I don't know why you guys keep talking about NDA's. I haven't said anything you cant find out by watching their own official videos, nor have most of the other posters admitting to being in beta. Though the one dude talking about "prison" is probably pushing it. Giving your impressions of a game after playing it in beta doesn't break any NDA. Talking about details like what the opening zone is for the Ebonheart Pact, discussing strats to beat the first dungeons, or talking about main storyline plot points... that's breaking NDA.

Absolutely agree. I envoked the "Don't be a jerk" policy, more as just something to consider for an individual discussing aspects of a game that the dev has asked them not to. I love that rule here because it works as a positive preventative tool (for me at least). It's not just about flagging jerky posts, it's about writing something and asking yourself, "Wait, would a jerk say that?", and then having to delete your entire dumb rant before you post it. ;)

Maybe this'll give you a little less rage in your life.

One of the "core features" of these types of games are collecting things and showing them off so it is kind of silly to say "it is a good thing they hide that". Gear are the trophies and achievements of these games where in a massively online game you want to show off hard work by just standing there and letting people see what you've collected.

The reason why MMO style games often need a third person viewpoint is that the combat is so variable and derived that it is important to know what is around the character. If position and disposition are going to be important to combat then you will need another set UI indicators and another set of controls just to control "look left/right/backwards" and such which at that point combat has to slow down and control setups get close or are overly complex for a controller. Given the choice between slowing down or encumbering control or the third person camera designers often pick supporting the third person camera instead.

WoW supports a first person view. As far as I know, no one seriously uses it beyond machinma and scene staging.

I definitely don't think that this is worth $15 a month.

Way to respect the NDA you signed.

Shame. Was looking forwards to it. At least I didn't finish the download.

From what I played it was damn near Neverwinter with an Elder Scrolls coat of paint. The combat tries to ape Skyrim's attack with the right hand, block with the left, but with the cooldown abilities in the mix and the dodging it's closer to what I played of Neverwinter. The 360 controller works well with the game since it requires so few keys. The graphics were impressive, I liked the environments I visited and I thought there was some good looking water and good looking lava flows around the red mountain. The only thing tempting me to play the game at launch is running around in the world and seeing parts of the continent I've never visited since I never played the older elder scrolls games like Daggerfall.

I had a ton of fun with it, I don't know what people are so bent about. I'll definable be giving it a go when it comes out.
It's also pretty as hell, one of the best looking MMOs I've played.

meh... if you're really interested in the elder scrolls world I guess this would be palatable for fans. There are a lot of easter eggs and bones thrown for fans of old and new. The combat however just doesn't feel very fluid and the animations look robotic. Compared to other mmos that are similar to this like Neverwinter and Guild Wars 2 that play much better, it's kind of hard to believe that they really want to push a monthly fee on this.

I think they need to focus on one market. They are trying very hard to get both Skyrim fans and MMORPG players. They might end up loosing both.

Might? From what I've heard they are pretty much already there. I feel bad for the people that have spent years working on this game.

My GPU died just the day before the beta started, fantastic timing.

It's a bit................. ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Won't be buying a subscription, can't say anything else.

My experience has been that I had it downloading overnight with 40GB free on my SSD (it said it needed 30 free and was downloading 22). I woke up to a message about not having enough space and it started the whole download over when I tried again. So not a great experience.

I hate to see this thing fail, because Bethesda/Zenimax put out good games, but it seems like an inevitability at this point (unless its free to play... Not sure if it is or not). I really hope Im wrong...

@tarsier: pretty much the only way you can make Skyrim a real challenge is with overhuals mods like SKYre, Frostfall (cold can kill you), and Deadly Dragons. It makes the game quite intense,though it is silly that you have to mod your game to make it challenging.

For all that's been said about ES online, I wish I could have tried it myself. I got a beta key, but I've been away this weekend and I'm not home until midnight tonight...

Isn't this supposed to come out like in a month or two? It speaks volumes of their lack of confidence in their product, that the NDA is still up during their first stress test, which was pretty much an open beta weekend.

I'm pretty sure they're bracing themselves for a crash landing by now. Just keep the NDA up until release and hope it'll recoup enough of their investment before public opinion kills all excitement and momentum for it. Classic case of being neither fish nor fowl, leaving everyone unsatisfied. It's not enough of an Elder Scrolls game and too much of an MMO for Elder Scrolls fans, and for an MMO it's simply bad timing. The genre is in a transitional phase. Caught between business models, and missing the trend to more modable, highly interactive gameworlds in the vein of Minecraft.

TESO has an uphill battle ahead of it, and I don't see it coming out ontop.

@seppli: Honestly, the worst part is I took part in this weekends beta and I still feel the exact same way. What you said about the NDAs staying tight until release is accurate as it shows a lack of confidence in their product.

NDA's are a travesy to this industry and besthesda should be shut down already for making this garbage. Be wary of the next TES.

People feeling that you should respect unenforceable NDAs just because they exist is way more interesting to me than ESO ever was.

@triviaman09: I have a feeling those people are probably in the position of "I don't like he's talking bad about something I'm interested in" more than actually caring about any NDA ever.

@seppli: Considering what was (or is I guess) even available during the stress test it makes absolutely no sense having an NDA for it. You could only access the two first zones of any of the factions, and it was capped at level 17. Although (as I hinted at in the other thread) it's pretty clear that even during these early parts of the game this is still very much a beta, with bugs that would be completely unacceptable for a launch product and missing/broken content. After pretty much having "finished" what I wanted/could during the stress test I'm just left wondering how broken this game is gonna be at launch if these parts have yet to fall into place.

Maybe I'm just another uneducated schmuck on the internet that has no clue about game development though, but 3 months seems like an awfully small amount of time.

I became disinterested when I found out it had a subscription model. That's unfortunate that it leans more towards MMO than Elder Scrolls :( I would have considered paying by the month if it did something different.

I would have been interested in playing the game, if only to explore more of the world, but the way many of the gameplay features have been handled and the fact the game has a subscription have completely turned me off.

This will go F2P in a matter of months and then we'll be left with another poor conversion to a hybrid payment model that nobody is completely satisfied with. The only question now is.. can it flop harder than Old Republic?

i get the feeling whenever someone asks for these sweeping changes in an MMO, what they really want isn't actually an MMO at all.

Heh, I would actually say that Old Republic is a better game, but then again they also had way more invested and had a ton more hype.

But guys, it's an MMO. It's never truly finished. They can add content, patch it, tweak it, etc. In 3 or 4 years this COULD be good. Just like Early Access, sip those delicious promises slowly until the thing happens or until you lose interest.

I almost think this post is a joke, but I can't tell. NDA's are fine, though perhaps being used wrong here, and even if that wasn't true Zenimax Online Studios is a very different entity from the people who makes the main elder scrolls games.

The NDA hurts the most because it limits my ability to convince people not to run into a collapsing burning building, the firefighters may be able to save the structure, but it may not be habitable.

They're not. Only in the gaming industry there is this super secret bullshit going on, with press event being an extending arm of PR for games and betas being convert testing & quality assurance that is easily outsourced to the public. People have the right to warn other of possible garbage games. People also forget how broken skyrim was (and still is) on any platform.

Eh... I had fun with the beta.

Will buy and play for like 2 weeks.

@trafalgarlaw: You know that the movie industry has plenty of NDAs for early screenings, and that reviewers of TV shows are always under NDAs when they get early screeners etc.? Regardless of what you think of NDAs, the video game industry isn't alone here.

Also, there's NDAs for people who "beta test" movies, ie. watch early screeners to give feedback etc.