First of all.. WHAT AN WONDERFUL FAMILY. BIG hats off to Fog for scoring us VIP tickets to this event for PAX 2013. I am also not part of the beta (yet) and was not discussing anything with any confidence.
Where to start! First of all, Elder Scrolls Online was without a doubt THE MMO event of the show. I did not get a chance to get a good demo myself because the wait was 5 hours long or longer every time I checked every day of pax! I did get a brief stint at the afterparty but I'll get to that in a moment. I have to say if you haven't seen the PAX east trailer video download it in full HD, and play it on the biggest TV you can find. It is immaculate. If they never complete the show they could use the cinematic studio to pull of a movie. I'm not exaggerating. I haven't gotten cheap cinematic thrills like this since starcraft (consider the era starcraft debuted in). We're talking "the hobbit" mixed with Final fantasy: The Spirits Within. If your facinated by animations that look lifelike don't miss it.
The after party was the most well thought out party I've heard of. This is my first major Con but everyone I talked to attending agreed it was probably the best themed event they had been to or even heard of. During the first two days of PAX Elder Scrolls people handed out scrolls that gave some details and instructions to find the event complete with a map. The ad indicated a free shuttle service as well. We didn't want to miss it so we headed to the shuttle about 30 minutes before it started. The line was, of course, wildly long. Our party decided to "cheat" and take a taxi. At this point I still had no idea if we needed tickets so the thought was that if we arrived and needed something more than the invite Fog got us then we'd have to do something else. Arriving we saw the gigantic, actual historical landmark, barracks in true granite with stone spires and the whole bit. Even the drawbridge chain and pulley were true to history, no props here an authentic military structure. As we entered we noticed the signpost attached below. All of the food and drinks were technically free. You were to pick up a bag of gold then use it to buy the food and drink themed and named after actual food and drink from the game. We kept our gold for two reasons. Firs, because the gold was AWESOME for tabletop gold and tokens. But mostly because the VIP passes got us free access to everything but the merchintile!! Open bar, nice! Also access to the VIP area!
It was in the VIP area I met up with and interviewed Paul Sage and tagged him with a few questions about their upcomming title and how they would handle problems that I've heard of and seen in a guild like ours. I know many of you are starving for gameplay details but I figured that the guild got me the VIP tickets so it would pay the favor forward better if I were to ask about those things I've heard that effect us specifically and leave the other details to the professional media.
Elder Scrolls Online player alliances (as they pertain to everything including PvP) will be divided into the three factions you see mentioned on the gamesite. Daggerfall, Ebonheart, and Aldmeri. These factions will be in a constant struggle in each of the Campaign instances. Though the statement that all players will be playing on the same "server" is technically true, each zone will be instanced to it's max capacity and the overflow will be instanced into a seperate zone area. Much like the corresponding Guild Wars 2 feature. The game is still obviously in heavy development so the details of exactly what these numbers are and how this will work are yet to be determined. I was a little hazy on what a campaign was as opposed to a quest and this tied into the zoneing somehow but I wasn't able to put it together in time to not hog all of Pauls time.
The summation of PvP that Paul gave was that it's much like Dark Age of Camelot, which I know many of you are familiar with.
As far as general gameplay are concerned, in all ways possible the game stays true to the traditional elder scrolls gameplay features. A choice between first person/third person view, blocking, attacking, and so on are important. Some exceptions have been made because of the fact that it's a shared world (you're sharing it with other players). The targetting bane that you may have heard about is kind of true but not quite. You still have a targetting reticle like Skyrim but you can press tab to lock onto your target as opposed to using it to alternate between close targets. It's a step in the hit-detection FPS direction but not quite there. So yes, targetting will change in ESO. It is not physically possible it have it work quite like the original single player titles but is a step in that direction. Think TERA. Another example is leveling. There are several weapon types, armor types, and magical lines. All of them will level independently of the others and rely on you to use that type of equipment to level them. A slight departure from the use based strategy from previous games. Additionally all of this leveling will unlock abilities both active and passive as you gain experience. However, how you're equiped will determine which of these abilities you have access to at any given time. And all combinations of your choices will have their own strengths and weaknesses. This is done in such a way that higher level characters will have access to more choices but not nessecarily significantly more power.
As far as graphics. There is some text polishing that needs to be done, but so far it's looking really good. Some things are incredible. Fire and environmental effects are insanely detailed and make good use of shaders. Others need work, as is typical in MMOs the monsters actions were boringly repetitive. There was some terrain detail missing here and there but nothing show-stoping. Personally I think they need to use some fancier text on the prompts and menus but ultimately it's nit-picky stuff.
Long story short the game is certainly worth checking into. Especially for the AvA (Alliance vs Alliance) PvP action. Can't wait to hear more!
