Morrowind
Latest
The Elder Scrolls Online explores the creation of its music
Music plays a major role in setting the mood of any game. Sure, it might not be what makes or breaks The Elder Scrolls Online, but it would be difficult to get into the feel of epic adventure if the game's soundtrack were played entirely on harmonicas and vuvuzuelas. The latest development blog on the official site explains how the game's music was developed, how it was recorded, and what you can expect from the experience. Brad Derrick and Rik Schaffer handled the composition of the in-game score, experimenting with a variety of different methods for delivering the songs. At one point the game featured a system that changed the soundtrack measure by measure based on context cues, but that proved unworkable in the long run; instead, the music shifts to a variety of pieces depending on gameplay, weather, and the like, with unifying themes in each environment. Click on past the break for a sample of the orchestral recording, as well as one of the bardic songs performed by the singer Malukah.
Elder Scrolls Online inviting 'millions' for stress test while fretting over sub model
This looks to be a big weekend for The Elder Scrolls Online's beta program, as ZeniMax is "inviting millions" for a scale test. ESO invitees will also receive an extra code for a friend and an exclusive monkey vanity pet for launch. The studio noted that the NDA will not be in effect for this weekend's test, meaning that any public discussion, screenshots, or videos are fair game. In a conversation with CVG, Bethesda VP of PR Pete Hines said that there is some anxiety in the company over the subscription model not taking hold for ESO but hopes that players will find the value of the game worth the monthly payment. "We feel like this approach is going to give people who want to play the best value, and reason to look forward to the next new thing that's coming out," Hines explained. "The Elder Scrolls is our crown jewel and it's the series that made everything we do possible, so it's a big triple-A title that demands huge, ongoing triple-A support."
Elder Scrolls Online will give option to bypass starter island
The Elder Scrolls Online's beginning experience will become optional, as ZeniMax is making a significant change to allow players to skip over it entirely. The latest build on the public test server now gives players the option to bypass the starter islands and the connected tutorial. They can do this by talking to an NPC, after which their character will be taken to a central city. The starter zones have been subject of criticism by some press and players for being too slow and plodding. According to the patch notes, players who choose to skip it can go back and experience the starter island at their leisure.
The Elder Scroll Online showcases crafting in new blacksmithing video
Fans wanting to get a taste of crafting in The Elder Scrolls Online can watch a new dev play session video that highlights blacksmithing while describing crafting as a whole. In ESO, crafters will control not only the the type of materials an item is made out of and its level but its innate properties and look as well. Regardless of profession, all players can pick up any kind of resource in the world; however, only crafters who spend points in the skill Keen Eye will see the materials highlighted. Additionally, raw materials can be salvaged from loot and other items. Crafting is also tied into exploration in more ways than just gathering. Instead of having to travel to cities in order to create goods, crafters have specific locales throughout the world that allow them to make special set items with bonuses unique to each locale. And in order to put specific traits on an item, a crafter must have already learned said trait by studying (read: destroying) other items with it. Check out all the details in the video below.
Leaderboard: What's your preferred Elder Scrolls Online faction?
ZeniMax partially dropped the NDA for Elder Scrolls Online, and while we can't really talk about stuff past level 15, we can talk about factions. There are three of them: The Ebonheart Pact, the Aldmeri Dominion, and the Daggerfall Covenant. Nords, Dunmer, and Argonian players will belong to Ebonheart. Altmer, Bosmer, and Khajiit fall under the Aldmeri banner, while Bretons, Redguards, and Orcs will be sporting Daggerfall colors. So, how about it, Leaderboard readers? Which Elder Scrolls Online faction will you be playing? Ever wish that you could put to rest a long-standing MMO debate once and for all? Then welcome to the battle royal of Massively's Leaderboard, where two sides enter the pit o' judgment -- and only one leaves. Vote to make your opinion known, and see whether your choice tops the Leaderboard!
