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Niyeaux

The Elder Scrolls Online free-to-play betting pool!

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This originally started as a joke on twitter, but now it looks like I'm actually going to have to organize it for real. A couple friends of mine have expressed interest in a betting pool based upon how long it takes for the Elder Scrolls Online to go free-to-play after launch. The easiest-to-organize way of going about this will be to have a flat $10 buy-in, with the closest guess taking the whole pot at the end of all this. If more than one person has the same guess, they'll split the pot.

If anyone wants in, I'm going to start taking buy-ins via PayPal. Doing it that way relies on people trusting me not to run away with their money, which isn't ideal, but I can't think of any way to do it that's more secure (and not a huge pain in the ass). Open to ideas on that front.
 

Anyways, let's do this thing. The only thing better than reckless gambling is reckless gambling on an inherently cynical premise.

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Bereft of its own topic, I'll just say right here that the opening cinematic of this game, which must've cost a veritable ton of money, is utterly boring. It's an 8 minute (!) fight between nondescript characters and it feels painfully generic. It doesn't have an Elder Scrolls vibe, it features a token seductive woman in boob armor, a token Skyrim ambassador, and confusing, tiring direction. Here, this is it.

 

 

After the incredible thrill that was the announcement film of Skyrim, how did this happen?

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I am not an informed better because I can't really tell whether this game is still in the DIKU mold, and that's a major factor. Anyone who wants to play something like WoW will play WoW, or Rift, or TOR. It's basically guaranteed that people in chat are going to be talking about how much better WoW, GW2 and WildStar are and how terrible WoW, GW2 and WildStar are, so the unflattering comparisons will start almost immediately.

 

What happens if it goes buy-to-play like TSW did?

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Then no one wins I guess. I'm assuming it's going to go Old Republic at some point, though.

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What happens if it goes buy-to-play like TSW did?

I would think that's the same as F2P for all intents and purposes. It means the subscription business model has failed.

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Bereft of its own topic, I'll just say right here that the opening cinematic of this game, which must've cost a veritable ton of money, is utterly boring. It's an 8 minute (!) fight between nondescript characters and it feels painfully generic. It doesn't have an Elder Scrolls vibe, it features a token seductive woman in boob armor, a token Skyrim ambassador, and confusing, tiring direction. Here, this is it.

 

It's pretty much guaranteed at this point that anything game-related done by Blur Studio is going to be really pretty and really boring. They make the same stupid BADASS SUPER KUNG FU NINJA MAGIC FIGHT trailer for every fucking game they're contracted to.

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I've got three people in on this so far, which is enough to make it amusing. Most guesses are in the six months to a year range.

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It's pretty much guaranteed at this point that anything game-related done by Blur Studio is going to be really pretty and really boring. They make the same stupid BADASS SUPER KUNG FU NINJA MAGIC FIGHT trailer for every fucking game they're contracted to.

Ironically the Hellgate:London one was at least slightly a departure from this. Still one of the best parts of that game.

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Few days old, but just read it: RPS's hands-on with ESO.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/02/07/hands-on-the-first-few-hours-of-elder-scrolls-online/

They pretty much gut the thing as a derivative work that neither hits the high tones of the series, nor manages to do anything remarkable with the (over-saturated) genre. Shame, because in terms of atmosphere I'd probably like it, but its MMO trappings restrict exactly the sort of wild adventuring and game-unscrewing action (stealing your gear, abusing systems) that makes Elder Scrolls such a delightfully tantalizing world.

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Most everyone I know just went to play Skyrim instead, though apparently the queues to get in to ESO are more than an hour long so someone's playing.

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I quite enjoyed faffing about in the game but i mainly just made me want to play it offline without queues and other people. Definitely gave me the itch to install Skyrim again though.

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I got an invitation to the beta. After the massive download, I logged in and created a character, but before I started playing I just backed out and uninstalled it. After losing over a decade+ of my life to playing MMORPGs almost exclusively, I feel comfortable saying that almost anything they offer has already been done better in a single player offline RPG. The only thing that remotely interests me is large scale PvP. Or it might if most of the good PvP experiences weren't rolled up in shitty pay to win monetization schemes these days.

 

The genre is dying and I think it's for the best. I'd really give anything to have all the time I sunk into EQ, WoW, etc. back so I could have put it something constructive. Just play Skyrim, there's more meat to a game like that than anything a theme park MMO could offer you.

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losing over a decade+ of my life to playing MMORPGs almost exclusively, I feel comfortable saying that almost anything they offer has already been done better in a single player offline RPG. The only thing that remotely interests me is large scale PvP. Or it might if most of the good PvP experiences weren't rolled up in shitty pay to win monetization schemes these days.

 

GW2's World vs World might be what you're looking for in terms of large scale PvP, including the avoidance of shitty pay2win mechanics. This is a game that has a cash shop and an official method to buy gold, but do not be fooled: gold lubricates some things, but the way you win in WvW is to get all your guys to the right place first. One guy with all the power buffs you can buy is still going to be steamrolled if he's there on his own.

