Zenimax – Page 4 – MMO Fallout

Elder Scrolls Online Delayed Six Months

With one month left until the launch of Elder Scrolls Online on the Xbox One and Playstation 4, Zenimax is in the unfortunate position of bearer of bad news. Due to “a number of unique problems specific to those platforms,” the release of both console versions has been delayed from its initial date. The announcement doesn’t reveal a specific date, but says that the delay is expected to be “about six months.” As a result of the unexpected delay, Zenimax is offering players the option to start playing now on the PC and transfer their characters to either the Xbox One or PS4 when the console edition is released.

Additionally, players who purchase the PC version of Elder Scrolls Online will have an opportunity to shift their copies over to either console for $20 alongside an additional 30 days of game time.

(Source: ESO)

Zenimax Lays Down Roadmap For ESO

The launch of Elder Scrolls Online has doubtlessly been, well, turbulent to say the least. In a newly released post on the official website, Matt Firor has laid out the roadmap for coming updates. In it, he assures players that customer support is actively banning gold farmers and chat spammers, as well as many of the game’s bugs that seem to dot the landscape. The first content update for the game available “soon,” Craglorn, includes a new adventure zone as well as twelve player raids, death recaps, tweaks for Cyrodiil, and a number of bug fixes and modifications for classes, abilities, animations, etc.

The article even goes into recent press reviews of ESO, not all of which have been very positive.

As those who follow ESO closely know, a wide range of reviews have been posted for the game, with scores ranging from 90s to 50s. ESO generates strong emotions in gamers—both positive and negative. While I obviously don’t agree with the more negative articles, the reviews are out there, and we read them to determine if there are legitimate complaints that we should address.

You can read the entire piece at the link below. Firor includes a list of updates planned for the future, as well as a note that players will receive an extra five days added to their accounts as an apology for the downtime over the past month.

(Source: Official Website)

MMO Rants: Nitpicking Elder Scrolls Online

The Elder Scrolls Online is yet another lesson in the running line of recent MMORPGs that you can either have an immersive single player story-based experience or you can have a game that encourages cooperative play, but you can’t have both at the same time and expect that neither side will suffer from it. Elder Scrolls Online is at its core a fun game with a lot of great ideas, but it loses a lot of the Elder Scrolls charm in its transition from single player to massively multiplayer, and I’m not just talking about the ability to be an evil bastard.

We all knew that sacrifices had to be made in the transition to an online game, and for some the deal was over right off the bat. It’s hard to vilify either side in this argument because technically neither are wrong. You would be correct in surmising that an online game has to have more restrictions in place because it has more responsibility to a connected community. Responsibility to maintain an economy, to allow a certain level of fairness, to make sure that everyone can have fun and no one in particular is left out, etcetera ipso facto.

And then you apply it to the Elder Scrolls, and that means no pickpocketing, no killing sprees, no stealing. NPCs no longer drop everything when they die, no extensive book collections, no criminal status, a reliance on random number generators for your loot, lag, skills tied to your number bar, respawning baskets and mobs, and a complete intrusion of other players on your business.

If the sacrifices of other features are the death of immersion by a thousand cuts, then the publicly accessible dungeons and buildings are the hammer that causes a mortal wound, if not instant death. Nothing cuts immersion in half like sneaking into a building or uncovering a “secret passageway that hasn’t been touched in centuries” only to find a couple dozen players already inside. In other quests, I battled my way through a dungeon filled with spiders in order to kill their queen, only to find the spawn point being camped by at least twenty bots/players. They seemed to have it covered, so I left.

Public dungeons are also a mood killer if you prefer to play stealthy and avoid or silently take down mobs, only to have three or four people rush in and start slaughtering everything in your path. Even worse, when the dungeon just has a train of people going back and forth, killing everything in sight. Not that it matters, because there is no incentive to actually get behind your opponent and strike them with a bow. This is especially annoying with dungeon bosses/mini-bosses, who spawn about once in a never, assuming they aren’t completely broken, and only the player who delivers the final blow will receive credit for killing them.

Sit around for twenty minutes for a mini-boss to spawn only to have someone jump in at the last second and steal the kill? Please, sign me up. For cancellation that is.

