Paul Sage wrote:

First, I would like to start off with a large ‘thank you’ to those of you who are beta testing the game. It is hard to describe the amount of effort that goes into creating a project like The Elder Scrolls Online, and I know the team appreciates your willingness to get into the game at this stage and give us feedback. As beta testers you may be wondering what this game is, what the direction is, and what you should be testing. That’s a fair enough question, and one I would generally answer with, “Let the game speak for itself.” But I also know that many of our testers come from already established communities of other games, and are curious how that experience maps over to ESO.

To understand the direction and vision of ESO, I think it is important to understand the term “MMO” and how it is viewed. “MMO” used to mean one thing: massively multiplayer online. Back in the 90s, this was a big deal. The internet wasn’t what it is now, and getting thousands of players into the same graphical “world” was a huge feat. Anything could be an MMO provided it had thousands of players in the same world. You could have MMORTS, MMORPG, MMOFPS, etc.
However, with the successes of a couple of games, “MMO” has become almost synonymous with a certain type of MMORPG, one that derived a lot of its spirit from MUDs. As you probably know, MUDs were solely text-based; MUD admins developed fun systems relying solely on information being passed to players through lots of words and numbers. It was natural for the first MMOs, or graphic MUDs, to base their systems on tried and true MUD systems such as chat, combat, itemization, etc.

Without calling any title by name, I think it is safe to say that two titles really contributed to this repurposing of the moniker “MMO”, and informed what many people have come to think of when the term “MMO” is mentioned. So much so, that people expect any game released as an “MMO” to emulate the systems in those titles. And companies have delivered that emulation. Title after title has been released that many people refer to as ‘clones.’ Even large name ‘titles’ based a lot of their gameplay around these successful titles. And the results were, I’m sorry to say, less than spectacular. I’ve watched quality titles fall by the wayside because of one simple truth: “People are tired of this clone thing.” Therefore, the point is, when the general public refers to something as an “MMO”, they generally mean, it is like X game, but the myriad of games that are like X game have been largely unsuccessful. People were generally happy with X game. They didn’t need us making it again.

That was a long way to go to say that our path to success is to embrace what it is that makes us special, what makes us Elder Scrolls. So with that, I’ll try to lay out the abbreviated vision for the game you are testing: The Elder Scrolls Online is a modern RPG that immerses thousands of players in the beautiful world of Tamriel during a time of great conflict, actively engaging them and encouraging them to explore together.

“Modern” and “immersive” are two key words I’ll concentrate on for this letter. To many people, they mean many different things. To us, it means removing a lot of the UI elements. Concentrating less on long narrative text and fine number-crunching math, and more on things like a visceral, active combat system, voice-over with believable writing and acting, player choice, etc. Players should be playing in the world-space, and not watching the UI.
What you see and experience in the game versus the UI is key, much more so than math and text appearing everywhere. That’s not to say there won’t be elements in the game for people who like to min-max and get the most out of a certain build, hey that’s fun too, but we are going to lean far more on world immersion and active decision making. This is part of an Elder Scrolls title.
Part of immersion is also interactivity. We’ve added many things to the world to make it as interactive as possible. This has been no small effort. In an MMO, keeping track of what gets introduced into the economy is important, but we feel that interactivity is also important in the Elder Scrolls. Players want to be able to take things from barrels, crates, etc.

We also want aspirational items, attributes, abilities, etc. that don’t take a four-page chart to understand. These should be things most people can readily identify and know if it is useful for them. When you can wear any weapon or armor, you should be able to understand its core functionality and usefulness to you.

There are also those things which just work better in social environments: grouping, guilds, chat, and other social features. Our vision for social is that you are able to play with your friends. We’ve tried to remove as many hurdles as possible, while some must remain to preserve other features. For instance, alliances are necessary to support our Alliance War effort. So it is true that you must be in the same alliance as someone to play with them, but we felt the benefits to the Alliance War outweighed the negatives in keeping players separated. We’re also a very account-based game. Benefits of having things like a bank shared amongst all characters, easily finding people, out-of-game access to friends, etc. outweighed other things that are benefits of a more character-based social system.

There are many other parts of our vision I could break down: Why are there levels? Why are there classes? Why is there an Alliance War? etc. But we’ve got a game to make and you’ve got a game to play. These are the things which I feel help us the most in beta tests:

(1) Remember, not everything can be added as optional. Even if you have seen certain things appear in the game, some features may be removed, maybe for a short time, maybe for a long time, maybe permanently or indefinitely. Every feature has to be supported by us and we need to feel that every feature is representative of the vision and our quality bar.

(2) Keep an open mind and remember to take the game on its own merits. If you’re like us, you don’t believe MMO is a genre. It is an acronym that tells you that a lot of players are going to be playing in the same play-space as you. It is an awesome and special thing to play alone or with friends in a world populated by other players. The term “MMO” doesn’t define what a game should or should not be or should or should not have, beyond having other players. So when we make decisions about what makes the cut or doesn’t make the cut for the final product, we are looking at what hits the vision for The Elder Scrolls Online, and not what makes an MMO.

(3) Keep giving us great feedback and playing. Believe it or not, just playing still really helps. We track lots of data, including all the behind-the-scenes numbers to see if things are adding up as they should. Positive feedback helps just as much as pointing out issues. I like feature X helps us know what you would like more of. And this wasn’t meant to dissuade any particular feedback, it was just meant as a clarification of what we are doing.

Once again, thank you for participating in our beta. Believe me when I tell you that this game is being made by people who truly want to bring you something unique, fun, and special. I hope you can see that in our efforts and in our product.

Witblitz wrote: »

Game is broken. They won't be able to fix it either. I also suggest they never attempt this genre ever again either.

Bhakura wrote: »

Didnt vote, you forgot "its a bot game"