Well, nice post Mr. Murphy, although this sort of beta tomfoolery has been going on for quite some time. I have been in a few closed betas (Rift) that offered beta access if you bought the game.

That is what I call "paying for beta."

The new thing is not really new. What happened with Neverwinter has happened in Allods Online and Dust 514. A long beta period where item malls and virtual currency were available to the neverending consumption machine of the modern gamer.

Remember the $20.00 sparkle pony from Blizzard? You bought it.

Remember that $20.00 bag from gpotato? You bought it.

Remember that $10.00 box from Atlantica Online? You bought it.

It does not matter if it is closed, open or released status of the game, the industry knows that we (the community) will pay outlandish prices for outlandish things because we all want to advance faster than the next guy and feel like this unique and special little snowflake.

We have set the bar. We vote with our wallets. And we are telling this game publishers that "Hey, I will buy stuff in beta!"

Don't blame the game companies, for they are businessmen and video games are a booming business. They don't make these games for handshakes and hugs.

You're hysterical. Great piece. I am still laughing to myself. I don't know who I would be in that convo, being a member of PCMASTURRACE and a PS/PS2/PS3 player I can't decide. I got Defiance for PS3. Don't judge meh, I like my shooters with teh controller, plus using my other screen to browse...MMORPG.com

All the things you pointed out about the game is true. I've put it down over hitting 600+ego and got sick of chasing arksfalls and seeing people drive around in a circle.

Congratulations Bill!

Say goodbye to sleep.

Good Review in Progress or RIP. I have been playing Defiance from beta into launch, while it definately has its problems, it still has a good hook to it. I've run into plenty of little bugs here and there. Hopefully the new build/patch is going to solve most of them. I can only hope to say all.

While I dropped the initial 60 for the game at launch, I am a bit apprehensive at this stage to indulge for the season pass. Which is going to add five content packs as (far as I know) the show progresses. I hope the show has a successful launch, looks interesting for a sci-fi western.

I've been playing a bit of the PvP. I can say that I am more of a Defiance player for its PvE right now. There is another shooter I go for my PvP. I am going to post about that soon.

Grats again Bill!

Ink

Hey Mike,

Good write-up. I would have loved to hit up PAX, but that job thing gets me every time. I am surprised there wasn't more of a solid marketing campaign for FFXIV at PAX E', we all know the company needs it. I do want to ask, what does a "me too" mmo mean?

Thanks, 

Ink

"There is no reason a rogue would wear heavy armor in the game."

With a high enough sneak skill, muffle with a decent illusion skill and either the invisibility spell or invis potion, you can wear a pair of cymbals as earrings and get away with it. Heavy armor does crimp the style of a stealth character, but it should not be a pre-req to ONLY wear light armor.

I do have to admit, I used a mod to make an enchanted ring of invisibility in Oblivion.

Named it One.

Originally posted by spizz

Well if you are installing this ENB you have to adjust some settings to your liking i.e. color intensity and grain, you should combine it aswell with the mod "Climates of Tamriel" for the nice weather effects but also for the lightning ! The night can be quiete dark if you select such an option and here are two mods really great: "Lanterns on the Road" and "Light up the night - people have torches"

 

If you have performance issues, try this mod:

"Skyrim Performance Plus"

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/6387

 

@Inktomi

Yeah, Frostfall is a very nice mod. 

I combine the following mods and they offer really good compatibility. I really recommand to run them together, such a nice survival gameplay with just the weather:

These mods are well-matched and complement each other. If you use only Frostfall you miss the content of the other mods.

Try it for sure !

 

* Frostfall

* Cold & Wet

* Climates of Tamriel

* Winter is comming: Cloaks

 

( * Skyrim Redone - offers a special perk tree for wildlife/survival which is especially made and compatible with these mentioned survival mods. But this mod has a bigger gameplay change in general since you combine it with an uncapper...probably best if you start a new game like I did. But you can play of course the weather mods without Skyrim Redone, no worry)

 

I love to craft my own hide tent and set it up with a fireplace to seek shelter when a snow storm arrives , or to wear warm cloaks if you enter snowy and cold areas in the mountains, you can cook a soup or hold a torch which gives additional benefits......so awesome. The major modification "Skyrim Redone" offers even a whole perk tree just for survival and special compatibility for the weather survival mods.