I also have a hard time taking the quests seriously in Elder Scrolls Online. I feel like every city I come across follows the same pattern: the town is overrun with zombies/pirates/bandits/etc, as though the folks at Zenimax were so proud of their phasing technology that they had to shoehorn it into every crevice of the game. The formula is always the same: Go to [insert town], receive quest from [guard/citizen] telling you not to enter, enter anyway, rescue [citizens/guards], defeat [x number of enemy], enter building, defeat boss guy. Unlock rescued town with merchants and crafting spots, rinse, repeat.

Now I know why the Imperials don’t want any of the three factions in power, these guys are fighting over territory while allowing virtually 100% of their own land be taken over by every necromancer and bandit with access to a sword. At this rate, I think the Aldmeri Dominion should just go ahead and elect a corpse as supreme leader. The country would still be in shambles, but at least we’d have a decent excuse. Someone please read the Elder Scroll that we stole from the Ebonheart Pact, maybe there are instructions in it on how to competently run an empire.

I like the fact that content is gated behind levels, and I say this as one of “those people” who preferred when enemies didn’t scale with you in Morrowind and installed mods to achieve the same concept in Oblivion and Skyrim. The idea falls short when you consider that you are being ushered from one area to the next, rather than being given free reign to go where you want as with previous games in the series, but it isn’t surprising or particularly detrimental in an MMO frame of mind.

Otherwise I have no strong opinions on the matter.

Zenimax Realtime Bans

It looks like Zenimax is ramping up their efforts against gold farmers in The Elder Scrolls Online. Intrepid explorer Necropsie over at the MMORPG.com forums snapped a screenshot in-game of a game master announcing to the area to step away from the boss or be slain. Presumably those slain by the GM would have their accounts flagged for review, if not banned outright.

This isn’t the first time an MMO has employed lethal force against bot. Back in the day, Aion GM’s could be seen executing accounts used to spam gold selling websites.

Zenimax Admits False Positives In Mass Bans

Zenimax Studios has announced that an investigation following a recent mass ban resulted in a number of false positives discovered and reversed. While the forum post in question did not mention just how many accounts were caught by accident, it did report that players identified should have had their bans lifted as of last night.

As part of our continuing effort to combat gold spammers, botters and exploiters, we recently banned a number of accounts. After several players appealed, we were able to investigate the matter further and discovered some legitimate accounts got caught up in the sweep. We unbanned accounts last night, and have email responses going out for those affected from our support group. It is never our intention for legitimate players to be harmed as we work to keep your game free of cheaters, and we sincerely apologize for the mistake.

This week has not been kind to Elder Scrolls Online, with Zenimax shutting down the game’s guild bank temporarily following the discovery of an item duplication exploit, as well as reports that players were being banned after their characters fell through the game world. The world of Tamriel is still being slowly taken over by a massive army of bots and gold farmers, and the company is still working on a fix for players missing banked items, deposited gold, skill points, etc.

(Source: Elder Scrolls Online)

MMOments: Elder Scrolls Online Part 2

Despite some setbacks, my time spent playing The Elder Scrolls Online hasn’t exactly diminished over the past week or so. I find myself dropping the game for the day due to quest-breaking bugs quite often, but it always seems that they are fixed by the next time I log in. I keep going back to my newly purchased Playstation 4, but I find that experience even worse with Warframe and Blacklight Retribution both plagued with bugs of their own. With that in mind, I don’t think that I am even close to the burnout point with ESO.

At this point, Razum-Dar has easily become my favorite character in the game. If you don’t know who this guy is, Razum-Dar is a Khajiit and agent for Queen Ayreen, that players will interact with a lot in the Aldmeri Dominion quest chain. Whenever my character wakes up in Jail, Razum-Dar is no doubt not far behind and in the process of murdering every single guard to secure my freedom. The quests and their stories are, without a doubt, fantastic.

In one storyline, for instance, I wound up uncovering a training academy that was treating its trainees like slaves and, in some cases, murdering those who act out of line. In another, I uncovered the secret behind an entire village turned to stone. The conclusion will surprise you.