Elder Scrolls Online answers more pre-order and Imperial Edition questions
Those of you who hang on every word flowing from the Elder Scrolls Online developers will be happy to know there's a new Ask Us Anything on the official ESO website. What does it address this round? Pre-orders and CE edition queries! By default, players will have eight characters with which to explore every facet of the game. But if you want to play with a friend through his faction's zones, you will also need to pre-order, even though you want to play a Khajiit and he's a Nord. In order for both of you to gain the bonus from the rings of Mara, which link you and a friend in the eternal bonds of XP gain, only one player must own the Imperial Edition. And lastly, all the pre-order and Imperial Edition bonuses will be available on launch day, April 4th, but the ability to play any race in any faction will be available as soon as early access starts. Don't forget to redeem those three- and five-day pre-order codes from the retailers! (If you ordered directly from the official website, you don't need to do anything else.)
The Soapbox: My hypersexualization conundrum
Every now and then here at Massively, we receive an email that isn't super nice. I know this may come as a shock to many of you -- the internet is, after all, a place of tolerance and constructive debate -- but sometimes the Massively inbox is no place any sane person would want to be. One reader recently took the opportunity to offer some choice thoughts on Massively staffers. And amidst the jumble of insults and generalizations, the reader levied the ever-powerful "hypocrisy" charge at us for claiming to care about hypersexualized designs of female characters in MMOs while simultaneously playing as those very hypersexualized characters. How could we possibly purport to care about the presentation of women in games if we're all running around in chainmail bikinis? Generally speaking, I prefer to not have my habits and behavior challenged via ad hominem attacks and false comparisons. But I have to admit that this one particular charge piqued my curiosity. Why is it that the majority of my characters are female? Am I, as a person who looks down on hypersexualized designs in games, committing an act of hypocrisy every time I create a female character? Let's sort it out. And before we begin, remember that the Soapbox, like most of our editorials, is just one person's opinion and doesn't represent the thoughts of Massively as a whole.
Elder Scrolls Online lifts its NDA for everyone
The press had its turn to spout off about The Elder Scrolls Online these last couple of weeks, but now it's your turn: ZeniMax has lifted the NDA for the ESO beta. Now you don't have to just take our word about state of the game; you can hear the opinions of our commenters and the other thousands of players who have been playing the highly anticipated MMO during the past few beta weekends. Unfortunately, there isn't a beta event this weekend for fresh impressions. However, if you have played ESO in a former beta, we want your thoughts. Was the game everything you want an Elder Scrolls MMORPG to be? Was it absolutely nothing special? Or was there still merit to the game once you've passed level 10? Maybe PvP turned your opinion of the game around, or maybe it didn't. Let's hear it!
The Elder Scrolls Online: Fitting into the genre or forging its own?
It's been about nine months since I first got my hands on The Elder Scrolls Online. Since then, like many of you, I've been trapped on the sidelines, watching and waiting for my turn to jump into the game. This past weekend, I got my chance, but I've found my experience to be distressingly similar to those described by other journalists. Like Massively's Eliot before me, my early foundation was in console gaming, but my reason for avoiding The Elder Scrolls series was very different from his: The Elder Scrolls has always been a single-player series, and after having my world opened by MMOs, I found that going back to single-player games has become difficult. I need people! I need multiplayer options! I need MMOs. Enter The Elder Scrolls Online and my excitement for it. I knew a lot of the series' famed freeform gameplay would be cut back in exchange for letting me play alongside my friends, but that was something that I, as a series newbie, was willing to sacrifice. But while my overall impression of the game was positive, I still have this lurking sensation that something important was missing.
Elder Scrolls Online Beta: Battling it out in Cyrodiil
Here's what most players know about Elder Scrolls Online's PvP setup, straight from the mouths of the developers: When the vicious Daedric Prince Molag Bal attacks the Imperial City, he generates a huge power vacuum. Each faction vies for a piece of the province of Cyrodiil, but only the strongest faction will ultimately lay claim to the Imperial throne. Massively's resident ESO columnist, Larry Everett, visited the Tamrielian answer to realm-vs.-realm this past weekend and is finally allowed to discuss it. Players have suggested that it will resemble Guild Wars 2 or Warhammer Online open-world PvP. Are they right? In this 10-minute video, Larry explores the details of his experience from the Ebonheart Pact side of the battle.
