How important is lore? (Poll and Discussion)

Cazzy

There have been many threads and polls dedicated to such things that would be considered lore-breaking as well as new things that have never been seen nor heard of in Tamriel history. So, I'd like to know where people stand in terms of NEW things added in ESO. Is it ok if it's been fact-checked as lore? If it's completely new is it acceptable? Would you rather ESO be a stand-alone game?

Please discuss, but keep it friendly!

Thallia

Well Technically they have already moved away from most lore as these events have never happend when looking back at Skyrim, Oblivion, etc.

Zeni tried to explain is for saying that they burnt all the books dating to these events but that isnt a very valid excuse for me and im sure for a lot of people aswell.

EDIT:

What im really trying to say is that LEts say in Skyrim and the other games. No one ever mentioned, and not even the respected and grand Scholars, Ever mention Molag Bal nearly destroying the whole god damn world. That can just be gon around by, bye just saying "they burnt some books" or something like that. Now all the Lore crazies have accepted these events but still... I hope in the next Elder scrolls game there is atleast SOME to very little referance to the world nearly ending.

Divinius

I don't mind ESO adding to the lore... In fact, I would encourage it. I just don't think it should do things that very obviously totally break existing lore.

The game is set very far in the past. There's not a ton of lore that surrounds this era, and as Thallia said, they can get away with a lot just by saying "well, not much survived this time period" so they can make up a lot of new lore to fill the gaps.

But there are certain things that were known about this time period, so those things should not be completely disregarded. To do otherwise would be a slap in the face to a lot of ES fans.

Ra'Shtar

New lore is always a new exciting adventure waiting to be discovered!

Cazzy

It'd be interesting to hear why people don't want Zeni to add new lore. I can understand no-one wanting them to 'George Lucas' it, but is that the reason?

Vaoh

Since it is a part of the series, it has to make sense according to the lore. Being that it is like a thousand years prior to Skyrim it has already created a ton of new lore specifically regarding places that were never visited in the other games.

I never had issues with the glowing pumpkin costume. There is some weird stuff in the lore. New stuff is the best part of any TES game! Learning more about the world, as long as we don't find direct contradictions that aren't related to the Dragon Break are fine with me. Just don't add... you know... guns, or something.

Lysette

ZOS basically has created new lore already, the whole alliance stuff and the Alliance war is new lore. And they managed as well to break any meaning of this new lore by putting out the imperial edition - imperials without an empire, what an idea?- And they broke the idea of s meaningful alliance war by allowing to play any race in any faction. Now it is a meaningless PvP zone, it could have been so much more. So ZOS is not just creating new lore, they are perfectly capable as well to destroy it again - basically by marketing reasons, what pissed off a lot of people at release, who care about lore and the advertised meaningful faction war - and ZOS just destroyed this meaning by introducing the imperial edition out of the blue.

I am as well not of the opinion, that ZOS should drop some lore or not pay attention to it - it would just *** off a lot of TES fans, who care about the game lore and the look and feel of a TES game. That it is a TES game in an online version is a major selling point, and if lore is abandoned, this could easily take the TES bonus from the game, what would be bad for ZOS.

altemriel

the main trait of a lore is that the lore always expands, new pieces of the puzzle are found and the picture is getting bigger and bigger!

there is no fixed lore, no "now we know it all lore", no "no, that is lore-friendly not possible, we know it now all"

this is illusion taken by some people as true. but as in real world, so in virtual worlds, the lore is the core network of the story, from which the whole world is woven and the network is always expanding, never stops to. welcome to the neverending story

Cazzy

altemriel wrote: »

welcome to the neverending story

Da de da, Da de da, Da de da.

Thallia

altemriel wrote: »

the main trait of a lore is that the lore always expands, new pieces of the puzzle are found and the picture is getting bigger and bigger!

there is no fixed lore, no "now we know it all lore", no "no, that is lore-friendly not possible, we know it now all"

this is illusion taken by some people as true. but as in real world, so in virtual worlds, the lore is the core network of the story, from which the whole world is woven and the network is always expanding, never stops to. welcome to the neverending story

True and I completely agree, But you cannot really add to the past, especially big events that will be timeless. (world ending)

They should for sure add lore, like small things, but not major things. I know that a lot of people turned their heds and got rather mad and confused with the Main Molag Bal Story of ESO.

