The Elder Scrolls Online

[vortex]

Vivec city

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Should have put that in the fucking trailer instead of the generic CGI actionfest.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Martyrized Dinosaur]

It plays like Skyrim with even less freedom, no fun combat physics and a terrible class system. Graphic and lore wise it's as good as TES games are which puts it above all the MMOs I know of but the encounter design is hot garbage and you will never be challenged, ever.

I would recommend it if you just want to hike on your own or with a buddy for long hours in the world of TES with some fighting at the center for added immersion. Pick the faction with the least players which I think would be the aldmeiri dominion, although the pact has you starting in the most atmospheric area and in Morrowind proper.

 

[Data4]

Balmora. Gotta say, regardless of how the MMO may be, seeing the Hlaalu building styles with a modern graphics makeover is hitting me in the nostalgia bone.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

What's with the trees? I don't remember Balmora having trees.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Martyrized Dinosaur]

I'm almost tempted to pick this game back up from where I left it but then I remember grinding packs of 2 mobs after packs of 2 mobs while they respawn faster than goombas for a neverending stream of quests that barely reward you. Even guild wars 2 has you confronted to the occasional challenge if there aren't enough players around you for the normal dynamic quest balance, the difficulty in this game cannot apparently scale above the average player's level.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Can the consoletards finally find Caius Cosades now?

 

[Turjan]

For the most part, they seem to have lifted the Vvardenfell map 1:1 from TES: Morrowind to ESO, with some adjustments, like lots of shortcuts. The volcano changed (higher?) and a few areas seem to be in the process of being built. The buildings are more elaborate, but less than in the original. Ald'ruhn is much smaller. I guess the whole map is either smaller size or the buildings grew (or a combination).

Screenies, including the ones that have been already shown:
http://imgur.com/a/oSBiP

Edit: Kogoruhn (or what that is) may be some special area.

 

[LeStryfe79]

I plan on going full retard into ESO around August. Hit me up in six months. Yes, I will be drunken.

 

[FUDU]

ESO story line takes place 700 years prior the the one in Morrowind. That's why it may look a little different.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[DosBuster]

the leaked unfinished map

 

[Turjan]

ESO story line takes place 700 years prior the the one in Morrowind. That's why it may look a little different.

And yet they have Seyda Neen and Caldera, and evtl. Pelagiad (if that isn't a Hlaalu structure), complete with houses in the imperial style, if some forum posts are to be believed. You can also see Rethan Manor. I guess consistency doesn't really matter. It's more about nostalgia.

 

[Rivmusique]

Maybe it is the copious amounts of bourbon I've just been drinking (Bulleit, for anyone who cares), but I almost feel like crying after watching that trailer.

Generic superhero characters we know nothing about and don't give a shit about. Generic CGI action cutscene where they swing swords and shoot magic at each other. Zero Morrowind atmosphere except for a few mushrooms and some Dwemer machines. Shitty jungle temple which has nothing to do with Morrowind. Big boss at the end, which again, has nothing to do with Morrowind. Ending with a completely Jeremy Soule-less (pun intended) rip of the Morrowind soundtrack. It's shit.

Think about what they could have done instead. Instead of some CGI action shit fest they could have put in some Dunmer dialogue, mora, all those nostalgic callbacks. Shown us Ald'ruhn. Vivec. Sadrith Mora. The Azura statue. Some daedric temples. The insides of Dwemer ruins. Kwama caves. Red Mountain and the Ghostgate (unless this predates Dagoth Ur, I don't know and don't give a fuck). Given Morrowfags like me some nostalgia, and newer player a sense of wonder, like "What the fuck is this weird landscape that looks nothing like generic medieval fantasy?"

Nah. They went for the TOR crowd with knives and armour replacing lightsabers.

Was laughing as I watched the trailer. Did they not think to ask some people "what do you like about Morrowind?" and go from there?

 

[Aenra]

How can someone say they went for the TOR crowd when the two are markedly different? Said it in another thread as well; if you don't know what the fuck you're talking about, why talk at all? Matt or whoever the fuck it was posting that..
Don't make this the Reddit section guys.

TOR is as mainstream and Biowarean as it can be, but it is still a PC mmorpg. Shitty for our standards, yeah, but a PC mmorpg nonetheless. PC. In the UI, the combat style, the interactions, you name it.
TESO is 101% console mo; not mmorpg, just mo. Console mo. Had the dumbfuck played either for just an hour, he'd have been able to tell. Console. 101%*

Yuuuge difference and trailers be damned. If you can't get your facts straight (ie you're either a dumbfuck or you've never played either), again, why post.

