The Elder Scrolls Online

Xaxius_sl said:

Yeah, I thought about that too.... Age of Conan all over again. Good point.

Still, surprised the Press would pick up on that. They're usually the most clueless of the bunch.

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I've experienced several Tortage quality zones so far myself. Can't provide any more specific details.

Anyone remember when the WoW open beta started and the NDA was lifted? I was in the open beta for a few weeks before the game was launched but its been so long I don't remember.

Rescorla_sl said:

I've experienced several Tortage quality zones so far myself. Can't provide any more specific details.

Anyone remember when the WoW open beta started and the NDA was lifted? I was in the open beta for a few weeks before the game was launched but its been so long I don't remember.

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Open beta was late October 2004 I believe.

Edit - Actually it was November 8th 2004.

I think Ut will be right in his statements on this game going F2P. Currently certainly does seem like a case of the marketing not matching the actual product from all the videos that go up (and down) on youtube. This game will sell lots, but it does not seem ready. It is like a total conversion mod for Skyrim where they had to make lots of sacrifices to be able to put multiplayer into it.

So it is not about him being wrong about it going F2P, but more if he is also right about the reasoning why they do not do it to begin with. A cash grab initially, to basically get as much money as possible, then go F2P when the game is better after a year. Them knowing that it is not finished, but marketing it as such. Nobody but the people behind it know for sure, but I am skeptical of how they treated the NDA in this round. They gave a press pass in an earlier weekend to where youtubers and media had their own server with no lag or issues. The press releases and official media from the larger youtube channels then offered little to none of the biggest problems of this beta. Conveniently the embargo date for them to release said press information was during this beta. So suddenly you get a beta, with lots of news regarding TESO, but where none of the news came from the beta weekend with an actual population. The beta testers of this weekend also can not really respond to the media/youtube releases by letting them know of extra issues, because this test is still under an NDA. Oddly though they seem to be removing far less foreign speaking videos on youtube (Russian and German in particular) than English speaking ones. Just sorting after date gives lots of new ones, but lots are removed quite fast.

David Georgeson on Everquest Next: Landmark

"To be honest, the reason we had an NDA is because I was really paranoid that we would launch and just fall over and everything would be very negative. We wanted to make sure that we had a window of time when we could make the corrections and make sure that it was fun for players before we started telling every one about it. The first weekend was so much fun, and the people really responded to the community, so we decided overnight to drop the NDA because we were having such a good time with the players."

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There is a reason why they still are playing the NDA game two months from release and I think it will be a future example in one of TotalBiscuits rants on his dislike of pre-orders and early access.

Kreugen_sl said:

Your understanding is completely wrong. WoW had a million and a half subscribers right out of the gate, smashing expectations tenfold, and rocketed upwards from there. Once it was released to asian markets, the numbers doubled, and asia continues to make up roughly half the total subscribers.

EQ peaked at 500k. Even if you don't count asians for some reason, you still are left with 7.5 million or so humans.

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Psst, that was a joke.. You know, Asians and Blizzard. WOW's initial success wasn't a surprise due how good the game was to most of us. The big surprise is how many people are still playing it, or still pay for a few months each year. I'd love a breakdown of what subs are from NA/Europe and which are from Asia currently.

I don't see a ton of press hate for TESO. I see some very fair reviews from people about a very buggy product. Two months from release the newbee zones should not have quests freezing up.

Vilmz_sl said:

Open beta was late October 2004 I believe.

Edit - Actually it was November 8th 2004.

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Wikipedia says WoW was released on November 23, 2004. That sounds correct since I remember playing in open beta for a couple of weeks. Any idea when the NDA was lifted?

Didn't wow start with no NDA in about March 2004? If you Google it there's posts talking about the NDA lift as the game went from alpha to beta.

Rescorla_sl said:

Wikipedia says WoW was released on November 23, 2004. That sounds correct since I remember playing in open beta for a couple of weeks. Any idea when the NDA was lifted?

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Once closed beta started in March I'm pretty sure the NDA was lifted straight away.