NewBlacksmurf

Because ZOS is being allowed to make a game where the lore in based on Bethesda even tho they are in some cases one in the same, the game should stick to lore.

Now, there is a lot that has nothing to do with lore already and I'm not one to flip out but there is a difference between sticking to lore and breaking or going against lore. There is a lot that came be done which doesn't break lore and that may not stem from lore but its not creating new lore.

Creating new lore should be off limits because ZOS isn't going to make a future TES game.

tennant94

Fix lag

Lysette

To me the whole alliance war thing got pointless at the moment where they introduced the "play any race in any faction" thing. If all is multi-cultural, why would their be a reason to fight for a certain faction, the next one is just as good as this one and pretty much the same then. There is no point in fighting when all factions have multi-cultural elements with pretty much the same races. So when I heard about this a bit before release, I was disappointed and did not want to play the game - I thought about which race to choose and which faction to join before and discussed it with friends, the pro and cons of each alliance - and then ZOS just destroyed any meaning of this alliance war with introducing the imperial race - in an empireless game world, wtf.

This converted for me a meaningful alliance war - what it could have been - into a meaningless PvP zone in Cyrrodil, filled with the PvP crowd, which is just like in any other MMO - they only care for max stats and high end gear and nothing else. So it is no wonder, that this pvp content is not really something I would enjoy, but I would have enjoyed it, if it would be meaningful inside the lore and alliances would have their specific advantages and disadvantages due to race restrictions- and not a multi-cultural society, which destroys any point in having an alliance war at all - if all is basically the same, there is no reason to fight.

UrQuan

You can't create a new game without adding new lore. Well, you could, but that game would be absolutely terrible. It's important for ESO to avoid breaking existing lore as much as possible (some breaking is unavoidable due to the nature of MMOs), but it also needs to add to the lore.

It's also worth noting that in a lot of cases the Elder Scrolls lore is contradictory: almost all of it comes from in-universe sources (primarily books), whose narrators are not necessarily reliable (and sometimes 2 books by different authors with different agendas and biases exist, which contradict each other). In some cases it's contradictory because of a Dragon Break, which means that multiple contradictory things actually happened.

The existing lore should be respected, but it isn't nearly as set in stone as a lot of people seem to believe. If you're pointing to a single in-universe book as a definitive proof that something is a certain way in the lore, then you've misunderstood what those books represent. In real life you don't take one source written a couple of hundred years ago as being definitive proof of anything - you need to corroborate it and understand the biases of the source. Anyone who has studied history at the college/university level will understand the proper way to treat sources in Elder Scrolls games.

Thallia wrote: »

Well Technically they have already moved away from most lore as these events have never happend when looking back at Skyrim, Oblivion, etc.

Zeni tried to explain is for saying that they burnt all the books dating to these events but that isnt a very valid excuse for me and im sure for a lot of people aswell.

EDIT:

What im really trying to say is that LEts say in Skyrim and the other games. No one ever mentioned, and not even the respected and grand Scholars, Ever mention Molag Bal nearly destroying the whole god damn world. That can just be gon around by, bye just saying "they burnt some books" or something like that. Now all the Lore crazies have accepted these events but still... I hope in the next Elder scrolls game there is atleast SOME to very little referance to the world nearly ending.

It was well established long before ESO was announced that this time period in Tamriel's history was during the Interregnum - a 400+ year time of near constant war and conflict. Sources from Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim at least (I think from Redguard and possibly other games too) talk about this as being a dark time when much knowledge was lost, that was a confusing period of insurrections and different states forming and collapsing, and that had a prevailing attitude of "anti-intellectualism". The sources prior to the release of ESO support the fact that very little is known about what happened in this time period. ESO happens about 100 years into the Interregnum, which means that chaos continued for over 300 years after the events of ESO.

All of the Planemeld plot happened during a very short period of time (3 years from the Soulburst to the defeat of the Planemeld), and through most of the main story nobody really knows what's happening except that Worm cultists are causing problems and summoning loads of Daedra. Eventually the truth of the Planemeld is discovered, but even then it's unlikely that most of the population of Tamriel found out more about it than "it was some plot by Daedra worshipers that was stopped". Most notably, the forces of the Alliances did not participate in stopping the Planemeld. It was a small strike force from the Fighters Guild and the Mages Guild (many of whom didn't make it back from Oblivion). That, combined with the general chaos of the age, means that relatively few people across Tamriel would have heard anything more than rumours about exactly what was going on there.

