[Emma Pennington]

Adding multiplayer would force Bethesda to reduce the the game in other areas - and I am opposed to this.

I would vote No for multi-player, the Bethesda AAA titles don't need it to be a smashing success.

Miax

[Cat]

I really think co-op could work in The Elder Scrolls. But I understand why people are worried about the inclusion multiplayer ruining single player to an extent, the feeling of immersion is what is so special about The Elder Scrolls. I think that if anyone could pull of co-op while keeping the intimate feel of TES' single player it's Bethesda. I have no doubt MP will be in a Elder Scrolls game eventually. If it's Skyrim, great. If its not, it doesn't matter.

If Skyrim has co-op I think the best way of doing it is inviting other players into your game world. You and them could work together or go your seperate ways. Once that person leaves any changes they have made on your world reverts. Eg. kills NPC's. Any items they loot in your game could not be traded (obviously could be exploited). Just my insignificant opinion.
Before they put it in TES they should test it in Fallout I think.

[C.L.U.T.C.H]

WoW = World of Warcraft

When and if they make an Elder Scrolls MMO, it will probably be made to compete with WoW (the current king) so they might dumb it down to attract the majority fanbase of 13 year olds. It would be a travesty, but making games is a business like any other, they want to make money. WoW makes so much money because it's attractive to teenyboppers that make their parents pay subscriptions. Games like Everquest and EVE Online, while they certainly have their fans, aren't as popular.

Keep in mind that it would not be Bethesda making this game, it would be Zenimax, who don't have the same values as a company as BGS does, so they will do whatever will make the most money.

This doesn't make much sense in writing, I know. But I hope you guys get what I mean by "WoW-ified", and why I hope it doesn't happen to the potential Elder Scrolls MMO.

Elder scrolls should not compete with any MMO its best if they do their own thing and keep on doing what they do best by worrying about themselves. if you look at it that way it has already lost. But if they put in Human Interaction game play in skyrim that would be Great I would buy more than one copy cause I like to play with my friends. Elder srolls would stomp on all MMO type games anyway do to the the fact you can do alot and the Graphics are NICE! If it does have co-op it should still be sandbox type gameplay I dont want to play follow the leader either....like fable.

(without taking anything away from single player and If they keep them two things and put it in a MMO type game it would not lose!) guaranteed.

[Natalie J Webster]

I really, really do not want an Elder Scrolls MMO. Though thankfully, I don't see Bethesda doing that. Multiplayer is very low on my wishlist for this game, but it would be kind of cool if you could just explore the world with a friend or two, that would be pretty cool, but I don't want the game being built from the ground up for multiplayer. I was a strictly singleplayer experience with multiple people if that makes sense, if multiplayer was introduced

[Stu Clarke]

I think I could deal with a small island that you take a ship to or something with a few houses and an arena where you can visit your friends if they are also there, that would be cool.
Then you could challenge them, give them items, perhaps just wander in a randomly generated cave or small forest. Its a little bit harder to allow that in the actual mainland of the game because what if one person had killed someone the other one had not? How would the game comprehend this? also completed quests? Its just a lot to figure out.
My idea I like :thumbsup:

[MR.BIGG]

Elder-Scrolls MMO based on Oblivion would = noone using melee and npcs would spend their time being chain paralyzed or charmed so noone actually ever has to worry about being hit by them.... pvp would be atrocious. As of Oblivion there is no such thing as game-play balance and it would be a huge flop.

[Marquis deVille]

Like I said along time ago, If you don't want co-op in TES then you probably don't have any friends to play it with.

[He got the]

Apparently there's an MMO in the works.

It's going to be developed by ZeniMax Online Studios
http://zenimaxonline.com/

Bethblog

We have another division, ZeniMax Online Studios, which is lead by Matt Firor, and they are working on an MMO. They have not said anything about what game they are making. When ZeniMax Online is ready to show what they are up to, we’ll let everyone know. Until then we aren’t going to provide hints or speculate on what they’re doing either.

