I thank everyone that responded in the last thread, but unfortunately I did not return in time to respond to some valid points before the thread maxed out. For those who didn't see the first thread: http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1483559-concern-over-game-direction/

Two points in reply I would like to make, in order to clear up confusion and correct my error. Also, I would like to reiterate again that these concerns are subject to change as new information is made available, I am not writing the game off based on preliminary judgement.

In hindsight, the poorly-chosen term 'WoW-clone' was a mistake. To be more accurate, I worry that ESO will strongly resemble the WoW paradigm, for instance, the best gear behind the Raid wall, an extremely simple and homogeneous crafting system, linear quest structure, etc. Generally speaking, a 'theme park' game in which players take part in developer-made, static world, at the pace the developer decides as opposed to a 'sandbox' game in which the developers build a world, give the players tools, and the players themselves create content by their choices. Obviously, I cannot expect the level of modding and freedom TES series allows yet I feel as though by lacking player-made and defined factions - among other issues - is a portent for the rest of the game. In other MMOs that adopted this paradigm, it encouraged players to construct artificial barriers in order to focus on the Raid as endgame. This appears in-game in many, often negative, ways - so-called 'cookie cutter' builds that players expect everyone to adopt, obscenely inflated minimum requirements to even participate, a sense of urgency to complete the content and gain gear superiority to the exclusion of all else, and movements by players to ensure other modes of character development are not explored or given weaker rewards. In short, it can be summarized as 'Raid or Die'. Choosing not the raid automatically classifies you as a 2nd tier player undeserving of the best rewards.

While there are obviously both aesthetic and practical differences between ESO and WoW (SWToR and WoW, etc, as well) the currently available information leads me to believe that ESO is more like a theme park game than a sandbox game.

Secondly, I should be clear on why I fear the release will mirror, well, just about every other MMO since 2005. There will be a large mass of players that will want, and expect, the sense of fun they got from WoW circa 2005-6 with all the game-play features of WoW today, but without recycling any of the high fantasy tropes or game mechanics. This is an impossible bar that not even WoW is living up to. Yet the developers will be compelled to make the changes to the game mechanics in an attempt to placate these people - whether from fiscal pressure as a business seeking profit or to gain more players from WoW. Even if in the process destroying the sense of community or watering down the game's RPG elements. To attract the most players means designing with the lowest common denominator in mind. The loyal fans who love TES lore and the freedom of the games are not numerous enough, yet they will be the ones playing the game 6 months from now.

Some people may say this is in actuality a good thing, and while I personally disagree, it certainly makes sense from a business point-of-view. If ESO could even get 2 million players, it would be a success and allow them to create more content for everyone, right? However, the lesson I've learned from 7 years of post-WoW MMO launches is that the millions of WoW players really want to play WoW. The vast majority of the huge pile of them that will be spouting Skyrim memes and racing to endgame raids will quit for Warlords of Draenor no matter the changes ZeniMax makes. They feel no loyalty to TES or particularly enjoy Tamriel, her peoples, and her history. They will gladly sacrifice the essence of an MMO (the social aspect!) and the uniqueness of TES, the in-depth lore, the wild and open world in favor of conveniences and hand-holding. They want a game that directs them continually where to go and when. They will judge ESO based on all the features it lacks compared to WoW and the totality of raids-as-endgame. This isn't speculation on my part; anyone that cares to can go play WoW and see for themselves where this game philosophy leads.

I recognize that the type of sweeping changes discussed are not going to happen given where the game is in development. However, expectations can be set to a more logical position given the previous launches of Triple-A MMOs. Rather than forsaking all in the hopes of retaining the WoW crowd when they flee after the free month, why not stick to the design philosophy that makes TES so popular among the non-MMO crowd?

Lastly, in the first thread I flippantly threatened to not even give ESO a chance. This is potentially a great game that can have Raids while also offering other play-styles the opportunity to grow their characters on an equal footing with raiders.

This is an interesting thought, Raids could be detrimental to the product and you know what, I agree with that thought process. My example isn't really an MMO but I also feel that this feature in this game hurts it to some extent and that game is Borderlands 2. I feel that Borderlands 2 is hurt by having Raid Bosses in the game be the end game in addition to farming thus making end game boring, Diablo 3 also suffers from this problem although that game doesn't really have raid boses. Borderlands 1 did have Crawermax and that was a good raid boss for that game, he was fair but wasn't easy (We'll ignore the glitched spot that makes him easy) and Crawmerax also dropped like 4 legendaries whenever you defeated him, thus you got rewarded for fighting him. In Borderlands 2 you had terrible raid bosses and they had terrible drop rewards in comparasion to Crawmerax from Borderlands 1.

ESO can't have that same problem if they want to be some what successful. I still feel that the game is going to bomb because of the fact that you're charging 60 plus 15 a month, which is suicidal IMO when going up against something like Guild Wars 2 which is buy once and then your done paying for it and it also sounds like a WOW clone which is not good. I feel that if you're going to do Raids, then they need to be good, they need to be hard in terms of difficulty and lastly they should reward you for playing them or don't have Raid bosses at all and just have endless random level spawn dungeons of different varients (Like Dwemer Ruins, or a Mushroom cave, etc) where we can have the chance to get rare loot and fight tough enemies who are tough but not raid boss like.

there was so much said on this.

I would just say that unfortunately game is made for players, the more of them the better for game creators / producers. We can not stop ZOS from making most popular game they can think is created this way.

What you mean is that ZOS is just making mistake because they try to attract as many people as possible while they should try something new and by definition make the game niche from the start. But that would be not good idea for investors.

I am not much of a fan of Raids, I should disclose.

