[ezra]

I don't know why everything is proposing random dates for the announcement. Unless Todd truly doesn't know the definition of "soon," we'll see an announcement before March, this I feel very confident of. I feel it'd make sense to announce it before the end of the year, though. But just throwing random dates out there is pointless.

Haha, that's a bit more than possibly in video game context, which leads me to believe that it's been delayed.

I don't know if "delayed" is the right word because it technically hasn't even been announced. More like it took them longer than Paul, who likely wasn't aware just how long it takes Bethesda to make games, thought they would take to make it.

LOL, and even that is in legal dispute, who would pay 50 million for an MMO license, anyway were getting off topic but to conclude the thought an article regarding that was recently posted. Seems to me that interplay is just trying to sour Bethesdas name and mooch off something that was unproven at the time '
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2010-10-22-eric-caen-bethesda-turned-down-rights-to-fallout-mmo

Interplay didn't start the lawsuit, Bethesda did. :shrug:

Anyway we can't talk about the lawsuit on these forums so lets get back on topic.

[Sasha Brown]

But just throwing random dates out there is pointless.

It's also misleading. For someone that glances over the topic every so often like me, to see exact dates like that makes me think that there is a confirmed date of an announcement.

[Rachel Cafferty]

I don't know why everything is proposing random dates for the announcement. Unless Todd truly doesn't know the definition of "soon," we'll see an announcement before March, this I feel very confident of. I feel it'd make sense to announce it before the end of the year, though. But just throwing random dates out there is pointless.

Pointless? Not really. Whoever (if anyone) throws out the right random date gets to feel like a genius and tell everyone "I told ya so."

That being said, November 7th.

[butterfly]

I don't know why everything is proposing random dates for the announcement. Unless Todd truly doesn't know the definition of "soon," we'll see an announcement before March, this I feel very confident of. I feel it'd make sense to announce it before the end of the year, though. But just throwing random dates out there is pointless.



I don't know if "delayed" is the right word because it technically hasn't even been announced. More like it took them longer than Paul, who likely wasn't aware just how long it takes Bethesda to make games, thought they would take to make it.



Interplay didn't start the lawsuit, Bethesda did. :shrug:

Anyway we can't talk about the lawsuit on these forums so lets get back on topic.

lol, actually i don't remember the mod's putting that in the rule set...they probably wouldn't like it if we opened up a thread though.

[Suzy Santana]

It's also misleading. For someone that glances over the topic every so often like me, to see exact dates like that makes me think that there is a confirmed date of an announcement.

Wouldn't announcing the announcement be an announcement in and of itself?

[Elizabeth Falvey]

lol, actually i don't remember the mod's putting that in the rule set...they probably wouldn't like it if we opened up a thread though.

Trust me, we can't talk about it. But if my word isn't enough, here's a post from Summer:

There is no threat of that. Since it is an ongoing case however we do not discuss it here. Thanks for that.

Edit: That was weird, the quote didn't show up because I put [url] tags around it for some reason... I need sleep...

[Madeleine Rose Walsh]

Evidence?

No "evidence" needed. The actual announcement may not be in December, but there will be something to "get".

By the end of the year, we will all be certain of "something".

I'm not even close to pretending to be one of those whack-job nut-cases that "claims" so have insider info. What I did though was compile data over the last 30 years from developers with regards to both development and announcement. It was a beeyotch to the understatement of the year award x infinity. It has been a year long project of mine because there is so much misinformation on the internet that sorting through actual dates has been crazy... not to mention the absolute nightmare reconciling PC and Console release dates with crappy handheld counterparts. All in all, when I made the post of "get it got it good" I was exasperated. The truth of the matter is that by a factor of 2.376 this December should give indication of what Bethesda is working on. The books throw that off by quite a bit... and I tried several permutations only to get similar results. The marketing of the next novel can reduce that to 0.31 and therefore would dis-allow December from a probable month, but I decided to not include that since the number of novel tie-ins was 0.013% of the overall product release line.

For those who care, I also factored in the recent trademark data but compiled only the trademark data from Halo, Diablo, Fable, Super Mario Bros, Sonic the Hedgehog, Final Fantasy, and Jurassic Park (Sega CD inculded). I needed a broad data pool to make accurate predictions. I used the obscure with a multiplier based upon the overall marketshare of similar type games.

Basically within each subset of data I also looked at fiscal drivers and with regard to the publicly traded release cycles there were ebb and flows that allowed for a statistic and probability map to be drawn. I tooled that mapping along the private release models to gain cohesion and then added in the last part.

The last part has been the staff size of BGS, engine tech, release history, investors, technological perimeters (chips/consoles/DirectX). I created a fluid model of competing drivers that flexed over time and also flexed forward with conservative thresholds.

2.376 may not mean much by itself, but when combined with all the other data, October is sitting currently at 0.000001 and November is at 0.4333 that is a lot. Other than that January and February are also in the "2" range and March is at both a "3" and a "0.x" model since there are reducing factors that will occur at the end of the year.

