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Speculation : Current state of TESO
spladian
Member UncommonPosts: 20
I like to look between the lines and analyze the 'other side of the coin' so to speak. The unspoken words, and the inactions can be just as good of cues to what is going on as to what is being said and shown.
PAX East, where the game was shown publicy for the first time, has come and went. Yet, the supporting public has not even had an official glimpse of game-play since then. What are we not supposed to be seeing?
The beta application site was launched months ago now, but there appears to be such a limited number of people being admitted that one also has to wonder "what do they not want us to know?"
It would make sense that most of the core mechanics and systems are in place now, at least in place-holder form. This would be enough for a reveal. However, the game must currently be content-lite at the moment. The developers are busy fleshing out their world so that you'll actually have fun when your in it.
Take a look at Guild Wars 2 beta for example. Every quest that was completed requested feed-back on how fun and challenging it was. This gave the developers an idea if they were heading in the right direction or not. A system similar to 'quest rating' must surely be in place for TESO, so its fair to say that either the small first wave of testers are giving initial impressions of the questing system, or that there is no content to test.
To say that the game may be delayed is premature. But in order to keep that idea from gaining traction within the community, it may be better to keep the interest for TESO surging by showing off some quick glimpses of the state of the game. As cheesy as Neverwinter Online's voice-over's were for their character reveals, they did well by keeping the public interested by introducing the classes.
Feel free to substantiate or refute my observations. No matter what they are - I do look forward to exploring the world of TESO.
Cheers.
Comments
After MMOing for 14 years I have seen it all. Companies that get excited and talk about all the cool stuff in their game and next thing you know its in WoW and 10 other MMOs before that game can release. MMOs are so big even minor changes impact sometimes so many game systems and mechanics that small changes cause large delays. Making the other 2 factions explorable is no small change. Exploring them gives you some of the best gear in the game, again no small changes.
As for game play footage from PAX, if you know where to look you can find them and they looked great. Why they kept shutting down youtube videos from PAX, I have no clue why. What does this all mean? Well 2013 is when they want to launch and thats been said a few times over the past month. Will they hit that mark? Its a MMO and its rare when a project that size ever gets released on time.
They will open the flood gates of info when its best for their business. Sit back and relax and enjoy the ride...
Well said sir.
I'm really excited about ESO, but I'm just relaxing, checking the site daily and seeing anything new. While I would love the game to launch now, I would rather they take there time and do it right. I also like having at least one game to look forward to.
PAX was what, two weeks ago? You're pissed we haven't seen gameplay since then from a game that's under NDA? Beta invites were low? There's no way to know that. Once again, the game is under NDA and beta testers aren't allowed to confirm that they're in the test.
They probably don't want you to know a lot of things... because they're still in development. This isn't an open beta, this is a closed beta, and the testing started literally a week ago. You being suspicious because we haven't been flooded with info for a game that's been in closed beta, and under NDA, for a week is a little early.
it would be nice to see a company actually use beta testing as beta testing and not pre advertising like so many others have been doing of late.
F2P may be the way of the future, but ya know they dont make them like they used to
Proper Grammer & spelling are extra, corrections will be LOL at.
Not sure where you think I came across as being upset in my post. I defined it as speculation, and stated my thoughts. I've been gaming for 30+ years now (tapper and lemonade stand on the commodore 64 anyone?) and seen the ups downs and arounds as others have previously stated.
Yes, I have seen the shaky cams from pax. However, I was speculating on why we really haven't seen anything official lately. Hotel room talks with moster creators may keep the younger folks on the edge of their seat, but I'd expect that the more seasoned gamers(those with the money to spend) would like to see some tangible progress in order to stay interested.
You can knock my thread, or contribute. Either is fine by me. I like the game, and wanted to try and get people to think about things they might not have thought about as opposed to contributing something mindless. We have been verbally given that this game has alot to offer. I'd like to see some form of developer updates, or other tangible progress to back up these statements. That is all. The lack of proof of progress was the catalyst for the thread.
We as gamers always want to know everything about a game as it is being decided. We want to be there with the designers telling them that they made the wrong choice, or that they should tweak a certain aspect of the game while they are building it. We feel that it is our right to tell the company how the game should be made. We feel that we should be able to play the entire game while it is in alpha stage just to see if we should buy it when it is release 1 to 2 years from now.
Unfortunately, that is not the reality of a billion dollar business. As Nanfoodle has said if they release some bit of info to early another company like Blizzard can scoop it up and slap it into WoW. Companies invest millions of dollars into these games so I can think of 50, 100, or 300 million reasons a company is holding things tight to the chest. Companies employ corporate lawyers to keep track of things like trademarks and copyrights as well as proprietary information for very good reasons.
Gamers also should understand the nature of Public beta tests. They are not going to have hundreds of thousands of people in them if they only need a couple dozen at a time in the early stages. Also the game has an NDA and it is active up until the time it is removed, even if you are not currently on that round of beta testing.