 

 I run aswell the big main mod "Skyrim Redone" with the uncapper....works great so far.

 

In general I recommand aswell an adjustment of the "Timescale". The days are too short, at least for my taste. There is one mod called " Sky Realism - Time Scale and Travel Speed".

 

 

By the way, I play the game without fast travel  =). 

With all the released community mods, Skyrim is probably the best RPG adventure game on the market currently. 

I've got Cloaks of Skyrim, Winter is coming cloaks, Wet and cold and the patches that go with them. Thanks for the advice anyway. I don't use SkyRe because it's not compatible with SPERG. Realistic Needs and Diseases goes great with Frostfall too. So I literally have to stop, warm up, eat drink to stay alive and I cannot fast travel (unless I get lazy).

Do you use Convenient horses? I installed it and never laughed so hard when I had to do the miniquest for the whistle. I would go up to an NPC and whistle in their face. Whistle, whistle or whistle? Good times.

I run over 180 mods and my ENB is focused on lighting and realism. I run a very dark and gritty version of Skyrim. The colors are a little desaturated that some people might call bland, but I like the stark realism with the lighting.

I would recommend:

Realistic Lighting Overhaul

True Vision ENB

Darker Dungeons for ENB

Just to support other modders:

Deadly Dragons w/ Deadly Monsters

Frostfall, the best immersion mod that exists for Skyrim.

STEP the Skyrim Total Enhancement Project.

Don't forget to endorse and give kudos!

Originally posted by NBlitz

Originally posted by Inktomi
Isn't SweetFX just for 32-bit executables. I wanted to use it for Skyrim but I have a 64-bit machine.

Originally posted by jazz.be

I tried the first method and I don't see any difference at all.

The only thing I see when I hit the  scroll lock button is a slight change at the edges of UI panels. But nothing else.

I tried the more aggressive settings recommended on the very same article. "Looking for the settings used in the guide preview image above? 

 

The article says:

It works with all 32bit DirectX 9 , 10 and 11 games (and many applications).

 

Does it mean it won't work on 64bit OS?

I am on a 64 bit OS, as you can see from my screenshot.

 

 I used the recommended SweetFX Configurator. My Game Settings in the Configurator:

It's all there. Follow the guide closely.

Awesome, thanks so much for your help. Sometimes the guidance given in the readme's is not very clear.

Originally posted by Teala

Originally posted by thark

Originally posted by Teala

It is just dumb.  We can travel all over the world in WoW, but in TESO we're limited to the lands of our faction, leaving 2/3 of the world unplayable.   Even in old DAoC we could travel to enemy lands.    Why are they taking this game backwards in game play?  Makes absolutely no sense.   Plus this ideal of faction pride seems lame.  We had faction pride in WoW and we could go where we wanted.   What makes the developers think not being able to travel to other factions lands equate to faction pride?  Again...this makes absolutely no sense and will only hurt their game in the end.  

In my opinion this is just bad game design.  

 Look..Dumb or not. , besides..Do you know how BIG one of those 3 territories will be ?

This is how they choose to design their game, because they believe in a conflict of war between 3 factions, I find it much more dumb if we have 3 conflicting nations and we all are able to group up and run around completly unmolested in each others territories, and even group up and join guilds with each other, they did that in EQ2 , let's have a guild were necromancers from Freeport can join a couple of  elf priests from Antonica, it doesnt make sence..

It's like....Let these Orc's roam around in Rivendale , We will invite them for tea and bisquits later, maybe Galadriel will join ..:) See the problem here ?

Faction pride or not..I think it's a good idea..

Play it, but for me as long as they keep this game design in game - I'll not waste my time or money on it - it is a total game breaker for me.

It might be, or it might not be. I know you were (are?) an avid EVE player. In EVE you can go anywere, to any star system and visit any planet. However, the denizens of certain area's create a natural boundary there by ganking you once you warp into the system. I tried scooting through to a 0.0 system once and got popped in 15 minutes even in a small ship with quick jump to warp speed. What is the difference if the game mechancs are stopping you, or a crowd of orcs with axes?

EVE is also split into 3 divisions of safety, Hi-sec, Lo-sec and 0.0, which is anything goes. To speculate, what is all we can do at this point, Tamriel might be set up similarly the same way. It is going to be single shard, so the way that ZOS is going to ease the server load is by segragating players to certain areas. It may be a design decision made from necessity not just to appease certain audiences. Single shard servers for the amount of players this game will receive is going to need as much leverage or it is going to be a slide show lagwich mess - and that is no fun for anyone.

