The Elder Scrolls Online

Utnayan

F16 patrolling Rajaah until he plays DS3
<Gold Donor>
16,314
12,083
I'm curious to know if Utnayan was in one of the elite raiding guilds back in EQ1 days.
Never in an elite raiding guild. Back in the EQ days I ran the Mithaniel Marr Daily News forum - played on Mithaniel Marr and while I did raid, was mostly Tier 2. Every once and a while we ran into Afterlife but they were fairly above us and mostly competing with spawns from the Japanese guilds on the server. But I sure felt sorry for them. Especially when I knew areas they were striving to get too had artificially bugged barriers to drops because it was a keyed zone and they never finished it yet, or Kerafyrm's art assets and end game script was never completed so Conquest got banned for showing they could bypass the artificially bugged 4th warder. That's probably also why I never joined one. I knew the hassle they would have go to through.

The fact that Utnayan seems to crap on pretty much every MMO since WoW leads to me wonder if the innovation of instanced raiding has permanently damaged his ability to have fun in a MMO.
As stated before, The Secret World had some really great and imaginative areas in it. I like designers/creativity/attention to detail. For an example, the Franklin Mansion. It was a haunted mansion with a very jaded past. And once I entered and went through the quest line, I started hopping into various time periods as they unraveled the haunted history of the house by actually seeing it from my own eyes and playing as the characters that lived in that house. But the big thing here just isn't the story behind it, which was awesome - but the attention to detail. Once I would switch time periods, including weather shifts, I would see that when looking outside the window. All different zone sets, all different house tweaks, which led me to believe I was * Really * in that time period. It was awesome. I could go back and play that area over and over again.

Had that been TESO and the creativity of Paul Sage, it would have been the same house, the same weather, shit, the same NPC models all telling a tad different story for the house but not seeing anything different or feeling anything different. It would have been another generic fucking boring mess. Exactly how this game stands today, aside from even the most ridiculous of combat issues.

The reason why I rant on most MMORPG developers is because I know they are holding me back from playing in another Franklin House. Doing the least they can from an asset perspective in the vein of "content" to ship a game, get it off their plate, and get swallowed up by another company so they can repeat that crap all over again. It probably doesn't help that as a guide in EQ I would see over 30% of an expansions content (all high level) not even close to done... And not just on ship, 5 months later. Developer boxes, empty zones, unpopulated zones, human place holders that showed up when there were no art assets for an NPC, no itemization... The list goes on and on. This shit still happens today, and it ruins the quality of the genre and of the game.

In this case, the game doesn't matter to anyone except some good folks on the development team putting up with Sage to get the hell out of that place and work on something fun and creative. It's a quick cash in attempt at a box sale which will no doubt, hurt the IP itself.
 

Bondurant

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
3,837
4,786
The reason why I rant on most MMORPG developers is because I know they are holding me back from playing in another Franklin House. Doing the least they can from an asset perspective in the vein of "content" to ship a game, get it off their plate, and get swallowed up by another company so they can repeat that crap all over again.
It's how most entertainement business runs nowadays : "hey I have 10 new [film / music / tv show] ideas, how about we produce them all with small to medium budget to see what will work ?" "Well, fuck you in the skull, we're gonna hardcore produce Marvelers Of The Derp 3 because who'd want to change pasture when we already have cows right here ?"
 

spronk

FPS noob
22,700
25,832
there's going to be a big weekend beta this weekend with curse apparently giving away 500k keys, so keep an eye out and check out the game yourself. the reddit thread mentioned something about keeping existing chars but i don't really understand what that means, hopefully not into launch
 

Flank_sl

shitlord
499
0

mkopec

<Gold Donor>
25,424
37,545
They need to do open beta, instead of hiding behind NDA. They would garner a whole bunch more respect that way.
 

turbo

Molten Core Raider
1,238
106
Never in an elite raiding guild. Back in the EQ days I ran the Mithaniel Marr Daily News forum - played on Mithaniel Marr and while I did raid, was mostly Tier 2. Every once and a while we ran into Afterlife but they were fairly above us and mostly competing with spawns from the Japanese guilds on the server. But I sure felt sorry for them. Especially when I knew areas they were striving to get too had artificially bugged barriers to drops because it was a keyed zone and they never finished it yet, or Kerafyrm's art assets and end game script was never completed so Conquest got banned for showing they could bypass the artificially bugged 4th warder. That's probably also why I never joined one. I knew the hassle they would have go to through.



