The Elder Scrolls Online Preview and Interview

It seems it will take a while longer for us to learn more details about The Elder Scrolls Online, as most of the coverage we have seen so far mostly seems to touch upon things we’ve already learned, but in case you’re looking to read for more about the title, we have a new preview and interview for you to read.

Shacknews was disappointed by the presentation offered by the developers:

And when the lights came up, all I could muster was “Is that it?” With a half-hour to show off its game, Zenimax offered an incredible lack of substance for a project that has been in development for five years. Maybe I was expecting too much, but I had hoped for a bit more flash and pizazz, or even something that I could actively talk about with enthusiasm. The graphics were flat, the combat system uninspiring and the general feel of the game had me thinking of vanilla World of Warcraft. Even the PvP, with a scale that had me intrigued, felt thrown together and tacked on at the last minute as an “oh by the way …” When the minute-long E3 teaser spends just as much time on credits and titles as it does showing anything from the game, there is a problem.

The dwindling population problems encountered by Star Wars: The Old Republic since its launch has shown that a strong license does not guarantee success. And as fanatical as The Elder Scrolls player-base is, it will take a lot to keep them engaged. There are other MMOs in the wings–such as a new expansion for Rift and the Dungeons & Dragons-based Neverwinter from MMO veteran dev Cryptic Studios–that are poised to snap up players with an innovative character development hook or a new take on a popular pen-and-paper franchise.

While Rock, Paper, Shotgun chatted with creative director Paul Sage. Here’s an excerpt:

RPS: You dedicated a lot of the presentation to discussing how solo quests can affect the world for instance, by putting a horde of restless ghost baddies to rest. Is the goal of Elder Scrolls Online to more or less make the player feel like the hero of a single-player RPG?

Paul Sage: Absolutely. One of the things we set out to do was make you feel like the hero. You saw when you went back in time, and you saw the direct results of that [in the present]. That is one of the big things we want to do, because we want NPCs to react to you when you come back to town ala Oblivion’s running (You’re the hero of Kvatch) joke. We want NPCs to recognize your accomplishments and those things.

RPS: But, generally speaking, MMOs do kind of a terrible job of making us feel like heroes. Other people run and leap and spam general chat all around, and they’re doing the exact same things as you. Why not instead focus on constructing a world that doesn’t try to ignore that?

Paul Sage: It’s a matter of perspective. If you feel like NPCs respect your accomplishments, there’s nothing that says other people being around takes away from that. In fact, it enhances that.

RPS: Right, but MMO NPCs are about as low on the NPC food chain as you can go. Typically, they’re rooted in one place for the sole purpose of spewing exposition and quest info. I’m not sure how much I’d really care if one said, (Hey, you’re totally that guy who slew the one thousandth instance of Xan’thulrex, the giant beagle.)

Paul Sage: With us, our NPCs might recognize your accomplishments or something else that’s not even an accomplishment. They respond to what you’ve done, so it does feel more like a living, breathing world. NPCs have professions and I know that’s true of a lot of other games but specifically what I mean is the NPC’s responses will change based on what the player’s done. Race and class choice is also a factor [in those responses].

You can also look at our goal to crown a player emperor. There’s faction warfare, and that’s one of the things where, yeah, you really are special. But if you don’t want to do the quests, you’re more than welcome to just go explore the dungeon content. So really, if that’s your goal where you don’t want to be the hero, we’ll have an option for you there, too.