With those factors combined, it would actually be surprising if anyone (aside from possibly certain scholars specializing in finding out about the events of the Interregnum) from the time of the other games knew much of anything about the Planemeld.

Plus, there's the strong possibility that ESO occurs during a Dragon Break. I can't remember who off the top of my head, but someone on the forums has a pretty convincing theory about that.

Lysette wrote: »

ZOS basically has created new lore already, the whole alliance stuff and the Alliance war is new lore. And they managed as well to break any meaning of this new lore by putting out the imperial edition - imperials without an empire, what an idea?- And they broke the idea of s meaningful alliance war by allowing to play any race in any faction. Now it is a meaningless PvP zone, it could have been so much more. So ZOS is not just creating new lore, they are perfectly capable as well to destroy it again - basically by marketing reasons, what pissed off a lot of people at release, who care about lore and the advertised meaningful faction war - and ZOS just destroyed this meaning by introducing the imperial edition out of the blue.

I am as well not of the opinion, that ZOS should drop some lore or not pay attention to it - it would just *** off a lot of TES fans, who care about the game lore and the look and feel of a TES game. That it is a TES game in an online version is a major selling point, and if lore is abandoned, this could easily take the TES bonus from the game, what would be bad for ZOS.

Giving the Imperials an Empire in this time frame would have been very lore-breaking. It's well established in lore from previous games that the Empire had crumbled before the time of ESO and wouldn't be reborn until Tiber Septim hundreds of years later. Imperials as a race couldn't just vanish from Tamriel - that would have been ridiculous. Imperials as an actual Empire in this time period would be just as ridiculous. Petty kingdoms trying to claim the name Empire make sense - an actual Empire does not.

Any race any alliance is also lore-friendly. Every Elder Scrolls game has members of every race living in the province it's set in. Tons of the books found in those games talk about members of races not considered native to a particular province living in that province. It would be lore-shattering to have only native races in each alliance.

Taleof2Cities

Lysette wrote: »

To me the whole alliance war thing got pointless at the moment where they introduced the "play any race in any faction" thing. If all is multi-cultural, why would their be a reason to fight for a certain faction, the next one is just as good as this one and pretty much the same then. There is no point in fighting when all factions have multi-cultural elements with pretty much the same races. So when I heard about this a bit before release, I was disappointed and did not want to play the game - I thought about which race to choose and which faction to join before and discussed it with friends, the pro and cons of each alliance - and then ZOS just destroyed any meaning of this alliance war with introducing the imperial race - in an empireless game world, wtf.

This converted for me a meaningful alliance war - what it could have been - into a meaningless PvP zone in Cyrrodil, filled with the PvP crowd, which is just like in any other MMO - they only care for max stats and high end gear and nothing else. So it is no wonder, that this pvp content is not really something I would enjoy, but I would have enjoyed it, if it would be meaningful inside the lore and alliances would have their specific advantages and disadvantages due to race restrictions- and not a multi-cultural society, which destroys any point in having an alliance war at all - if all is basically the same, there is no reason to fight.

My view of the Alliance War is totally opposite ... we will have to agree to disagree.

A character may have different views of why they are fighting the Alliance War ... based on their upbringing or favored Alliance's general reasoning for fighting the war. You might recall in prior Elder Scrolls games that there are very much a number of areas and towns that are culturally mixed ... even in the far reaches of Morrowind and Skyrim.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Demographics

Also, why should Imperials not be in the game when they are well-represented in prior ES games ... and are the ones most affected by the war??

Out of my eight (8) DC characters, only one of them (my Redguard Nightblade) is from an actual Daggerfall Covenant zone. The others are all High Elf and Wood Elf ... and they fight for DC for their own lore reasons.

UrQuan

Lysette wrote: »

To me the whole alliance war thing got pointless at the moment where they introduced the "play any race in any faction" thing. If all is multi-cultural, why would their be a reason to fight for a certain faction, the next one is just as good as this one and pretty much the same then. There is no point in fighting when all factions have multi-cultural elements with pretty much the same races.

