so we are gonna be Microsoft?

barney2525

Found this interesting

Sangwyne

Microsoft has bought out Bethesda and Zenimax for quite a sum, yes. Don't worry, they aren't going to let this franchise go anywhere anytime soon, and to be entirely honest I have slightly more faith in Microsoft as a parent company than some of these other game publishers (looking at you, EA and Activision). Hopefully, they'll be able to port the game over to their Azure servers; from what I understand, Azure would be more than capable of handling the demand imposed on the game's servers by Cyrodiil, and then some.

barney2525

hmmm.

can't add the link and can't edit the previous one

Aaaaanyway - March 5th, SEC clears the way for Mircrosoft to buy Zenimax Media

Sangwyne

barney2525 wrote: »

hmmm.

can't add the link and can't edit the previous one

Aaaaanyway - March 5th, SEC clears the way for Mircrosoft to buy Zenimax Media

The Edit gear wheel is to the right of the title at the top of the page for the post itself, and at the top right of each of your comments, to the left of the # and above the timestamp.

Crazyprophet

Microsoft made Age of Empires - the first series of games I ever played, and a truly legendary series imo. They've made a great many cool and wonderful things.

I'm actually not against Microsoft acquiring Bethesda. Thank god we weren't acquired by Blizzard

kargen27

I still think Microsoft is interested in projects being developed and/or future projects. I doubt they are going to get hands on with ESO.

StormWylf

Microsoft? What Microsoft? Nothing to see here just move along quietly please.

menathradiel

I, for one, welcome our new Microsoft overlords

virtus753

Sangwyne wrote: »

Hopefully, they'll be able to port the game over to their Azure servers; from what I understand, Azure would be more than capable of handling the demand imposed on the game's servers by Cyrodiil, and then some.

ZOS has already announced they're replacing their servers this year. They didn't specify anything about Azure, but they did say that they expect no performance increase as a result.

Mindcr0w

kargen27 wrote: »

I still think Microsoft is interested in projects being developed and/or future projects. I doubt they are going to get hands on with ESO.

While they are certainly going to milk all of Bethesda's ip's for every cent they can with future projects, to think that the acquisition of one of the biggest MMO's of all time as part of the deal is something they don't also plan to milk is, imo, extremely myopic.

Cryptor

This is the best thing that could have happened to ESO.

barney2525

Sangwyne wrote: »

barney2525 wrote: »

hmmm.

can't add the link and can't edit the previous one

Aaaaanyway - March 5th, SEC clears the way for Mircrosoft to buy Zenimax Media

The Edit gear wheel is to the right of the title at the top of the page for the post itself, and at the top right of each of your comments, to the left of the # and above the timestamp.

yeah, I know. have edited lots of my posts in the past. This time it did literally nothing.

weird

TwinLamps

maybe microsoft pulls the plug

Scardan

virtus753 wrote: »

Sangwyne wrote: »

Hopefully, they'll be able to port the game over to their Azure servers; from what I understand, Azure would be more than capable of handling the demand imposed on the game's servers by Cyrodiil, and then some.

ZOS has already announced they're replacing their servers this year. They didn't specify anything about Azure, but they did say that they expect no performance increase as a result.

Xd

Mythreindeer

Mindcr0w wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

I still think Microsoft is interested in projects being developed and/or future projects. I doubt they are going to get hands on with ESO.

While they are certainly going to milk all of Bethesda's ip's for every cent they can with future projects, to think that the acquisition of one of the biggest MMO's of all time as part of the deal is something they don't also plan to milk is, imo, extremely myopic.

Of course they’ll milk it financially it was big money to acquire. That doesn’t mean they’ll turn it into slot machine and even if they start with server performance only it’ll make a really good game an exceptional game.

Anyone playing other games can probably testify how bad gaming and companies have gotten over the past few years. LoTRO has been bought 3 times in the past 4 years and each time became tragically worse to the point of devs straight up lying on the forums and they aren’t even trying to hide the pay tactics to avoid a massive in-game grind.

