This could be sooo good. Sadly, from what I've heard it's going to a relentlessly generic WOW-style MMO with classes and hotbar combat and some apparent consolization as well as talking about how the UI is special (which isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but it sets off a warning flag. Yes it's nice that your UI is minimalist or whatever, but I honestly don't care whatsoever. I'd rather have a good game and terrible UI than vice versa).

The game mechanics are different from what I've read about it. Haven't played it, however.

I don't believe in this news. It's a lie!

I am against this.

kind of, but not necessary. It means that progress in the game is driven by a narrative and the player interacts more with the story.

In WoW the narrative never impacts on progress, and it is perfectly playable without ever noticing it, there is no overachieving narrative, but several so-called self-contained micro-narratives which have no impact, what ever the player does the world never changes (to a degree phasing is changing this, only minimally). The story and the world is the same to all players.

To a degree this is also doable with LotRO, but the story there has much more impact on progression, you are following the narrative of the book and there are much more "stages" in the narrative where the player are at. The world is still consistent, and the world is shared, but it is more important that the players are on the same narrative level.

TOR (and Elder Scrolls Online) take this to the next level, and the narrative is not shared by the players, each player follow individual story arcs (in TOR they are determined by faction and class). The good thing is that this means the developers can deliver a story, the bad part is that it then is not shared. If you team, the other players are not progressing their story, but helping you on yours. The result is that you can then be a "World Hero" saving the world, whereas in for example WoW you cant (there cant be 12 million heroes each saving the world) . It does means that most of the game will probably be instanced....

Who will pay $59.99 for it ?

I might, lets see how it goes along - it has some interesting things going for it. The deal breaker for me will be how large effect PVP will have on the game... I don't do PvP so if it is necessary then I'm out.

probably about a million people.

after a E3 demo which apparently did not capture everybody's imagination, Paul Sage defends it in a RPS interview:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/06/11/interview-zenimax-defends-elder-scrolls-online/

the more information they give, the worse I think it gets - and I had high hopes for this. Two bad things that stands out for me:

"You can also look at our goal to crown a player emperor. There’s faction warfare, and that’s one of the things where, yeah, you really are special. But if you don’t want to do the quests, you’re more than welcome to just go explore the dungeon content. So really, if that’s your goal where you don’t want to be the hero, we’ll have an option for you there, too." - looks like the focus is going to be on PvP. I can do PvP and become a emperor, or if I do not want to be a hero I can explore dungeons....

"There are also what we’re calling Daedric Anchors in the world. Daedra filter out of them [and attack]. It’s a little bit reminiscent of Oblivion Gates." - what I felt was the worst part of Oblivion is resurrected. Running around shutting down the gates.

Whether this succeeds or fails it will kill off the TES rpgs, we will never see KOTOR 3 or another Warcraft strategy game, now we will never see TES VI

Agreed, the desire to make an MMO is something I hope we see swing full circle very soon. I'm sure we will see Tetris, Mario, and Fight Night MMO's first though :/

yeah mmos certainly killed off final fantasy and monster hunter did it

Nah. Different team, side-story told 1,000 years earlier, skips the main platform for TES games (Xbox), the main team like singleplayer and aren't going to make Fallout games forever.

I dislike this release for taking a singleplayer series into the MMO space where I can't follow but you're being really over-dramatic about it. TES6 will follow Fallout 4 on next-gen consoles and PC and play pretty much the same as Skyrim and Oblivion... MAYBE with coop, but not much else.

Just sharing some more TESO stuff. Here's an interview with Paul Sage from RPS and here's another interview with Paul Sage from E3.

I have many, many things to whine about, but I'll keep it to a minimum: 1. I personally think an MMO with a singleplayer focus is stupid for two reasons: a. The knowledge that every other player is the same chosen one on the same quest as you (though I assume factions will have different quests. And no, the NPCs really appreciating what you've done probably won't assuage that) and b. IT'S AN MMO. By it's very nature a singeplayer MMO will be inferior to a dedicated singleplayer game, 'specially since we've already got a bunch of singleplayer Elder Scrolls games kicking around. An MMO shouldn't be story-driven, it should be world-driven if you know what I mean. It should be about the stories of the NPCs and the events that change the world, not every person being the chosen one (TES games have always been better at world than story anyway). I'm also not entirely confidant in the class system they're using because it seems both restrictive and vague (I can be a Mage! But a Mage with an axe if I happen to randomly pick one up!), MMOs are in dire need of a classless system and TES already (sort of) has one, I feel like adding classes is unnecessary. I could continue, but I'd suggest just reading the comments on that RPS article as they basically sum it up for me.

At the very least, it's nice this is being developed by Zenimax so it won't delay whatever the next Bethesda game is (though it seems like they might mess with the lore a bit? Have Daedric Anchors ever been mentioned in anything ever?).

EDIT: Again putting RPS where my mouth is again, here's an article about single-player MMOs and TESO in particular. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/05/23/a-rant-enough-of-single-player-mmos/ ;)

EDIT2: I actually think a main TES game with co-op could be a lot of fun. Whatever happened to those people trying to make Skyrim multiplayer?

I totally agree. I just read that interview as well and it basically was crap. Nothing that Paul Sage said seemed interesting, or even genuine to me. He had talking points, and then when there were real questions that actually addressed problems with MMOs (or at least what I perceive as problems: I don't play MMOs) he batted them away and didn't answer them to any depth. :/

You know what I would love? An MMO (again, not that I would necessarily play it) that actually wasn't about your character being a big hero. And this is of course an archetype of games, because when you get control why wouldn't you get to be the big hero, but what if there was an MMOFPS that was set during World War I? You get to be an individual soldier, the commanders are all NPCs, and you and all the other real people are random soldiers who have to follow orders and not get shot. I have no idea if that would actually be fun, but hey, at least it would be different and an interesting idea.