It's been a while since The Elder Scrolls Online – an MMO set in the same world as Oblivion and Skyrim – was first announced, but now we finally get to see some gameplay footage, with plenty of commentary from the developers. Here are some of the facts you'll pick up if you watch the ten minute video.
The Elder Scrolls Online is set 1,000 years before Skyrim. While the world will undoubtedly look a little different than it does in the game set a whole millennium later, the team has tried to make sure the art style is consistent with what players of Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim are used to. In fact, you'll be able to explore the whole of Tamriel – the continent on which the Elder Scrolls games take place – including the worlds from those games: Morrowind, Cyrodiil, and Skyrim.
The development team wants to bring together what players love about existing Elder Scrolls games with what players love about MMOs, which might lead either side to worry about tainting from the other. That'll be something we won't know hasn't happened until we get to play the game, but it's looking promising. For Elder Scrolls fans, the game does have that characteristic style. The races, the customisation, the armour – daedric, dwarven, what have you – feel very Elder Scrolls. But MMO players will be pleased to hear that you also get to pick a class at the start of the game, and go adventuring with your friends (as well as on your own). One particularly interesting statement from the video is that this game will only have one “mega-server”, so you won't have the problem of having friends on different servers with whom you can't play.
So what do you think? For me, if this felt Elder Scrolls enough it might get me to play an MMO properly for the first time in years.