The Elder Scrolls Online announced

Bethesda has announced The Elder Scrolls Online, an MMO set in Tamriel coming to PC and Mac in 2013.

58

Making good on a rumor from March, The Elder Scrolls Online has officially been confirmed. As suspected, the game takes place a millennium before The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, and focuses on the daedric prince Molag Bal's attempts to pull Tamriel into the demonic realm.

The game is appearing as June's Game Informer cover story, so we should see more details, screenshots, and a teaser trailer soon. For now, the setting is about as far as our knowledge goes. The game is being developed by Zenimax Online Studios, and is due in 2013 for PC and Mac.

"We have been working hard to create an online world in which players will be able to experience the epic Elder Scrolls universe with their friends, something fans have long said they wanted," said game director Matt Firor in the announcement. "It will be extremely rewarding finally to unveil what we have been developing the last several years. The entire team is committed to creating the best MMO ever made - and one that is worthy of The Elder Scrolls franchise."

Editor-In-Chief
From The Chatty
  • reply
    May 3, 2012 9:30 AM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, The Elder Scrolls Online announced.

    Bethesda has announced The Elder Scrolls Online, an MMO set in Tamriel coming to PC and Mac in 2013.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 9:43 AM

      So basically you can see this wonderful world gone to shit by a couple lolling Khajiits and Dunmer running around naked yelling peeenisss. Fans wanted MULTIPLAYER, not an MMO! /pass

      • reply
        May 3, 2012 9:45 AM

        [deleted]

        • reply
          May 3, 2012 10:08 AM

          ^this !

        • reply
          May 3, 2012 10:10 AM

          I would have been happy with just being able to show off my character to other players using in game tools. Maybe some sort of co-op like Fable has. An MMO? Not interested at all.

        • reply
          May 3, 2012 10:10 AM

          THIS is why MMOs don't interest me at all, so bummed about this.

          • reply
            May 3, 2012 11:01 AM

            Yep. Playing in a world with thousands of other real people sounds great at first but then when you think about it you should realize that most of them will be fuckheads.

            • reply
              May 3, 2012 11:07 AM

              somebody should create a badass MMO game and then display every player's driver's license photo and home town on their avatar.

            • reply
              May 3, 2012 6:16 PM

              I dunno... I think Elder Scrolls will attract mainly players that are not fuckheads... I played LOTRO, and I found the majority of players really nice people, plenty willing to help, plenty of excellent groups to join. And those that I didn;t directly interact with, well there were plenty of players just going about their own business crafting and the like.

              Maybe it was something to do with how LOTRO was setup? I dunno, but it left a sweet taste in my mouth.

            • reply
              May 4, 2012 6:17 AM

              Yeah, it was great for me when it was UO and Everquest... a little bit with WoW. Now I'm done with it. I feel that MMO's were kind of something I needed to get out of my system and now I never need to go back.

        • reply
          May 3, 2012 3:46 PM

          Pretty much :(

      • reply
        May 3, 2012 10:14 AM

        On the positive side, I don't believe the developers that make the single-player games are being pulled away from that. The MMO is from a studio they founded back in 2007, so I imagine the guys that made Oblivion and Skyrim will keep on making Elder Scrolls games. Plus, the MMO is only for PC and Mac, and I doubt Bethesda wants to stop cashing in on the consoles.

        • reply
          May 3, 2012 10:28 AM

          That is correct. This is not from the Skyrim development team.

      • reply
        May 3, 2012 12:06 PM

        100% this.

      • reply
        May 3, 2012 7:07 PM

        ^^^
        I will check this out only because I love the Elder Scrolls, I am not hopeful about this news though :(

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 9:48 AM

      This will be the BEST MMO ever made.... nuff said...

      • reply
        May 3, 2012 11:15 AM

        I beg to differ

      • reply
        May 3, 2012 11:46 AM

        The same was said about SWTOR. And RIFT. And TERA, and...

        • Ebu legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
          reply
          May 3, 2012 3:07 PM

          RIFT was the best MMO. At least, I enjoyed it the most since EQ1. They got a lot right.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 9:48 AM

      Don't forget the requisite 50 comparisons to WoW in chat every 10 minutes.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 9:51 AM

      >:I

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 10:09 AM

      eeeeehhhhhhhh

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 10:10 AM

      Does this mean that we won't get a Skyrim coop update?

