I think this could be the best thing to happen to MMOs in...ever. OR...it could be the beginning death knell of a great series.

Depending on how they pull it off, how innovative they are with it, making it unique/their own but still enjoyable and in keeping with the Elder Scrolls tradition of deep-seated lore and mature tones.

I wouldn't mind it having a class system akin to all previous titles before Skyrim, that is, you pick a "class" which just means you have a prearranged set of skill ranks to represent your life up to that point (it's not like your character was just birthed when you started playing him/her, they had to live a life before the game actually began...) but let you change up your skill progression as you see fit. Training/using skills you aren't very proficient in at the start would be harder, but very possible, so if you wanted you could start as a Mage but then add onto it some sneaky or martial skills as you see fit...

I like the class dynamic more because of the backstory idea, that your character didn't just poof into existence from nowhere when you create him for the game...I liked that about elder scrolls games, it made it feel like your character actually came from somewhere and had a life, but doesn't preclude the possibility of changing your image down the road (like most other RPGs do).

While I understand where you're coming from, handpicking your skills doesn't make it any less roleplaying or character building than picking one of the preset skill groups. And it amounts to the same exact thing, mechanically.

If they did it the same way they did it in morrowind and oblivion, i don't think anybody would care. My concern (and others' I'm sure) is that they're doing the standard warrior/mage/rogue archetypes, where all skills and abilities are set in stone the moment you pick a "class."

I don't think the class aspect helps that really, but I see your point. Honestly Skyrim had it more 'realistic' than anything. It assumes that you are an average citizen until the game begins and therefore you have skills at racial, stereotypical even, levels. I mean, I don't often know people who take a training course geared for Archer/Warrior before becoming (the medieval equivalent of) an Army Ranger.

And the skill sets afforded by the class systems in TES before Skyrim did govern your leveling. If you weren't leveling a skill in your major class skill list, you wouldn't level up. So it didn't matter what level Sneak your Mage had, if he wasn't a bloody Witchslayer, it didn't friggin' help you any.

Huh... I always thought the thing that really made a game an RPG was well, roleplaying. I mean, sure you could level up, but pretty much every FPS these days has a level up system. Since everything in the world scaled to you level there was no point in leveling up either, except to see the bandits in daedric armor. IN fact, it was often a bad idea to level up because if you hadn't raised your main skills weren't combat focused all the enemies would get way better at killing you while you didn't get better at fighting. It meant that the best way to play the game was to avoid increasing your primary skills and instead focus on skills you didn't specialize in so you could raise them to a level where you'd be able to fight enemies properly when you leveled up.

Sure Skyrim is dumbed down as hell, but it's really no less of an RPG than Oblivion. I mean, from what I understand Skyrim even has some actual choices you can make in some of the quests. You know, roleplaying!

I don't really see how this game is any more likely to be "the best thing to happen to MMOs" than any other. I mean, this is Bethesda we're talking about. Where they made Oblivion. The game that tossed out all that deep-seated lore and mature themes in favor of being as intentionally generic as possible in order to gain more mass appeal. Daggerfall was about conspiracies and political intrigue with everything culminating in your choice determining the fate of a deadly weapon. Morrowind was about conspiracies and political intrigue while exploring a very strange and alien culture and discovering the secrets of their living gods. Oblivion is about saving middle earth (Even though Cyrodiil was supposed to be premarily wetlands and rainforst) stand in from the demons (Even though the Daedra are supposed to be significantly more complex than typical fantasy demons). Hell, they even shat all over one of the coolest characters from Daggerfall, and couldn't even be consistent with the race of the main villain of the game. And oh god I could go on and on and on about everything wrong with Oblivion so I'll just stop now. Ohyeahonemorething, noflight.

Also, you know you could actually design a backstory for your character in Daggerfall based on your character creation choices. One of the things they cut from Morrowind, along with climbing.

On the point of the two people talking about oblivion ruining it, and Skyrim ruining it. I was a TES fan the moment I played Oblivion. After I played oblivion for a while I went ahead and picked up Morrowind just to see how it was. The graphics killed me compared to oblivion, the constant attacking without weapons sounds half the time, and the long loading times, were terrible. If it wasn't for the glitch to level up all skills freely (or maybe it cost a coin or two)..and be able to levitate in the game, I might not have played it much.