As stated before, The Secret World had some really great and imaginative areas in it. I like designers/creativity/attention to detail. For an example, the Franklin Mansion. It was a haunted mansion with a very jaded past. And once I entered and went through the quest line, I started hopping into various time periods as they unraveled the haunted history of the house by actually seeing it from my own eyes and playing as the characters that lived in that house. But the big thing here just isn't the story behind it, which was awesome - but the attention to detail. Once I would switch time periods, including weather shifts, I would see that when looking outside the window. All different zone sets, all different house tweaks, which led me to believe I was * Really * in that time period. It was awesome. I could go back and play that area over and over again.

Had that been TESO and the creativity of Paul Sage, it would have been the same house, the same weather, shit, the same NPC models all telling a tad different story for the house but not seeing anything different or feeling anything different. It would have been another generic fucking boring mess. Exactly how this game stands today, aside from even the most ridiculous of combat issues.

The reason why I rant on most MMORPG developers is because I know they are holding me back from playing in another Franklin House. Doing the least they can from an asset perspective in the vein of "content" to ship a game, get it off their plate, and get swallowed up by another company so they can repeat that crap all over again. It probably doesn't help that as a guide in EQ I would see over 30% of an expansions content (all high level) not even close to done... And not just on ship, 5 months later. Developer boxes, empty zones, unpopulated zones, human place holders that showed up when there were no art assets for an NPC, no itemization... The list goes on and on. This shit still happens today, and it ruins the quality of the genre and of the game.

In this case, the game doesn't matter to anyone except some good folks on the development team putting up with Sage to get the hell out of that place and work on something fun and creative. It's a quick cash in attempt at a box sale which will no doubt, hurt the IP itself.
Oh the good ole Z-axis exploit. Devs fucked over alot of my friends over that deal and drove away some of the most dedicated players in all of EQ. The funny thing was when alot of the guys who decided to leave came back after years and started raiding again with shit for gear and stomped most the established guilds.
 

Cinge

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
7,023
2,101
Well that's a first. Got a invite, went to install and the installer actually stopped responding :p
 

Skylancer81

Molten Core Raider
701
802
Got an invite.
Installing now, 5 minutes in at a whopping 2%.
Good thing I got nothing to do today till after 4pm.
 
368
0
As stated before, The Secret World had some really great and imaginative areas in it. I like designers/creativity/attention to detail. For an example, the Franklin Mansion. It was a haunted mansion with a very jaded past. And once I entered and went through the quest line, I started hopping into various time periods as they unraveled the haunted history of the house by actually seeing it from my own eyes and playing as the characters that lived in that house. But the big thing here just isn't the story behind it, which was awesome - but the attention to detail. Once I would switch time periods, including weather shifts, I would see that when looking outside the window. All different zone sets, all different house tweaks, which led me to believe I was * Really * in that time period. It was awesome. I could go back and play that area over and over again.

Had that been TESO and the creativity of Paul Sage, it would have been the same house, the same weather, shit, the same NPC models all telling a tad different story for the house but not seeing anything different or feeling anything different. It would have been another generic fucking boring mess. Exactly how this game stands today, aside from even the most ridiculous of combat issues.

The reason why I rant on most MMORPG developers is because I know they are holding me back from playing in another Franklin House. Doing the least they can from an asset perspective in the vein of "content" to ship a game, get it off their plate, and get swallowed up by another company so they can repeat that crap all over again. It probably doesn't help that as a guide in EQ I would see over 30% of an expansions content (all high level) not even close to done... And not just on ship, 5 months later. Developer boxes, empty zones, unpopulated zones, human place holders that showed up when there were no art assets for an NPC, no itemization... The list goes on and on. This shit still happens today, and it ruins the quality of the genre and of the game.

In this case, the game doesn't matter to anyone except some good folks on the development team putting up with Sage to get the hell out of that place and work on something fun and creative. It's a quick cash in attempt at a box sale which will no doubt, hurt the IP itself.
Ut,

That is a great post but do you think it's fair to compare Those first three zones of TSW to anything? In my opinion those are among the ten best zones in all of MMOdom (that would be a good thread). You have the lost trawler story, the haunted amusement park, Black House and the Monster Hunter's Club. That is some amazing story telling... and yet the combat systems are crap. So nothing is ever perfect. Also, it's pretty clear from the spiraling downward of the content after New England (at release - they have fixed some of this) that even your gold standard game was rushed after the first few areas.

