Semi-Spoiler Alert!!!!!!

It already lends itself to an expansion.  After you complete the main storyline, there's still a certain group of high elves that need to be taken care of ;)

The real fun is when two dragons come at the same time, and a group of hired thugs just to really piss you off roflmao.  Good thing I went with lots of stamina to run XD

I was like omg wtf, TWO dragons!  Then ran away about 20 feet, and here comes 3 hired thugs (probably from Solitude, I went on an imperial killing spree earlier hehe).

Great read, and I really love this game.  I'm upto 68 hours played, ~20 hours sleep, ~12 minutes with my family lol.

I actually never got into bioware's NWN, but I loved the original AOL NWN to death.  I spent more money on playtime for that game than I have paid for any other game since lol.

Hopefully Skyrim will show game developers that you can make a game hard, and it'll still be popular.  You just need a great story!  Although I replayed most of the game on easiest setting, and it's so easy, hard difficulty ftw.  I know alot of people hate the UI in Skyrim, or don't like it, but it harkens back to the old days of rpgs and MMOs.  You don't get some stupid minimap telling you where to go, you get a general bearing of where you need to go, you have to find a way around or over that huge mountain standing between you and your goal.  The world map and fast travel I could've done without though (I only used fast travel a couple of times, most of the time I just walk/ride my way there).

It's one of the reasons why I play Rift still.  It's hard.  Now, leveling 1-50 is extremely easy, but the raids and end dungeons are hard.  You expect to die in a raid in Rift.  In other games (WoW comes to mind) you expect to complete a raid without dying, and if at all maybe a couple people die.

I think you left out one of the biggest things. STORY AND LORE!  Just because it's a sandbox doesn't mean the company can get off easy just buy building the box, putting sand in it...you gotta have a shovel and bucket, some toys, which I would call the story.  If you've played Skyrim this is a perfect example of a Sandbox/theme mix.  You can build your character however you want, but there's still a reason to what you're doing.  Running around killing 50 bears, just so you can craft some armor isn't enough of a story for anyone to stick around a game for very long.

I think the lack of story and lore has been the greatest downfall of almost any sandbox.  Now you can argure, Sandbox games aren't supposed to have quests.  Players are supposed to make up things like territories and law.  To some extent this is true, however, there is always a need from some lore behind the game.  This is where most fail.  They get the combat down, that's easy.  Lore and the story that goes within the game is what makes people stick around.  If you took UO, and took out every single bit of Lore/story there is in the game, that game would be so horrible.  If you took any game really, and did that, it'd be horrible.

Unfortunately, if you're looking for a 100% sandbox game, you're going to be disappointed in anything that is 100% sandbox.  Meaning the devs just make a world, mobs, character creator, and launch the game.  There just isn't a point to the game if it's like that.  You could have the point/goal to level up certain skills to maximum, but then what? There's nothing more to do.  Lore is what makes games last 50x longer, probably longer than that.  If I have a reason for doing something, then I'm more likely to do that, and more objectives.

Edit: It doesn't help either, that ~99% of the MMO community is made up of people who started with WoW.  They'll enter a sandbox and be totally lost.  Looking for an NPC to tell them where to go.

Originally posted by Siris23

I found it moderately humorous that the login page displays:

"This page is not available. This may be because you are currently not logged in."

So I can't login because I'm not logged in?

i thought the exact same thing lol

i'm probably the only one, but I never fast travel, and when I'm on foot I walk everywhere, only turning on run when I enter a battle.  Almost never sprint, except for those stupid archer types that like to flee when low on hp on hardest difficulty hehe.

This game is probably the best looking game ever.  I have all settings on maximum on my desktop, which has a new GTX 580 I got from a contest :D

I spend hours just walking around town, smithing, enchanting.  Really getting immersed in the world.  It's really all the little things this game does that makes it so great.  Things you really won't ever notice unless you slow down and just take a stroll.  NPCs have thier own lives, they go to work and home at certain times.  They go to the local inn to have a drink somedays.  Splashes from running through water (first game I've seen with such realistic water effects).  Weather so realistic, I get cold when walking around High Hrothgar, and I swear the humidity in my house goes to 100% when it rains (I guess in Texas it's 100% humidity most of the time anyways lol).  I can spend over an hour walking to the next town (well I used to, I bought my own horse), just staring at the distant mountainside, or watching wildlife run then a pack of wolves come and kill them, then turn to me!  Mercenaries traveling on the way to thier contracts.  Hunters setting up camp. The leaves move in the breeze.  Water current pushes you when you swim.  I could go on til the character limit for a post, but i'll stop now. 

The Legend of Zelda used to be my favorite game of all time, but once the "new" feeling wears off (it may never), Skyrim might take that place, easily in my top 10, probably top 5.  Time will tell.

If you don't have this game, it's a must have, I can tell you that!

-Nazgrom, Orc Berserker, Companion Harbinger, and Master Blacksmith

or

-Gravarg, Orc Warrior

or

-Ro'katha, Khajiit Thief

or

-Landor, Wood Elf Archer

the only legendary skin worth buying is teemo.  pew pew pew lazerz!!! :)

From MMOs probably the most memorable would have to be from WoW.  In outland you got a quest to walk a felhunter until it poops out the key that it ate...I always though that quest was hilarious.

