From gamespot.com: "...a variety of game-news sites reported that new evidence has surfaced that an Elder Scrolls massively multiplayer online role-playing game is in the works. Such a notion isn't exactly new. In August, ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Elder Scrolls developer and publisher Bethesda Softworks, announced the creation of a new MMORPG studio, ZeniMax Online..."

This has been around for while, but it's due a good whacking with the think-stick. Now, before we get all wound around circles about who likes what game, and what genre is better than the other, and inevitably end up in the MMO bucket bashing foreheads with the pubers, let's put our smarty-pants on. Sit back, put Grandma's foot down, soak a graham cracker, smoke something, and let's discuss.

• What parts of Bethesda's ingenuity has led them to create several Games of the Year?

:lightbulb: We've seen throughout the Elder Scrolls series, and with the excellent Fallout 3, that a setting of open-world exploration fueled with the special care of a well-written plot-line is Bethesda's forte. A single-character-driven storyline with an open ended quality utterly lives up to the company's celebrated slogan: "Live another life, explore another world."

We have done it. Each of us in a different, separate way - each of us in his or her OWN way - have enjoyed Tamriel. That's to say our experiences are all different and somewhat unique. Tamriel, to use an old cliche, has always been "mine, my own, and my precious". There is no chat screen with a http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_jMkkcGSVIIc/R9qKe5yK2YI/AAAAAAAAAlk/m3ieh40jM9g/s400/lol_blair3.jpg, nor is there a monthly payment plan.

In many ways, the single player computer game is much like a book. Back in the days of our parents and our grandparents, these "book" objects were a papery object covered in the written word, glued within a binding, much like an iPad that you have to think to use. These stories led our personal imaginations to conjure up the characters and the experience by ourselves. Every fictional book you read becomes your own, in a way, and every book was a great piece of art - invoked, written, edited and completed. Enough with fondling the teacher's apples: what the hell am I talking about?

:deal: I propose that the single-player experience is where Tamriel belongs, and that the developers will always have the most fun, and execute the most memorable masterpieces, using the solo medium. There is so much more freedom for a team of dedicated developers to tackle a big idea within the single-player genre. Dedicating the time and passion of creative developers to an online LOLfest is like a drop-dead beautiful girl standing on a streetcorner with the look that says, http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted.html

• Does the MMORPG medium lessen the depth, storyline and artistic memorability to which a team of creative developers can give Tamriel?

MMORPG's have nothing left for me. (Except for that full suit of T9 gear after grinding ten thousand nodes! Oh man! Oh man!) :ahhh: Now, don't get carried away with disagreement (the last thing I want to do is argue with fans about MMORPGs' various qualities - spare me!) I do understand that they are all quite excellent, draining thousands of tubs of Bengay and getting millions of Moms to provide http://www.ripten.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/cartman-wow-sunder.jpg every night around the world. Hell, typing this out and putting all the pretty colors on the words took me no less than FOUR tubs of Bengay, and Mom called on the phone to see if I was ok no less than TWICE.

I understand that MMORPG's provide a whole world of fun, and I've played most of them at one time or another. We should be thankful just for the ability to play any game at all, but Tamriel has existed for a good, long time, and she's not the town bicycle (though it appears she's really thinking about giving http://www.nrk.no/pyro/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/ts.jpg a ride).

:grad: Churning Tamriel into an MMORPG world will cheapen her, water her down, market her, and drop her old fans like a senior citizen with the walking farts. The allure of the marketing incentive must never overcome the developers' desire to create artistic computer games that push the experience into new levels.

First off I want to remind everyone that Bethesda is NOT developing the rumored MMO, Zenimax Online is. So we cannot rely on Bethesda's skill at crafting amazing open worlds for this MMO, it's a completely different team of people that are making it.

Now, to answer your question, no, I do not think it would improve the experience of Tamriel. However, I also don't think it would be a terrible game. I feel that it could work quite well, I just don't think it will be better than a single player game. A lot of people seem to think an MMO is guaranteed to be awful, but that's a ridiculous notion. Just because it's an MMO doesn't mean it can't or wont be good.

In all honesty, the only thing stopping me from playing a TES MMO would be the fees required. I, and many others, do not like and/or cannot pay, the monthly subscription costs that most MMOs implement. If it was free to play or it implemented a unique form of payment, I would play it. But no matter how good the game is, I can't, and don't want to, pay a monthly fee, no matter the cost.

As far as the monthly fee goes, I'm afraid the (warning: advlt language in link) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZub-7ulikc have found another loophole in single-player games: the dreaded on-screen-advertised DLC. But that's another topic. Ultimately, I'd probably try out a Tamriel-based MMO myself, but my prediction is it simply wouldn't actually be Tamriel - it'd be like comparing http://newsitemstoday.today.com/files/2009/06/the_2_faces_of_michael_jackson.jpg

I also can't pay montly fees and I don't have a PC, so I doubt I will be playing an Elder Scrolls MMO. If it came out for the PS3 and it didn't have a monthly fee, I might play it, but only because it is an Elder Scrolls game.