TESO might be crap. It might be one of those games without any kind of worthwile game system, exploration moment, PvP great dungeon or great story. It might never have its Franklin Mansion (or my fave the Unrest dungeon from EQ2). But it might have something new and different and unexpected. Some dev might have gotten something right or maybe the players abuse some system in just three right way. Your 4th warder recitation of one of the truly great EQ moments shows that sometimes gaming greatness is when the players overcome devs. I don't know. Just be more optimistic. Have more fun. The MMO glass can be half full too.
 

Crone

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
9,709
3,211
Got an invite.
Installing now, 5 minutes in at a whopping 2%.
Good thing I got nothing to do today till after 4pm.
Beta doesn't start until Friday unless they sent out different emails than the beta weekend event email I received.
 

Blackwulf

N00b
999
18
Sooo, Tuco, regarding our wager: what sort of evidence regarding sales will you use if ZOS doesn't release numbers. I'm starting to think I have a chance considering the demand for pre orders and the generally improved perception of the game on high traffic sites
 

Recalcitrant_sl

shitlord
190
0
BETA SESSION 0.17 PATCH NOTES
ZOS_KaiSchoberZOS_KaiSchober Administrator, Moderator admin
February 4 edited February 4 in Patch Notes
OVERVIEW

The Elder Scrolls Online v0.17 focuses on polish, bug fixes, improvements, and balance to existing content throughout the game, based on tester feedback. So, instead of many big systems or updates, these patch notes are a long list of systems that have been updated, bugs that have been fixed, and improvements.

Here?s a brief overview of what awaits you in this test:
Continue your characters from v.0.16.
Play through level 1-17 content for all three alliances.
Create up to eight characters, increased from four.
Access the Alliance War in Cyrodiil.
Experience many fixes and improvements across the board, including to quests, animations, skill lines, and the UI.

During this test, you will have access to the following areas:
Khenarthi?s Roost
Auridon
Stros M?Kai
Betnikh
Glenumbra
Bleakrock Isle
Bal Foyen
Stonefalls
Cyrodiil


TEST GOALS

For this test, we have a few goals we?d like you to try to reach while playing the game.
Attain level 10 on at least one character.
Reach Rank 10 in any crafting skill.
Find and complete at least one group dungeon.
Travel to Cyrodiil and participate in the Alliance War.

FIXES & IMPROVEMENTS

Alliance War

General
The Eastern Elsweyr Gate now has map pins.
Bankers have been added to the following locations:
Northern Highrock Gate
Northern Morrowind Gate
Western Elsweyr Gate
Various crafting resource nodes and quest objectives around Lake Rumare have been fixed.
You can no longer log in to keep or resource locations.
Character stats gained by Battle Spirit have been adjusted to be more in-line with natural level 50 stats.
Towers at keep resources can now be accessed and exited properly.
Mender Guards at keeps and resources will now cast a personal siege shield on themselves when they are hit by siege weapons, similar to what Honor Guards already do.
The Tower Guard at Roebeck Mine is now properly a mage.
Keep walls are now considered ?under attack? at 95% instead of 90%. Once a keep wall hits 95%, defenders will get a message stating that the wall cannot be repaired while in combat.
If you log out in a keep and are offline for 10 minutes or more, your character will now correctly be moved to one of your alliance?s border keeps in Cyrodiil.
Fixed an issue where placing a siege weapon at a keep door before placing a ram would result in an error message appearing and no rams could be placed. You can now properly place a ram at keep doors, even if a siege weapon has been placed in front of the same keep door.

Campaigns
When you view the campaign menu during this beta, you will see many more campaigns on the list than before. Bloodthorn and Scourge are still the primary two campaigns for beta. They are the ones that most of you are assigned to and will likely find the most action in.

Also, please be aware that all of the other campaigns on the list, except for Bloodthorn and Scourge, have the standard 90-day campaign ruleset that ESO will be feature at launch, not the 48-hour beta campaign ruleset.

Quests
All Scout quests are no longer sharable, and their XP rewards have been reduced.
The Unseen Quest is no longer sharable, and its quest XP reward has been reduced.

Art & Animations
Fixed a large number of animation issues that occurred when NPCs used items such as tankards, bread, quills, etc.
Fixed an issue that was causing some Wayshrines to appear pink when viewed from a far distance.
Fixed an issue that was causing some combat animations to skip during periods of high latency, giving a false impression that the abilities had not fired after a button/key press.
Improved the running animation for all female character models, based on player feedback.