For any quest, I'd have to say Skyrim's Dragonslayer quest or the Defense of Whiterun.  If you do defense of whiterun on hardest difficulty, it's like an all out war with like 100 guys charging the gates :D

you have to have a steam account to install/update, but not to play.  Once installed you can go to the steam folder and click on

c:/Program Files (x86)/Steam/SteamApps/common/skyrim/TESV.exe it will start the game.  If that fails it is due to steam, and steam forums will let you know what to do.  I actually had this problem with Shogun total war II, or i think it was this.  I had to redownload the client again, it was corrupt on the dvd for some reason.  Try to hard start the game.  That won't let you get the steam achievements and stuff, but you'll be able to play :)

Originally posted by snoocky

SKYRIM lol!  But that isn't a MMO

I actually thought this as well roflmao!  Love my level 39 Archer!!!!!!! I got fully enchanted dragonscale and daedric bow (working on enchanting it) :D  So epic :)

I just wish we could craft our own arrows!!!! and enchant them!!!! maybe they'll patch it in :)

I literally kills just about anything except bosses and dragons in 1 hit :)  From far enough away, other mobs don't even know where i'm shooting from, they'll walk over to the body like "WTF" and I kill them too roflmao roflmao!!!!

(sorry, I just had a bowl of cocao puffs, and hyped up on sugar!!!)

BFG...Trooper wins! :)

+1 OP

My thoughts exactly, MMOs are lucky that Skyrim isn't Co-op, or noone would play MMOs anymore :)  It's still fun to chat with friends on 3rd party voice chat while playing Skyrim together though :)

It's true, but it's better to remember the older games as great.  DAoC, probably my favorite MMO of all time (FFXI close second), I like to remember as playing in the level 48+ out in the frontier defending my Midgard Pride and trolling (literally I was a Troll hehe) the enemy territories bashing little hippy Keens in the head.  But if you want to get down to it, DAoC had alot of flaws.  First and formost, the UI.  Granted for being that old, we're lucky it had a UI at all, but I can remember when you actually had to type /quit or /camp to leave the game, no exit menu or anything lol. 

Then there's the ungodly amount of time it took to get to 48+.  This is good and bad in a way.  I've always thought of MMOs in the sense that the journey is more important than the destination, but did level 40-50 really have to take a month for even the hardestcore (yay new word lol) player.

FFXI and FFXIV are probably the best to show the Nostalgia goggles.  They are very similar to each other, heck even the races resemble each other, and if it wasn't for the missing Galka tails, I'd say an outright copy.  FFXIV is alot faster paced and leveling is alot easier, however you play the games the same way.  The Guildleves really aren't that great, so you get into a party, like FFXI, and go kill a billion monsters to level (like FFXI also).  Really the only big difference is that there's no sense of a Nation War and there are no jobs to unlock (which i think they plan on adding in the future).  Now some might say FFXIV had a much worse start than FFXI, and that's true, but FFXI had some problems at launch too.

DAoC, easily the best PvP game ever thought of (let alone made), has always had huge imbalances in classes...however, people who have played it will tell you it's still the greatest...Balance has nothing to do with Fun.  I find it fun to play my troll warrior on DAoC, it's an actual challenge.  If I want to play simple and cheap, I'd switch over to my spiritmaster and just crowd control everything that breathes (or doesn't, for you necros lol).

I still play Rift, and still love it.  Although since I got it, all my time has been spent playing Skyrim.  It's a great game if you have alot of friends on it, as with most MMOs.  If you want to play the entire game without talking to a single other player, you're going to be disappointed and bored.  I don't understand why people complain about a game, especially games like MMOs that are supposed to be highly social, but they play in thier own little corner, never talking to anyone.  Get a guild, go questing together, do some instances...it's a blast :)

Edit: Even while I play Skyrim, I stay on my Rift Guild's vent server chatting it up hehe

It wouldn't make a great MMO, but it would be an awesome CORPG.  Having 2-6 friends running around with you would be awesome.  I've sat on 3rd party voice chat and talked to friends while we both play it "together".  It's funny when you hear a friend say "OH ****!" over the headset, then 5 seconds later you do and say the exact same thing lol.

It's actually been this way for awhile, but I always have  the notification on the right side and top of the page saying I have 1 new message, but there's never a message when I go to my mail.  It's been that way for about 8 months.  I just never really cared enough to post about it lol.  I just finally figured you'd like to know, incase someone else has the same problem.

CORPG, MMORPG...they're just titles.  Everyone calls GW a MMO, but it is really a CORPG and a MMORPG.  I think the big difference, and why many consider GW a MMO, is there's a feeling of a persistant world, even though it's still a lobby game.  Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3 are OFPS, but could be considered MMOFPS (well bf3 at least, 64 players is enough for massiveness?) because they also have the feeling of something more than just a single battle.

I will play this game, as should anyone.  It's free anyways, so why wouldn't you at least try it...If you don't like how they have the item shop set up, it's no loss to you (maybe an overnight of downloading).  I don't see what the big deal is.  It's free :)

Inquisitor.  You can never truly defeat the darkside :)