Going into The Elder Scrolls Online feels like going into an MMO. You choose your character class, sex, race and allegiance. You use skill points to build an arsenal of active and passive abilities and you make your character look as unique to the rest of the players out there as you can thanks to a relatively deep character creation system (at least in the MMO space). What you might not be prepared for is how much the game actually differs from other MMOs once you’re in the world proper.

In fact the biggest differentiator to other games in the field, is TESO plays more like the single-player Elder Scrolls games we’ve all come to know and love. Specifically Skyrim.

“So it was interesting,” enlightens Zenimax Online Creative Director, Paul Sage. “The way we started out was that we kind of made less of what we like about MMOs; what we like about Elder Scrolls games, and we started looking at where those things paired up. So kind of “what are our expectations?” and “what are player expectations?” and, you know, there were interesting things like exploration being really high on the list, so you know, that [became] one of our key things to really concentrate on. So we actually found that there were a lot of places where [the genres] met, you know, they’re not as dissimilar as you might think, and so that really helped us out.”

This comes by way of multiple lines of dialogue and questioning when conversing with NPCs and quest givers, the fact they’re all fully voiced (and sound like Elder Scrolls characters), that you level up simply by performing tasks as opposed to reaching a level and handing it in to a task master, and that you don’t need to learn skills like crafting from a blacksmith or such, rather you collect your ingredients, find a table and build it yourself.



Possibly one of the most difficult inclusions from the traditional Elder Scrolls experience to carry over to an MMO though, is definitely dynamic player impact, and reflection. In short, can a persistent, static world actively reflect decisions you make in the game-world or during quest lines? It’s hard because other players are going to be walking a similar path to you, so killing a quest-giver in your experience, if the game were a traditional Elder Scrolls title, would mean another player would, in theory, be locked out of that quest. But there’s another way to give players a greater sense of character progression and impact, without having to physically change the world in a way that would break it for others.

“I don’t want to get metaphysical, but change is a matter of perception; how you see the world,” Sage enthuses. “And that’s sort of a tenant that we worked on which is [that] more or less how you perceive the world may be different from the way your friend perceives the world, if they’ve done different things. So internally what we did was we looked at privatised interactions, so your interactions with NPCs -- my interaction with NPCs might be different than [your] interactions with an NPC, and how they react to you (as a result). And so that’s one example of a private interaction.

“Then there are other things that a lot of people are familiar with, which are layering, or “phasing” -- we use that,” he adds. “We have to be cautious about that because we don’t want to split up our players very much and then we also have something else which... internally we call it “conditional visibility” [which means] some things just aren’t there for other players, things you can see. So we use all of these different techniques to make sure that the world does change and your decisions do have an impact.”

The other major component of the traditional Bethesda Elder Scrolls experience, is in emergent gameplay through player exploration -- another difficult crossover to pull of in the MMO space. But it’s another area the team tackled and reworked to fit their collated vision. I didn’t get a full-on look at their implementation, but the short time I had with the game gave me faith they’re pushing this element in the right direction, something Paul affirms when probed about the difficulties in facing this in design.



“One of the big things about our exploration game is we still want you to be able to walk around the world,” he says. “Interestingly enough, everyone who played today should have started off with no quests whatsoever and then really no direction. Now, if you found quests, if you found things to do, that was really one of our goals: can you just go off and have a good time, and then stumble upon that content? So I will say that has been one of the more difficult parts from design, is how to get that to work because you still need enough population for players to be able to play together and feel challenged, but you also need enough exploratory content to where [players] can still go around the world and still feel engaged. It’s probably one of the things [we did] that I’m most happiest about.

“We just keep adding more and more things into the world, you know, like fishing is in the game (though not in this build),” he adds enthusiastically. “We have all the different crafting things, we’ve got treasure chests that are locked, and of course there’s all the explorable caves, all the dungeons, all of that goes [on] throughout the world.”

To be fair, in my playthrough of around 90-minutes I didn’t team up with anyone or rock an instance. But I did take on multiple quests and smash the Bloodthorn Assassins. Taking on quests was incredibly organic, and often there was crossover between quests that made perfect sense and helped flesh out the immediate area I was in. In this sense the MMO formula was intact, but blended seamlessly with the more single-player crafted element of the game. Add to this the ability to play in first-person (and barring a few animations here and there, it looks and feels fantastic), and you have one of the more unique high-fantasy MMOs out there.

PvE and PvP were unfortunately absent from my session though, two factors most active MMO players want to know the most about. We did learn a bit about things like alliance and guild Campaigns, and the group missions that come with those, such as starving Keeps of their resources by taking over an associated farm, for example, but on the whole this is an area we’ll be looking at in deeper fashion as the game draws closer to an open release.



Despite a clear drop in visual fidelity in relation to Skyrim, TESO is still pushing MMO visual boundaries and is easily one of the better looking entries in the field. Architecture in towns is breathtaking and on-point for the Elder Scrolls universe. It’s also teeming with life: markets, banks, blacksmiths, tailors and more add a greater sense of believable community to the game, and if you’ve ever been trotting through these in any of the previous Elder Scrolls titles and wanted to see other players inhabiting the space as well, TESO offers this in spades. It really is the most obvious jump for the franchise, and while concerns may have reigned supreme early in its revealed development, the way things are looking here, most of those fears can be put to rest. The team has also ensured players with older tech aren’t locked out of getting into the game.