      • reply
        May 3, 2012 11:23 AM

        I don't believe the engine skyrim is built with is really made for multiplayer coop. As i understand it it would be very difficult to do.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 10:11 AM

      Cue lots of whining from MMO haters. I'm excited to see what they bring to the table.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 10:54 AM

      A Bethesda MMO? So we can expect a buggy, incomplete MMO that feels unbalanced and unfinished until the modding community fixes, balances and completes their game for them?

      • reply
        May 3, 2012 11:04 AM

        It's unlikely they'd allow mods for this for huge a number of reasons.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 10:55 AM

      Why yes, I will buy that.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 11:09 AM

      [deleted]

      • reply
        May 3, 2012 11:16 AM

        Having large numbers of skills is not the same as having depth.

      • reply
        May 3, 2012 11:29 AM

        So you want it to be frustrating and unintuitive as fuck?

        • reply
          May 3, 2012 12:40 PM

          [deleted]

          • reply
            May 3, 2012 12:44 PM

            [deleted]

            • reply
              May 3, 2012 1:23 PM

              [deleted]

              • reply
                May 3, 2012 6:32 PM

                I loved Morrowind and I love hard games but swinging my axe point blank at a cliffracer and missing because my arbitrary axe skill wasn't high enough isn't hard, it's lame. They need to think of other ways to make the game hard (such as: demon's souls esque combat!!!!)

        • reply
          May 3, 2012 12:57 PM

          Intuitive is fine. But plenty of MMOs have tried to be 'accessible' and turned out to be 'pathetic easymode' and then naturally people got bored as shit and left.

          Look at EVE. They won't kill Blizzard anytime soon but they're doing really well.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 11:14 AM

      After SWTOR, it will either be really basic and cheap or lose money.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 11:21 AM

      No thank you I'm burnt out of mmos star wars was my last one and I only lasted two months. I play skyrim about 30 minutes a day and I like having the world be deep and immersive by adding dungeons and lore to read not by adding quest that involve getting X amount of this then get X amount of that for 50 levels I also like the ability to not have class restriction I can be whatever I want to be. In MMOs you have to pick to a class angst be stuck with it.

      • reply
        May 3, 2012 12:09 PM

        MMOs don't have to be that way, but one that doesn't has to prove to be successful before people will believe it I guess.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 11:32 AM

      [deleted]

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 11:54 AM

      Housing and pking or go home!

      • reply
        May 3, 2012 12:31 PM

        ^^ This. And when I kill you, I get all your stuff. UO lives!

        • reply
          May 3, 2012 1:44 PM

          I miss UO so much. No game since has made my heart race or my palms sweat as much as when you're alone dungeon crawling and after an hour of killing liches a murderer comes barreling at you on horseback from off-screen. Luckily I got the game when Second Age came out so I had a few years of crazed paranoid adventuring before it turned to a snooze-fest with Renaissance. I tried going back to felucca after I realized how boring trammel was but it just wasn't the same, felt like a ghost town.

          • reply
            May 3, 2012 5:27 PM

            There were so many awesome moments, both on the winning and losing side of that game. I don't think it will ever be repeated. It was the wild, wild west, and we were all just learning what it was to be peekay.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 12:04 PM

      I swear to fuck, the first asshole that yells, "FUS ROH DAH!" in voice chat is getting his shit kicked in.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 12:05 PM

      Do not want.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 12:12 PM

      [deleted]

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 12:13 PM

      I'd love to be thrilled, really, but a MMO where people spend days of their lives has to have a solid core of gameplay mechanics (combat), and thus far they haven't truly been able to deliver one. I'm sure it will be fun for a while though.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 12:14 PM

      [deleted]

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 12:26 PM

      They can't release a single player game without many game breaking bugs and poor coding, and they're still using the gamebryo engine for fucks sake, and they want to release a mmorpg?

      Unless it has a combat system like the one in Skyrim, it will die fast, as there's already enough generic fantasy games with the typical "click monster, auto attack, click buttons to activate special ability, etc.", as opposed to actively needing to block, dodge, time each individual attack, decide which angle is best to attack from, etc.

