Isnt startrek a movie or whatever you want to call it? Im sure thats what go it famous, on the other hand the Elder scrolls had no film to it, and has the reputation for good rpg games and great lore.

I dont understand.

Yeah, elderscrolls have kick ass lore, so does Starwars, Dungeon Dragons and all that. But what does the fact that Elderscrolls started as a game where SW and D&D where movies and books have anything to do with the possible success or not of ESO?

There is a strict correlation between game success and if it was a movie, unfortunately. Wasnt Lotro originally p2p, then had to step down to F2P, and similar to that SWTOR which some believe eso will end up like? On the other hand, ones without the films books etc behind it seem to flourish, how is that? Look at wow, guild wars2, etc.

Star trek started out as a TV series, which got 5 spin offs, multiple movies, a movie reboot, a whole line of books, multiple boardgames, since 1982 a roleplaying system, 38 games (if you count the 3 pinball machines as games:P)

So yeah, while TES has quite an awesome lore, there are a lot more with really expansive lore.

The advantage I feel TES has is not the awesome lore, but the fact that they IP holders has always been Bethesda / Zenimax Media and (hopefully) more connected to the IP

So why didn't you post this on the beta forums where people have actually played instead of here?

This is completely irrelevant. Innovations aren't necessarily a step backwards by design. New things often innovate in a positive way.

But the opposite is also true.

Innovating for the heck of it, without improving, wouldnt be a good choice for a MMO.

Look at GW2 for example "Innovated" by removing the trinity, it turned out a mess.

I like how ESO is mixing classic gameplay elements from different games.

Of course it is but you could say that about anything in any situation I agree with your point though in general, and yeah GW2 is a wreck.

Games based on movies should have an mandatory warning label like cigarette packs. (Consumer warning: Most games based on movies are awful to bad)

Games based on an movie or books universe or setting tend to work better, neither SWTOR or LotRO was directly based on the original stories but used the universe.

Same way all elder scrolls games shares an universe but is unconnected.

One major difference is that an very popular franchise tend to have hundreds of million fans, but just an minority of them are gamers and even fewer dedicated enough to buy an sub MMO.

Far more of the fans will try an F2P MMO, even people who don't play many games.

Yes but lotro went f2p after 4 years of it's release. Still there's an option of sub (vip) and only vip's can pvp. SWTOR died in less than a year of it's release.

Also I wouldn't call gw2 a success lol

Lotro is based on the LOTR books. You are not a part of the fellowship (obviously), but you do side quests very relative to the events. You also meet pretty much every hero in the book even those not mentioned in the movie (tom bombadil etc)

"Rich" lore doesnt have to be OLD lore. There are a lot of games out there with good lore. Problem is people (like you I imagine) dont READ any of the stuff you click and accept and move on. Rift has very good lore. WoWs lore for what its worth isnt horrible either. I dont know about the Pandas since I stop at Cataclysm, but the lore is there and its pretty in depth .Also ESO has fundamentally impacted their lore with some of their recent decisions so it almost makes that argument moot for people who have played ES games for years.

"Open world" is also a misnomer.

PvP is dead for the most part thats why games have shyed away from investing too much time and effort into it. That is this games biggest gamble. Which feeds into your next point. ES is an RPG game, ESO doesnt have any tangible RPG features in it at all. Where is the housing, and everything that comes with it? Where are the cosmetics (in the store more likely but I digress), where is a player made music system? Where is the auction house or trade market? (connected to PVP is most definitely not RPG friendly), where is the random exploration (has some not nearly what is expected from an ES game)? Probably more but I hit the highlighted stuff.

But tying PvE 'buffs' to PvP related encounters is going to end up having a backlash in this game. Youre forcing something on one aspect of a games population based on something another does. Yeah I know there are "PvE' quests in the PvP zone, but most pure PvE players wont step foot in a PvP zone given the choice, no matter what the consequences. The whole game is a contradiction to ES and MMOs alike actually.

Basically Age of Conan though will answer most of those questions. At the time that game was that generations ESO. Everything that was said about that game is being said about this one. The good and the bad. The similarities are eerie. It is all there I imagine there is this thing called google which is amazing it lets you go back in time and read stuff people said 7 or 8 years ago.

