Why Official Art Shows Cloaks?

Vaerth

I have seen several pieces of ESO art (even the Elsweyr one on main page of ESO site) that makes no sense. There are no cloaks in this game, so why do they advertise it as so? I do not care if we have or do not have cloaks, I am not one to be concerned with it. However, I have seen requests for it for a long while on the forums, which I check out even when not playing the game here and there. I see a character with a cloak on a few official artwork, and even in game Nord zone loading screen art some have cloaks. Why? I mean, why would ZoS show that in a game that does not have it? I am simply curious, as it seems really odd to me the way the show the game off in art but what we really have is nothing like it?

adriant1978

Artwork and cinematics not matching in-game experience? I'm sure this has never happened before ever.

I agree though; wish we had cloaks.

Ermiq

1. Advertisement and marketing purposes. The same as that almost naked woman on the official TES: Arena cover. Cloaks look cool in videogames, e.g., for me a significant part of Destiny's charm is made by its cloaks, and Warframe's, etc.

2. ZOS artists (along with trailer's makers) have their own vision of the game's world, but sadly it does happen in gamedev that actual game look is a bit different than artworks due to either some technical issues or lack of communication between artists and 3d-artists and programmers.
Regarding cloaks in ESO, it's quite likely the technical issues. Implementing the cloaks requires some work to add new gear slot, to make them not clipping with weapons, to animate them or even make them use physics (while trying to avoid clipping, which is quite complicated). Dev team leaders could just think it doesn't worth the efforts required.
By the way, I always recall the Tribunal Temple in Mournhold when I think of ESO artworks. The Temple at the loading screen artwork looks nothing like the actual in-game Temple. And in this case, the reason is definitely the lack of communication between artists and 3d-model artists during the Deshaan zone developement. I wish they will make new Temple assets someday so it will be similar to the artwork.

Ogou

We used to have cloaks during the beta so that might be why some of the earlier load screens and art have them. No idea why it's in the new art though.