 

But having played a lot of MMOs, particularly the weirder indie ones, I'd violently disagree with the idea that they have nothing to offer that a single-player game can't do better. I've played an MMO where the progress of the brightest stars in the game depended on their ability to recruit and support newer players. I stalked in-game celebrities and employees for autographs. I've been in cold wars between two rival factions that wanted the same resources and just couldn't get on. I've seen developers drop new areas in unannounced, and been part of the discussions of people working out what it all meant. I've seen an entire map of 100+ people cheer each other on as they've been brought up to bat against a boss, 5 at a time, where everyone had to succeed for anyone to get the rewards.

 

Single-player games, by and large, can't do community. A good MMO builds its game around it. If you're just looking at WoW and its clones then yeah, MMORPGs look moribund and worthless, but what you need to remember was that Blizzard redefined that genre to be a single-player RPG with other people, with sketchy, decades old mechanics meant for a text-based game run in a part-time university server. It's just now that we're seeing serious efforts to redefine it back, with games like DayZ. Making a follow-the-leader game doesn't work in MMORPGs because you're directly competing against the leader and offering a product that's smaller, jankier and more expensive; it especially doesn't work now that what MMOs used to offer is matched by Call of Duty multiplayer.

 

So yeah basically ESO is as doomed as TOR was, which also made a follow-the-leader game and then was surprised when it turned out people had already played that game enough.

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What you just described that you are enjoying out of MMOs is the communities and people, but not really much about any game mechanics. That's cool, but I've been around enough of that "community" to know that I've had my fill of it. I get enough "community" at my job. :-P

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Here's the thing, though: most of the MMOs that I thought worked have had game mechanics that foster co-operation. As I mentioned, Pyroto Mountain had a mechanic where the maximum level was determined by a formula that took into account the distribution of players, and earning the right to advance involved participating on the mountain's BBS, with a post of substantial length, that had few spelling and grammar errors, to please The Spirit of the Land. As a new player, you couldn't afford to piss off the powerful wizards; as a powerful wizard, you couldn't afford to let one dipstick ruin your mountain for everyone else, or else they'd move and you'd be prevented from advancing. To get off land in Puzzle Pirates, you had to get on a ship, which usually meant you had to charm someone enough to join a crew. Because crew members could join any crew ship at logon and kick off one of the computer players keeping you afloat, you basically had to ensure everyone you recruited meeted a minimum standard of decency. As a result, the most committed Puzzle Pirates players were all basically socially adept, because you couldn't really get anywhere without it. Guild Wars 2 allows anyone to revive anyone else - basically every new player runs across another player's corpse, get them back on their feet, and have that other player thank them. Most players seem to credit that one mechanic with making the map chat significantly friendlier and mature than the average internet community, even though the official forums are still basically awful.

 

From there, you can have ridiculously large fights and collaborative puzzle solving and having strangers pull you out of fires and all that other stuff that you only really get in a game populated with mostly strangers. 

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So, I guess this has become the defacto ESO thread? I had no intentions of getting this after seeing a somewhat dismal showing at PAX, but friends have been having a lot of fun in the beta and my resolve crumbled.

 

Once you get out of the starter area, this plays mostly like an Elder Scrolls game. It's not the best thing in the world, but it's solid and fairly fun. I'm also a big fan of the level-up system. Combat is a bit less responsive than I'd like, but still better than most MMOs.

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Watching the Giantbomb Quicklook, and this game is so bad during a quest to "save the town from the siege" by "burning the siege equipment" what they actually did is just dance in the hokey little fire particles of the totally unguarded "siege ladders" after they were on fire. Because... well the only thing to actually do on the "quest" at all was make fun of it by /dance

 

http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/quick-look-the-elder-scrolls-online-part-02/2300-8701/ you can watch them do so within the first five minutes or so over here.

 

Free to play within a year.

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Free to play within a year.

 

Nah, a year is too close to admitting defeat. At the very least, they'll run it as close to a loss to get to eighteen months, the threshold for no longer being "almost/barely (more than) a year".

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I watched that Quicklook and they hit a ton of bugs. I have hit a few, but not near as many as they did. For the record, I like it (but don't love it.) My only real complaint is that it feels awful crowded with other players, but that goes away once you get out of the tutorial areas and into the wider open world.

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I'm sad to say I'm really enjoying this. Hopefully the fun evaporates before my free month runs out.

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I keep on meaning to make a real gaming topic on this, but then I get distracted and forget by the time I get home from work.

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I'm sad to say I'm really enjoying this. Hopefully the fun evaporates before my free month runs out.

 Haven't you already paid full price for it? One would hope you'd get at least something you'd enjoy out of it.

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STOP THE CLOCK

 

TESO goes buy-to-play in March 2015.

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