However, I do agree that Raids should suit the desires of those who enjoy them, in terms of difficulty and any other requirements needed to complete them. That's why I truly believe Raids should be AN avenue of character development, not THE only avenue of character development. If all the endgame content is Raids, then the Raids have to be accessible enough for the majority of players to theoretically be able to complete them. If they are not, those people quit the game. If players such as myself had other ways to gear and advance our characters - not as substandard to Raiders, but on par with them - then Raids could be designed to give Raiders a higher difficulty threshold and include a tiered structure without shortcuts.

Everybody wins.

We dont know anything, despite what people say. The only thing we do know is that end game is seemingly an after thought. With them just making other alliance zones and quests accessible to other races to extend the game play. So its the same stuff at 50+ as it was at 15, just with scaled up mobs. No telling what the loot tables will be like or money drops.

Also these so called adventure zones that have been talked about. Basically phasing the same stuff we saw before with new material. Might sound exciting but generally when its seen in action it isnt what people expect, and is generally seen as a 'grind'.

But basically it looks like it will, at least in the beginning be a grinder. The way Veteran Points are described is a good indicator of that.

So it looks like theyre just using phasing and existing game space to try and make it seem like a lot of 'content'. When it looks to me like its just revamped existing content.

Now I am the first to say you cant create content faster than people will go through it. But thats why you have RPG facets in the game. I dont see too many of those being put in. Theyre focusing on PvP. That can be debated forever on its own, but there will be people in both camps with their own opinions so it isnt very objective.

But when you go and read the confirmed features there isnt a lot there.

We also dont know how long it will take to see every zone there is. People who have played the beta would know how long it takes for each one I am sure. Then they can do some napkin math and figure out how that extrapolates out to seeing all 15 or whatever zones they will ultimately have access to. Then you have the little things like 'exploring', searching 'stuff', crafting, fishing, etc. That is somewhat RPG, but from what we know it isnt a lot. "Missing RPG' features that have been confirmed...housing (thats a biggie) and Auction Houses, which creates a whole mini game of playing the economy. Yes Guilds will have stores or whatever theyre called but theyre limited and require you to belong to a large guild to make them close to efficient. But that efficiency is also tied to PvP because once a guild claims a PvP keep then other non members can see their store. Subjective point of view is that linking a PvE (RPG) aspect of a game to PvP is a mistake.

In the end to know for sure youre going to have to buy it and play it. Or have a friend who has bought it and lets you see where he is after X amount of days.

There will be debates about it no doubt. Which is the usual fare when it comes to big named highly anticipated MMOs.

WOW made that mistake with having Raids be more accessable. They still are number 1 but they don't have the number that they did at their peak. It's still high around 7.7 million but who knows how long that number will last. I don't want ESO to make that same mistake. Make Raids rewarding, hard and fun if you are going to do them, otherwise it'll be deja vu like TOR and the other MMO"s who tried to copy WOW and failed.

Investors rarely, if ever, invest in a single game or IP. They invest in a company whole. Yet even if they did invest on an individual game basis, any investor with a brain would see the recent past of MMOs and be seriously concerned.

WoW is not the rule, it is the exception. The outlier. I would argue that ALL games are niche games. SWToR was a big budget gamble that a developer could recreate WoW's success with one of the biggest IPs on the planet, widely known in the mainstream, with fund galore. While SWToR is not dead, it isn't pulling down 2 million+ subscribers, either. There's just no expectation that WoW's success was anything other than a confluence of events and design decisions that managed to break through to the mainstream at the right time.

Given this knowledge, it seems prudent to build upon a loyal core of fans that love TES and then market that community to gain new players, as WoW did with EQ. As soon as ESO goes F2P (does anyone seriously doubt that will happen?) the gaming media and WoW players will write off the game as a failure, like they do with SWToR now, even as that game has 500K subscribers, a healthy amount.

If you like a game you like it. Who the *peep* cares if no one else does? Sure this is an MMO so you need at least 100 other players to like it too to enjoy it. But how much money the company can make or not is non of our concerns at all as players. Yes bla bla making profit equals new content. Sure to a point. It's more likely they invest more money into a financial success. However just because its a financial success does not mean that they are going to invest more money into it. It can just mean that they will pay the shareholders more money. Or we can take an example form the car world where you can find allot of exclusive, extremely good, super cars makes 0 money for the companies that build them. In fact they usually cost more money to make then they can sell them for even though they cost in the ball park of $10 million USD to buy. Still they make new models of them all the time because we do enjoy them.

Because if no one else does the game you like will get shut down.

I'm glad you brought this up and it seems they have taken some steps to address these issues:

Since I can't post links for whatever reason, check out this interview on Joystiq - have to google it.

ZeniMax's Paul Sage on ESO endgame, pvp, and crafting

There are different avenues for players to take once they hit the level 50 cap. It looks as if raiding isn't the only avenue, and to get high end gear, you can craft it or quest in other racial areas that are more difficult.

I like doing the heroic and hard dungeons, but I'm busy and live in Alaska, so time time differences and contraints make being a hard core raider rather difficult, so I am happy to see they are addressing this issue by having various types of end game content to keep players involved.

Well, that's not entirely accurate. Most companies are not in the habit of being altruistic. Those super-cars also provide a highly-valued commodity, called 'marketing'. So while they may lose money on the car itself, it is made up and then some with the increased business they receive from having the cars out in the public advertising for them.

I mean, you're right that ESO's bottom line is not my fiscal concern, but on the other hand I feel developers and players both have a huge investment of time and energy into the game. I felt bad that WAR's developers had to pull the plug on something they spent years creating. I want ESO to be a commercial success and part of that is realistic expectations of what qualifies as such. Too many people seem to think an MMO without millions of players are failures, that is simply untrue, and I'm hoping ESO's devs are not setting that expectation.