We spent three hours last week holed up playing Elder Scrolls Online. During that time, we learned so much about the game it's going to make your head spin. Read on for our comprehensive 3,000 word preview and then share your thoughts in the comments below.

Elder Scrolls Online. Those three words do some strange things to the gaming populace. They both titillate our dreams of an online Tamriel, and fill us with trepidation on what could go wrong with such a venture.  When the game was unveiled and previewed at E3 2012, many worried that it wouldn't live up to the Elder Scrolls name it carries. Well it just so happens that we were invited to the Maryland offices of Zenimax Online Studios to learn about the current status of the game's development, it's plans for the future, and more importantly? We played the thing... for three freakin' hours straight. Three glorious hours that flew by in what seemed minutes. When the devs told us we could get lunch? We stayed put. When they told us the building was on fire? We didn't flinch. [READ: The building did not actually catch fire.] 

Elder Scrolls Online is still in pre-alpha stages, but what we played for hours was enough to make one thing certain: it's more than worthy of the Elder Scrolls name.

Read the rest of Bill Murphy's Elder Scrolls Online: The Comprehensive Preview.

I cannot express how much this game impressed us last week !!

Since E3 they have been very hard at work!

Originally posted by erictlewis
OK so where do you sign up to get into testing?  Sounds interesting.

That bit is a ways away I think.  While they were talking dates at the event, the game's still aiming for late next year launch.  It is in pre-alpha right now.

While some of the things in this preview sound really interesting and exciting, it does sadden me quite a bit when an Elder Scrolls MMO starts talking about what class you picked.

I saw no mention in the preview of whether we can just go at it on our own without classes, so I assume it's not the case (SOrry if that was confirmed long ago, I haven't really been following the game all that closely). Honestly it's just not an Elder Scrolls game if everyone is put into classes. An open skill system (or at least the ability to choose to play that way) is probably the defining feature of The Elder Scrolls.

Hey Wookie,

Yeah, definitely has classes.  Which I can understand lamenting, but I think once you see how much each class can be tailored you'll be pleased with the diversity.  It uses the single-hotbar design and entails so many different skills across armor, weapons, and class choice that you really will be a unique character even if you are called a "Dragonknight" or whatnot.

Queue hate filled ignorance and uneducated opinions in 3,2,1.

On a positive note, I am looking forward to this title.  a little sandbox on top of a themepark model with an exploration centric toolset.