The Elder Scrolls Online

I think a fantasy game based on a similar design to EVE (sandbox, player crafting, economy, material farming instead of purple farming, high crafted item decay/recycle) might actually have a harder time finding an audience than a non-fantasy game. It's easier to imagine losing a ship + modules in a battle than it is to imagine dying in Fantasy PvP and losing all gear, adorns, etc. Part of that is Fantasy MMO players are only familiar with the current paradigm. Push button, receive purples. I would be willing to try it, easily, but not sure a lot of people would. Same with a lot of the design features. People would hear about a fantasy game like this and make an instant assumption that it would simply be a gankfest, they would imagine dying in such a game in terms of what they are familiar with ("I dont want to lose all the gear I spent so long acquiring"even if that isn't a valid concern based on the game's design, especially if you can just get more gear like you do ships and modules in EVE), and let's be honest - EVE is a difficult game for many to get into. Making a Fantasy EVE might make it even more difficult for the Fantasy MMO crowd to embrace.

Another advantage EVE has beyond the sci-fi space setting lending itself to the kind of game that it is, is probably the way that the star system/warp environment works. I think it would be natural to assume that in a Fantasy setting most would want a seamless, gigantic map instead of what are essentially individual "system" instances with gates that warp you to connected systems. You could do zones I suppose, but bear in mind that EVE has something like 7K+ systems, and I don't think that takes into account wormhole space. Personally I think that a gigantic general area (map with thousands of "hex" areas so to speak) or a gigantic number of individual zones would be necessary. If you ran with the number of zones that most fantasy MMOs run with it would never work (think possibly AQ opening event or even worse, on a daily basis), or you'd just have zerg versus zerg fighting for the same handful of zones nonstop. The other issue I would imagine would be how to create or populate that much area or that many zones. EVE has the luxury of being able to just plop a lot of stuff into mostly empty space (stations, planets, moons, etc) without really having to worry about much else other than some "mood" stuff like dust clouds, coloring, suns, and stuff like that. Now imagine how long it takes Fantasy Devs to create just a handful of zones - they would need a way to create thousands of zones, or a map the size of which we've never seen in MMOs, with enough polish and population (items, mobs, structures, POI, etc) so that it all wouldn't just look like a deserted wasteland. People posted some screenshots of a few places in Vanguard (if I am remembering correctly) that looked like they were in a hurry and just threw shit out, plus I remember a lot of complaints about the 'chunking' when I also thought Brad had said it would be a seamless transition.

Resource collection would be harder to create too, unless they just recycled things like ore nodes and herbs (which is what I would expect almost any studio to do frankly). I want a COMPLETELY interactive world, one where if I own a large plot of land, I can choose to create a mine for ore and have to buy and equip minions to work it, or create and run orchards or ranches or farms or even coastal fishing areas. I know that what I want in an MMO in frankly impossible as things stand now, but at the same time I still am blown away when studios do SO LITTLE with SO MUCH FUCKING MONEY. I'd love to see an MMO where you can create not just a few different castle skins to represent "tiers" of castles and buildings, but actually choose to build in sections and have it actually go through a process of construction. And have your enemies be able to knock a hole in it.

Sometimes I think the genre needs to have a return to 2D or an almost "8-bit theatre" level of detail/graphics so Devs can afford to put in a higher level of detail elsewhere before we'll ever be able to see anything similar to what I dream of built within the framework of current MMOs. Maybe updated UO level graphics, or something like D2 graphics, I dunno. But surely someone will do something like this before I'm in the grave.

As this ties into TESO: I really am curious if they will be able to capture the feel of the ES franchise without it feeling like they reskinned a different MMO. Will I even want PvP? If I want to wander out into the middle of nowhere, will I be able to 'get lost' and discover new areas and dungeons, or will I get there and find shit camped? I mean I dunno, I can't imagine that they could make TESO large enough that they will be able to cater to thousands of people ON A SINGLE SHARD who might well be turned off if/when it ends up being too much like just another MMO with Elder Scrolls artwork. The single PvP zone seems meh to me, like they just threw in a PvP continent to appeal to that particular subset of gamers without basing their core game design around it. PvP points? Meh. One person can get elected as "Emperor"? I guess that's great for one person, but it sounds like it will be tied to whoever's "score" is the highest, so I picture something similar to the race to High Warlord, only worse. Beyond that, no real in-game reason to PvP at all. I get that the idea of PvP using ES-type characters will appeal to some, and it will be something that you can't do in the single player games, but it just seems really ticky-tack to me. I think I wouldn't have minded that 10 or 15 years ago (like DaoC RvR), but I kind of expect more nowadays. I'm probably not being remotely realistic, but damn. Where are the dreamers in the industry? Where are the people wanting to do [Big Things] instead of trying to capitalize on yet ANOTHER popular IP that will probably sell a million boxes at release due to name recognition and marketing alone?

Fuck, just thinking about this is depressing.