The more that I play The Elder Scrolls Online, the more I get used to the floaty, not-100%-accurate combat. You get used to the fact that the game provides some lenience for lag which results in wider hit cones, or how magic attacks are auto-aimed. The issue with bugs in Elder Scrolls is one that varies from day to day. Mostly the instances of broken quests, NPCs, or missing nodes is dwindling. It seems like whenever the game does break, now, the bugs are worse. The loading screen stuck in a never ending cycle, crashes to desktop, being thrown out of the world, falling under the map, etc. Items disappearing from banks, the works.

Keeping interest in the war in Cyrodil is difficult, and I will admit that this is my sore loser side talking. The Daggerfall Covenant on Skull Crusher has completely rolled both of the other factions to the point where you can see below that they are nearly one hundred thousand points ahead of both of us. Turns out that Zenimax’s prediction that balance would be kept by the two losing factions ganging up is complete bunk, at least as far as my campaign goes. My faction isn’t even showing up anymore. I can’t even get the 15,000 alliance points needed to change campaign.

It is rather disappointing because, for Elder Scrolls Online, a disappointing campaign lasts three months. The good thing is that there is so much to do in The Elder Scrolls Online that I can pretty much ignore the PvP for the time being, between questing and exploring, completing achievements and finding treasure chests.

Ever since the last MMOments article, I only had one instance where I was ready to throw my computer out the window, and it is a quest in the Aldmeri Dominion campaign where your companion turns into a werewolf. Some combination of bugs and lag resulted in the most frustrating fight I have ever experienced in this game, where he was hitting me from across the room, cone of fire attacks would simply auto-target me even if I was directly behind him and nowhere near the area of effect, blocking was not working, and I would randomly go from half-health to dead instantly. Frustrating, yes.

The next MMOments that I run for Elder Scrolls Online will be in about a month. For now, this will continue to be my primary MMO.

Zenimax Bans Thousands Of Cheaters

Beware all cheaters who enter through this gate, for your dastardly deeds have sealed your fate. Zenimax Studios has announced that “thousands” of cheaters have been exiled from Tamriel as a result of a sweeping ban that targeted bots, spammers, and speed hackers. The announcement notes that many of these bans are thanks to reports from viewers like you, and encourages the community to continue sending in reports as the miscreants show up.

The exact number banned was not revealed in the announcement.

(Source: Elder Scrolls Online)

MMOments: Elder Scrolls Online Part 1

The Elder Scrolls Online is a game that, for all intent and purpose, should have launched and immediately crashed into the ground. Most of us will remember a couple of years back when pre-alpha footage leaked onto the net, showcasing a product that looked nothing like what we would expect out of an Elder Scrolls MMO. It looked like a shoddily built World of Warcraft clone, a cheap mockery that harkened back to the days where the MMO was a stick that companies used to beat their properties to death. With the impressions deep in everyone’s mind, and much of the media already declaring the game dead on arrival, Zenimax went back to the drawing board and reshaped the game to what it is today.

And frankly, we should be thanking every single person who overwhelmed Zenimax with feedback after that leak. We will likely never know for sure if that is how the game would have turned out had the leak never happened, but I’m willing to go ahead and say we should treat the scenario as Earth Prime and be thankful that Warhammer Online hasn’t been guaranteed a successor in post-launch exodus. The game as it is right now isn’t perfect, but it is indicative of a company that quickly pulled its head out and at some point since that pre-alpha footage was taken, started treating the game like more of an Elder Scrolls experience and less like a new World of Warcraft.

But what The Elder Scrolls Online fulfills is wholly based on your expectations. If you want Skyrim online, you’re out of luck. As with previous additions to the series, ESO is a new take on the Elder Scrolls formula that adds and removes features as it sees fit. There is certain to be a block of Elder Scrolls fans who want nothing to do with this title, as we saw with the releases of Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim, and undoubtedly those who never played earlier games in the series who will give the game a try.