But I still had fun. Oblivion, I must have played 20+ times through. I felt it was very re-playable, partly because the beginning is quick and then they drop you out into the world to do whatever you want. I musta played the first time to level 30 before I even realized I hadn't done the main story quest lol

Skyrim I like, however to me, I feel it's re-playability lacking a bit. In Oblivion you had to pick certain skills that would help level you up more then the others. So replaying with different ones as your main ones was a good enough reason to replay just to try different things out and still level up, or finish a quest differently. But in Skyrim, since you can level anything up, there's no real point to replay, other then maybe trying different perks earlier on.

The dragons were awesome to begin with, but after you've seen your thousandth dragon you just want them to go away already because once you have 50+ dragon souls just sitting there, as well as full sets of both dragon armors, you have no reason to fight the dragons anymore, but they continue flying about each time you fast travel somewhere.

Don't get me wrong I still like Skyrim, I'm just saying for me, oblivion had more re-playability and Skyrim is more of a beat everything and then maybe one day you'll feel like starting a new profile kinda game. The slow motion kill moves, though sometimes cool..kind of made it feel more like Fallout..and I don't want Fallout and Elder Scrolls to merge into one game. I like my dragons and guns in different games.

I haven't played anything older then Morrowind, but I do intend to some day. The main point of this however is that, no matter who you are, usually the game you start with is the game you like better then the new ones. Same with 3.5 players Vs 4.0 players.

You do realize you could master everything in Oblivion with one character as well don't you? The primary skills only determined what skills you were required to raise to level up. You could raise your other skills as much as you liked with no problem. In fact you often had to in order to survive thanks to the broken level scaling system. I admit that I have a soft spot for Morrowind being the first game I played, but I'm fully capable of admitting that the series started going downhill after Daggerfall. Morrowind had awesome atmosphere and really immersed you in the lore, but it was really dumbed down in some ways compared to Daggerfall. Then Oblivion came out and basically removed everything unique and interesting about the series, and replaced it with unique blandness. It's really a sad thing that it's the game that introduced so many people to the series. Hm, I guess it's basically the Budweiser and McDonald's of videogames.

I know, I was saying if you wanted to level up quicker while using different skills. If one profile you started with all your skills being combat oriented, then decide you'd rather just level up by making tons of potions or using spells you'd have a reason to make another character, compared to Skyrim where all the skills contribute the same, therefore you wouldn't need to make another profile.

The only main reason would be to try out another race.

But there's no real reason to level up in Oblivion. You just make your enemies stronger. And if you level up using alchemy skill them you don't get stronger, so you end up breaking the game, being unable to survive against any foe. And like I said, you'll end up maxing everything in either game as long as you use it, so the difference is negligible.

I'd merely like to point out... Bethesda isn't making a TES MMO of any kind. Their parent company's making one of their sister franchises do it.

Ya not looking forward to this game.
Crap Engine.
Already looks like it has been WOWified. (Not that wow is bad mind you)
Going to lose allot of its charm in that its latency based.
Going to lose allot of its charm in that its going to have actual levels.

Hear is the thing It's going to be just like SWTOR.
HUGE sales of the game then HUGE drop off after the first month is over.
And then steady drop off until its at maybe... 500k. If there are lucky.
SWTOR is already below 800k. And still falling. So much for a WOW killer.

I give it six months. TOPS, before it goes free to play.
I'm not buying SWTOR until its goes Free to play. (So i'm never buying it)
And if they make the mistake they did with TOR. Spending 300million on it. Then they are going to fail big time.
Because with 800k subsribers its going to take 25 years to make back the money for the game. (Not counting the price of buying the box) SImply put the game will not last that long.

You can say what you want about WOW, but if it has 10Millon+ Players, then clearly its doing something right.
And that is the problem, to beat or even take a piece of the WOW pie, you cant just be as good as WOW you have to better, much better. And so far every game that has come out and promissed Big things has been a big failer.
Nothing that ever comes close to WOW, which is a flawed game that is micromanaged until its just annoying.

This game will be worse.
Bad Game Engine, Bad Ideal, It's going to be a repeat of SWTOR.