The Elder Scrolls Online offers a look at making dark anchors
Look, we realize that this might be a minor spoiler for the story of The Elder Scrolls Online, but those huge portals of darkness tearing open the sky and shooting anchors into the ground? Those are not good news. The Dark Anchors are visible manifestations of Molag Bal's power, an attempt to pull Tamriel into his realm of Coldharbour, and the latest development diary explains exactly how these pulling mechanisms were conceived and designed. Originally, anchors were smaller in scope, but the team wasn't happy with the idea that these were local things. As a result, steps were taken to ensure that Dark Anchors were visible from far away and had wide-ranging effects, giving players a solid indication that something Very Bad was taking place. If you want to gaze deeper into designing the yawning maw of darkness, take a look at the full development blog for more details on how the anchors took shape.
The Elder Scrolls Online has been given (very) unofficial Oculus Rift support
If you're looking forward to playing The Elder Scrolls Online but want to really feel that you're in the game, your options are a bit limited. Odds are you don't want someone standing by to hack at your torso with an edged weapon during on-screen combat, for instance. But if you've got an Oculus Rift and want the full VR experience, that might be a bit more doable after all; a fan has hammered together unofficial support for the headset. The video contained past the break shows about five minutes of footage -- nothing novel, but more than enough to get a sense of the game running on the Rift's paired screens. The fan in question is aware that this is breaking the terms of his testing agreement; however, he hopes that this will convince ZeniMax Online to add in native Oculus support before the game goes live. If you want a peek at what it looks like, feel free to check out the video past the break.
Previewing The Elder Scrolls Online: Massively goes to Tamriel
Have you heard that rumbling in the air over the last few months? That was the sound of millions of gamers grinding their teeth over The Elder Scrolls Online's unwavering NDA, a sound that grew ever louder as the game announced controversial preorder bonuses last month and passed the two-months-from-launch mark earlier this week. Fortunately for your dental health, that NDA is at least partly coming down today. The gaming press was invited to play a limited portion of the game last weekend, and though our readers are still under NDA, we're finally not, so at last we can pass along our experiences! Today, we present to you our impressions of last weekend's preview event and the beta so far. We've got videos on character creation, thoughts on the starting zones and storytelling, guides to skill progression and racial perks, and an overview of the state of the game from an MMO player who isn't already a nut for the series. Enjoy! The Elder Scrolls Online beta is absolutely nothing special Eliot posts his general impressions of ESO as an MMORPG fan with no Elder Scrolls baggage. A guide to character creation in The Elder Scrolls Online Larry tackles ESO's robust character creation with an in-depth video. Butt sliders included. A guide to skill progression in The Elder Scrolls Online Matt investigates ESO's skills and character progression in the noble pursuit of battlemagery. What do The Elder Scrolls Online's racial abilities mean for endgame? Larry explores just how annoyed we should be about the Imperial Edition's perks. Starting out in The Elder Scrolls Online: Coldharbour and Stros M'Kai Matthew treks through the tutorial and Daggerfall Covenant zones. Starting out in The Elder Scrolls Online: Bleakrock Isle and Khenarthi's Roost Matt scopes out the early areas of ESO's Ebonheart Pact and Aldmeri Dominion factions. Tamriel Infinium: Story and character in The Elder Scrolls Online Larry considers the quality of ESO's pivotal players and introductory story.
Starting out in The Elder Scrolls Online: Bleakrock Isle and Khenarthi's Roost
Everyone knows that first impressions matter, and this is especially true for MMOs. The Elder Scrolls Online starts all players in Molag Bal's realm of Coldharbour, but after their escape, they're sent to a faction-specific starting zone, each with its own questline and flavor. While Massively's Matthew has Coldharbour and the Daggerfall Covenant's starting area covered in his own piece, I had the opportunity to make my way through the starter zones of the Ebonheart Pact and the Aldmeri Dominion. The difference between the two is borderline comical. The Aldmeri Dominion is treated to a sunny tropical paradise, while the Ebonheart Pact fights its way through the frozen mountains of Skyrim. On top of that, they seem to be designed almost completely independently from one another.