Droigan_sl said:

So it is not about him being wrong about it going F2P, but more if he is also right about the reasoning why they do not do it to begin with. A cash grab initially, to basically get as much money as possible, then go F2P when the game is better after a year.Them knowing that it is not finished, but marketing it as such. Nobody but the people behind it know for sure, but I am skeptical of how they treated the NDA in this round.They gave a press pass in an earlier weekend to where youtubers and media had their own server with no lag or issues.The press releases and official media from the larger youtube channels then offered little to none of the biggest problems of this beta. Conveniently the embargo date for them to release said press information was during this beta. So suddenly you get a beta, with lots of news regarding TESO, but where none of the news came from the beta weekend with an actual population.

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What is your criteria to determine when a game goes live whether it is "finished"? ESO has already said stuff like the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood quests won't be implemented until after the game is released. Other than that, what content do you believe will be missing when the game launches but should have been included and tested before release?

BTW it stands to reason that if the media were playing on a different server and they didn't complain about lag or gameplay issues while the weekend beta testers were having major technical and gameplay issues, the disparity isn't so much the content of the game but technical problems with the megaserver architecture. Obviously that needs to get fixed before launch but is that something to be overly concerned with 2 months out?

Xaxius_sl said:

The Press though, have been really railing against this one. While I'd like to think it's them waking up after the countless 85+ review scores they've put out on shitty to mediocre MMO releases (ie SWTOR, AoC, Rift, Warhammer, etc), I get the feeling like something else is driving it. I can't believe the Press is getting somewhat honest for a change.

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Most of the previews for ESO so far I've seen present it as "buggy and mediocre but maybe they can fix it by launch."

While I agree the press usually overhypes mediocre to poor MMOs, there is an example of an absolutely broken and ill-conceived MMO that both the press and players slammed.The original release of FFXIV- a game which eventually had to be taken down and reworked from the ground up. The difference between the games you listed and FFXIV/ESO is that the games you listed had very seductive early-game experiences and didn't fall apart until later. Most of the people supporting ESO admit something along the lines of "you have to play for a while for it to open up." So if we look at MMOs being judged in the press nearly entirely on their opening experience, I think the reviews make a lot more consistent sense.

Recalcitrant_sl said:

Most of the previews for ESO so far I've seen present it as "buggy and mediocre but maybe they can fix it by launch."

While I agree the press usually overhypes mediocre to poor MMOs, there is an example of an absolutely broken and ill-conceived MMO that both the press and players slammed.The original release of FFXIV- a game which eventually had to be taken down and reworked from the ground up. The difference between the games you listed and FFXIV/ESO is that the games you listed had very seductive early-game experiences and didn't fall apart until later. Most of the people supporting ESO admit something along the lines of "you have to play for a while for it to open up." So if we look at MMOs being judged in the press nearly entirely on their opening experience, I think the reviews make a lot more consistent sense.

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We're comparing ESO to FFXIV now? Let's have some perspective people. Christ.

I don't want to grind mobs. I just don't want mobs to die with little or no effort on my character that I don't put any armor on and don't upgrade any spells/abilities. Maybe the mobs get tougher later, but early on it's clear they want mobs to be a minor speed-bump in reaching the next arrow on the map, not something you actually have to think about or take into account or even care about. You just run through them, basically, so you can keep running. It's boring.

I also got bored in Rift when I was level 15 and hadn't allocated any points of any kind and was still steamrolling most of the 'solo' content.

Since when did 'solo' have to mean completely lacking any challenge of any kind?

Utnayan_sl said:

Yes? After a 7 year development cycle, and this is the best they can come up with, the answer is most assuredly yes.

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Do you have any background in software engineering? I'm software QA myself. Most of the time you don't know things are broke until you test them because developers typically suck at unit testing their own code. What do you think was the primary purpose of the weekend beta test that gave out 500K new keys? The crap the weekend beta testers had to put up with from a QA perspective is a good thing as long as the root cause of what caused the problems was identified.

BTW I suppose you remember that as great as Blizzard was and how confident they were in WoW and how smooth the open beta went, all hell broke loose when the game went live and it was pretty much unplayable for the first several days? Sounds to me that that is pretty much what happened to ESO this past weekend two months before release.