersome gameplay issues, the better the final product will be

This. Big brother is watching, even if they choose to limit their responses. Have faith in papa Akatosh that the messages are getting there, because they are.

The user base for ESO absolutely dwarfs Wildstar, there is much more at stake for ESO devs should they err in talking about game features and design than Wildstar devs will ever have to worry about. In addition, they have been under siege both fans and the press since launch of the game, since no Elder Scrolls MMO can possibly mimic the single player games and please everyone.

I am shocked that they bother to communicate with fans at all, when it would be easier to just go dark and count on the Elder Scrolls brand and some CGI + gameplay vids to maintain interest, but I suppose it helps to clear up some of the many, many misconceptions out there.

Obviously, I'd like more communication, but ESO is a lot less dependent on player input to develop the game than Wildstar is. Elder Scrolls is already a popular IP with a formula the developers can borrow from. Wildstar has to throw stuff at the wall to see if it sticks.

I see this kind of thread right before the release of every new MMO and i always wonder: what are the DEVs supposed to do, answer every single one of our too many questions?

Waste of resources, nothing would satisfy some of us.