Elder Scrolls Online brings to MMOs what has so woefully been lacking over the years: Exploration, and more importantly the desire to explore the world around you and tinker with the things that you find. What Zenimax brings to the table isn’t just a scavenger hunt disguised as exploration, either. Whether you find yourself in a dark cave or some alchemist’s house, there is always something to grab your interest. Resources dot the land, herbs require a keen eye and maybe a helpful perk in order to spot in the tall grasses and flowers. Treasure chests can be found and picked for loot, and one of the grandest features of the Elder Scrolls series is back in full force: The books. Those of you who have played Elder Scrolls games will be fully aware of the series’ signature massive library of hundreds of books of varying length, and Online does not disappoint at all.

I have a love hate relationship with the combat in Elder Scrolls Online, and admittedly most of my problems will likely be smoothed out in the next couple of months. Combat is a pretty straightforward system of using your mouse keys to attack and block, and the number keys to use special attacks. Enemies choreograph what they are about to do to give you ample time to defend or interrupt and get in a quick counterblow. Some foes pull off cool abilities, like freezing you in place or hopping over your head to get in an attack from behind. You won’t get very far standing still and spamming buttons.

The problem with Elder Scrolls Online right now is that combat is very clunky and occasionally completely unresponsive and deceptive. I can count several instances where my character simply refused to attack or defend himself, as well as others where he did attack but the animation did not play. In a game where visual cues are everything and bugs can be expected, it becomes frustrating when you can’t tell if your inability to move is because of lag, or because the NPC you are fighting cast a freezing spell but a bug is causing the ice not to show up. ESO also has a terrible habit of not conveying why you can’t do certain actions. Some enemies have the ability to momentarily stun you, but there is no visual cue on the player when they do. Again, no way of knowing if your inability to attack is due to a bug or intended game feature, because it could be either.

When I originally began writing this MMOments piece, I meant to talk about how the interrupt ability was completely broken. Turns out, after reading through a Reddit thread, that isn’t the case. The game tells you to press the left and right mouse buttons to interrupt certain attacks, when what you actually need to do is block and then hit attack. If you press both at the same time like the tutorial tells you, odds are you may accidentally stumble into the right formula ten percent of the time. You can also bind interrupt to a single button, apparently, which is much more convenient.

Leveling in Elder Scrolls Online continues the ongoing evolution of the series, sticking to its roots while branching into new areas. As was the case with Skyrim, leveling up offers points to invest in health, magic, or stamina. Gaining levels and obtaining Skyshards also awards skill points to invest in combat or crafting related skill lines. As with Skyrim, you will need to raise your levels in individual skills by bashing the skulls in of mudcrabs or making mudcrab stew in order to unlock related perks and abilities using your skill points. Those of you familiar with the series will be happy to know that the system of gaining levels by finding specific books has made its way in as well.

One of my peeves with Elder Scrolls Online has fermented in the form of provisioning recipes. Barring finding other players willing to sell them to you, your provisioning ability is tied one hundred percent to recipes that you find randomly in stashes or in mob loot. In the last beta period, I managed to finish the tutorial with four extra copies of all of the starting recipes. Once the game went live, I didn’t find a single recipe until several hours into the game when I managed to stumble upon a recipe for pork soup.

The Elder Scrolls Online looks great and sounds amazing. The world changes rather dramatically as you go through and complete multi-quest storylines which often revolve around liberating some village from a curse or group of bandits. It is a very sharp turnaround from the standard MMO fare where you are asked to kill twenty five wolves to cull overpopulation only for it to have no visible effect on the game. It also diverts away from The Old Republic, where phasing was mostly done in isolated chambers that only you could access.

Oh and did I mention that you get to talk to Sheogorath?

I expect to have a part 2 for MMOments as I go along, likely within the next week or so.

A Beta Perspective: Elder Scrolls Online

Since the dawn of time, many have asked why the Beta Perspective has not yet covered the Elder Scrolls Online, and the answer is as old as time itself: Zenimax doesn’t regard us as a press outfit. I hold no grudges against them, I am merely pointing this out for the purpose of transparency. Factored in with unrelated events, I haven’t spend much time playing Elder Scrolls Online prior to the NDA being lifted because, frankly, I don’t have the time to beta test a game for the sake of bug hunting.