* and because i am addressing edgelords and as such i can see him coming back for a one-liner reply:
- Console in that you can't even interact with other people like you can in PC mmorp games
- Console in UI functions and style
- Console in cyclical menus (because pads)
- Console in combat (not just style, but also mechanics; see an old post of mine here where i go about how shallow it is, how dots and hots can't be timed, etc etc)
- Console in gameplay (restricted options due to pads having less buttons and nevermind the PC players)
- Console in limited client-to-server handshaking(?) or whatever the fuck you call it. Which is why combat is so superficial, which is why dots and hots can't be timed properly, which is why it suffered and suffers still from so many exploits. Core mechanics (walk, run, /die and others) are client-side only

 

[Night Goat]

Was laughing as I watched the trailer. Did they not think to ask some people "what do you like about Morrowind?" and go from there?

I very much doubt that the audience they're going for has ever played Morrowind. They might know it by reputation, but they're not gonna play a game that may have been made before they were born.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

Was laughing as I watched the trailer. Did they not think to ask some people "what do you like about Morrowind?" and go from there?

I very much doubt that the audience they're going for has ever played Morrowind. They might know it by reputation, but they're not gonna play a game that may have been made before they were born.

What people liked about Morrowind was the story and lore, not the "collect 50 bear hides" and "sick tab target combat" or whatever the hell TESO is doing.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/02/22/elder-scrolls-online-morrowind-preview/

How Morrowindy is Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind?
Alec Meer on February 22nd, 2017 at 3:00 pm.

I will admit to a certain wateriness in my eyes when I heard the music. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind was and is, I believe, almost more a state of mind than it is a roleplaying game. A strange and desolate place, built upon a foundation of distrust, it is almost aggressively lonely. As an RPG, the precursor to Oblivion and Skyrim is all over the shop, but that never mattered because it was a place to disappear into. The mist, the mushrooms, the menace. The music. Elder Scrolls games since have been playgrounds first and Other Places second, and I don’t know how they can go back now.


Going back is exactly the plan. Morrowind is a standalone expansion-cum-relaunch of The Elder Scrolls Online [official site] (ESO), Bethesda’s massively multiplayer spin-off of the series that gave us Skyrim. It’s due for release this June and I’ve taken a look.


ESO: Morrowind is designed as a clean entry point for new players, and also to dangle the juicy carrot of nostalgia in front of series veterans who have hitherto regarded ESO with deep suspicion. I was, I admit, unconvinced this could work. I’ve never spent any time with ESO, because from afar its initial release version seemed too routine an MMO for my tastes. Though I do hear it has made great strides since launch, there has been nothing to compel me to visit.

Then I saw Vvardenfell again.


Vvardenfell is the specific region of Morrowind that the game is set in. Vvardenfell is where I first saw towering, skinny-legged Silt Striders and towns built inside enormous crab carapaces, where I levitated over a live volcano and where I met the last dwarf in the world. Vvardenfell is a place of ash and fungus, blighted and desolate, lonely and low-tech. Vvandenfell is home.

A home, anyway. One of my many videogames homes – places I need to see only a screenshot of to recognise them, places that I feel I lived in rather than where I merely played tourist for a time. Age has not been kind to The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, though mods have provided reliable life support for quite some time. I always want to go back once again, but increasingly worry that, this time, the slings and arrows of outrageous technological advancement will have done too much damage and I will only ruin my precious memories.

Perhaps Elder Scrolls Online’s Morrowind is the answer. It is a meticulous recreation of Vvardenfell in a newer, prettier engine. While I do not expect 1:1 parity, it apparently covers the same “footprint” as the original game, with a flyby video showing Vvardernfell’s greatest hits. In a few cases, there was perhaps a little too much colour and life compared to the bleached and empty places of yore, but in others my breath did briefly catch in my throat. “I know that place. That is my place.” My place lavishly recreated, and prettier than ever. Perhaps a little too pretty against the murky, mist-choked lands of yore, although I am conscious of mounting rockist impulses that I should bat away for my own good.

And there is the music. An elaborate orchestral rendition of the comparatively skeletal original theme; sure, I prefer the simpler arrangement of the older version, but damn, take me home.


All of sudden, I want to play Elder Scrolls Online more than anything, although for Morrowind I must wait until June. The spell is somewhat broken when the videos switch to show action rather than landscape flybys, and the MMO-iness becomes unavoidable. A buzzing hive of exaggerated spell effects, the high-speed, puppety motion of third-person character models swiping at each other, gigantic Dwemer-tech bosses that seem straight out of the Blizzard playbook…


I won’t lie, it’s a far cry from the subdued Morrowind of memory. At least when the camera switches to first-person it looks significantly more restrained though, and it should be noted that the Team-America-does-Riverdance quality is far less pronounced in solo or small group play than it is in the PvP battlegrounds I know that I shall never play.


