Early Word On The Elder Scrolls Online Suggests Exciting Possibilities

Steve Anderson : End Game
Steve Anderson
The Video Store Guy
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Early Word On The Elder Scrolls Online Suggests Exciting Possibilities

Recently, some early reports started slipping out about The Elder Scrolls Online, the first MMO from Zenimax using the Elder Scrolls world as its backdrop. What's coming out around this title certainly bodes well for players, but the universal question is, just how well is it likely to do?

We begin with something of a universal truth: World of Warcraft and its various expansion packs pretty much own MMO. While we slip away every so often to try a little slice of new and different--The Secret World, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Eve Online, and so on--most gamers out there come back to World of Warcraft. It's where their friends are, it's the game they know and enjoy and have come to have the most fun playing.

But The Elder Scrolls Online has a little something extra going for it. It's not that the game has a particularly excited fanbase that will look forward to such a game. It does, of course--I happen to be a pretty big Elder Scrolls fan myself--but so too did Star Wars: The Old Republic. Here, I'm thinking of the look of the game. Looking at The Elder Scrolls Online and comparing it to World of Warcraft is like looking at an Xbox launch title and comparing it against an Xbox 360 launch title. There's barely a comparison.

Looks, however, only go so far. Gameplay has something to say too, and from the sounds of things, The Elder Scrolls Online will have plenty of options to pursue. That's the kind of thing that goes a long way. In fact, in much the same way that Elder Scrolls games have in the past--as well as those newer entries into the Fallout vein--there will be a main quest to pursue, but there will also be side quests to launch into from the introductory zones. In World of Warcraft style, these seem to revolve going places and killing things, but then that's not too far from what the Elder Scrolls would do. So seeing it happen here actually fits in reasonably well. But it's not all fetch quests, either; some are multi-part quests in which one quest kicks off three smaller quests that should be finished to get the parts for the larger quest. Depending on how you treat these parts, your next quest may be harder, or easier, than normal based on what all you did to assemble the parts.

That sounds like standard Elder Scrolls, and in a big world like Tamriel, there's plenty of potential for more.action to come. I'm more a console gamer than a PC gamer, but I have to admit I've had more of an interest in some PC games of late. It's exciting to think about the possibilities to come, and the growing field will have to be watched.
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