[James Hate]

I highly doubt it, if only because it would take attention away from Skyrim, and Bethesda has been so hard at work with Skyrim, it doesn't seem a good idea to have two TES projects going on around the same time. On a more personal note, I hope that it never happens. What I love about TES is being the hero. I am the only one of my kind in TES universe. I am the hero, I am the one saving people, and sharing that role with thousands of other people would be a horrible thing, in my mind. I just can't bare the thought of saying "I destroyed Dagoth Ur today." and having people in my party saying "Yeah, we did that last week. Let's go raid." It would just strip the magic away from everything that is TES.

Hopefully they're creating an MMO of an entirely new IP. If it really is TESOnline, I can't say whether or not I would even acknowledge its existence. But that's just me.

[Naazhe Perezz]

It definitely won't steal Skyrim's thunder since they are two different genres and the MMO would probably launch in 2012. Leaving this year to Skyrim.

[Mandi Norton]

I swear to god I will cry in horror for the first time in 20 years if that Zenimax Online whatever is making a ES MMO.

The Elder Scrolls is about walking in the wilderness and dungeons alone. Solitude is part of the game. If I wanted a fantasy MMO I'd play WoW.

[Kat Lehmann]

Chimera of Desolation, my favourite CTF map.

[Cayal]

The benefit to having an MMO is being able to visit the other provinces in Tamriel.

[Kevin S]

The benefit to having an MMO is being able to visit the other provinces in Tamriel.

Yes, but they would be much shallower and inane than in the single player games. If you kill and NPC you don't have to work with that decision for the rest of the game; it will just respawn in a few minuets. Anyway, the single player games are going to cover all of Tamriel most likely.

[Scott Clemmons]

1 I Say Leave the MMOs to Halo, COD, and WoW
2 But if they have one in the works they should keep it separate from the storyline and i like what Bethesda is doing at this point but for Akatosh's sake refer to line 1

[Hilm Music]

Yes, but they would be much shallower and inane than in the single player games. If you kill and NPC you don't have to work with that decision for the rest of the game; it will just respawn in a few minuets. Anyway, the single player games are going to cover all of Tamriel most likely.

It's going to be another 30 years before we get to see the rest of Tamriel.

An MMO would give us a taste of the other provinces, making us extra excited for the single player games.

[Adam Porter]

It's going to be another 30 years before we get to see the rest of Tamriel.

An MMO would give us a taste of the other provinces, making us extra excited for the single player games.

Thats not the way MMOs work. They are not just "teasers". If an Elder Scrolls MMO was released and successful, its likely Zenimax would put a halt to the singleplayer games to stop any lore conflicts/focus their efforts.

As for lore, it would ruin all future ES lore. Instead of one super heroic deadly quest per game, there would be hundreds; and instead of one hero, there would be thousands. Consequences go out the window; did the NPC you were supposed to protect die? No problem, just return to the spawn point; not even any game time loss from reloading a game.

Also, Arena was released in 94; so far we have covered Highrock/Hammerfall, Morrowind and Cyrodiil, and a ton of cities/wilderness across Tamriel in Arena. Its hardly going to be 30 years to cover all of Tamriel if they keep up this pace

[Sierra Ritsuka]

I would like a LAN/Online Co-op TES, related to the TES universe, but any MMORPG I wouldn't mind, as long as it was placed away from the main plot and idea of TES.

EDIT* I dont see an ES MMO working, mainly because as previously stated, it would virtually destroy lore, and make future games probably unmade... A solution to this is make a new, remote, unknown Continent that is not released untill the MMO is released. Or use the appearance of the new continent to spur sales. The factions would obviously have to change, and so would many of the races, but Magic and Combat could be similar, but made without lore being destroyed.

[sally R]

I am somehow split on this matter.

Because there is soooooo many thing i would LOVE to see in the TES universe that i could only see in a TES MMO

But an TES MMO would also most likely ruin the lore (which is on of the best things about TES)

[Kill Bill]

My Fellings from beginning till ever after.

Still this. Always this.

My eternal sentiment on this matter.