I have a good feeling that the MMO wont be taking place in Tamriel at all. Bethesda needs all the provinces it can get so that it can make as many TES games as possible. I have a feeling that it will be set in a different land or in a daedric realm. Most likely in a land we never heard of before. There's A LOT of ocean said to exist between Tamriel and Akavir, so I'm sure they'll come up with a brand new land for the MMO to take place in.

I also think they may set it in Yokuda, though I'd prefer if they left that alone for a future singleplayer TES game.

I would hate an Elder Scrolls MMO, and here's why:

1. Complete removal of the experience of joining a guild, and rising through the ranks to become the leader.
2. Buying Houses, obtaining Forts/Towers/Lairs and whatnot would be impossible.
3. Wouldn't it seem kind of odd to see hundreds of people running around with the same artifacts?
4. Elder Scrolls is a First-Person game, with First-Person physics. How bad would it be that someone ran up and just killed you because they were a higher level?
5. In the Elder Scrolls, when you die, you're dead. End of story. You have to reload a saved game to a previous point in time, losing the given amount of time spent since last save. People in Tamriel aren't reborn at some sort of alter, or run back to their bodies. This isn't Warcraft.
6. Elder Scrolls has always been very personal with the players. Just as Dungeons and Dragons was always personal with the groups, defeating challenges in their own worlds. MMORPG's remove this level of connection.

Considering Bethesda will probably use all the provinces, except for part of Morrowind(Vvardenfell) and Cyrodiil, in future games, and considering Bethesda only seems to be able to release a new Elder Scrolls game every 5-6 years(with the Fallout series), a Bethesda-made Elder Scrolls game set in Yokuda won't be released for a very long time.

However, Daedra can keep their memories after they die and can then be reborn with all their memories. Perhaps this MMO will be set in a Daedric realm?

True, but I'd still like them to preserve it for a future singleplayer game regardless. :shrug:

And they'll very likely have a game set in Morrowind eventually. Vvardenfell, as you know, is covered in several feet of lava and ash so it's not like they'd be ruining old lore by revisiting it. The only province we can be certain they wont visit again is Cyrodiil, but if the province changes enough over time they might decide to revisit it anyway.

I know Vvardenfell is covered by ash and lava, but still, why visit it again? It's covered in ash and lava. As I said in my post, I only expect not to visit Vvardenfell and Cyrodiil, but I still expect to actually see Morrowind in a game.

It always seemed to me as if they could easily move from one province to the next: one great hero, one great calamity for each region.

My guess for the next one? Well, it's somewhere in the conversations people are having on the streets of the Imperial City.

Alinor, Sumurset Isle.

By the time we do have a game in Morrowind, Vvardenfell will likely have a few settlements on it. Though to be fair, all of Morrowind is currently a wasteland considering all the invading and slaughtering the Argonians did in the book, so none of it is really a good place for a game atm.



The problem with that, and it's a big problem, is that Bethesda currently only has a single trademark relating to the TES series, and that's Skyrim. And they've renewed it as recently as January, so they must intend on using it. Bethesda could technically announce the game without having a trademark but that would be an awful, awful business decision.

Doesn't seem like it would be that interesting to me. Look at the things that make TES stand out as a singleplayer game: world size and total content? Both are two of the most common factors of MMO's, because their main goal is to increase the amount of time the player can spend there (and thus the amount of monthly fees collected). Sandbox roleplaying? That would be very difficult to represent in a massively multiplayer setting. You can't kill some NPC and ruin the quest for fifty thousand other people. You can't rob a house and expect it to stay that way; it would have to be a separate zone which each player gets their own version of, which doesn't exactly give you much feeling of having any impact on the world. About the only thing that would really make it TES is the lore/setting, and I'm not paying monthly for that when obviously being single/multiplayer doesn't do anything to make it more or less interesting.


1. The only factor that would really be threatened is becoming the leader, which already means pretty much nothing in past games.
2. Wouldn't be at all impossible. You could have apartment-style individual zones, or fort-style locations that players can fight over.
3. Quite possibly, but it doesn't seem to have stopped every MMORPG ever.
4. This one doesn't make a lot of sense. How does first-person conflict with anything? (Ironically, the lack of high-level things killing you is a common complaint toward Oblivion)
5. So it would be changed. Losing in Warcraft knocked you back to your last save too, before it was in MMO form.

Drive the outlanders out from Morrowind? That sounds familiar.

My response to the second part of your post will be TES V speculation thread.

Lets use the http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1070334-official-tes-multiplayer-thread/.