Ex-MMO QA talks about early days of ESO

Mikoto

Here's a nice read I went through by an ex-QA that used to work on LOTRO and ESO. He talks about a number of things that was going on during WoW's reign with the higher ups and other things. There's one thing though that he posted on the forum that made me think on the future of ESO and where it's heading. Not sure if anyone else have posted or read about this but here it is!

Aylwen wrote:

This is a good point to mention that a lot of the issues that Turbine experienced weren't unique to Turbine. For instance: after leaving Turbine the first time I went to Zenimax Online for a year. By this point (fall 2010) they had been 'developing' ESO for something like 4 or 5 years and had a projected launch date of spring of '12 (the idea being to follow up Skyrim with a big marketing campaign with WETA and then launch). But less than a year and a half from launch the game wasn't remotely near alpha state, despite having already consumed untold millions of dollars. To make a long story short, I was amazed they finished it at all. There was no hope of it being a great MMO regardless. As my friend, a ZOS producer (and a former Turbinite), commented, half the team seemed to think they were making a single player game, the other half, WoW. When you get 50 cooks in the kitchen trying to make one cake, if you get it done at all, be sure it isn't going to be a masterpiece. The days when you had one guy with a vision field generaling development (a Sid Meier, for example) started to go out the window when the industry got corporate. On another side note, I sometimes think money becomes somewhat unreal when you get into the tens of millions. An exec who will shout about being overcharged for an oil change can be strangely sanguine about a project that costs millions a month.

Seems ESO was in a very rough state back in the days, good to see that it managed to get out the door and into the field to be baked in but it's quite saddening that it was doomed in the beginning.

Aylwen wrote:

Although this wouldn't exactly qualify as 'current', I think Dark Age of Camelot has always been an intriguing game. I really wish LOTRO had adopted a similar overall approach. The cap would be 50 (as with DAOC), which covers Eriador and with leveling culminating in Angmar (let me say too that I loved the epic storyline for SoA and really got into the Amarthiel arc). The rest of the game, the world beyond the Walls of Moria, is essentially one big sprawling end game, where players are free to explore as they will and where every instance in Moria, Isen, and beyond is relevant (a big objection many of us in QA had with SoM was the 5 level bump...for a trivial leveling experience we were rendering obsolete most of our Moria instances-having finally worked out all the glitches). Progression post 50 would come from gear and alternative advancement systems ala DAOC. You as a player have just that initial-and very manageable-linear level grind to master your class and then have a whole world of end game possibilites ahead.

While it is true he is speaking about LOTRO with the above quote it can also be applied to the changes ESO is undertaking currently [Removal of Vet Ranks + Battle Scaling with new zones] so I want to see what everyone's response is to this also here's some Pre-Alpha Screenies!

Aylwen wrote:

Valenwood




Valenwood landing




Company PvP test



Placeholder mob army.



Crazy goat!



More ESO angels

Source

EDIT: Replaced Dev with QA as pointed out below

KhajitFurTrader wrote: »

Mikoto wrote: »

Here's a nice read I went through by an ex-dev that used to work on LOTRO and ESO.

.

Um, no, he was QA, as he stated multiple times in the posts you linked. So, while he may have been more "on the inside" than any of us, his position is important to consider when assessing his take on things.

Nutronic

Personally I think this fellow comes off a little bit bitter.

What I mean by that is the tone in which he is relating this information makes it seem like he's nostalgic of the olden days when everyone tirelessly worked under a single "great" mind.

I think this has less to do with his claim that the left hand is ignorant/dismissive of the right hand when it came to developing the game and rather more to do with he didn't like how the company was organized. I can't say I blame him when you walk into a development team that has already been developing the game and they aren't even at a beta with less than 1 year to go.

Personally I think there was a whole lot more going on behind the scenes that perhaps he didn't even consider/was aware of such as: The huge legal dispute between interplay and Bethsoft for the Fallout MMO rights, The usage of various personnel from Bethesda who helped shape the early stages of ESO, backpedaling in early alpha from up to due to responses from Skyrim. I mean let's be realistic, if you took a look at Morrowind today it's a perfectly logical assumption to think it was an MMO (my point being that the DAOC people may have drawn early ESO inspiration from that).

Either way, none of this really matters because even if it did offer a glimpse into the future of the game nothing has been set in stone. We have what we have, and what has happened has already happened, might as well make the best of it and enjoy what we've already (well most of us) payed for.

My own personal 2 cents: I feel like ESO is just a natural extension of Morrowind which I loved. Is it a step back from the next two titles? Perhaps, but overall I've enjoyed it more than the last proper ES game so all in all I feel they are at least going in the right direction. I just worry we might be further derailed from all that juicy content that's been postponed.

Samadhi

Love this armour design, hope it makes it into the game at some point.

Oh wait.

|:

Rosveen

As my friend, a ZOS producer (and a former Turbinite), commented, half the team seemed to think they were making a single player game, the other half, WoW.

Just like the players, then?

KhajitFurTrader

Mikoto wrote: »

Here's a nice read I went through by an ex-dev that used to work on LOTRO and ESO.

.

Um, no, he was QA, as he stated multiple times in the posts you linked. So, while he may have been more "on the inside" than any of us, his position is important to consider when assessing his take on things.

Edit: Thank you for correcting it above, @Mikoto.
Btw: great find! I used to hang out a lot in "that other LOTRO community, the one that must not be mentioned on official forums", because the OF became so toxic.

Tapio75

One thing in any MMO i played exept EVE was, that i was not happy with exessive need of leveling.. Most notoriously WOW with its current level 100 cap >.<

What i have been hoping from any new MMO for a long time was that leveling would be fast thing that we could get rid of in early state of gameplaying.. In ESO that would be Stonefalls for EB for example, after that world would be open to go and do what we like, there would still be progressions but it would be different from leveling in a way where you get better gear (Only slightly) better skills, your accuracy would get better over time and stuff like that.. You would not get stronger, but you would get better by playing and advancing skill lines.