Will it make it? I imagineit will. I doubt it pulls a warhammer. It will sell an astounding number of boxes both PC and console. The longevity of its sub based model is the real question. Once they release the extended plans and pricing of those plans it will give some more insight. I suspect them to be amazingly inexpensive. I also expect some sort of 'founders pricing' for anyone willing to sub for a year. Something like 89.99 or 99.99. If they can sell enough of those and deliver enough content in that first year to appease the people who bought into everything theyll go another year. Similar to RIFT in that regard I suppose.

But they have a rough tie ahead of them, a lot of new games coming out, some with a sub some without. Some many people personally 'invested' in as well. So they have to deliver more than games in the past just to compete with them and put out more stuff in the future to keep up with the new games coming out.

People can say all they want about 'this game doesnt effect that game' Thats crap ANY MMO will have interest from MMO players. They dont all get the same hype or keep the same hype but when ANY now MMO is announced every MMO player wants to know about it.

Having been a beta tester for WoW and played that game for several years before quitting, I can tell you that simply because the beta and initial launch don't have certain aspects you want (player housing, trade markets, etc) doesn't mean they aren't planned for later expansions. Please remember that WoW was stagnant for TWO YEARS before an expansion was released and was still the number one MMO at the time. Endgame was nonexistant for many and PVP was a joke during that time. But people stuck it out because they liked the core playstyle of the game, and that's what it will come down to in ESO as well. If the core playstyle is engaging and people enjoy it, then it will be successful.

Personally, I think the game will be successful simply because it's doing something no other MMO is: catering to solo playstyle. Not just with daily grind quests, but with an actual main questline and creating a world that rewards you for exploring. That alone makes it unique in this genre and I think that feature will create loyal customers.

WOW had almost no competition. So comparing that era to this one makes no sense. If WoW was released in the past 5 years it would have flopped. It was completely right place right time. Hell had Vanguard not been such a complete disaster it may not have become what it did. Wow is VHS, and Facbook, and windows, and WWE; everything else is Beta, myspace, and Mac, and TNA. WoW isnt and wasnt better, just more people recognized the name and more people utilized it.

As for the other stuff you cited. You can only explore something once. So without dynamic stuff being constantly introduced (which is highly unlikely) that is a one time deal. Just like it is with every other game once a wiki comes out. And EVERY MMO out there has daily grind quests, that certainly isnt unique in any universe. Main quest line by their own admission is 5-6 hour of gameplay. Not something anyone would really cite as a positive. Also if you want solo play in an MMO try oh I dont know every other MMO you can think of. LOL at least in this one when you fight Rifts you have to have at least two people to open one up. So that right there makes it more 'group required' than just about every otherMMO around.

Look I am a critic of the game. Mostly because their stand alone games are more of what youre saying than the MMO is. Why they didnt stick tot hat core is beyond me. I have my reasons and have expressed them. But even in that most cynical sense it really doesnt make sense. Time will tell but there are alot of things about this game people will like, a lot people wont like it will come down to how fun it is and howl ong before it gets boring.

Why start a new thread to display your negativity when there are a few dozen similar threads you could have posted to with the same dreary claims that the game will "fail" or go FTP or Hybrid sooner rather than later?

It might happen eventually, in fact I consider it likely ... EVENTUALLY as it is the way of the industry ... but starting a thread based on a hunch and a few hours gameplay is little better than rolling a D6 to make a judgment. Buy it and play it or don't that is the choice you have but cease the unwarranted negativity and guesswork please. At the very least make some recommendations for things you think might make a difference.

WoW was going up against MMO giants like Everquest at the time, so yeah, a two year drought for content for a new game is kind of a big deal. Why did people stick around, when they had already done every quest, ran every raid, no real pvp options, etc? Because they liked the game. They liked the world, the playstyle, and the community. That is the point.

Exploration is going to take hundreds of hours. The landmasses are huge, and a lot of them are locked to you until you hit 50. It's not like people are going to find everything within the first month and be tired of exploring already.

The main questline is supposed to take a few hundred hours as well, haven't you read any articles on it? 5-6 hours? I can't tell if you're trying to make a joke or you actually think that the main questline of the entire game can be done in one day.

You can be critical of the game. Heck, I am all the time. But you also need to be realistic and acknowledge everything, not just the negatives, or people will stop listening to you because you're ignoring information that doesn't fit with your opinion.