The three factions are going to be set up from different landmasses and all three are very large. Vvardenfell and Morrowind, in itself are both large. Cyrodiil being central is the largest, and that most likely will be a PvP zone. Its going to be enough content there to keep any type of player busy. 

If you choose not to play, that's totally on you. But do understand Teala, at this point you are prejudging on speculation with limited information. I already made up my mind, I'm just asking to keep yours open.

Originally posted by gamesrfun

I played in a lot (or led a few) achiever guilds/alliances/clans.

Here was my order of the top tier players, by percentage:

a)  Slacker (but smart) unemployed kids (young adults)  living at home:  This was the largest segment.  Many had dropped out of high school.

b)  College students (undergrads at university):  Don't mistake this for technical college schools where attendance is mandatory.  I'm talking your average BA student with 12-15 hours of lecture per week and lots of spare time.  LOTS.

c) Armed Forces (leave) or retired vets:  The vets were permanent.  The guys on leave played like maniacs until deployed.

d) Regular dude with a crappy job  with a wife and kids that he neglects:  There were always a few of these.  Were usually the largest source of drama as real life stress drove them Chris Dorner.

d) Professional and single guy:  Sometimes elite players, but eventually rage quit when the slacker kids who can play 16 hours a day instead of his 8-10 pass him.

e) Independently wealthy types:  Never actually met one. 

f) Single moms/fat women:  Ya there were always a few of these, but they were never elite, so they go below independently wealthy, because at least a few of those existed.

For the record, in my MMO heyday, i was b).

 

I'm d), except I can't do not even 8-10 hours a day any more, its like 2-4 now. I know quite a few of all of the above during my harder core years. I met an e) some f)'s and a whole lot of a,b,c and d. d)'s in my opinion are the coolest and sometimes best players, but when they are deployed, we lose them for months at a time.

Originally posted by Vesavius

Originally posted by Inktomi

Originally posted by Vesavius

Originally posted by Inktomi

It's TES, how bad can it be? Do you really think Bethesda will let its best cash-cow falter (beside FO3 n NV) after so many years of success? 

No way man. It's a brand name.

 

Ahh the memories of Bioware and Star wars pre launch are flooding back....

True, past performance is not indicative of future results. But there is $x.xx of dollars waiting on this game. They release I will invest into them and give it a go. It turns out to be another...what was it...tortanic? I lose a couple of bucks. 

I didn't lose a dollar on Star Wars, The Secret World and countless other over-hyped duds that have rolled down this mmorpg.com pipe. I am willing to put my rep behind TESO though.

 

Well, glad you are Ink.

The point I was making though was simply a trusted dev, lots of money, and a much loved brand do not always add up to a good game, so citing them at this point as a reason why it's gonna be great is a bit premature.

The chances are TESO will be a solid offering and appeal to a decent amount of people, though sadly I won't be one of them for different reasons. I actually hope it won't be another SWTOR tbh... this industry needs more succes and diversity all round.

 

(Tips hat) Thank you, kind Sir. Sadly, you will not be joining us. While no game is ever perfect, especially at launch, I will be hanging in there with the rest of the crowd on release day. For whatever reasons you cannot play TESO, wishing you the best of luck in all of your gaming endevours.

~Ink

Sub.

Make it a level playing field.

WoW does have microtrans though.

Originally posted by Distopia

Originally posted by Inktomi

Originally posted by Distopia

 

Two things, first it isn't bethesda making this game they make SP games, and by todd Howards own words that's what they'll stick to, second they weren't bought out by EA.

Zenimax (Media) owns Bethesda, Arkane, Id and Zenimax Studios. The TES IP is all owned under one roof. So the powers that be at the top of Zenimax will probably not want their online version of the game released* without the same level of quality that the SP games were made.

I certainly would hope so, my point was about the lack of similarities between the TOR situation and this one. To be specific i do not think a failure here would come back to haunt the TES franchise as a whole, i think that's half the reason they've created a studio as they have, not to mention why Beth-soft themselves did not create an MMO.

We are talking about different companies and different IP's. Matt Firor runs ZO Studios and he was an integral part in* the creation of Dark Age of Camelot when he was with Mythic Entertainment. We know how the MMOG community feels about DAoC. One of the many reasons why I am personally backing TESO.