Audio

General
We have made many audio fixes and improvements throughout the game, including audio for abilities, monsters, UI, etc.
Voiceover has been recorded and implemented for a large majority?but not all?of the game.
In preparation for launch, we have removed all placeholder robotic voiceover from the game.
In cases where the final voiceover is still missing, no voiceover will play (instead of the placeholder robotic voiceover).
Fixed many cases where the voiceover and the text didn?t match. (This is an ongoing effort.)
Audio will now stutter less.


Classes & Skill Lines

General
Fixed an issue where numerous ability buffs were not giving the correct bonus value for battle-leveled characters in Cyrodiil. Here are some examples of affected abilities:
Aggressive Horn
Immovable
Mark Target
Molten Weapons
Solar Flare
Spiked Armor

Dragonknight
Inhale: Decreased the damage this ability deals to your target, and the amount of health per target hit that it heals you
Draw Essence: Reduced the amount of Magicka recovered per target hit for this ability?s morph

Emperor
Tactician: This ability no longer increases siege weapon damage versus players. It still increases the siege damage versus keeps and other siege weapons.

Nightblade
Agony: This ability now deals damage for several seconds after the effect ends, rather than throughout its entire duration.

Sorcerer
Unstable Familiar: Increased the Scamp summon?s health and made him a bit better at protecting his owner.


Combat & Gameplay

General
Fixed an issue that was causing people to see a significant delay between the button press and the ability firing, particularly when using lots of abilities in quick succession.
We have made some broad experience balance changes to better smooth the starting experience and even out overall progression across the three alliances.
Reduced the amount of experience you receive for killing monsters in Cyrodiil
We have lowered battle-leveled stats in Cyrodiil.
We have adjusted all item traits to make each more balanced relative to one another. Here are the highlights:
Increased the gold sell value of items with the ?Ornate? trait.
Decreased the critical strike bonus of weapons with the ?Precise? trait.
Decreased the attack speed bonus of weapons with the ?Weighted? trait.
Player character resurrections will now complete as they should instead of looking as if the cast was completed, and not resurrecting your friendly target.
You no longer need to have an available skill point in order to be able to re-spec at a shrine.
Monsters that respawn instantly and infinitely will no longer appear.
Monster swarms that are level 0 have been removed from the game.
Fixed the difficulty of certain monsters associated Fighters Guild, Mages Guild, and Main Quest content who were more difficult than intended.
Adjusted instant cast and heavy/light attach timers to improve responsiveness and feel during combat.


Crafting and Economy

General
Clear water and natural water can now be used without spending a skill point in alchemy.
Updated the crafting system mails to send the correct resource tier.
All crafting stations within the world are now functional, with the exception of a small number of cooking fires.
Removed all instances of infinitely spawning crafting nodes.
Wilderness monsters in Grahtwood now drop items.
We have introduced a new model for the Jute plant (a cloth crafting resource). It should now be much easier to see and find.
Fixed an issue that resulted in solo instance clickable fixtures all being empty.
We have balanced the inspiration gain rates for all crafting professions.


Dungeons/Group Content

General
We have made many fixes and improvements to group content, including the following:
Fixed a number of voice-over timing issues.
Fixed some cases where monsters had no loot.
Fixed issue where dungeon points-of-interest couldn?t grant bonus xp on completion.
Fixed a variety of world building issues in dungeons.
Fixed an issue that was causing crashing upon entering a handful of explorable dungeons.

Exploration & Itemization
Clickable fixtures (crates, barrels, nightstands, bread, etc.) are now instanced on a per-character basis as opposed to having to compete with others for the items.
Improved drop rates on bows, staves, and shields.

Miscellaneous
Moderately reduced the cost required to re-spec your character?s skills and attributes at a respec shrine.
Fixed an issue that was causing players with special characters in their User ID to run into problems logging into the game.
We have increased the number of character slots available per account to eight.
We have updated tutorials and help systems throughout the game.
Introduced crafting tutorials and hints
Fixed numerous places where player characters could get stuck in objects or escape the world.
Fixed an issue that was preventing some users with foreign characters in their User ID from being able to log in.
The User ID watermark has been removed, in preparation for launch. Please note: The NDA is still in effect until we say otherwise.


Quests

General
We have fixed hundreds of issues with quests and content in the game.
We have streamlined the text for many quests so they are more clear and concise.
It is now easier to find your way to critical quest NPCs who are not out in the open (in caves, ruins, etc.)
Fixed an issue that was resulting in some quests breaking or failing if you logged out, dropped from your group, left the quest area, or if your character died.