My fervent belief, though not news to any of the regulars, remains as follows.
Local, drop in/drop out co-op would add enormously to the value of these games for legions of players, and would NOT hurt the single player aspect of the game in any way. The only argment of worth against it is a resource argument. Other than that, it is an optional feature.

Also, anyone who argues that there are "other games for co-op" is missing the point, and also making a fallacious equation. Not every game that offers co-op is a game every gamer desiring co-op wishes to play. There are many hardcoe and casual gamers who are really only interested in traditional to semi-traditional RPG style gamesm but who love co-op. In their game library you will find everything from Final Fantasy to Ultima, Sword of Vermillion to Gauntlet, NeverWinter Nights to a heap of Dungeon and Dragons games and its spin offs like Baldur's Gate, you will find Fable games and Elder Scrolls games, but never once run across Call of Duty or StreetFighter. The RPG is multiplay in its origins, and no other style of game offers the as much potential for shared exploration and adventure, as much pure value for companionship, as the RPG game does. So the talk of, "there are other games for that" is myopic garbage. What people asking for co-op want is a game like Elder Scrolls that offers the ability to expereince the alternate world alongside a real friend. . . if all they wanted was Super Mario Smash Brothers, I am sure they would not bother posting here in the first place.

Co-op is not about adding stats to the game or any of that bunk. It is about allowing you the enhancement and pleasure of experiencing an alternate world with a fully customizable friend at your side, just as you might do in your own life if you went on a great adventure. If a portal opened up in your backyard and an honest to God magical otherworld lay just beyond it, you would probably want to be able to have friends along to explore it with you. And that is essentially what a good RPG like ES is supposed to be. An RPG game should never dictate to players, "this is meant to be played alone" NOR that, "this is meant to be played with your friend, and must be done so." It is about a choice. The game should cater to good quests, good stories, good NPC interaction and good immersion. It should no more try to dictate whether or not you should or can play with a friend than it should try to dictate wheter or not you should or can play as a wizard or as a warrior, as an Elf or as an orc. Co-op is about exploring a world of great depth, magic, wonder, intrigue and yes, mosnters. . . of sweeping vistas and magnificent environments, of heavy lore and wonders and marvels. . . and being able to do it WITH a friend at ones side.

The AI companions offered are but a pitiful attempt to simulate exactly this thing, which no AI can ever truly simulate. True companionship. The ability to explore, to triumph, to face fear and danger, to unravel mysteries and to delve into the unknown in the way that most of us would want to if presented with the real things. . . with a sure friend at our side . And what game offers that already? There are few singleplayer games which offer the depth of Elder Scrolls. There are no immersive RPGs that I know of outside of Fable that offer decent couch co-op, and Fable is not nearly as expansive and intricate as Elder Scrolls, despite being a good game in its own right. I know Bethesda has ties to the game Hunted that is in development. Sure it has co-op. . . but your character choices are limited to two people, and you are forced to have the other person tag along in AI even if you are not playing co-op. Now THAT ruins a lot of the game experience, if you ask me. It forces you to partner, and limits you customization. I don't want to play as a female elf-mage, and I don't want to play as a human warrior, male or not. If that game doesn't flourish, it won't be because it offered co-op. . . it will be because it handicapped the co-op and limited the options of the players in a constraining manner. People want co-op in their RPGs, not predetermined characters. The ONLY decent argument concerning reasons not to add co-op are resource issues. All of the others fall flat.

RPGs began as multiplayer expereinces. And GOOD COUCH I.E. LOCAL CO-OP, which is the only thing I have EVER petitioned for, is drop in drop out, still allows the story to focus on the primary or first player, and in no way impedes or detracts from the singleplayer experience, save that, for those who tire of playing alone and wish to explore with a friend, for those who want to be able to share the wonders they have beheld in the game world with a real companion, for those who want the frankly incomparable experience of facing and expereincing all the challanges and wonders that a game like Elder Scrolls provides with a friend at one's side, a co-op OPTION allows this to take place . Being Optional, no person who lacks the social aptitude to get along well with others and to play co-operatively need ever be forced to play it thus. But it allows the millions who LONG for such an experience to have it. Without altering the focus, story, or general play of the game, it allows a person to have and allow a customized friend to enter their world, and to interact with it. Such a feature causes a game like this to become more than a gaming experience. . . it is an awesome bonding experience, an awesome way for friends to interact and explore and test themselves together. In a game like ES it would be trancendent. And, aside from resource, there is no good reason not to have it.

