» Sun Mar 23, 2014 10:33 pm I came to this game with little experience of The Elder Scrolls beyond a bit of dabbling in Skyrim. I do however have over 10 years experience in MMOs, particularly EQ2 and EVE two titles with extremely strong and loyal communities. Gone are the days for me now however of being a hardcoe raider and I have spent the last few years looking for an MMO with real depth and complexity. So I approached TESO with some optimism, a franchise with heritage and a loyal fanbase. I signed up for the betas and pre-ordered the game. As release approaches however I am becoming more and more disillusioned with certain sectors of the community and the bickering and in-fighting already prevalent on these forums.
Every day I log on I see threads demanding that the devs do this or that, closely followed by cries of outrage from another group with little being achieved in these threads beyond an increase in acrimony between the parties. No chance that polar opposites are prepared to compromise but rather a setting of irresolute mindsets. And this is all to the detriment of the community and ultimately the game as a whole.
It seems to me that the diehard Elder Scrolls fans want a game that is basically online Skyrim however this is patently impossible as the entire premise of Skyrim is that you are The One. As soon as you introduce multiplayer to the environment you have hundreds of thousands of The One all running around interacting with each other. As soon as that is accepted then it follows the gameplay HAS to change. Today's technology makes it impossible, or at least impractical to allow persistent change effected by the players, at least in a terrestrial PVE environment in the same way that was allowed in Skyrim. Accordingly you are left with this game being just another MMO albeit decorated with Elder Scrolls lore. There's no arguing with this, no matter how the critics complain the only way you can have online Skyrim is to play Skyrim while hooked up to Skype or Teamspeak or whatever. The sooner they accept this the sooner we can all move on and play this game the way it has been developed.
The next apparent bone of contention revolves around add-ons or player designed mods. There are those on these forums for whom such things are anathema. They see them as being a means of cheating irrepspective of whether or not they are endorsed or at least allowed by the devs of the game. This viewpoint makes me believe that those who complain about such things either have extremely limited experience of MMOs and therefore to the tremendous and imaginative benefits such add-ons can bring to a game, or else fear being driven out by an imaginary horde of rampaging WoW players bent solely on causing maximum grief. To the former group I can offer the example of EVE where meta gaming has made it one of the longest lived, continually successful franchises in MMO history, and to the latter I would ask you to have confidence in the devs who would be the last people that would want to see their game broken in such a way. Look at other MMOs where a draconian war is endlessly waged on gold sellers and botters. I played EQ2 for many years using the controls provided by the game. Over time however I began to use player mods such as improved UI designs which while not neccessary in order to compete, they just made the game more enjoyable. By the time I became a hardcoe raider in a guild constantly working towards server first kills I had started using Advanced Combat Tracker in order to parse combat logs and aid and assist my proficiency in the cutting edge raids we were taking part in. While raiding was not a requirement of gameplay you found many people inevitably gravitated to it once they had been at level cap for some time if for nothing else, something to do in the game. It was the ultimate expression of the game, using all the tools built up progressing your character and employing them in the most effective way. Indeed because we became so effective it allowed the devs to design ever more complicated encounters that perhaps would not have been the case without our proficiency. Boss fights became more than just boring tank and spank and it allowed the game to extend its life far beyond what it may have been had it been allowed to stultify by using the plain vanilla tools provided by the game upon release.
Finally, as I've already touched on, there appears to be a continual reference to the "WoW" player, usually in a derogatory fashion. The fear that the "WoW" players are going to take over the game and that every other player is going to be a Leeroy Jenkins, that groups are going to be flame-fests throwing out casual players for playing like "noobs" and that chat is going to be a continual litany of swearing and smack-talking. I'm pretty sure this isn't going to happen. I've never played WoW but I'm pretty sure not every person is like that and similarly there are unpleasant people in every game, it's up to the community to freeze them out. On the other hand the WoW players need to have respect for this game. There is no god given edict which says every game has to be like WoW and that if it isn't it is in some way lacking. There is nothing to be gained by comparing this game or it's features to WoW (or any other game). If you miss the features of WoW then I suggest you go back to playing WoW, I'm pretty sure it's still out there somewhere.
What I'm finally getting around to is that we need to pull together as a community. A community of TESO. We need to stop fearing the hypothetical or trying to change everyone into a clone of yourself. Play the game as it is, not as you wish it had been designed.