All in all, for the masses, by what I meant with "get it, got it, good" I meant, "Probably, finally, whew".

EDIT: By the way, numbers crunching is a game in and of itself to me, and after I re-read this post I thought to myself, "Self... you sound like an obsessed lunatic... perhaps you should tell the rest of the folks out there that this "speculation" business is a game just like the game itself is..." I am just a geek with excel folks... and yeah I like math.

[BEl J]

- snip -

Haha, I was going to mention that you should go outside once in a while. Still, it's nice to see someone has done something more (potentially) constructive than scratching their asses around here. I'd ask for what specific factors you looked for and how they were weighted -- especially since it seems odd that March is (potentially) the most likely month for an announcement -- but it would (potentially) all fly right over my head.

And please note that asking for evidence was never meant to insult you or imply that your claims were baseless. I've discovered that outside of science and academia, asking for one's sources is a rather grave offense. It's something I doubt I'll ever understand.

[Johnny]

EDIT: By the way, numbers crunching is a game in and of itself to me, and after I re-read this post I thought to myself, "Self... you sound like an obsessed lunatic... perhaps you should tell the rest of the folks out there that this "speculation" business is a game just like the game itself is..." I am just a geek with excel folks... and yeah I like math.

Well that's reassuring.

When you first started posting in the Speculation thread, way back when, I remember advising you that finding such specific patterns was ultimately pointless. We can say that Bethesda seems to have a specific pattern in terms of how many months or years it takes them to announce and release a game, but getting any more specific, such as what days of the month they announce the games, is far too specific and will likely be proven wrong when it's actually announced. Patterns are no match against human will. If Emil or Todd want to delay the announcement some more for an important reason, they will. If they want to announce it earlier than expected, they will. They don't have access to a Big Book 'O Patterns to see if their breaking a pattern someone came up with for them, they just do it. Were already seeing this in the fact that Bethesda wants to announce and release the game in the shortest amount of time it's ever taken them. If Todd didn't say this, if we looked at their pattern, we would be assuming they would be taking even longer than usual.

That's just my opinion on it, off course. If you find that coming up with patterns is fun for you, than keep doing it. And who knows, maybe Bethesda will announce it exactly when you thought they would. But I think the pattern you just described to us is so complex and derived from so many different factors that it will ultimately fail in the end. We've been saying that they will announce it soon for a while now, but if they do announce it soon, I don't know if we can really assume your pattern was accurate, or if it was just a coincidence.

That said, if your pattern successfully predicts the release date, then maybe I'll have some more faith in it.

Oh and keep in mind that I meant no offense by any of that, I'm just a skeptic when it comes to the subject of predicting the future via patterns.

[Cheville Thompson]

So...

QUALITY ASSURANCE
Testers
Ashley "Childlike Cat Empress of Chocolate Mushrooms" Betters
Casey Kwock
Anthony "Darth Anthrax" Rogers

...these people are Bethesda employees? I didn't think so, but what do I know...

Andrew Scharf http://bethblog.com/index.php/2010/02/09/inside-the-vault-andrew-scharf/


To say there were no testers at Obsidian, well that would not be true. To Say that Bethesda was not in charge of all the QA and I quote:

What’s your job at Bethesda?
I’m a QA Project Lead. My responsibilities include scheduling testing throughout the various stages of the game’s lifecycle, managing the day-to-day tasks of my testing team, and maintaining the bug database to make sure that the issues we find are clearly communicated to the development team, management, and production.

Well that would also be untrue:)

[Betsy Humpledink]

FINALLY, an announcement date has been confirmed!!!!! The 31 October is when Bethesda is planning to unveil their next project

[FLYBOYLEAK]

FINALLY, an announcement date has been confirmed!!!!! The 31 October is when Bethesda is planning to unveil their next project

If it's ok with you I will trust your username for now. But if I trust your user name I am trusting you which is contradicting myself. But if I do trust you I should trust your username.

You have just created a paradox that has destroyed the universe.

[Marie]

FINALLY, an announcement date has been confirmed!!!!! The 31 October is when Bethesda is planning to unveil their next project

Either a link to this "announcement" or stay silent. We do not allow trolling and misinformation here.

[Lovingly]

No "evidence" needed. The actual announcement may not be in December, but there will be something to "get".

By the end of the year, we will all be certain of "something".

That "something" being that we will be waiting for something in 2011.

The waiting game is really long in the tooth and the "or if -- it is going to be released" line is so paper-thin that it mimics the behaviors of how a child who in their denial of bad behavior, implicates themselves. I think my desire to see an announcement is that it will put an end to this silly aspect of this phase of ES:V gestation as much as for anything else it will do.

As for "The Announcement", soon... or so I hear.

