I have one major gripe with ESO.... The terrible classes. Why is EVERY class a magic user? Not only does that ruin the fun of choosing a caster class, being that every class uses magic, but it utterly breaks the lore of TES. Magic required years of study and practice to use, it was a skill acquired and refined through extensive training. Every fool off the street was not tossing fireballs and lightning bolts. It cheapens the feel of things. I can see pvp now, it is going to be all flashy lights and explosions. The game will lose its visceral steel clashing feel. I know there are some players who could not give two craps about lore, or the rpg elements, but this lore breaking system cheapens the game for me quite a bit.

Sure, you can go out of your way to make your dragon knight a no magic using warrior, but at what cost? By gimping your character by going out of your way to not use any class skills? Who will actually do that? Nobody. Every class is a mage of some sort in this game. Regardless of whether you are wielding a two handed sword or a destruction staff, every class is a magic class. The "use every weapon, wear every armor" thing is just a ploy to mask the pigeon holes we are forced into. Why even make a "sorcerer" class? Why even include classes to begin with? Why not just make the classes individual skill trees and allow players to pick which trees they wish to use, without forcing them into some specialized magic class? Every Tom, dike and Harry was not a sorcerer in TES. It required magical affinity, intelligence, and great skill to use magic. It just totally breaks it for me when every person running around is the "soulless one" and some kind of mage. That's not TES.

Best bet is to do away with forcing players to choose a class. They are uninspired, boring, classes anyway. Turn the skills from the classes into their own skill trees, and allow a character to pick from scratch the skills he wants from whatever tree he likes. That way my warrior is not running around with some ridiculous title like "dragon knight" that never existed anywhere in any piece of TES lore ever. I cant even believe Bethesda let them drop such a hot steaming pile of crap on their lore like this. This is TES, not WOW. We are TES rpg fans, we made this label what it is today with our support, and we fell in love with what made TES great, the lore!

Ummm no. In other TES games you can go from knowing no magic whatsoever to the baddest spellcaster, and head of the entire mage guild, in 1 in game month. Yet you think THIS breaks lore? Really?

EVERY CHARACTER in EVERY TES GAME can learn spells.

All they gotta say is, "That long ago, everyone used a little magicka."
I agree somewhat. I'd like a barbarian who fears and hates its use.

Know what? I actually agree with you on that one.

not that this will make a difference...well, maybe it will make you feel better,

but it will not change the game for that is almost ready to go public.

So, what is left for us to do? we take what is there or we do not and

walk on to something else.

I for one will ignore all the Magicka and go for solid steel as much as possible

Well, it ain't possible and so I will ignore the fireworks and pretent it is steel only.

I agree

I hate the [censored] class system

That's called a game mechanic..... They are not going to make you spend a month in game learning a spell like it would take according to lore. Use your head

Oh look a purist, but why're you under the impression that magic requires intelligence to use? infact only in Morrowind and Oblivion could you buy magic by the truck loads, same with Skyrim. The class system is fine, not like class systems ever worked in any TES game anyway why there were abolished in Skyrim but people go into a MMO expecting to already know what character they wanna play be it a magic user a tank a healer or an assassin, they wanted to settle in the MMO crowd into this game and make them feel as though they're right at home with the system in this game but they didn't wanna alienate the TES fans either. I'm a huge TES fan, am I mad? no, not at all I'm thoroughly enjoying the experience and I'm glad to see all the new people around who will enjoy this experience with me and learn about the lore of the TES it breathes new life into it for me while I wait for the next installment of TES.

You can choose to be a melee user if you please only relying on your stamina pool, which is what your weapon related skills are for. There was a article I linked earler that said there was "combat changes" coming I'm not entirely sure when I guess we just have to wait and see.

I dunno, maybe because intelligence was the main stat for using magic? Or the numerous lore books stating such?

I do like the fact that, to increase your magic guild rank / skill

you have to read lorebooks / (find lorebooks)

Ya, Just wish there was a purpose to calling yourself a "mage" in the game.

It was ONE of the main stats. And therein lies the problem that would have crippled TESO on the magic front-as well as the stealth and fighter fronts.

Before Skyrim abolished the 8 main attribute system of say Morrowind and simplified everything down to what were the main 3 derived attributes, magic fell under one of 3 stats(Intelligence, Charisma, and Willpower). Just porting a system like that to a MMO would not have been feasibly done well imo.

Its all very well and good sticking to Lore when you can. But when going from one type of game to another(single player > MMO), you just have to accept some things will have to be changed completely. Its just too reductive to think that a simple 1:1 correlation of content would do anything other than fail in a situation like this.

STOP! YOU'VE VIOLATED THE LORE!

I get what you're saying, but it is a known fact that magic is everyone's talent in TES. None of the "classes" are pure archetypes. But you can make yourself mostly a pure archetype if you focus on the correct skills.

