I switch from first to third person a lot, I mostly play in first person though. However some of the spell animations look pretty bad when cast in first person. It's easier to block with first person than 3rd.

The spells are interesting but nothing complete groundbreaking. Skills and spells level up as you use them and then you can spend skill points to pick more skills in each area.

For example when my summoning spell got to level 5 I can morph it which let me change the skill to 1 of 2 different summons. One is similar to the previous, but a bit stronger and the other attacks for 10 seconds then explodes.

Here are some pictures. Server is broken or something now but I can't log in on my characters.( shown in last picture).

Some more .

 

I'm sad to hear that the magic is generic. Our understanding of Magicka has changed historically over time, and it would have been interesting to see some of the earlier iterations of it. I guess that would have been expecting too much, considering their lack of dedication to making this in any way lore-compatible.

 

Have to say that those shots haven't really shown anything worth picking it up over going back to Skyrim, Oblivion, or even Morrowind. Nothing worth paying subscriber fees either.

Raine, were you really expecting them to either conform to the standards of Elder Scrolls Lore or do something actually interesting with the magic system?

 

After showing us what they did to Coldharbour? No, I wasn't. But it would have been a nice conciliatory gesture to the portion of the fanbase that is severely pissed off at the blatant disregard for the lore that the main plot features.

Apparently, they just don't give a damn about the lore at all. I'm already expecting them to ruin Talos. It's a good thing Whitestrake is dead by this point, or they'd probably wreck him, too.

By all rights, magic at this point in history should be more heavily influenced by elven doctrines. It wouldn't be out of the question for some forms of Ayleid casting to still remain, which are focused on the ideals of the four elements in balance; Air, Water, Earth, and Light (they abhorred fire as an impure and primitive version of light). I doubt we would see blatant changes in the manner of casting, but magic in general and Destruction in particular should look quite different from it's current 'modern' incarnation in Skyrim. There should be no dedicated arcane universities or guilds besides the Psijics, who are secretive and hidden away from the world, and magic should look very elven, because humanity is as this point cribbing notes from the elven races, who are in turn looking to the fallen Ayleids as the high point of magic in recent memory.

Also, everyone that isn't canon fodder should be able to use the Thu'um, because we're still in the era where that was fairly common.

 

Also, it's pretty easy to edit out that kinda stuff. Just be nice to get a visual idea of what your talking about.

 

Whaddyamean? Edit out the lore inconsistencies? I don't think so, they're pretty much ingrained at this point. Sure, you could change fire particle effects to light, but that would be pretty expensive actually - you'd need to do a lot of QA testing for the completely new particles everywhere. And any stuff that's voice acted or written into the quests has to be all redone...

I was shocked when I read all the blatant errors in the game's lore. It's like they have no one over there that's played Morrowind or even Oblivion. Nevermind Daggerfall.

It's nice MMOs have long beta periods, but they're mostly for marketing. 'cause there's just too much work to be done for any player input to matter before release.

 

Humans had magic as well. It's not like they were rock-banging primitives. But the Ayleid Empire would have only fallen a few hundred years ago. There would still be elves and even Bretons alive who would remember when Whitestrake threw down against Umaril. Even if they were almost universally reviled as a people, the Ayleids were THE highpoint of arcane mastery. Even to this day, we still aren't entirely sure how exactly it is they did everything that they did. Some of their methods of practicing magic would have still been around at the time, and if there was a concentrated place of arcane learning, it would have mostly consisted of new spells and arcane experiments run by the past few generations of mages against a dense backdrop of almost exclusively Ayleidic magic. Destruction probably would not have been exclusively Fire, Ice, and Lightning at that particular point in time. Earth, Water, Wind, and Light would have also still arguably been involved, either in Destruction or spread out across the schools of Destruction, Mysticism, and Alteration, because those elements come from the Ayleidic school of magical thought, which is what everyone would have been basing their work off of at the time. It's not like Fire spells hadn't been invented yet. The Altimer have a completely different, divergent thought process on magic from the Ayleids, and we get the classical school of Destruction (Fire, Frost, Shock) from them, so it's not like no one was throwing around ice and lightning and fire spells.