For example having unmorphed flurry at level 1 would hit much less often than at level 4 and so forth..

What i hope ZOS wwould do first though, is to tweak instances in a way where we are in the world with players from every faction and level.. We could go where we want in WOW fashion.. Just by using horse, no loading screens but endless roads from Ebonheart to Auridon and that way.

Then tweak battle level to work in any area of game so people can just go and do what they want..

And yes, now that there is crime, i hope there will eventually be another main storyline for evil characters and option for neutrality too. That would greatly improve replayability. Right now i just want to skip all the guilds and storylines wwith alts and get the benefits as those quests never change. Especially guilds are bad since against all reason, they are exact duplicates in each faction.. At least NPC's should be different.

Mikoto

KhajitFurTrader wrote: »

Mikoto wrote: »

Here's a nice read I went through by an ex-dev that used to work on LOTRO and ESO.

.

Um, no, he was QA, as he stated multiple times in the posts you linked. So, while he may have been more "on the inside" than any of us, his position is important to consider when assessing his take on things.

I stand corrected!

Gidorick

I kind of think this guy is talking out of his sphincter. QA guys aren't privy to the kinda of info he's claiming to possess. They aren't in design meetings and his producer friend (if he exists) wad probably taking about the fact that ESO was trying to find a middle ground between the two genes.

Cool screenshots though!

Bloodfang

Tapio75 wrote: »

One thing in any MMO i played exept EVE was, that i was not happy with exessive need of leveling.. Most notoriously WOW with its current level 100 cap >.<

What i have been hoping from any new MMO for a long time was that leveling would be fast thing that we could get rid of in early state of gameplaying.. In ESO that would be Stonefalls for EB for example, after that world would be open to go and do what we like, there would still be progressions but it would be different from leveling in a way where you get better gear (Only slightly) better skills, your accuracy would get better over time and stuff like that.. You would not get stronger, but you would get better by playing and advancing skill lines.

For example having unmorphed flurry at level 1 would hit much less often than at level 4 and so forth..

What i hope ZOS wwould do first though, is to tweak instances in a way where we are in the world with players from every faction and level.. We could go where we want in WOW fashion.. Just by using horse, no loading screens but endless roads from Ebonheart to Auridon and that way.

Then tweak battle level to work in any area of game so people can just go and do what they want..

And yes, now that there is crime, i hope there will eventually be another main storyline for evil characters and option for neutrality too. That would greatly improve replayability. Right now i just want to skip all the guilds and storylines wwith alts and get the benefits as those quests never change. Especially guilds are bad since against all reason, they are exact duplicates in each faction.. At least NPC's should be different.

WoW has level cap 100 which you can reach in a day. ESO has way more levelling content than WoW.
The main difference is that quests in ESO are more like stories, while in WoW just mindless clicking grindfest. (That's the reason why ESO can get away with it).

I just wish they someday introduce world scaling, so players can go anywhere they want right from level 1. I want to see content scaled to player level.

Gidorick

Bloodfang wrote: »

Tapio75 wrote: »

One thing in any MMO i played exept EVE was, that i was not happy with exessive need of leveling.. Most notoriously WOW with its current level 100 cap >.<

What i have been hoping from any new MMO for a long time was that leveling would be fast thing that we could get rid of in early state of gameplaying.. In ESO that would be Stonefalls for EB for example, after that world would be open to go and do what we like, there would still be progressions but it would be different from leveling in a way where you get better gear (Only slightly) better skills, your accuracy would get better over time and stuff like that.. You would not get stronger, but you would get better by playing and advancing skill lines.

For example having unmorphed flurry at level 1 would hit much less often than at level 4 and so forth..

What i hope ZOS wwould do first though, is to tweak instances in a way where we are in the world with players from every faction and level.. We could go where we want in WOW fashion.. Just by using horse, no loading screens but endless roads from Ebonheart to Auridon and that way.

Then tweak battle level to work in any area of game so people can just go and do what they want..

And yes, now that there is crime, i hope there will eventually be another main storyline for evil characters and option for neutrality too. That would greatly improve replayability. Right now i just want to skip all the guilds and storylines wwith alts and get the benefits as those quests never change. Especially guilds are bad since against all reason, they are exact duplicates in each faction.. At least NPC's should be different.

WoW has level cap 100 which you can reach in a day. ESO has way more levelling content than WoW.
The main difference is that quests in ESO are more like stories, while in WoW just mindless clicking grindfest. (That's the reason why ESO can get away with it).

I just wish they someday introduce world scaling, so players can go anywhere they want right from level 1. I want to see content scaled to player level.

What would be the point of leveling then? Pvp?

Tapio75

The point is that leveling as it is now is pointless grind that should not exist in a form it exists now.

I mean why do you have to level to do stuff in games? Why not level just to get better instead? Just the way it happens in Skyrim for example. You can go anywhere there but you still level to get more and better stuff. No, your argument "This is MMO" is not valid, it is something people usually say when they just lack mental capacity to think outside of box. That box in this case being worlds smalles box.

Tandor

I read all the comments he made, and what comes across is a pretty hypocritical account by someone claiming he has nothing against Turbine but who then proceeds to attack them, nothing critical to say about anyone personally but who he then proceeds to name. All of his comments are made against people who he knows full well are unable to respond. I wouldn't say he comes across as bitter, rather that it's sad that he feels the need to trot all this out and betray his former colleagues in this way. Who would want to employ him after making such public disclosures about what went on in his previous jobs?