Social Systems

General
Members of any alliance can now send each other whisper messages while in ?Normal? and ?Beta? campaign rulesets in Cyrodiil.


User Interface

Achievements
Fixed an issue that was preventing the achievements window from properly updating when multiple achievements were updated in the same frame.
Fixed an issue that was resulting in the progress bars for achievements not displaying past their first tier.

Chat
Changed the Chat Window background to make it easier to grab and drag the edges.
Fixed an issue that was causing the scroll bar to sometimes not showing when it should.
Chat colors will no longer reset when exiting the social options menu.
Changed the "Create New Window" option to "Create New Tab."
When the Chat Options window is open, you can no longer remove or create new tabs until you close the Options window.

Crafting
Fixed many crafting UI issues.
Added crafting UI animations.

Grouping
When entering a group via the Grouping Tools, the UI will no longer continue to say Group Members 0/4.
If your group members are assigned to a campaign, that data will now properly display in the Campaign Browser window.

HUD
Health and Magicka bars now show regen effects.

Load Screens
Added game hints to load screens.

Localization
Added support for gender-specific names for classes, races, skill lines, etc.

Mail
A confirmation box will now appear when returning mail.
You can no longer simultaneously trigger multiple mail interactions.
Fixed an issue that resulted in returned mail spam when a mail expired.

Maps
Maps have been added or updated for many of the dungeons.
Dungeon maps set to zoom out to the wrong overland zone have been fixed.
All overland maps have been updated to a higher resolution, more detailed style.
A new Mundus map has been added to the game but is not yet fully functional.
Fixed incorrectly placed quest markers on the map.
Filters now properly work on all special maps (keep travel, keep respawn, Wayshrine travel).
Fixed an issue that was causing the Wayshrine travel map to start zoomed all the way in instead of completely zoomed out.
The map for Tamriel has been updated. You can now right click to zoom out to the Tamriel map and left click on another zone to view that map.

Options
It is now possible to set keybindings for the following German character keys: < >.

Quick Slots
Treasure maps (and any other non-consumable items) will now appear as a greyed-out icon on your quick slot menu when you no longer have any of that item in your inventory.
You will now receive an error message when you attempt to equip an item in your quickslots that you do not need the level requirements to use.

Tool Tips
We have polished many item tool tips.
Achievements now have tool tips.

Still capped at 17, but you can use your previous test characters.
 

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
<Gold Donor>
45,485
73,569
Sooo, Tuco, regarding our wager: what sort of evidence regarding sales will you use if ZOS doesn't release numbers. I'm starting to think I have a chance considering the demand for pre orders and the generally improved perception of the game on high traffic sites
We'll figure that out when we get there. It wouldn't be the first bet I've made here where the result is ambiguous and nobody wins or loses.
 

Kreugen

Vyemm Raider
6,599
793
XCODBro says absolutely no one on console will pay $15 a month to play this, because Call of Duty servers are free so it makes no sense that you should pay money just to play a game online. I pointed out that he payed more than that every month to rent his own BF3 server for a whopping 16 players, when a typical MMO server tends to host around 5000 people at a time. I also pointed out that he spent over $50 in DLC packs when such tiny updates are included with the sub. I also pointed out that his brobox live subscription is a pay service mostly for things that are free everywhere else. It's literally paying money to access a store. I pointed out that the Master Race had 15 million people paying a sub to play wow, but he countered with the fact that a gaming pc costs $7000 so PC players are fools to begin with. My sub $1000 pc that runs battlefield 4 with vastly superior graphics (understatement) at three to four times the framerate of his xbone, combined with the fact that I payed $40 less for the game + premium than he did did not deter him.

Nope, logic will not win out. ESO will sell 5 copies on the Brobox.

But seriously, I think getting consolers to accept an extra sub fee will be a gradual thing in the way that UO->EQ->HOLY SHIT WOW was.

EDIT: This wasn't exactly a serious, heated argument or anything. Much joking hyperbole was involved. Don't get the wrong idea, heh.
 

mkopec

<Gold Donor>
25,424
37,545
Kreug, I agree. They need to definitely use a F2P model for the consoles for this type of game and then do the DLC, and cash shop thing. Basically what DCUO does. Or what SWTOR oes on the PC side. Charge $5-$10 for mini content updates, chapters, whatever... This $15 per month wont fly and I guess they will find out the hard way.