The resource argument only goes so far as well, I might add. Every aspect of a game requires some resource, and what the enemies of co-op are essentially saying is, "since we don't use it, we don't want anyone else to be able to use it either." Which is about the most callous, selfish, almost hateful and malicious form of argument I can imagine. I always play as a wizard. As such, I NEVER wear armour. I use swords, but I have not so much as donned a pear of greaves in all my thousands of hours of playing these games. I am a mystic in a loin cloth until I get my hands on viable wizard robes. And yet you would NEVER hear me argue that the devs should take armour out of the game, so as to focus more on expanding spell lists, etc. Because I know that there are people who love playing in the armour, and the setting of the world allows for it, so why should they be denied it because of my optional personal preferrences? I HATE Argonians. I am always an Elf, either Altmer or Dunmer, and I find the very look of the lizard folk a little revolting. Yet again, you won't ever hear me asking that resources be divereted from making skins for those creatures. Because I don't HAVE to play as one, and as long as that remains true, I am not interested in forbidding anyone else to play as one. Yet that is exactly what the "singleplayer only" crowd are doing to those who wish to play alongside a friend. They are killing a potential experience for us, in many cases with cold blood and full malice of forethought. The only relevant question is, can simple, local, drop in/drop out co-op be achieved without destroying some other key feature of the game. And playing alone is not in and of itself a key feature. Who the hell buys a game with the express thought of, "oh thank god, finally a game that none of my stupid friends can ever play with me!" No one thinks like that, except perhaps for an honest to god, lives under a bridge, man-eating, Literal troll.

Again, RPGs origins lie in social play. The epic lie that has been spread about them being innately singleplayer only is as foolish as it is false. An RPG, including Elder Scrolls, has no more reason to be innately singleplayer exclusive than it does to be third person perspective only, or first person perspective only. The option should be there. It would offer ENORMOUS enhancement to the game for those who wish to be able to share their experiences with a friend, and to have the psychological comfort and satisfaction that can come from having a real companion in such an expansive and immersive experience, and it WOULD NOT (if done as the form of local co-op I advocate) in anyway detract from the singleplayer oreinted aspects of the game. And, of course, it would be entirely optional. It simply would have no effect on those who opted not to use it. I don't know that it will happen, with some of the moderators and even some of the devs religiously, and frankly in some cases illogically hostile to it. But the value of it remains all the same.

P.S. Rohugh, even though I get the notion that you are hostile towards co-op (correct me if I am wrong) and maybe a tad biased against it, I still wonder if it might be better for there to be at least seperate threads for the extremely different types of co-op being proposed. PvP, MMO and Local (couch)cooperative are all extremely different from one another, and having them all included on the same thread has lead to some confusion, with many people arguing points that posters aren't even making, I.E. explaining why an MMO would not work to someone who is asking for couch two player, or limited PvP etc.

[Shiarra Curtis]

There are two ways I could see multiplayer work for TES:

1) Co-operative play.
Have between one and three friends drop into a locally hosted game* in a somewhat seamless way that wouldn't break the immersion of the game. For instance, you could imagine the taverns as a place to find "travel companions", so while you're at taverns your friends can join your game. (May I add, if anyone at Bethesda is actually reading this and it might actually make it into the game, please use Steam for it. GFWL is way too convoluted and rigid.)

*I guess a server could be possible, but for a series relying on great SP, it's not a plausible market and with fibre internet connections on the rise, multi-core systems and most systems having 4-8GB of RAM local hosting is not a poor bet

2) Arena battles.
In the arena, when you've reached the highest title you can get from fighting NPCs, you can challenge what the game will describe as Champions from other provinces. These will be players who you will then fight 1-on-1

I would elaborate more on these ideas, but they're both pretty self-explanatory.

