It’s easy sometimes to forget what the MMORPG world was like over a decade ago, with so-called “WoW clones” being a dime a dozen. But Elder Scrolls Online’s former creative director Paul Sage said that the team worked its hardest to break out of that mold—and it was more difficult than standing out as just another open-world Elder Scrolls title.
As explained by GamesRadar, Sage felt the expectations that World of Warcraft, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, set for MMORPGs at the time, and he (and other MMORPG devs) needed to work both alongside and against those to stand out. Indeed, to be considered purely a “WoW clone” became one of the damning insults of MMORPGs from its potential player bases, especially in the era of MMO releases just before ESO’s launch.
Still, it was a massive era for MMORPG genre experimentation, and Sage says Bethesda lent ZeniMax and his team a lot of freedom regarding what they could do with the Elder Scrolls franchise, with Sage explaining that Bethesda was “amazingly generous with what they allowed us to do on the MMO."
"One of the things we had to do was break out of the WoW mold, more than break out of the Elder Scrolls mold", Sage told the publication. “So whereas I felt that you could still really be creative, there were still those marks of like, 'here's what people expect from an MMO'."
Thankfully for the ZeniMax team, the strategy seems to have paid off. Over a decade later, the game is still going strong, with regular new expansions and updates releasing for a consistent player base.
Paul Sage has been chatting it up, it seems, after his latest team announced a new co-op shooter that’s yet to be named based in the “American heartland.” The Texas-based studio where Sage acts as CEO, Ruckus Games, touts developers from Gearbox, Riot, Epic, Blizzard and more with $19 million in funding already thanks to a 20-minute demo.