I am actually happier when game companies keep things closer to the chest instead of trying to sell me alpha/beta game with shock and awe tactics and mass marketing.
edited you to gamers after reading the previos post to make it more a general comment.
I have to agree. If they release a trickle amount of info that is more or less confirmed, well then they are just leading us on. If they keep things close to their chest, then people begin to wonder what in the hell is going on. Developers are truly in a lose/lose scenario. If ESO is like any other game, the beta client is probably weeks behind the internal dev client, so even if someone were to leak info, it's probably already outdated.
If the game is going to release in 2013, then it could be much further along that we know, and Zenimax is waiting to flood us. E3 seems like a decent enough venue to begin the flood of info. If we don't get much info by E3 or soon thereafter, I would imagine that the release would be pushed back.
Either way, I would prefer for them to sit on info, and then hit us with a media storm, rather than trickle little bits here and there that can be interpreted numerous ways without a full on context of a feature list.
It is in their own best interest to control the release of information on the game seeing as how whenever anything is said, all TES sites are flooded with angry TES fans making Zenimax put preasure on the developers because the only reason they forcefully took the IP from Bethesda and gave it to them was to drain money from the millions of TES fans.
The longer they can keep a portion of the TES fanbase that does not go to gaming websites from finding out that the TES MMO that is coming out isnt going to be what they are wanting, the better their sales will be. And much like SWTOR, KOTOR fans will leave soon after playing and once most MMO players get their taste of yet another themepark funneling them into even more themepark PvP, they will leave too.
I hope we shall crush...in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomes Jefferson
With phrases like "What are we not supposed to be seeing?" and "what do they not want us to know?", the only thing you're trying to do is stir up suspicion. You may have had another intent with this thread, but it's pretty difficult to see past those loaded questions.
We'd all like to see tangible progress in the game, we're impatient gamers, but their lack of transparency through the development process is not surprising, nor is it concerning.
How could you or anyone possibly know that? They have seen what happened to Guild Wars 2 and SWTOR; its not like they are ignorant of the lesson that a themepark with no long lasting endgame is a recipe for players leaving. Jeeze, I just love how some person sitting at a computer is so vastly more knowledgeable of obvious things than a business with hundreds of people investing tens of millions of dollars.
If TESO is a good game, people will play it. If its a bad game, they wont. Doesnt really matter if they were originally TES fans or not. Some TES players will like it, and some wont. Some MMORPG players will like it, and some wont. If they only wanted TES players they wouldnt bother with a MMORPG in the first place because no MMORPG will ever be more TES than TES itself. By definition they are reaching out beyond the single player playerbase, and we cant know how that will work until we play the game and talk to others who played the game. WoW wasnt Warcraft but I met a number of people who played WoW because of Warcraft, and I met even more people who played WoW because it was a MMORPG. In the end this is a different product with a different potential clientele. There are a lot of overlaps, and there is no way to entirely please any single player who has a very strong point of view about what ESO whould be.
Elladan - ESO (AD)
Camring - SWTOR (Ebon Hawk)
Eol & Justinian - Rift (Faeblight)
Ceol and Duri - LotRO (Landroval)
Kili - WoW
Eol - Lineage 2
Camring - SWG
Justinian (Nimue), Camring - DAoC
The Elder SCrolls Online.
Current state of the game: In Development.
This... not sure how you thought we would see it any other way?
^ That is good speculation. Bravo! I can agree that studios are in a peculiar position of releasing info too early, or not releasing anything.
I thought about this today. How many games have we seen that we've heard Little to nothing of, and find out that release is 2 weeks from now? I can't think of any off the top of my head. I know its an extreme example, but it gets the point across. Any company could get the word out about their game within 2-3 weeks of hard pushing. Enough to give all the major media outlets at least an overview, and possibly exposure to the game.
However, there seems to be a pretty cut an drawn line that deals with a game and its exposure to the masses. Developers that don't actually use their game to build excitement about their game ulitimately don't have a game for us to play. While there intent may be good, its ultimately the result of publishing or funding deadlines that push them out way early. The lack of showing the public anything concrete only fuels this speculation.
So while the Dev's may be putting their heart and soul into it, their work may be deminished substantially because of conflicting interests of the publisher. Its the lack of tangibles that lead me to think that the publisher wants the game out before the vision is complete.
Over at SOE, Smedley has been quoted as saying that gamers will get their hands on EQ Next later this year "and I don't mean beta." That game hasn't even been shown yet and won't be until August nor is there any sort of beta open to the public going on.
People have to stop trying to predict MMO release dates based on what they have seen when a different company released another MMO. Closed beta doesn't require "x" number of months nor does open beta need "y." There's a lot that can be done internally and if it's done well, beta is mostly about stress-testing systems with a lot of simulataneous activity.
Even when you're one of the beta testers and see that a lot of stuff has place-holders and is coming "soon" that's not even an acurate measure since all of those "coming soon" features can be just one patch or several months away.
