The Elder Scrolls: Online

The Elder Scrolls: Online is an upcoming epic MMO from ZeniMax Online Studios, which will be the first Elder Scrolls game to allow players to explore the series' universe with others. Like previous Elder Scrolls games, The Elder Scrolls: Online will be set on the world of Nirn. Unlike previous games, it will feature online, mulitplayer action.

Matt Firor has spent twenty years in the game industry thinking about and creating online games. Once a leading voice at Mythic Entertainment and a producer on the beloved MMO Dark Age of Camelot, Firor left that studio and began the monumental task of taking The Elder Scrolls series online. With The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion as a rough starting point, there were years of head-scratching and team-building.

ZeniMax Online Studios faces the difficult task of appeasing several different sets of expectations from gamers who come from different games and genres.

Features

 * For players fresh from playing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, there will be the prospect of visiting locations like Black Marsh, the Summerset Isles, High Rock and many more that were only mentioned in the hugely popular stand-alone game.
 * Tamriel's Second Era was barely mentioned, so this new installment will give all the lore aficionados plenty to sink their teeth into
 * Daedric princes, birthsigns, guilds will play a major role.
 * Unlike World of Warcraft, Zenimax Online is going out of its way to make sure helping someone else out always benefits everyone. For instance, there will be no “tagging” and helping a random stranger kill a monster will result in both of you getting full credit.
 * Non-instanced PvP warfare. Take out the server-crashing lag, since the engine can handle up to 200 players onscreen and Zenimax Online has still-under-wraps plans to divert excess population.
 * Familiar but innovative combat. ESO has lock-on targeting and a hotbar, but it shakes up quite a bit within that framework. Limiting the number of available skills to a handful (currently six, but that number could change) but making each ability awesome sounds great. The addition of stamina for blocking, sprinting, interrupting, and disable-breaking should dramatically increase the moment-to-moment depth of combat.
 * Full voice acting.
 * Dynamic, large-group combat. The baseline solo encounter design has players taking on three enemies at a time, and they work together to bring you down by combining skills like lighting oil patches on fire.
 * Zenimax Online hopes to recreate the sense of working together with random strangers with the Fighters Guild content as well as public dungeons.
 * Stability and polish at launch.