The absolute first thought that I had upon starting The Elder Scrolls Online was “this is certainly The Elder Scrolls.” One constant that has appeared in almost every game in the main series is that the player starts off in a prison, but ESO’s take on the series trope is quite possibly one of the most interesting. At the start of the game, you are dead. Not just dead, you were sacrificed in a ritual and are now stuck in a jail cell somewhere in the insane depths of Molag Bal’s district of Oblivion. With a conga line of NPCs running around me towards the exit, I had to soak in that just minutes into the game, I was taking part in a jail break out of hell. Even if the rest of the game turns out to be forgettable, you have to admit that it’s one hell of an opening.

The world of Elder Scrolls Online looks great, from the atmosphere to the lighting to the voice acting and the soundtrack. Upon returning to the world of the living, the player comes to a tutorial island of sorts, specific to their faction, to complete a series of quests and get a lay of the land before heading off to their faction’s territory.

From a mechanical point of view, I can understand why some Elder Scrolls purists will not enjoy this game. While certain facets of the series are still present, like much of the combat system, reading books and a multitude of boxes strewn about containing mostly crafting ingredients, certain sacrifices had to be made in the transition to an online shared-world experience. Gone are the days of pickpocketing or even killing random NPCs in the streets, friendly NPCs cannot be touched at all. No more breaking into stores in the middle of the night to steal their wares or loot an armorer. Enemies you kill no longer drop all of their belongings, a well equipped bandit might reward a couple of gold and a potion or cooking ingredient.

Going directly from earlier games to Online may result in the feeling that the game is openly mocking you with some of its restrictions, like throwing you into a bandit’s den strewn with large quantities of food, weapons, armor, and potions, and not allowing you to pick up any of it. I get it, Zenimax has a budding interior decorator on staff, but does everything have to be welded to the floor? I am also not a fan of the game’s restriction on sneaking, where you are physically prevented from crouching in certain areas because it “makes you look suspicious,” according to the in-game message. Jumping around like a madman is fine, so is unsheathing my weapon and trying to stab everyone, but I can’t sneak because it would seem suspicious. Right.

I’ve found combat to be mostly enjoyable in Elder Scrolls Online, with a slight exception to the fact that NPCs telegraph their special attacks with those red indicators on the floor. Since I played through most of my time in the beta in first person, however, the floor markings were rarely within my line of sight anyway. Minus a bit of intermittent server lag, combat feels well paced and fluid, and unlike Final Fantasy XIV’s three second lag, I never felt cheated if I missed a block or failed to disrupt a foe’s attack. As you level up you gain special attacks that add more variety to combat, like the ability to leap on your enemy or knock them to the ground.

And that is nothing to say about the PvP which I was unable to get into this weekend due to lag issues making the area unplayable. What I can say from previous experience is that PvP is insane. The map is huge, combat is frantic, and success on the battlefield feels less reliant on the roving bands of zerg squads found in Guild Wars 2.

After playing the last couple of beta weekends, I decided to go ahead and buy the standard edition on Green Man Gaming with a 20% off coupon. I fully suggest checking out the final beta weekend if you get the chance, when it rolls around.

Elder Scrolls Online Pre-Order Bonuses

Yesterday the details for the Elder Scrolls Online collector’s edition leaked on the Amazon page for Dishonored, and today the details have been confirmed with Zenimax opening the game up for preorder. There are two bundles to choose from, standard and collector’s edition, and both have already sparked some controversy among fans. Preordering either edition automatically grants players the Explorer’s Pack, which includes the obligatory 5-day early access, vanity pet, and bonus treasure maps. The Explorer’s Pack allows players to roll on any faction, regardless of their race. Currently this is only listed as a preorder exclusive.

The Imperial Edition includes a metric ton of loot, including a 224 page illustrated book, a 12 inch Molag Bal statue, and a map of Tamriel. In-game, players receive a white horse mount, mudcrab pet, tradeable rings that grant bonus experience when grouped, and the ability to play as the Imperial race. To play devil’s advocate for a moment, anyone who purchases the standard edition has the option to later upgrade to the digital collector’s. The art of selling exclusive races seems to be getting more common, with last year’s Neverwinter offering an exclusive Drow race only with the purchase of a $200 package.

For now, check out the Arrival trailer.

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