[Princess Johnson]

Ok so I have been playing Oblivion for a very very long time now. I have bought something like 4 copies over the years, replacing damaged DVDs etc not to mention the Expansions and I am still modding it. In fact I chucked out my xbox after seeing this on a friends PC and thus started my investment in gaming hardware at both my residences and what will probably turn out to be a lifelong love of modding. Modding turned Oblvion (on the PC) from a great game to my all time favourite. Fallout3 fell a bit short on this score for me as the modding was a bit more temperamental and I simply preferred the beauty of existence in cyrodil.

I am getting desperate for a new game to replace oblivion. Sure I am playing fallout NV but to me its just biding time waiting for a new Oblivion. I tried mortal online thinking it would be an Oblivion style game online. (How wrong I was) there wasnt even a game behind it to speak of.

Please someone tell us how much longer we need to wait for the next installment of the TES series. I have been playing since daggerfall and need my next update.

[KU Fint]

FINALLY, an announcement date has been confirmed!!!!! The 31 October is when Bethesda is planning to unveil their next project

Surely a warning from a mod for misinformation?

[kasia]

Surely a warning from a mod for misinformation?

Surely a warning from a mod for being a 12 year old tattletale.

[Mistress trades Melissa]

-snip-

I whole-heartedly agree that predicting the future in this way is unlikely to divine the correct date and we are better left to things like the statements Todd has made to key us in on a better date. I certainly am not offended by anyone stating that because I believe it too. Realistically I can only check out the USPTO site and catch up on so much trademark minutia before I want to punch myself in the face, so I thought it would be fun to start a massive project and collect as much data as I could to build a case. Initially I started with just Bethesda and realized that my scope was too small and branched outward. I had to assign weights to things that were not numeric in order to add them in effectively to any model and while my first pass was arbitrary, I actually came up with a pretty good system that had only marginal variance (thank you Super Mario Brothers for having so many games on so many consoles!). When I applied these numbers to other franchises, it to prove it out it worked most of the time (Star Craft, Diablo, and Zelda are a few examples where it missed entirely). To me the whole process is entertaining, and while ultimately fruitless, it passes the time till we actually get an announcement!

[naome duncan]

Surely a warning from a mod for misinformation?

To be fair, isn't this essentially what we've been doing for the past 5 threads? Everyone's spreading misinformation, it's nothing new. Remember when you guys thought it would be announced by tomorrow based on a tiny bit of info? Yea, that's misinformation as well. All 72 of these Threads are full of misinformation.

[Mariaa EM.]

To be fair, isn't this essentially what we've been doing for the past 5 threads? Everyone's spreading misinformation, it's nothing new. Remember when you guys thought it would be announced by tomorrow based on a tiny bit of info? Yea, that's misinformation as well. All 72 of these Threads are full of misinformation.

Speculation based on something isn't misinformation, since it is, after all, speculation. And furthermore, has more or less relevant basis. Stating something as a confirmed fact, when it is neither confirmed nor alluded to, on the other hand, is misinformation, which not only doesn't serve any suitable purpose for this thread but also confuse other people.

[Gaelle Courant]

Please someone tell us how much longer we need to wait for the next installment of the TES series. I have been playing since daggerfall and need my next update.

If we knew that this thread wouldn't be here.

To be fair, isn't this essentially what we've been doing for the past 5 threads? Everyone's spreading misinformation, it's nothing new. Remember when you guys thought it would be announced by tomorrow based on a tiny bit of info? Yea, that's misinformation as well. All 72 of these Threads are full of misinformation.

Wrong, there are plenty of people trying their damnedest to spread misinformation, but there are still some of us are trying to debunk that "information" and remind everyone the little amount of true information we do know.

[BRAD MONTGOMERY]

Wrong, there are plenty of people trying their damnedest to spread misinformation, but there are still some of us are trying to debunk that "information" and remind everyone the little amount of true information we do know.

And I am one who stands rank with them! :wavey:

We obviously don't always get it right, but we try our best to sift out and debunk the falsehoods from what is reliably considered true as it relates to TES:V's announcement. That is the point of this thread.

[Pumpkin]

all I hope is that bethesda releases it before 2012 (if ya no what i meen)

[Guy Pearce]

If we knew that this thread wouldn't be here.



Wrong, there are plenty of people trying their damnedest to spread misinformation, but there are still some of us are trying to debunk that "information" and remind everyone the little amount of true information we do know.

There is absolutely no true information about TES 5 or any other TES game, therefore the "information" you spread is also misinformation unless proven different, which you have never done and most likely won't untill TES 5 is announced.

[Steve Smith]

There is absolutely no true information about TES 5 or any other TES game, therefore the "information" you spread is also misinformation unless proven different, which you have never done and most likely won't untill TES 5 is announced.

There's a difference between seriously speculating about something and making up crap knowing fine well that your lying.

Anyway, apparently Uncharted 3 has just been leaked by amazon, something similar could happen with our game anytime now.. you never know.