Which is why there were Germanic soldiers fighting loyally for the Roman Empire, as well as Germanic soldiers fighting loyally for Germanic tribes against the Roman Empire, right? Clearly you've never studied history... To one degree or another virtually every nation in history has been multi-cultural, and that certainly hasn't stopped people within those nations from finding reasons to fight for their nation.

Frankly, your posts in this thread show that you don't know Elder Scrolls lore, and you don't know real world history.

Ezareth

Sheezabeast

Lore makes me smile, pumpkin heads make me cringe.

Thallia

UrQuan wrote: »

All of the Planemeld plot happened during a very short period of time (3 years from the Soulburst to the defeat of the Planemeld), and through most of the main story nobody really knows what's happening except that Worm cultists are causing problems and summoning loads of Daedra. Eventually the truth of the Planemeld is discovered, but even then it's unlikely that most of the population of Tamriel found out more about it than "it was some plot by Daedra worshipers that was stopped". Most notably, the forces of the Alliances did not participate in stopping the Planemeld. It was a small strike force from the Fighters Guild and the Mages Guild (many of whom didn't make it back from Oblivion). That, combined with the general chaos of the age, means that relatively few people across Tamriel would have heard anything more than rumours about exactly what was going on there.

With those factors combined, it would actually be surprising if anyone (aside from possibly certain scholars specializing in finding out about the events of the Interregnum) from the time of the other games knew much of anything about the Planemeld.

Plus, there's the strong possibility that ESO occurs during a Dragon Break. I can't remember who off the top of my head, but someone on the forums has a pretty convincing theory about that.

Ahh I have heard about the Dragon Break theory, but I think it is unlikely.

But you are raising a very good point a lot of Lore enthusiasts fail to realise. But you are missing one point. There were many MAge guild and Fighters guild soldiers and mages. They will tell their family back home and they will tell their friends etc. about how they defeated Molag bal from a massive plot to nearly destroy the world. And with Zeni's (spoiler) plan to bring back Molag bal with another grand fight with the rest of the world with the mainquest, in the next DLC or Patch, is is hard to see that people wouldnt know much about this kind of stuff.

There would have been some mention of Molag bal's war with the rest of the world the scholars and other insightful people would write, yet there seems to be none. I mean there are books dating probabaly dating even Waaaaay before Eso's timeline in the other games that have detailed information.

But I can agree with you a lot but also have to Argue it as such big events couldnt just go past the whole civilization, i mean the Oblivion gates being everywhere. Citizens will see that.

Also, (as much as it my favorite faction and I love it) Ebonheart pact.... Argonians with Dark elves...... such an event would never go past the Argonian Scholars (which somehow appearantly has..?) Maybe we will see more about this in the next Elder scrolls which is Rumoured to be In Argonia

UrQuan

Thallia wrote: »

But you are missing one point. There were many MAge guild and Fighters guild soldiers and mages. They will tell their family back home and they will tell their friends etc. about how they defeated Molag bal from a massive plot to nearly destroy the world.

Actually, I'm not missing that:

UrQuan wrote: »

It was a small strike force from the Fighters Guild and the Mages Guild (many of whom didn't make it back from Oblivion).

The dialogue in the main quest makes it clear that it was a small force from those guilds that went to Coldharbour (in the absence of being able to take the full armies of the Alliances they intentionally opted to use a small strike force using unorthodox tactics rather than take the biggest force they could muster from the guilds), and it makes it even more clear that most of them died there. Many died while scattered across Coldharbour, many during the assault on the Endless Stair, many during the assault on the Reaver Citadel, and many more during the Vestige's final attack that destroyed the Planemeld. Very, very few survivors would have come back to Tamriel to tell their friends and families about what happened.

Thallia

UrQuan wrote: »

Thallia wrote: »

But you are missing one point. There were many MAge guild and Fighters guild soldiers and mages. They will tell their family back home and they will tell their friends etc. about how they defeated Molag bal from a massive plot to nearly destroy the world.

Actually, I'm not missing that:

Then how can you just ignore the fact that information passes on, especially big information! Journalists and Newswriters would get hold of such information and put their information on those big Wooden boards in the main city Square.

ThePonzzz

The whole reason I started playing ESO is because I enjoyed the rich lore. It was between Final Fantasy XIV and ESO when it came to starting a new MMO, and I decided to go with ESO because FFXIV broke too much of the lore (since the stories are non-linear from one game to the next). Though, if they made a sprite-based MMO in the FFVI world, I'd be there in a heartbeat.