      • reply
        May 3, 2012 12:27 PM

        On a side note, what has made the Elder Scrolls game so popular (at least in my case) are all the mods. You can't mod anything but the UI in mmorpg's :(

        • reply
          May 3, 2012 12:28 PM

          tru tru

        • reply
          May 3, 2012 1:09 PM

          I think mods only started showing up around Morrowind. The series was already greatly popular prior to that. Given that, the mod community for these games is definitely a boon, but I don't think it will make a difference for the MMO.

          • reply
            May 3, 2012 2:56 PM

            Funny you say that, I found out about the Elder Scrolls games, with my first one being Morrowind...friggen cliff racer swarms :D

      • reply
        May 3, 2012 12:28 PM

        age of conan had the combat you're describing and it died fast

        • reply
          May 3, 2012 12:47 PM

          I played AoC and I thought the combat (and the quest sytem. and the progression system. and the loot system) still felt pretty freaking MMO-like.

          granted there are probably significant technical limits to how un-MMO-like you can make combat in an MMO.

          • reply
            May 3, 2012 4:29 PM

            It was mmo like, but at least it was engaging and fun to string together combos

        • reply
          May 3, 2012 4:49 PM

          AOC died because their content after level 20 was non-existant.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 12:33 PM

      I just don't feel any real need to play this. Unless there's some fantastic new gameplay mechanic or ground breaking technology on display I think I will pass. Frankly I would have preferred drop in drop out coop support in Skyrim/Fallout such as allowing a friend take control of a companion should I invite them to my game.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 12:38 PM

      [deleted]

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 12:41 PM

      Matt Firor, please make it Dark Age of Skyrimlot, kkthx.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 12:42 PM

      Haters gonna hate. If they announce it as F2P, the tears will blot out the sun.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 12:50 PM

      Yuck. Guess we aren't getting Fallout 4 anytime soon.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 12:52 PM

      Elder Scrolls and Fallout are the last great single player RPGs. I don't like seeing them go the way of the MMO.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 12:54 PM

      Maybe it's the anti-SW. Fanboys boo the announcement, love the final product.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 12:57 PM

      Worst fucking idea they've come up with. This will bomb hard.

      • reply
        May 3, 2012 12:58 PM

        It's actually a pretty great idea if they were trying to waste shitloads of resources/time and lower the reputation of one of gaming's biggest franchises.

        • reply
          May 3, 2012 1:02 PM

          You are correct good sir, I should have taken that possibility into account. :(

      • reply
        May 4, 2012 7:49 AM

        Very true, but only after they tarnish the Elder Scrolls name.

        Sadly with the current state of things I seriously doubt there’s anything to be done. This project will come to fruition, management will make money, the game will bomb and the outstanding series as we know it will be gone forever.

        Another joyful chunk of our past is rapidly disappearing. Cheer up, Nintendo hasn’t decided that Mario is gay. *yet*

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 1:40 PM

      Because everything needs to be an MMO. Everything? EVERYTHING!

      • reply
        May 3, 2012 1:49 PM

        I'm waiting for the Sneak King MMO

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 1:52 PM

      [deleted]

      • reply
        May 3, 2012 2:26 PM

        Well, I am looking forward to seeing what they create and think this is a great announcement.

      • reply
        May 3, 2012 3:41 PM

        ES games are about the player becoming the singular, virtually godlike hero. The world and story are far less appealing when you have everyone in the world as the hero.

      • reply
        May 3, 2012 6:38 PM

        I'm just worried that Bethesda is going to sink a bunch of money into this MMO only to have WoW rip it apart and force it to be free-to-play in under six months. Based on this Bethesda then decides gamers no longer value the Elder Scrolls franchise and we never see another one : (

        • reply
          May 3, 2012 6:46 PM

          that's... extremely unlikely. no-fucking-one is not going to make a sequel to Skyrim. even if Bethesda and Zenimax are all swept up into a time vortex and sent into the future, who ever is left who owns the franchise would have to be mentally deficient to not launch something, ANYTHING as the next chapter in the Elder Scrolls story. It's just made too much money to possibly die (for now).