“Okay, so it’s always hard to talk about PC specs because it’s all just numbers,” Sage says. “Let me tell you some things I’ve seen it running on: I’ve seen it running on a five-year old Mac laptop, I’ve seen it running on a Microsoft Surface Pro -- with decent settings on it, actually. The technology team has done a great job of keeping it to where it will run on older machines because we want to have as broad of an audience as possible.”

On the server side of things, the team are being somewhat coy about their plans. Sage tells us they’re yet to reveal their server roll-out, and so avoids any commitment to localised servers for the geographically challenged like Australians and New Zealanders, but is happy to go into a bit of detail about what the Mega Server tech their using will mean for players.

“Essentially what we try to do is we try to put people in... let’s say you have a zone space that is 2km x 2km (the game is bigger than that though),” he explains. “[In these] there’s only so much population a certain zone can handle before you start getting overcrowding issues so the Mega Server really balances that out by providing “channels” and we try to intelligently put people in the right channels, you know, kind of depending on your friends list and your guild list and things like that. And then if you are not in the channel you want to be in, say your friend’s in another channel, then we allow you to switch those channels and you’ll be taken right to him.”



Combat is relatively fluid, and borrows from both classic Elder Scrolls games and MMOs. Keybind abilities and utilise them as you see fit, though most things come packed with a cooldown. Two handed and one-handed weapons work the same as they do in Skyrim, and you can block and parry as well as build up a strike for a more powerful hit (though this leaves you more open to attack). It lacks the more definitive feel of Skyrim’s combat though, as you're pretty much grinding through ever-respawning enemies and creatures, but this is still an MMO, so it’s all par for the course. Moreover, unlike Skyrim, encounters are a bit more frequent and feel more scripted in placement than the emergent, discovery element of the single-player game. It’s in this point TESO will separate itself from Skyrim and other Elder Scrolls entries, with the ability to team up with friends or guilds and trounce about the world as a powerful high-fantasy gang of sorts.

“In MMOs for instance, you know, combat can kind of get stale,” Sage explains. “And so [we realised] this is what we need to concentrate on; we need to concentrate more on, like, the Elder Scrolls [combat] where players really like it, so it really helps it to balance out.”

The final cross off on our MMO pillars list comes in the form of trading between players -- arguably one of the most important parts of any game in the field as it acts as bait to keep players coming back, working to build that elite loot manifest. Not much is currently known about how the team will handle the trading side of things, but Paul is happy to give us a taste of the philosophy they’re going in with.

“When we were looking at how we wanted to do trading between players, we wanted to make it more of a microcosm, and I’m giving you early details on this system, but we want to make sure that the way people trade can be done globally, but is more of a microcosm,” he explains. “I mean, that’s not a lot of detail, but the idea is to get these smaller communities together working on trading goods, as an example, because when it gets too broad sometimes it just kind of blows out people’s expectations... we wanna make sure that the economy starts off on a more micro level and grows from there.”



While TESO will serve a broad PC community not at all starved for MMO content, the question of next-gen console possibilities can’t be ignored. Especially given the relatively PC-friendly architecture lining the upcoming machines. But does it mean a project like this would be easy to port to the likes of PS4 or Xbox One?

““Easy” is a relative term,” Sage says with a chuckle. “I’ll say that I think the new consoles are pretty exciting. Honestly, since I’m [also] a console gamer I absolutely would love the idea but right now we’re announced as PC and Mac and we’ll see what the future holds.

“[But] we’ve taken a lot of nods from the things that make console games great,” he continues. “A reduced UI which makes it easier to interact with, you know, it’s not a very super-complex UI and we’ve done that for a reason because we want people to pay attention to the world-space. So I think when a console player looks at our game they’re going to immediately say “this is very familiar to me”, you know, the controls are... if I say “simplified” sometimes people think that means dumbed down, but it doesn’t, it enables you to really look at the world and really experience the world in a way that’s great.”

We do try to trick Paul into confirming some form of console development with a question about controller support, something he expertly dances around (the answer is not at this stage), leaving us to ponder the living room MMO experience and its possibilities in the future. Right now though, in the present, the game is PC and Mac and inching ever-closer to mass consumption.

“We’re in our beta test right now,” Paul concludes. “[And] we’ll be broadening that out [but] a lot of this relies on that beta test: so when you have things like how many players do the servers support, you know, we have the mega server technology, and you’re really just looking at going step by step through that process of, like, “okay, we’ve got this many people at this time”, and “we’ve got this many on the next time”, and being in beta you’re getting close to what [we] call “feature complete”, that way you can react to the feedback that you’re getting from people, and so we’re definitely at that stage of the project where we’re in beta; we’re in closed-beta and we’re just gonna keep opening up more and more as the year progresses.”

There’s a lot riding on answers to simple and complex questions where a successful MMO formula and playstate is concerned, but everything we’re seeing and hearing is gearing the game up to be a very strong contender in the high-fantasy MMO space. The established Elder Scrolls universe is one of the game’s strongest drawcards, and is likely to pull in many non-traditional MMO players as well as those wanting to try something new and fresh. The more personalised approach to the experience, which is in line with any Elder Scrolls experience, is what I walked away most excited about and with that, and all of the above in mind, I just can‘t wait to sink more time into the game to see where they take it.