Cazzy

Do the Fighters/Mages Guild have families? I thought everyone that helped to defeat MB was single and ready to mingle

Edit: This is a legit question

UrQuan

Thallia wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

Thallia wrote: »

But you are missing one point. There were many MAge guild and Fighters guild soldiers and mages. They will tell their family back home and they will tell their friends etc. about how they defeated Molag bal from a massive plot to nearly destroy the world.

Actually, I'm not missing that:

Then how can you just ignore the fact that information passes on, especially big information! Journalists and Newswriters would get hold of such information and put their information on those big Wooden boards in the main city Square.

Go back and re-read what I wrote. You'll see that it's all explained there. Also, if you think knowledge like this would never get lost in a period of hundreds of years of chaos a thousand years ago, then you clearly never studied history. It takes a lot less disorder than that for massive historical events to be forgotten and only be rediscovered centuries later after extensive research (which even then virtually never gives us a definitive view of what happened). Anyone who has studied history at a college/university level will tell you that.

Merry

Over all I prefer a game with a great story (obvious games to name a few: ESO, WoW, SWTOR, LOTRO) however it doesnt bother me if they stray, add to, alter, or whatever it to make the game more fun. For example flying mounts. I dont care if they are lore friendly or not....they are fun.

M

BabeestorGor

Lores more important than someone getting a flying dragon.
ZOS and Bethesda make games and have always been prepared to change, interpret or invent lore where they felt it was right for the game but that doesn't mean anything goes. To a large part of the games audience the setting and lore is a big part of the games appeal. We still want a good game but one that is identifibly Elder Scrolls and not just a mishmash of whatever someone thought was a good idea at the time.

JD2013

As long as they stick to the big things that are set - for example the Dwemer being gone, I can't see a massive problem. They can certainly add to lore like with the planemeld and

the incoming war with the Daedric Princes

that is fine that they add things like that. As long as it fits in the pre-existing world it's fine, as they deliberately set it in this era because there was so little recorded history.

robkrush

Anhedonie

ESO already *** the lore to the full extent, so It can't be worse anyway.
Wait, *** is also considered bad word? Oh lol.

Thevampirenight

Well, for example in this setting nothing truly set with whats said in the books, and some people take whats set in books made of fiction within elderscrolls as fact, well this is like the sun orbiting the earth yet the opposite is true the earth orbits the sun one man was burned alive for saying the sun did not orbit the earth back hundreds of years back and one was put under house arrest and a book published was banned in many places til they found out both men where right on this.

This is what it is with lot of the elderscrolls lore contradictory not proven fact wise in games, immortal blood for example is fiction to make the cyridill vampires look good. This is what makes elderscrolls so interesting to most. Some say that undead werewolves are impossible and they explain it in some complecated ways with no conjecture. now undead animals and creatures do exist, thus techically undead were creatures can exists as well. Adding new lore is what makes these games good, and nothing is 100% because its all a guess, unless they go and prove it within the game universe.

Recorded history can be considered fact, or did happen because the empire did keep extensive records of it so, that would be lore right there, and it did happen snowelves going almost extinct did happen, those types of events happened, but with the empires records keeping some of it could be made up to cover up things they did not want known, most likely much of what happened in elder scrolls online was covered up or forgotten about, by the new empire or Talos. Some might have records of what happened in this not very well known time period the game is set in but most might be destroyed or lost because of the chaos that did not stop til Talos came.

Acrolas

Even after The Force Awakens made a billion at the box office, there are still people who still consider the Expanded Universe books for that timeline as their lore. Even though Disney has discarded it.

Just showing that no matter how commercially successful a change is, some people will refuse that change for personal reasons and no amount of arguing will ever change it.

So even if TES I-V are discarded in favor of a new and modernized direction, there will still be people who see I-V as their lore. On one hand, that's okay. You can't change how people feel. But as the owner of an intellectual property, you are not legally obligated to please everyone. Fans come and go all the time and you can't be second-guessing yourself every hour of every day. Otherwise you get stuck with bland, trying-to-please-everyone product that is irrelevant to any narrative.

You're already ganked as a storyteller when you do a prequel anything. I think that's the bigger issue than lore itself.