Out of Pod Experience

I think you misunderstood me. In most MMOs your spec will be specialized for a certain role and you often need to invest all your "skillpoints" into it in order for it to work. In ESO you will end up with spare points if you just specliazes. So it will encourage you to branch out and get skills for other roles. Likewise in eve there is a limit on how much you can improve on 1 type of ship.

So what both games have in common is the fact that you can spend your skillpoints and get good at multiple things rather than having to focus on 1. However you will still be limited to do 1 (or a few) things at a time, as you in ESO will be limited to 2 weapon sets (thus skills for other weapons will not be used) and you will have limited amount of active abilites on your skillbar. Likewise in EVE, you can have 10 million worth of skillpoints in battleships, but if you fly a cruiser they do not matter.

This creates flexible charactors that you as a player can mold for the roles you need to perform. In ESO you switch weapons and active abilities and in EVE you swtich ship and fitting. That way you can adjust for what you need without having to respec / reroll.

TESO just seems like it'll be the first game in the series that I'll take a pass on. It's a shame too because once this inevitably flops after a couple of months or so we might just never see another proper single-player TES game.

But the downfall could still overflow to the traditional single player series and kill the 'vibe' so to speak enough to destroy the series. Unlikely, but valid worry non the less.

It's funny that EVERY single forum I've been on the overall sentiment of ESO is "meh." The thing that stands out the most, not a single beta for the game has come out to defend it and say it's worth the money.

imo, all they had to do, was to release the next game in the series with added
co-op mode for up to 8 players.

Instead of going all out developing a brand new mmo.

For me, this is the most important point. I'll pass... I'll definitely pay one, I can be coaxed into two for a VERY good game, but three is way too greedy. Will expansions have to be paid for as well?

Is this really surprising? The head of Zenimax Online Studios is Matt Firor, producer of most of Mythic's titles including Dark Age of Camelot.

It was almost impossible for ESO to not become DAoC2.

Overall, I am very disappointed by ESO. I would have no problem throwing down $100 for the imperial edition pre-order and paying a monthly sub. If the game was worth it. While I have not been a big follower of the series, I have played a couple of the games, and I loved every aspect, and my biggest "complaint" was always "I wish my brother and I could play this together!" Because of that, I have been looking forward to ESO for a long time (When Ultima Online came out in 1997, I thought that ESO would be the next big online game. Daggerfall was so amazing the year before, and with the graphics and everything that UO had, man, ESO was going to be amazing! The next ES game I played was Morrowind, which was also incredible, but smaller and disappointing in the fact it was single-player.)

The things I want to see in an ESO release:

SIZE - Maybe not Daggerfall, but if they could do it I would throw my money at them like a crazy man.

BUILDING - I want to build houses, castles, TOWNS! UO had most of this 15+ years ago, but you still never see it in today's games. I want the ability to found towns if people are interested in settling there. Have some mechanism where with enough money or enough non-NPCs,you actually have a town where NPCs can start to live as well.

SHOPS - Allow players to buy shop stalls in major cities. They can pay a monthly fee (in game currency) for the stall and have it stocked with basic stuff for whatever type of shop it is (You can pay to have more types of stuff, and also pay to have more valuable stuff to a certain level. They can also list items they have picked up themselves). To have a shop, you need to pay for an NPC shopkeeper.

NPC HELPERS - Speaking of NPC shopkeeper, they are "human" and so can only work 8 hours a day. If you want your shop to have better hours, you can hire additional shopkeepers to work the other shifts. Each town has a limited NPC pool, although the pool can expand, especially as towns reach certain size milestones, but NPCs are at a premium, and their contracts are for limited times, so their cost might go up as the demand increases and supply of NPCs goes down. Other than shopkeepers, I like the idea of being able to staff/arm your own guards. If you allow me to reference WoW, there were many times one faction would raid towns of another faction. There were normal NPC guards, varying by the town in how powerful they were. I would like to see additional guards being hired to protect your own assets, with the ability to upgrade them and provide equipment for them. For instance with WoW, a shop with multiple guards carrying around the Warglaives of Azzinoth, if the owner was a big enough badass... Possible other NPCs would be resource gatherers (abusable if not extremely well thought out) and a "Squire"/sidekick similar to your mercenaries the Diablo world.

WORLD IMPACT - If you walk through a forest enough along the same route, a path will eventually form. If you mine an area, you create a quarry or mine shafts. If you cut enough timber, you can clear a forest. Trees eventually can grow back, but only if they are allowed to. Also, in terms of quests and stuff, I would like to see less of the weekly raid setup, and more of the "once someone kills this dragon it is dead, although another dragon my appear somewhere else soon." Most people don't like having to inform Mankirk his wife is dead, for the 20 millionth time. Anytime a major event happens, have the histories updated so you can go to a library, check out the history and find out that Reiisha and Slade Trillgon killed Amaxsthia the Crimson Dragon on March 17th, 2014 or whatever. Then you can check the lists and find out that Slade is the most prolific dragonslayer in Tamriel, having slain 16 dragons. They don't just respawn, you have to find them. When a dragon appears, maybe rumors start in the nearby areas. They longer a dragon is alive, the farther the rumors travel. A player can follow a string of rumors, getting more and more accurate information (although with rumors, maybe the information leads to a dead end, and you have to back track to find someone with more accurate information...) eventually you can find the dragon and slay it.

NO CLASSES - I enjoy classless RPGs where I can do anything I want. I have a very detailed skill system written down, but am saving it incase I ever get a dev team to listen to me. I can promise it is more groundbreaking and amazing than EVE's system, and makes a lot of sense, while allowing people multiple ways to work up skills.

PACK ANIMALS - I want to have a couple pack horses follow me around so I can carry stuff. Pack horses are susceptible to predators if you don't protect them, and if you don't tie them up they can wander. Finding a pack horse wandering around with 800 pounds of gold coins would make anyone's day brighter, too.


Anyway, those are a few thoughts on my ideal ESO (or even a non-mainstream title) and I would shower the devs of such a game with praise and hard earned money. At the moment, I am going to give ESO a try with it coming out of beta, but whenever the new UO game comes out, it might be better...

What did TSW get right? As someone who waited for it for years and then got disappointed I'm interested in your view.

It really is this simple. Hell I would be extremely happy with just a two player option. This is all I really ever wanted with the Elder Scrolls games.