Molag-Bal
Latest
Tamriel Infinium: A hitchhiker's guide to The Elder Scrolls Online
I believe we can all agree that The Elder Scrolls Online is not a sandbox in the MMORPG sense. However, the game starts to branch out as your level increases. Although it will never be an MMO sandbox, it does start to resemble the single-player sandbox, except there are tons of other people playing at the same time. Just like those single-player sandboxes, ESO allows us to do pretty much whatever we want when we want to. It's an explorer's dream, if you ask me. Of course, we might be able to find some of those explorable items on the in-game map, but many of them remain hidden until we just land on them. Today, I'd like to talk about a few of the items that I think every ESO explorer should be aware of.
Six things you will and will not find in The Elder Scrolls Online
The Elder Scrolls series launched in 1994 with Arena. The game was sold on floppy disks, for goodness' sake. It's been around for a long time. With that extended life comes convoluted and complicated lore. Even after I'd heard the time period for The Elder Scrolls Online, I had to research to find out whether certain pieces of lore would actually appear in the game. Of course, I'm not going to be able to tell you everything in this one article, but before ESO launches, I can hit some of the highlights.
Tamriel Infinium: The Elder Scrolls Online's stress test, Daedra, and Coldharbour
Beginning this article, I'm giving a huge shout-out to everyone who read the last two Tamriel Infiniums. I know not everyone agreed with my assessment of The Elder Scrolls Online's payment model, and I appreciate that immensely. If I didn't have respectful discord and constructive disagreement, my articles -- and my writing of said articles -- would be far less interesting, and I thank all my readers who commented whether in agreement or disagreement with what I said. You help me propel and perpetuate the topics that I discuss in this column. So keep up the good work in the comments, and I will do my best to keep writing columns that interest you. This, of course, leads me to today's article. Several of you mentioned that you will have to wait to see what the game is like before making a comment on the payment model. And some of you (and many other ESO fans on Twitter) announced how excited they were to receive a beta test invite. First, congratulations! Second, read the rest of this column; I have some words for you regarding your experience in the stress test starting in just a couple of hours.
The Elder Scrolls Online embraces solo story, traditional MMO format
Ever since Game Director Matt Firor announced that Elder Scrolls Online would have a 100% soloable main story, we've been wondering just how much this will impact the game's appeal and approach. Firor spoke with PC Gamer to elaborate on TESO's format, saying that it was essential to make the story solo in order to establish the player as a hero. While portions of TESO's endgame and its PvP experience require grouping, Firor said that the core of the game will be played alone: "The way we do that in Elder Scrolls Online is there are parts of the game that you just do solo and you just do in a story instance. So the main backbone story of the game, which is your interaction with Molag Bal, one of the Daedric princes, you're the hero in that story, so you experience that only yourself." Firor also addressed the team's decision to eschew the skill-based system seen in newer Bethesda titles in favor of returning to systems seen in earlier Elder Scrolls games. "What we had to do to make it an MMO is to kind of evolve over to the multiplayer side and there are some things that come with that," he admitted. "Since we have a PVP component to our game, it's very difficult to make a skill-based game like in Skyrim."
