KATY: What is your overall job with The Elder Scrolls Online?
PAUL: I’m the Creative Director of the project, so basically—
KATY: All of the things.
PAUL: Exactly.
ROBYN: What are you most proud of about the project? If you had to pick a single, favorite aspect, what would it be?
PAUL: Okay… so, probably—well, that’s a tough question!
*Everyone laughs.
PAUL: If you look at the art, I think that our art team is amazing. When you see the world for the first time, you see that it’s expansive, it’s beautiful, but then you look at our tech team. Not only do you have this beautiful world, but you also have 200 players on screen at once, which is a pretty huge feat. If you’re playing on PC or Mac, or if you have a machine that’s five years old, [the game] still runs really smoothly. It’s hard to say what I’m more proud of from those things. I think the combat system is also really great. Getting an MMO to feel reactive and feel like something that’s really engaging is a real challenge.
KATY: Yeah, it’s very unique. I had to adjust to it because I’m so used to using the mouse to move the camera, but it’s a lot more interactive now which is awesome.
ROBYN: And you did get the combat to feel reactive, as well. It’s very intuitive.
PAUL: Yeah! We have a combat team, and I think they did a great job.
KATY: It feels like Skyrim, pretty much. Everything looks like how an Elder Scrolls game would look.
PAUL: Today you didn’t even play first person, so you know that’s coming. We’re beta, and we have the first person active now. We’re getting a lot of feedback on that.
ROBYN: How has the feedback been so far?
PAUL: Great. I think the people who want to PVP like to play in third person to get that situational awareness. But if you’re just adventuring in the world, there’s something really cool and engaging about being able to experience it in first person.
KATY: Yeah, absolutely.
ROBYN: There are a lot of easter eggs in Skyrim. Are there any in The Elder Scrolls Online that we can look forward to?
PAUL: I can promise you that there will be tons of easter eggs in the game. Even if it’s not considered an easter egg, a good example is M’aiq the Liar. M’aiq the Liar makes an appearance in Elder Scrolls a lot, so there will be a little bit of M’aiq for everybody. But how is M’aiq here? It’s a thousand years in the past! Why is M’aiq here?
ROBYN: *laughs* That’s a very good question.
KATY: How will the endgame content work?
PAUL: Endgame is really interesting. What is “endgame”? Is endgame level 50? When you hit the level cap, if you completed the main quest in the last zone, you realize that you can move from that to another alliance with the same character. So, you have that whole alliance, but now it’s leveled up to 50 versus if you started in that alliance, so it’s an even bigger challenge. If you get through with that alliance, you can move onto the next. There’s hundreds of hours of content available there. That, you know, is straight content. There’s also the Alliance War that we have. We have dungeons, and if you go through the dungeons—the normal dungeons up to 50—then once you get to 50, you get to play what we call the Master Dungeons. At that Master level, you can go in, and it’s that much harder. It’s not just the same dungeon. It’s got a second story and new areas that have opened up. We’ve talked a little bit about Adventure Zones, but we haven’t revealed a lot of details. Adventure Zones are more like if you have a really big group, and you want to go in and take on large challenges. So, there’s a lot of content planned for what you do once you’ve hit the level cap.
KATY: How big would you consider a big group to be for that kind of stuff?
PAUL: A normal group size is 4, so right now a large group is around 24.
The Elder Scrolls Online is slated for release in Spring 2014. If that’s too long a wait, you can apply to be a beta tester on ESO’s official site.
