Classes:

The gist of the video: Classes are “supposedly” more open ended. “A class is really your starting point, a class is us saying, here’s 3 extra skill lines you get to choose.”  said Paul Sage the Creative Director for the game.  I.E. Picking a class opens up a couple of new skill trees to match your archetype. Sounds similar to expertise pretty much. Archetypes are as follows:

• Dragonknight: Fighter with sword
• Templar: Healer
• Night and Blade:Sneaky
• Sorcerer:Magic and Users

Supposedly you gain new skill lines as you adventure throughout the game. Add new skill lines as you adventure in the game. When you join the mages guild, add that skill line. When you become a werewolf/vampire here’s that skill line.

Can choose your armor and weapons to your liking apparently. No word on restrictions. It sounds like you’ll be restricted by your archetype.

Group Sizes:

4 Player Groups. With 24 man raids/pvp.

End Game Content:

End Game Raids for 24 man groups. No details.

Adventure Zones: Large Group Content. Sounds similar to warhammers world pvp. Very hush hush on this. Most likely in very early development. Remain skeptical about anything from here. Most likely won’t be in the game at release.

 My hopes:

• Dwemer devices are in the game!
•  4:33 has the first First Peron Gameplay Footage!
• 5:00 has a transition from third to first. Right now it’s just an instant switch.

• Elder Scrolls is in very early beta. Open beta is some ways away. Gives them time to fix/change stuff.
• Simplistic Controls. Xboxone Controller here I come
• Lore Books have made a return! The best stories!

My worries:

• End-Game content is still non-existent. This to me, is by definition an alpha build. Any time he talked about end-game raids, pvp, or zones he became very very vague. Which means that it’s still in the developmental phase and doesn’t want to say anything that might change. If your adding new features into the game, that’s alpha not beta. Beta is polishing the bugs.

• Animations are weaksauce. Running with your character looks weird. At 6:00 to 6:05 you see a character running and it demonstrates how boring it looks.

• The first person footage at 4:40 showcases weak animations again. The character is swinging both axes on a small robot creature. You do the animation of a swing and the creature continues it’s attack. This to me, is a perfect example of why you should not include first person view in an mmorpg unless you have reactive animations(where a swing+hit=stumble by enemy). Reactive Animations  are very hard to do in a online environment, but it makes you, the Player Character, feel useless without them.

• Another thing is using the same animation for a weapon throughout the game. Your super one of a kind badass axe of thor swings just like your noob starter axe. Maybe with some added proc effects to “shiny” it up. That’s dull. It should crackle with thunder and aoe zap my enemies which stuns them briefly. I should feel like Thor and not some 8 year old playing make believe.

• The video was laced with some cinematics throughout the video. Which raises partial red flags. I can’t be sure but at 6:06 you see a few pre-rendered scenes at the very least.

My 2 cents:

The only information I have learned about elder scrolls online came from this video. From what I saw, I came away more intrigued then when I walked in. I do see a lot of the common “mmo” mistakes though. No End-Game Content while trying to build hype up. Promising 24 man zones without even knowing what will be in those zones. Spoiling part of the main story. These are minor things but they add up for anyone who will follow the game. On release day that guy who’s been watching every video will know the story, all the classes pros and cons, and have every feature the developer talked about in his head. I know because I’ve been that guy. No mmorpg can beat that expectation.

TL;DR:

The game is on my radar but I’ll remain skeptical until player footage comes out.