Elder Scrolls Online - Interview @ Metro

In an interview with Metro, (ESO) director Matt Firor talks about the future of the game and MMOs and that making a game like this being very hard.

GC: How do you feel The Elder Scrolls Online has performed since launch and what are you most pleased with? What do you think were the biggest mistakes at launch and what do you think ESO offers that other MMOs do not?

MF: ESO is doing awesomely! Our success has gone a bit under the radar so to speak, but we are very happy with where we are. I am very pleased that we developed a game that can take so many different types of gamers and give them different play experiences – but all the while introduce them to other play styles and stay true to the Elder Scrolls lore. I’m also extremely happy with how our technology works behind the scenes. We don’t get to talk about that enough, but we seamlessly hide server transitions and instancing, which allows players to simply choose a region megaserver (Europe or North America), and the technology does the rest.

To answer your question about comparing ESO to other MMOs: ESO is not really a traditional MMO, so we don’t use that term much around the office – and it is this distinction that separates it from other games. If you want to play it solo, like you did with other Elder Scrolls games, you can do that. If you want to play it super-grindy with dungeons, Trials, and group bosses as the core of you experience, you can join up with others and do that too.

It’s really up to you to figure out how you want to play it, as we don’t enforce a play style one way or the other. In fact, ESO has been super-successful at taking gamers not used to massive online games, introducing them to the concepts of group play by making it fun and optional, and turning them into online gamers.

I think we could have done a couple of things better at launch like setting proper expectations for our betas (which for the first few were done primarily for technical scaling testing, not for game testing), and we definitely launched with a content bug that prevented many players from completing quests.

Thnaks Couch.