For stranger-danger types like me, thirty hours of story, split between main and side quests, is promised, in a Vvardenfell set 700 years before the events of TES3. There is complete freedom to explore if preferred, as, unlike its more WoW-like structure at launch, ESO now scales its zones and enemies to the player’s level – more comparable to how it works in mainline Elder Scrollses.

If you do want plot, the major tale is that Vivec, one of the three ‘Tribunal’ mortal gods who govern Vvardenfell, is sickening. If he dies, Morrowind is doomed, for various reasons involving volcanoes and giant space-rocks, so quest-y type players will embark upon a mission to save him. Though chronology-wise this happens hundreds of years before TES3, it would seem that the broader demographics of Vvardenfell have not changed.

The main race is still the Dunmer (Elder Scrolls’ take on Dark Elves), the key cities at least remain (I saw Balmora, Vivec, Sadrith Mora and Ald’ruhn in the demos), the Telvanni, Dres and Redoran houses are still locked in cold war, and it seems there’ll be a big focus on insectoid monsters and spelunking into Dwemer/dwarf ruins.

So far, so Morrowind, although there are switch-ups here and there. For instance, the city of Vivec is still mid-construction and thus not quite as large, while the woken god inside the volcano, centrepiece of Morrowind’s main questline, is still counting sheep at this point in the timeline. I think I look forward to the subtle and not-so-subtle differences more than I do treading familiar streets – I want surprises, not a museum.


That is a lie. I yearn to stride along the short bridges that connect the two halves of Balmora once again.

I am relieved to hear that I will be able to play as a level one character, with no experience of the rest of ESO required. A clean beginning, with a new tutorial promised for those who are only here for Vvardenfell, though ESO veterans are just as able to bring their existent characters over, and will appreciate that their questing involves Naryu Virian, a long-standing and apparently beloved ESO NPC.

The developers talk about a new character class, the Warden, who combines group healing abilities with the option to summon various animals, including the notorious Cliffracers (temporary) and a magic bear (permanent), to fight for him. Like the new 12-man raid in Soltha Sil’s Clockwork City and the three new PvP battlegrounds (a quarry, a Dwemer ruin, a Daedric ruin), this is for long-standing ESO players rather than newcomers. I’m afraid I can be of little use to those people, for all I want is to be a lonely soul with a simple dagger and a predilection for burglary, not a walking Las Vegas revue.

Following an unusual close to the demo, in which the assembled journalists watch another journalist/self-described ESO mega-fan pose primarily PVP-related queries to the developers, I am able to ask a question of my own. “I want to ask about Silt Striders,” I begin, knowingly, and pause for an audience chuckle that does not come. “Are… are they in the game?”


I am bewildered that the towering, louse-like creatures used by Vvardenfell’s denizens to quickly travel along its waterways, have not been mentioned, and do not seem to be the first thought on anyone else’s mind. Morrowind is not Morrowind without Silt Striders. I am relieved when the reply comes – yes, there are Silt Striders. And yes, they can be used for travel. Only fast travel though, as in TES3. We will not get a sightseeing tour of the island from atop their chitinous backs. My heart sinks, just a little. Real-time Silt Strider travel is all I ever wanted from any Morrowind remake.

Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind is not a Morrowind remake. It is Morrowind’s land rebuilt inside a different game. I will go there, I will thrill to that music and I will walk across those bridges in Balmora. I will see towns built inside impossibly large shells, I will traipse through mushroom forests and I will feel lost in Vivec. I relish that prospect, deeply. Yet I do not know what I shall find.

 

[Wayward Son]

I very much doubt that the audience they're going for has ever played Morrowind. They might know it by reputation, but they're not gonna play a game that may have been made before they were born.

I do...

 

[Data4]

I'm glad they didn't retcon the outer appearance of the Dwemer ruins. The interiors are TBD, I guess, but I never could stand the reimagining they received in Skyrim and ESO thus far.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Data4]

cant speak for ESO, but I actually like what skyrim did to dwemer ruins

I just didn't like how they tried to "dwarfify" them. I mean, yeah, Dwemer were colloquially referred to as dwarves, but they weren't the standard Tolkien-derived fantasy dwarves. They were just another race of elves, whose only physical feature that distingushed them from Altmer was that some had beards. All the hammer imagery and the large rectangular structures just didn't give me that Dwemer vibe like the round, pointed towers of Morrowind.