Originally posted by Distopia

Originally posted by Vesavius

Originally posted by Inktomi

It's TES, how bad can it be? Do you really think Bethesda will let its best cash-cow falter (beside FO3 n NV) after so many years of success? 

No way man. It's a brand name.

 

Ahh the memories of Bioware and Star wars pre launch are flooding back....

Two things, first it isn't bethesda making this game they make SP games, and by todd Howards own words that's what they'll stick to, second they weren't bought out by EA.

Zenimax (Media) owns Bethesda, Arkane, Id and Zenimax Studios. The TES IP is all owned under one roof. So the powers that be at the top of Zenimax will probably not want their online version of the game released* without the same level of quality that the SP games were made.

Originally posted by Vesavius

Originally posted by Inktomi

It's TES, how bad can it be? Do you really think Bethesda will let its best cash-cow falter (beside FO3 n NV) after so many years of success? 

No way man. It's a brand name.

 

Ahh the memories of Bioware and Star wars pre launch are flooding back....

True, past performance is not indicative of future results. But there is $x.xx of dollars waiting on this game. They release I will invest into them and give it a go. It turns out to be another...what was it...tortanic? I lose a couple of bucks. 

I didn't lose a dollar on Star Wars, The Secret World and countless other over-hyped duds that have rolled down this mmorpg.com pipe. I am willing to put my rep behind TESO though.

What is the music of life?

Y'know what? I don't really care. I don't care about the PvE, the PvP or the .0025% of the world I can or cannot PvP on. I just really want to play the game. It's TES, how bad can it be? Do you really think Bethesda will let its best cash-cow falter (beside FO3 n NV) after so many years of success? 

No way man. It's a brand name.

Zenimax has to appeal to a very diverse crowd that has followed this brand, if not blindly, for years. So yeah, they have to appeal to the crafters, the min-max mages, the two-handed hack-it-all's-gonna-melt-your-face-with-my-axe and the duel-wielding-quest-grinding-flower-picking crowd that has sprung from every river run through Nirn. That is why PvP is going to be part of TESO, in my humble opinion.

What is the music of life?

Hunter weapon!

Throwbacks eh? I will see your Bow of Taut Sinew and raise you a Rhok'delar.

Beat that.

Heck yeah, both games should have multiplayer capabilities.

Remember when Half-life was released and had an online mode. Yes, it was primarily king-of-the-mountain style maps where we all just ran around and shot each other up, but it gave the game more of a lifespan and increased its following. Demons Souls online capabilities made the already good game more of a hit that there would be sudden pvp. 

It would work better in Skyrim in dungeons. If a player could come in and either help or hinder you, then it wouldnt end up feeling like just another hack n slash dungeon crawl. Same with the Witcher series. 

/sigh

There will always be a part of my that loves WoW, yet I cannot play it any longer. I played in vanilla right up until the release of TBC then quit. I was probably quitting at the absolute worst time, that was when WoW was at its peak. But I ended up returning years later post TBC and WoTLK after Cata was released. Blizzard sent me a free 10 days, worst move ever. I quickly got sucked into my old server Dethecus and powered my Tauren Hunter up to 80.

I was a career hunter, no alts, just played him and had a priest I was leveling on the side. Every time I was relaxing on my priest, someone from my guild was like, "Yo, get on your hunter and ____" whatever we were rolling into.

I have to admit, all the new pets and mount they added to the game were cool and fun to tame and parade around with. But I felt as if I was flying last years flag. What was fresh and new to me was run-o-the-mill for most others. WoW is a surprisingly social game, so I picked up a good raiding guild very quickly. 

I did enjoy soloing most dungeons that it took a full raid to complete. I could just imagine the effort it took to kill most bosses that I was soloing with a turtle. My guild still could not understand my excitement when I picked up Chromaggus as a pet and named him Barney. It is different seeing things through the eyes of a vanilla player. 

Yet, the grind and the neverending gear on a stick chase wears me down after awhile. I cannot sacrifice real life for virtual stuff I really don't own anymore. Once again, I unceremoniously quit WoW and uninstalled the game. Looking back, I am yet to find another game like WoW that could suck me in that quickly.

My moneys on TESO. If that doesn't do it for me, I am going to hang up my spurs forever. Good luck in your gaming future OP.