I'm not arguing that Fire, Frost, and Shock wouldn't exist. They should definitely exist at this point in time. What I'm arguing is that Wind, Water, Earth, and Light should not have faded into obscurity just yet. There would still be wizards and sorcerers who practiced some form of Ayleidic magic, and a lot of what would have been going around as general arcane instruction of the time would have been based at least partially on the Ayleids, because they were a magical empire of arcane wonders and knew what the hell they were doing, in spite of being evil bastards, and most people aren't going to start from square one when 90% of the work has already been done for them by someone else.

 

I didn't realize there was another page, I was responding to Skykes saying he couldn't post screenhots because his email would be in the picture.

 

I've had plenty of gripes with the game from what I've played even putting aside the more minor things. My biggest issue is how they designed their class system. You basically get three lines of skills for your class and as you use them and level them up you can invest additional skill points that branch out and develop additional effects for your ability. Like you can make your rogue backstab heal you if you kill someone with it, etc. Unfortunately for you as the player these are the ONLY abilities that this happens with. Meaning the dozens of other skill lines for all the armors and weapons and guilds completely pale in comparison over time. They don't really improve or at least not nearly enough to merit using their actives.

I also took issue with how annoying inventory management was, the complete and utter lack of iron nodes (I found 3? maybe leveling two characters to level 10) which made crafting really frustrating for better quality gear, and a clunky interface. Like why do I have to use menus to exit a party? You can feel some of the console design influence.

 

Apparently server-side files were leaked. People have private servers already running for the beta client.

That's really not good news for this game. I don't know how big an impact emulation is, but there will be a free alternative now, come launch.

 

Having explored private servers on several occasions across more than one MMO...

They're generally pretty crap, hard to set up, and are under-populated.

 

For the most part in most games, yes.

WoW, however, had a really good private server pre-2009 called "WoWScape". It was really popular until 2009 when the GM's started being assholes, and until the owner was sued by Blizzard in 2009 or 2010. None of the other private servers matched up to it afterwords.

 

Wow, it's been a while... anyway I just got an email for beta access, the next session they open the servers are set to be from:

From Friday, November 22nd at 6:00pm EST
Until Sunday, November 24th at 11:59pm EST

Does anyone have anything they want me to try and find out in particular? Most stuff you can probably find elsewhere with how long its been since the first session but I figured I should at least offer.

 

Drat, if this round of invites already went out, don't think I made the cut. If possible, can you look into crafting materials, and if it feels more like Skyrim for gathering them, or if there are distinct influences from other MMOs? EG - you can probably get a wolf pelt from the wolf you just killed, or some iron or copper out of a vein, but can you loot a pelt from an animal someone else killed and just kept going past? Once someone else taps a ore vein, are you competing with them for the node, or does it even show up on you screen as something you can get?

I'm not sure if I'm being clear enough about what I'm asking - let me know if you need me to try again. I guess I'm trying to figure out if crafting is going to be a royal pain in the ass, a grind fest for massive amounts of materials, or something that happens more organically throughout the time you are there.

Edit: Also, are you finding a great deal of weight is allocated towards carrying around just about everything you can think of, or are you finding you are skipping over a lot of the loot due to weight issues?

 

Going by previous experience a couple months back I couldn't find ore for shit maybe in 10 levels I found 3 veins at most. Pelts you didn't really skin you just picked them up as you go. I ended up ditching tons of stuff because it wasn't weight based it was slot based and I'm too much of a hoarder for that to be a very viable system. I didn't know what I might want to use for crafting.

 

I got a beta test invite in my e-mail today, too. Wondering if I should get it...

Edit: Biggest question will be; how many megabytes will it be? If it's over 20k, that's gonna be ridiculous.