I also think these are great ideas but getting that to work with mods would take some clever engineering, and also the pausing while going into menus and such would need to be disabled and real-time.

[Marilú]

I think it would be cooler to have an instanced Arena type online. Players could take there characters into this arena for matches of 1v1 or 2v2 . Not players roaming around the same world, or each other's worlds. It would be a simple, yet addictive online experience added to what should be a great game. Not to mention it would add an extra feeling of accomplishment for leveling your character and having quality weapons if they base difficulty on level scaling like in Oblivion. So what if you have the best weapons, armor and are level 100 in every skill, and it means nothing in game...... it'll matter in the arena!

....I don't know, I think it'd be cool. And they'd be able to manage and polish that sort of content much more efficiently, to deliver a much more rich and focused online experience than if they were to attempt a full game co-op sort of online play.

[Adam Baumgartner]

You want a multiplayer TES game, go find a copy of Battlespire. Now you see how Bethesda does multiplayer games.

[Nick Jase Mason]

First up, I'm a console gamer... I can't speak to PC gamers here.


I can't tell you how many times I've dug out my copy of oblivion, gotten hooked on quests for a few days, and think, 'Wow, if only this was multiplayer I would never stop playing'. I read through the roleplaying threads and hear people describing their characters, their accomplishments, their world, and I realize they never get to show that creation off or share it with anyone. To date, my most memorable moment in game is simply exploring, hearing the winds, seeing the trees, picking some flower, prowling for wolves, FEELING like I am there from the comforts of my basemant. This is what immersion is all about, and due to the high standards for TES, this isn't going to change. Personally, SKYRIM (so far it looks amazing, this is not a flame) could be marketed as an expansion to Oblivion. I am sure there will be a ton of new quests, a ton of new features, improved graphics, etc. But what will it do that Oblivion did not? What will make a higher % of consumers buy the game than whose who bought oblivion? To me, I don't know how much more immersed I could be for a single player RPG than what Oblivion offered. Yet, it has never been that game that I played for months on end without taking a break (and I have played online games like TF2, NHLseries, MMORPGs that have).

That being said, here is my dream: Setting out from imperial city (I would love/hate to see fast travel go away...) on horseback, avoiding the roads because the guards are after you, desperately pulling out your map repeatedly, until at last, you reach the Inn of Ill Omen. You walk inside, the familiar faces are there gossiping as usual, and then you notice a strange figure in the corner. He's recently arrived from Chorral and on a mission he won't give you the details of, but he needs someone to occupy a guard so he can slip by unseen (or any number of hypothetical things). This character rides with you, and together, you head out south. During the ride, you talk, laugh, share stories. You don't know where you are going, or what you are going to be asked to do when you are there. You are no longer the all-knowing central cog in the world, instead, you are just along for the ride.

This is what only co-op can bring. Truly dynamic scenarios and characters. A group of 4 heroes setting out to kill a mob which seemingly can not be killed. 4 characters, each completely unique and with skills to offer, yet each one fallible in ways only a player on the end of a controller can make it. It creates the classic fantasy experience. I have a few friends I play on Xbox live with, all of whom love RPGs, who talk about how great a game like TES would be, multiplayer on a 'controlled' level. No 15 year old farming zones or yelling obsenities into chat, just you and a couple like minded friends in a completely new world, friends which you must invite (thereby making the co-op experience optional for those who want to remain solo).

[Robyn Lena]

Multiplayer in open-world games = mediocre at best. Just look at RDR or GTA IV.

Co-op in open-world games = also mediocre at best. Much better suited to more linear, story-driven games with lots of action.


All in all, multiplayer would be a token feature at best and a complete waste of development time. Stop asking for it. Just let them make the best singleplayer game possible. If that isn't enough for you, then the Elder Scrolls series probably isn't for you at all.