I wish more people got this:

“MMOs are fundamentally broken. Like the free-to-play model, they all too often put commercial demands in front of game design.”

If your business model dictates you get more money the longer I play, you have an economic incentive to slow down the rate at which I can tackle any given amount of content to as slow as players will tolerate.  Therefore: grinding, long travel times, slow healing out of combat, long cooldowns on convenience abilities, etc., etc., etc.  It’s nearly impossible to design a game that maximizes player fun per time if the business model wants to slow you down.

I’m a pretty huge Elder Scrolls fan, but I really don’t see the point of this. If you take what’s great and unique about TES in the single-player space, and try to put it into an MMO, don’t you just end up with another fantasy mmorpg? 

I found through my love of Tolkien and my attempt at Lotro, that lore isn’t enough to overcome my disdain for the traditional mmo model. Yes, it was cool to be able to visit Rivendell or wherever, but the game itself was still that crappy “hit 1, then 2, then 1 again, then 5, and hit 1 a bunch till the cooldown on 5 is over” combat (I DESPISE that!) and kill ten rats quests that make MMOs bad.

I hold a slim hope that this might be different. It has to be to have a chance, but no one wants to risk being different in the mmo space due to the dev costs, ironically dooming themselves to failure. Maybe this’ll be different. Maybe, at the very least, they’ll make it the all-too-rare sandbox style mmo instead of the awful WoW theme park style. Who knows?

I’ll keep an eye on it, but won’t hold my breath. Just maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised. So long as the new expansion for Skyrim is good, I’ll be happy.  

I doubt it’ll be much like multiplayer Skyrim. Not interested either way, though. I remember back when I first played stuff like Everquest and Anarchy Online, I had such high hopes for the MMO genre. I saw so many exciting ways it could evolve. But it never really went anywhere. Instead it just got blander and blander.

I’m waiting for you.

 Thank you for my first laugh in a post-Adam Yauch world.

Rather than an MMO Skyrim, I think it would be interesting to play something with a limited amount of multiplayer- think Crackdown’s multiplayer mode, but with a few more people.  Or think Minecraft.  Or system link games in Baldur’s Gate.  Really, making a fantasy sandbox that people can play in, whether they want to fight each other, complete missions together, or just mess around with the world would be really fun, and make a lot more sense for a game in which you are supposed to be a powerful individual. 
Really, if me and 7 friends could all show up in Skyrim at the same time and just mess around in the world, I would pay money for that.  Not a monthly subscription

There’s ways they could improve this, like setting up multiplayer-specific missions or allowing players to change the game world more than Elder Scrolls games currently allow. That might be a bit much for modern computers, but they could compromise in other areas. If they could make a heavily customizable world that could take 8 players at once, but had to reduce the world size and graphics to Morrowind levels, I would play the hell out of that game.  

 Yeah, probably you’re right (or at least they would if they think about the interplay of business model and game design model at all).  So probably what I mean is: “I wish more people liked what I like and disliked what I dislike so that the market would support a higher amount of what I like.”  Which is sort of tautological.

 I really don’t think most people do. I think most people just play whatever their friends play, or whatever is marketed to them(heavy marketing makes friends playing more likely of course). I’m probably a sad, cynical bastard, but that seems to be the way of it.

Though of course part of why they’re fine with it could be that they are unaware of the wide variety of experieneces electronic games can offer, or that this experience is superior for them because it’s their first run through the gauntlet. I still see it as a negative that it’s easier to exploit such inexperience than say the first wave of mainstream JRPGs led by FFVII in the 90s(I was a content “victim”).

Don’t forget that Bethesda also releases some crazy buggy software.  I don’t really see anyone putting up with that and the frustration of an MMO even if it were free to play.

Great screen shot.  I recall EQ looking like that.

I love the Elder Scrolls games, but I’m not really sold on this idea. A co-op version? Awesome! MMO? eh, I dunno. 

I’ll play it, it could be great, but the whole MMO aspect seems to miss the point of the Bethesda experience to me.