 

Eh, the lore stuff doesn't bother me that seriously, really. I mean, yeah, it's a bit disappointing that they couldn't keep to the lore... but I'll still play to see if the rest of the game is good. It still has a TES 'feel' to it. The gameplay is still guided by similar mechanics. From what I've seen and heard I'm cautiously optimistic so far.

As it is, I got my beta invite as well. That's all I'll be saying about the beta, though.

Oi, Lord Raine. Thoughts?

 

The lore is the only thing keeping The Elder Scrolls from becoming Fable minus the cartoon graphics. It's incredibly important. A lot of the more interesting or impressive things in The Elder Scrolls games came from having some knowledge or context of what happened in the past. If they start rewriting and reimagining the lore wholesale, a lot of what made the games and the setting interesting are going to go completely out the window, and all you're left with is the game equivalent of Oblivion's locale. Just boring pastoral rolling hills where a steaming jungle swamp filled with horrible monsters is supposed to be.

Blab bid de blah bid de blah, I'm one of only three people on the site who gives a shit.

Tells us what you can about how the game mechanics work. How much shit can you carry? Does Encumberance still exist? How many slots do you get for things to wear? Is this Morrowind where we can wear clothes beneath our fully pieced armor set, Oblivion where we assemble a full suit of armor from about six different parts, or Skyrim where babby's outfits are boiled down to three things plus accessories?

Can you dual-wield? Are there any spells that do anything besides Magic Missile and Fireball? How does stealth work? Are there Perks? Core stats? What happens when you level up?

Don't feel pressured to break your beta agreements. Just tell us what you can.

 

The answers to literally all of that can be found in videos on Youtube from official interviews, but I'll answer most of them.

Yes, dual wielding is possible, and yes, Dual Wielders can block. Yes, there are other spells that do many other things. Many of the spells, are, in fact, utility based in one way or another. Stealthing around drains your stamina. If you move, stamina drain. If you sit still in stealth, no drain (I think).

Core stats are normal. Health, Magicka, Stamina. You also have an Armor Class and a Power stat. Power affects both your Damage and your Healing. Armor Class is obvious.

Every time you level you get an ability point to spend, and a point to spend on magicka, health, or stamina.

There are no perks. But there are Seven different classes of Skill Line. Race(nine races), Class(four STARTING classes), World(Lycanthrope, Vampire, etc), Guild(Fighters Guild, Mages Guil), Armor(Three Types), Weapon(Six Categores) and Alliance Vs Alliance.

You can also gain skill points to spend on abilities by finding three of a specific collectible thing in game.

You only have six ability slots on your ability bar. 5 normals and an Ultimate. At level 15 you gain the ability to weapon swap for a different set of abilities/ultimate. It's been described as a 'deck building' system. Looooots of options, only so many you can use at once.

Technically, the only skill lines you don't have access to are the ones from other races/classes.

When you use skills enough, you gain the opportunity to 'morph' them. Where you are presented a couple options on how you want to change the ability.

There are six different weapon category skill lines. Sword and Board, Dual Wield, Two Hander, Archery, Destruction Staffs and Restoration Staffs. With each of those categories are of course different types of weapons and such. Axes, Swords, Maces, Etc. No spears right now, but maybe later. Destruction staffs come in Flame, Ice and Shock.

There are almost no cooldowns. Your ability usage is gated by resources. Only your Ultimate ability has a 'cooldown', and that is affected by how well you play. If you play better, the 'energy' it uses to cast is refilled faster.

There are three different kinds of armor. Heavy, Medium and Light. The armor types are also associated with a core stat. Heavy = Health, Medium = Stamina, Light = Magicka. Each also has it's own skill line that you can spend points on.

There are seven or eight armor slots. I'm not quite sure.

 

That actually sounds really interesting, and quite cool.

The real question though is, Is it fun? Does it feel intuitive, flow etc.