          Also, as far as I can tell, 'Zenimax Online Studios' is a totally different game development entity from Bethesda Softworks. So it's not even really a game from the same people who produce the singleplayer titles at Bethesda.

          So, it's ok, I think this can come out and flop pretty 'safely'. Who knows, some of the development (of even a failure) might even cross over into the next Elder Scrolls game having robust co-op?

      • reply
        May 3, 2012 11:50 PM

        I read the article. It is an actionbar MMO (just like WoW, everquest etc.) which you play in the third person. It also comprises of kill 10 rat quests. Now ofcourse there will be alot more to the game, like daoc style 3 faction RvR. But its elder scrolls and i think we all wanted first person action combat mechanics.

      • reply
        May 4, 2012 12:45 AM

        The ES games is the opposite of MMOs. One single player shaping the world. The worst part of this announcement is that they may stop making SP ES games and focus on this, like Bioware with TOR. The HORROR!

      • reply
        May 4, 2012 7:38 AM

        Dude here’s the problem.

        They can sell a lump of poop and because of their reputation they’re guaranteed to make tens or hundreds of millions. So what they have now (Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim) is an impeccable record of outstanding games. What they’re doing is selling themselves out and killing the series and their creditability.

        Play +12 MMOs and you know how they ALL are. Nothing good will come out of this other than a short term increase of the developers wallets. Have we learned nothing from the greed of wall street?

    • Ebu legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
      reply
      May 3, 2012 3:06 PM

      If they do it correctly, it'll be a throwback to Asheron's Call.
      If they don't, it'll be yet another failed MMO.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 3:09 PM

      Ahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahhahaahhahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahaha.

      • reply
        May 3, 2012 3:22 PM

        Now that I got that out of my system, what the fuck is Bethesda thinking? Choice one is to make this a pay to play mmo, which would fail out the gate in this day and age. If Star Wars can't keep numbers up after 2 months what makes them really think they can? The other choice is a free to play mmo, which while I'm sure would make them money, I can only see it hurting the Elder Scrolls name. The only reason I can see them doing this is a profit grab, which doesn't feel like the Bethesda I used to know. I guess this is the horse armor Bethesda.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 3:19 PM

      Hmm not going to toss this idea out the window just yet. If anyone can make a fantasy game, it's definitely Bethesda and their Elder Scrolls team.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 3:27 PM

      guys calm down, this game is like Elder Scrolls 6,7,8,9 all rolled into one!

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 3:28 PM

      I look forward to ignoring this completely, then impulse buying it on release day and quitting 30-60 days later.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 4:02 PM

      I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt until I read a few bits of scan floating around (after people mentioning them on forum after forum without actually providing info, I eventually went to 4chan).

      It's a third person class-based hotbar mmo with instancing and linear themepark quests where you are the hero of kvatch and so are 2500 other people. While the Dark Age of Camelot three faction system, with the implication that Cyrodiil is the PvP area, is kind of nice... two of the factions make no logical sense within the TES lore. Maybe I'm the only who cares about that.

      Graphics look decent?

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 4:04 PM

      You people hate fun. At least wait and see how it turns out before shitting all over it :(

      • reply
        May 3, 2012 4:36 PM

        I'm not too excited because MMO's don't do it for me anymore. Still interested in seeing what it's all about though.

      • reply
        May 3, 2012 6:43 PM

        [deleted]

      • reply
        May 3, 2012 7:10 PM

        MMO's are boring poop.

      • reply
        May 4, 2012 12:46 AM

        Show me an MMO that can provide what the ES games can, and I'll get behind this.

      • Ebu legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
        reply
        May 4, 2012 8:48 AM

        MMOs, by their very persistence and shared-experience, exclude the kind of thing that makes TES games awesome.
        Unspoiled land to explore, people to kill (that STAY DEAD), economy-breaking merchantiling, the random dragon attacks that have a real consequence for the world? Yea, not if everyone else has to be able to play the same quest.