It's in development...period.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
this holds true for all MMO's, not just themeparks. none of them will last more than a few months for most people until a game comes along that is just so much better than everythong else, people flock to it and play that game for years, like in the old days.
i like sandbox elements in my games but pure sandbox bandwagoning around here is so annoying.
sandbox games are over-rated, they will never have success like a themepark can, yet people pretend that they are the only games that have a chance to hold subs?
yeah, they may hold a few 100k subs for a while, which is still inferior to many "failed" themepark games.
i am not saying subs are the be all end all to judging an MMO but i just get so sick of the over-hyping of sandbox games around here.
if that's all you like to play, right on! but you need to realize that you are the minority.
I completely agree. I like sandbox elements in games. But full sandbox games just aren't my think I suppose. I would rather have a mix between some sandbox and themepark. Hopefully ESO and wildstar will turn out great!
They've said somewhere themselves, that they're doing a "true beta", and good for them! Im sick of all the mmo's that have come out recently who use their betas as a way to get a little extra cash and marketing, and then release a broken game because they didn't do any specific phase testing.
Perhaps with their beta model, they will indeed get their chosen testers doing specific things over and over to make sure the game works in the end.
Betas really do need to go back to how they used to be long ago, where you were given a developer objective, ie. Try to climb this terrain, try to glitch this, try to break that... Instead of what they seem to be these days, where thousdands of people are just playing a "beta-release", and then the game remains in "beta" or months after release.
I sometimes play under the alias "Exposed". Don't tell anybody.
Maybe they are trying to hide the fact that it plays just like any other generic MMO that has been released in the past 10 years. Level your character through quests, do some group dungeons on the way, reach endgame, where you have gear progression and 2 paths to acheive that progress: pve and pvp.
The reality is, most MMOs at launch have a severe lack of depth, and mostly consist of generic endgame dungeons and battlegrounds. More in depth features may get added later on when people start whining on the forums, but I'm not holding my breath. Buying this at launch and expecting to get a fully fleshed out MMO is simply not going to happen.
I am keeping my expectations as low as possible on this game. In fact i'll treat it as a single player title (worth buying for progression from 1 to 50), until I see some solid features that make me want to pick this game over any other MMO. If it is built just like any generic MMO, I'll still get my money's worth from the storyline and progression up to endgame, but don't expect me to hang around any longer if that is the case.
Why do so many noobs think they're "hiding" things. If anything, they don't want to overhype, and that's a GOOD thing. Look at archeage, people play on korean servers, all the hype is lost, we know everything about the game, and many people aren't following it anymore.
Another reason is to hide your mechanics from other developers, do you know how much funding ESO has? It's Alot. (Swtor had huge funding too, but they squandered it all on "high class" voice acting). This is a AAA mmorpg afaik, they can't risk another developer taking their mechanics and putting them in their own game.
Again, they dont want to advertise a game in development, which is what it is, anything a tester is seeing is builds behind what the devs are at, and that's many, many, many builds behind what they will get to come release.
I also dont understand what you mean by "in depth features"... or how you assume this game wont have any of these "features"...
I sometimes play under the alias "Exposed". Don't tell anybody.
from everything i have read so far about people hands on experiences of the game at pax. i don't see how anyone can think this game plays like any generic mmo?
i am sure it will have some generic mmo features, just like any mmo no matter which game we are talking about.
i know we are speculating here but i don't see the combat in TESO playing anything like wow or the clones, we will see though.
but i totally agree with the way you are handling your expectations with this game, i take that approach with every mmo these days because none of them have longevity anymore.
when one comes out that does, i will be pleasantly surprised.
Longevity is exactly the thing I'm looking out for. Combat can hardly be considered as something that keeps players busy and entertained for a long time. It is important yes, but I don't really expect someone going: "oh the combat is wonderful, today I shall pass my endgame time by killing random trashmobs because hey, the combat is so entertaining." The problem of longevity usually comes up when you try to list the different possible activities that a person can do at endgame on a daily basis.
The 2 obvious things that every new MMO will have are:
- pvp battlegrounds/persistent zones
- group dungeons
The thing that sets apart a bad MMO (no longevity) and a good MMO, are the features that the devs have made besides the 2 obvious ones that I listed.
- deep crafting. Crafting that produces useless crap that is worse than dungeon drops or doesn't introduce any unique items unobtainable through other means, doesn't count (and yes I know they have discussed this).
- risk pvp
- daily war
- horizontal progression
- housing
- player created content (they could let us write books for example)
- in a game that advertises its combat, there should be a built-in feature for duelling or guild vs guild, or tournaments with prizes that are built into the game and don't require organising from players. How cool would it be to duel a real person in the arena from TES4.
- gear progression without a cap. Who has played RoM knows what I'm talking about. You could improve your gear infinitely, depending on your time and resources (that game was item shop based so it didn't work very well there). RoM is a generic MMO, but this simple feature is what kept it entertaining for over a year for me. You always had something to work for.
- randomised loot. Special rare drops from specific monsters. I've always liked the idea of being able to get the best item for a slot (or not the best, but best for a specific situation), from a monster that isn't endgame or part of a dungeon. Being able to get your whole gear from one source (endgame dungeons) is bad design.