Glad to be here and cautiously optimistic about the future.

etchedpixels

kargen27 wrote: »

I still think Microsoft is interested in projects being developed and/or future projects. I doubt they are going to get hands on with ESO.

Even in a fairly direct takeover you don't generally meddle for the first 12 months unless you are buying something that's in crisis. You watch for a year making notes as you go and then slowly begin introducing the necessary changes to unfiy it - boring stuff like common email systems, legal compliance, and a security audit.

I'm not expecting anything noticeable from the outside to happen for at least a year beyond the server farm migrating to tme Microsoft cloud. In some ways I wish more would happen like better ticket handling, compliance with microsoft policy on loot boxes etc.

Starlight_Whisper

Sangwyne wrote: »

barney2525 wrote: »

hmmm.

can't add the link and can't edit the previous one

Aaaaanyway - March 5th, SEC clears the way for Mircrosoft to buy Zenimax Media

The Edit gear wheel is to the right of the title at the top of the page for the post itself, and at the top right of each of your comments, to the left of the # and above the timestamp.

It doesn't show unless you refresh sometimes

Alinhbo_Tyaka

I think the purchase by MS could be good for the game. It has the potential for MS to move software engineers with a better understanding of Windows/XBox programming into ESO such that we finally have a chance to see real performance improvements. Having worked with Microsoft on projects before I retired I believe over time they will also enforce a more rigorous testing and development environment.

With the purchase I expect Microsoft will require ESO to be ported to their cloud gaming platform. What this means for Stadia I don't know but it wouldn't surprise me if ESO is required to leave the platform in order to drive sales to the Microsoft service. I don't expect to see any changes to support for Sony Playstations for ESO though I would not be surprised that in the future Microsoft will not allow any new Playstation exclusive games.

Jusey1

Sangwyne wrote: »

I have slightly more faith in Microsoft as a parent company than some of these other game publishers (looking at you, EA and Activision).

Well, Microsoft has an anti-gambling box ordeal for any games that they own... So Crown Crates in ESO are gonna get massively nerfed or just gutted once the deal gets finalized because they go against Microsoft's terms of what should be acceptable...

Which is better than EA and Activision which fully embrace that disgusting nasty crap.

CSose

barney2525 wrote: »

hmmm.

can't add the link and can't edit the previous one

Aaaaanyway - March 5th, SEC clears the way for Mircrosoft to buy Zenimax Media

Interesting is right. The same day they decided to give up on PvP support all together. Ya, it's probably just a coincidence.

Starlock

Sangwyne wrote: »

Microsoft has bought out Bethesda and Zenimax for quite a sum, yes. Don't worry, they aren't going to let this franchise go anywhere anytime soon, and to be entirely honest I have slightly more faith in Microsoft as a parent company than some of these other game publishers (looking at you, EA and Activision).

I generally do as well, but then I have to take a look at the fact that Microsoft signed off on an agreement with EA to get most of their games on Games Pass. This to me signals tacit acceptance of EA-style monetization, including putting gambling in games marketed to children (aka, the EA sports titles). It seems that Microsoft is more interested in simply having a broad portfolio and that this unfortunately includes games with unethical monetization strategies.

ghost_bg_ESO

There is link (report) to it still not listed decision: https://www.windowscentral.com/european-commission-rule-microsoft-acquiring-zenimax-march-5
Approved in US: https://screenrant.com/microsoft-bethesda-zenimax-buyout-approved/
About "Vault" https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-launching-vault-subsidiary-xbox-bethesda-deal-advances

CMDR_Un1k0rn

virtus753 wrote: »

Sangwyne wrote: »

Hopefully, they'll be able to port the game over to their Azure servers; from what I understand, Azure would be more than capable of handling the demand imposed on the game's servers by Cyrodiil, and then some.

ZOS has already announced they're replacing their servers this year. They didn't specify anything about Azure, but they did say that they expect no performance increase as a result.

You understand that the main reason this was said, in those words, was so that there is no "promise" of better performance?

Basically, it's so us customers have no grounds to complain when or if no performance increase arrives.