        It's a horrible, horrible idea.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 4:44 PM

      I have heard of your Elder Scrolls, well enough; We
      were given single player, and some demanded
      multiplayer: you whine, you cry, and you troll, and
      write petitions to the desingners, and make your wantonness
      your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath
      made me mad. I say, let there be no more MMORPGs,
      those that are MMORPGs already , all but one, shall
      die; the rest shall go Free to Play. To a
      forum, go.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 4:50 PM

      ugh... MMO... multiplayer please, but don't I don't want to play with thousands of losers

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 5:58 PM

      The MOST we needed was some co-op, MAYBE some PvP (if Arkane would help them with their combat).

      This was definitely not needed

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 6:24 PM

      Oh goody, yet another MMO.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 7:07 PM

      I dunno what to think... time will tell i guess.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 7:08 PM

      Like an RPG... but ONLINE?

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 7:35 PM

      Meh. Multiplayer with private worlds for friends, not this crap.

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 7:38 PM

      Technology has come so far in 1,000 years. Will we be inventing fire and the wheel?

    • reply
      May 3, 2012 10:49 PM

      I think they heard all these people asking for Elder Scrolls multiplayer and took that as we wanted an MMO?! I think all people really wanted was freaking co-op! Just add co-op to an Elder Scrolls game... it would probably cost a few million less and take a few less years to make... and people would actually play it!

      I kind of feel like I'm done with MMO's. Firefall is about as close to MMO's as I want to get.

      And I'm a HUGE Elder Scrolls fan and I've been playing since Daggerfall.

    • reply
      May 4, 2012 3:07 AM

      I still doubt that everything that makes TES games great can be captured in an mmo.
      Reading that gameinformer article, some of it sounds interesting enough and I hope the can pull it off. Not a fan of that "hero-engine" look.

    • reply
      May 4, 2012 3:22 AM

      The real Quake killer!

    • reply
      May 4, 2012 6:50 AM

      If they offer no new gameplay to differentiate themselves over the past decade of MMOs, then this will fall flat on its face. They need to focus on what makes ES great: immersion. Heck, I was playing Skyrim because it felt like a vacation to another world. I don't want to spend my time 'winning' by putting in a combination of 1-2-3-4-1-2-1-2-3-4 click click 1-2-3....

    • reply
      May 4, 2012 7:26 AM

      If as a grown man, I got upon my knees and pleaded please do not do this to my favorite game series, do you think anyone would take notice? I will buy every single, single player Elder Scrolls 1-9999999, just please do not bastardize this series. By making this a MMO you will be seeking to appease the masses that flocked to such filth as WoW, the corrupted youth who believe that all MMOs are merely a “WOW” clone. This is the standard you will be held to, WOW, not the significantly higher standard of the Elder Scrolls series. Congratulations you are not being compared to the “Barney” of games.

      Developers please do not tarnish the Elder Scrolls impeccable reputation by associating with the filth that is known as an MMO. As an experienced gamer of 30 years, the only thing I know you will gain is revenue. Yes money will follow such as CoD __ will, however you will lose the respect and support of every mature loyal follower.

      I can easily say without a doubt, I will never purchase an Elder Scrolls or any other MMO ever again.

    • Ebu legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
      reply
      May 4, 2012 8:49 AM

      It's a muhmorpagah!

    • reply
      May 5, 2012 8:58 AM

      What disappoints me about this announcement is that the care and forethought , and perhaps even inspiration that gave rise to the original namesake game seems to be missing. I think a go anywhere world without traditional limits is what the devs should have been going for. The kind of out of the box imaginative iteration is needed in the MMO genre. Player controlled economies with farmers and crafters providing an abundance of goods, regional wars, plagues and other disturbances could create realtime changes in supply and demand for various items and raw materials. Caravans that moved goods from one place to another while providing the adventurer with fun and profit perhaps hooked onto random sidequests seems a great link between a living world and a combat oriented one.

      Solo and party level dungeons with public missions whereby players en mass fight off invasions or some other calamity in the bowels of a dungeon or over an open field under siege where the outcome shapes the world seems fitting. Thinking out loud some kind of kinect interface to really get the player into the visceral on screen action of real time combat seems natural.

      I hope they make a good game but I'm not sure if it will be as rich an experience as Skyrim or Oblivion. Only 3 factions seems woefully inadequate for Tamriel.

Hello, Meet Lola