Starting out in The Elder Scrolls Online: Coldharbour and Stros M'Kai
When we were planning assignments for The Elder Scrolls Online's embargo lift, I volunteered to go through and document each of the factional starting zones. This was a great plan, except for technical difficulties. I was able to play fine for the first few hours at high settings, but coming back to continue where I left off led to a series of frequent GPU crashes, even at lower settings. Fortunately, I was eventually able to make it work well enough get one zone done, and Matt stepped up to cover the other two. So today I'm going to cover the shared introductory experience, followed by the first island zone you end up on as a member of the Daggerfall Covenant. That's the faction based in the north-west of Tamriel, consisting of the magically inclined mountain kingdoms of the Bretons, the dark-skinned Redguard and their desert homeland, and the roving clans of Orsimer, better known as Orcs. I actually made a character of each faction but settled first on the very pretty Orc lass with a flower in her hair over the chubby, antlered Wood Elf and ostentatious Argonian lizard featured in the other factions. Spoilers ahead!
A guide to skill progression in The Elder Scrolls Online
In any roleplaying game, a character's identity is largely defined by his abilities, and The Elder Scrolls Online is no exception. During their adventures in Tamriel, players will develop their characters in a variety of ways, including acquiring fancy new gear, but the core progression in ESO is found in its skill advancement system. Many players of modern MMOs might be inclined to think of a character's abilities as being determined by that character's class, and that is indeed somewhat the case in ESO. However, ESO owes its genesis to a series of games renowned for its freedom of character development, and that legacy continues (albeit to a slightly lesser extent) in ESO's skill progression system, though it also takes ample cues from its contemporary MMOs as well.
The Elder Scrolls Online beta is absolutely nothing special
I've always had a profound antipathy toward the Elder Scrolls franchise. Part of this may very well be timing; the first three major installments released when I didn't have a computer that could handle them (I was generally more of a console gamer), and so I've no memories of happily chugging away across Tamriel as a young lad to sustain me. But I've also never seen anything that's reached out and grabbed me, no inspiring bits of lore, no systems that particularly grab my interest, just the promise that "you can do anything you want" without a great deal of encouragement. The point I'm making here is that the franchise is not my jam. But that's part of the reason I wanted to try out The Elder Scrolls Online in the first place. Sure, at a glance, it seemed like a fairly generic fantasy RPG that had the weight of a franchise behind it, but that's an evaluation based on nothing but bits of story and gameplay videos. So I settled in over the past weekend to play the beta and see what all the fuss was about, to give it a more fair evaluation than one based simply on the name of the franchise and what I saw at a glance.
The Daily Grind: Are you missing out if you skip an MMO launch?
I'm a huge fan of the Elder Scrolls franchise. I started with Morrowind over a decade ago, and I'm almost ashamed to admit how many hours I put into it as well as its two successors. Consequently, it pains me to realize that I'm not such a huge Elder Scrolls Online fan. I'll play it at some point due solely to my fondness for the IP, but as of now I probably won't be paying full price for it at launch. And I'm kinda bummed out by that. What about you, Massively readers? Do you feel as if you're missing out if you skip an MMO's launch window? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Elder Scrolls Online hosting another beta event this weekend
With the NDA still firmly in place, the best way to know what is happening in The Elder Scrolls Online is to see for yourself, and many fans will be doing just that this weekend during the game's next beta event. And according to the official site, even more invitations are going out than before, so players should be sure to check their spam folders as well as Gmail's promotions tab. The event itself starts Friday, February 7th at 12:00 p.m. EST and lasts until Monday, February 10th at 11:29 p.m. EST. Characters that players created during the previous test will be available to play. [Thanks to all who sent in tips!]
The Elder Scrolls Online answers a variety of questions (and the CE question)
If you've read about The Elder Scrolls Online lately, you surely heard about the whole collector's edition thing. The latest batch of answers for community questions tackles that head-on, stressing that the only exclusive for Imperials which other races won't have is a single skill line. That line will be balanced along with all other racial skill lines, so players who decide to go the Imperial route will just have a bit of extra visual flair, not a gameplay advantage. No mention is made of the cross-faction races for pre-orders, however. Aside from the obvious question and a few corresponding bits of confusion, the array of questions cover topics from open PvP in Cyrodiil to death gates to skill resources. If you're eagerly anticipating the game or just want to see more clarification on the whole function of the Imperial option, take a look at the full set of answers for a clearer picture of the CE bonuses and the game as a whole.