Do you remember Gauntlet? It was a console game I used to play around an arcade machine at the local 7/11 back in the late 80's

Taken from wiki:

The players, up to four at once in the arcade version, select among four playable fantasy-based characters; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarian, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizard_(fantasy), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thyra the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valkyrie, or Questor the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elf.^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauntlet_(1985_video_game)#cite_note-moby-2} Each character has his or her own unique strength and weaknesses. For example, the Warrior is strongest in hand-to-hand combat, the Wizard has the most powerful magic, the Valkyrie has the best armour and the Elf is the fastest in movement.

Perhaps if ESO was a little more like that you'd be happier?

Magic was not everyones talent in TES. If you read up on any of the lore books you would know that some people are more capable then others in terms of magical ability. If everyone was a mage, there would be no reason to have the lore ever mention the word "mage" or sorcerer" because the title would be redundant if everyone was such a thing. Yes anyone could learn magic, with time, study and practice. But it was not as simple as the gameplay mechanics of walking into a store buying a spell and casting it. That was a gameplay mechanic. Read up on some of the chronicles. The mages guild, college of winterhold, etc, would not exist if magic was "everyone's talent". Morrowind and prior, if you did not specifically spec your character for magic, they would hardly be able to use it.

As I said, I am an advocate of NO class. Let a person decide the skills he wants to train as he goes along. If they want to train all weapons skills with a mix of archery and some guild, then go for it. If they want to mix it up with magic and weapons go for it. As of right now, if you don't choose class skills you will be gimped, because people are not going to go out of their way to avoid magic if it gimps their effectiveness for lore sake. And the fact that all class skills are magic related, is the issue.

It's possible.

Put all your attribute points into stamina, select only weapon set skills. Ta-dum. You're a warrior.

And there are surely some magicka based abilities that resemble physical attacks, so use those if you'd like as well.

Magicka is what you make it. it's simple a word used to discribe the pool of energy used to do certain abilities. Refer to it as you will.

I'm not insulting you, but too many ppl fail to use their imagination nowadays.

Ignoring the fact that every Tom, dike and Harry in TES:Skyrim was a sorcerer because it required no magical affinity, intelligence or great skill to use magic. In fact the game is pretty impossible to play without mixing the two because you will be hopelessly gimped and incapable of handling various situations. Hmmmm... Maybe that is where they got it from?

But magic is not everyo's talent in TESO.
It's every PLAYER characters talent, sure. But there are loads and loads of non-magic using NPC characters in TESO.

i think its more about classes needing balancing than anything else. with nightblade and dragon knight skill trees maybe needing to be based off stamina more ( Im thinking 2 trees of the 3 for each) and maybe the first skill tree for templar being based off stamina too. Mages are somewhat at an advantage at the moment because they dont have to put points equally as much as the other classes at the moment. This would kind of fix somewhat the lore problem and help towards balancing

Again, you are mixing up gameplay mechanics with lore. The amount of magicka a person was born with, based on their stats, birth sign, race, etc, determined their affinity for magic. The more magicka pool one had the more powerful one was. Skill came into play with what spells you could actually use. In Oblivion If you did not have the sufficient skill, the spells were not able to be cast. In skyrim it came down to mana cost, most skills above apprentice were off limits to you unless you took the require skill perks. In morrowind skill came into play with spell failure. \

as far as skyrim being impossible to play without magic, what are you smoking? I played as non magic classes all the time

I too was originally hoping for a "classless" system, but the classes are set up so that each can fulfill any role, so I'm not disappointed.

If you think of the alternative (as per the other Elder Scrolls games), you'd have thousands of identical templated characters running around for PvP, and most likely for PvE as well.

And I mean IDENTICAL. Same stats, same skills/morphs, same equipment with the same enchants.

Min/max'ers. elitists, call them what you will, would pervert the game.

No thanks, I'll pass on that.

Too true. and you cant even use fire/ ice magic unless you have a fire / ice destruction staff. what is up with that. How hard would of it been to add hand magic not that hard.

In all of TES games i never used a weapon only magic. and i never had a problem with magicka but with eso i have too micromanage and that is a big no no in a mmorpg

Amen to this.

In the TES universe, it's everyone's talent, just not everyone's specialty. In other lore-related threads it has been compared to math IRL. Everyone has some aptitude for it, but not everyone is going to go into a profession that revolves around it (engineer, physicist, economist, etc), and only a few people are going to pursue a math degree (the equivalent of being a mage in TES).

Neutronium Dragon, you are assuming everyone is born with equal ability with magic. That is not true. Hence why Bretons and elves are clearly stated in their description to be more powerful in spellcraft. While everyone has the ability to some degree to use magic, not everyone is born equal. Some are far more powerful then others. In the game it was represented by their stats and magicka pool. That is not including the actual learned skill side of things. Using your example, not everyone has the intellect to get through med school and become a doctor, even tho they can enroll. Not everyone can perform neuro surgery after the first week of med school either. Using the word talent next to everyone is false. Everyone is born with the ability to learn magic. The degree of their ability is different from person to person. Skill is represented in the game by the spells you can and can not cast. Morrowind had a spell failure system if ur skill was too low, oblivion would simply not allow u to cast a spell above ur skill level and skyrim was a mana reserve system