It may indeed be wholly accurate but I think it's ridiculous to take it as 100% "this is what will happen" when anyone who takes two minutes to consider the position of responsibility that an MMO dev is in, and the implications a bad word choice has.

Basically, that was said to protect ZOS, not to please fans when they confirmed a server upgrade/replacement was incoming.

Prof_Bawbag

Dunno, i'll wait and see. Microsoft is a mixed bag. Never played it, but Minecraft seems to still be going strong and still looks like the Minecraft people got before MS hopped onboard. Obsidian seem to be thriving too.

Then there's Rare. Such a shame to see what has become of the company. But hey, not really sure what went on there. The fact remains, though, it's no longer the Rare that MS initially purchased.

There's many more examples, but listing them all gets old fast and folk get the point.

kargen27

Mindcr0w wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

I still think Microsoft is interested in projects being developed and/or future projects. I doubt they are going to get hands on with ESO.

While they are certainly going to milk all of Bethesda's ip's for every cent they can with future projects, to think that the acquisition of one of the biggest MMO's of all time as part of the deal is something they don't also plan to milk is, imo, extremely myopic.

None of that changes what I said. ESO is one of the biggest for a reason. No need to start stirring things up now. The path is pretty much set.

virtus753

Jusey1 wrote: »

Sangwyne wrote: »

I have slightly more faith in Microsoft as a parent company than some of these other game publishers (looking at you, EA and Activision).

Well, Microsoft has an anti-gambling box ordeal for any games that they own... So Crown Crates in ESO are gonna get massively nerfed or just gutted once the deal gets finalized because they go against Microsoft's terms of what should be acceptable...

Which is better than EA and Activision which fully embrace that disgusting nasty crap.

No, Microsoft has a policy on lootboxes for games developed by their own Xbox Game Studios. ESO is not developed by Xbox Studios, and it won’t be moved to those studios. If Microsoft wants to apply their policy to ESO now, of course they’re free to do so. But their policies don’t automatically cover it:

https://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/for-everyone/responsible-gaming/loot-boxes

zaria

Sangwyne wrote: »

Microsoft has bought out Bethesda and Zenimax for quite a sum, yes. Don't worry, they aren't going to let this franchise go anywhere anytime soon, and to be entirely honest I have slightly more faith in Microsoft as a parent company than some of these other game publishers (looking at you, EA and Activision). Hopefully, they'll be able to port the game over to their Azure servers; from what I understand, Azure would be more than capable of handling the demand imposed on the game's servers by Cyrodiil, and then some.

Depend a lot on the architecture used to run the servers, decent chance its Linux who don't benefit of Azure over Amazon as I know and Amazon let you run some serious servers as in +100 cores.

But I agree Microsoft is one of the better here as they plan long term most of the time.

shimm

We?

Elsonso

Sangwyne wrote: »

Hopefully, they'll be able to port the game over to their Azure servers; from what I understand, Azure would be more than capable of handling the demand imposed on the game's servers by Cyrodiil, and then some.

I doubt this will happen. Azure is a generic cloud platform. ESO is running on dedicated on-premises hardware built specifically to run this game.

Danikat

One thing to bear in mind is Microsoft isn't buying ESO or even Zenimax Online, they're buying Zenimax Media, the parent company to not just ZOS and Bethesda but id Software, Arkane Studios and a bunch of others, so ESO is just one part of what they're getting.

That means they may well have no plans specific to this game and as long as it's making money ZOS might just be told to carry on as usual, at least for a few years.

I'm sure the Elder Scrolls IP is one of the things they're interested in, but even then their focus might be more on the upcoming TES 6 and future titles in the series than any of the existing games.

Psiion

Greetings,

After removing a few posts, we would like to remind everyone that Bashing is non-constructive and against the Forum's Community Rules as stated below:

Bashing and Slanderous Comments: We do not permit the bashing of individuals (including ZeniMax employees), groups, or other companies on our forums. We believe that doing so is neither constructive nor in spirit of our game and community.