Did you notice . . . . .?

Did you notice . . . . ?

Having just crested a hill, I paused to get my bearings unaware I was not alone.  Until . . . My mount shied and made a nervous sound.  I quickly scanned the area to see what caused my horse to display some fear and to my surprise there was a wolf.  We were perhaps 20-25 feet from the wolf.  We were able to press on undisturbed; the wolf not inclined to give chase.  If this is any indicator, I find it intriguing that we may have to call upon our senses; rather than rely on icons or text to pop up and tell us we are experiencing.  Talk about immersion!

I also noticed that at night the wolves gathered in packs and were very aggressive.  By day, they were either alone or only grouped in pairs and much less aggressive.  

Hmmmm...interesting.  Has anyone else noticed any other environmental behavior like this?

Wow, this sounds amazing. TESO would be the first game to capture this level of immersion. I hope you are right. Oh man, I'm having ESO withdrawals right now..........

Yes, I've noticed that the entire world is more "intelligent" than other games.  I think it's fantastic and completely support the decision not to allow add-ons that flood you with so much information that you spend your time watching the data and miss the entire scene unfolding in front of you.

Yeah, I was hoping the hours of red-eyed questing didn't cause some kind of breakdown.  LOL

That's why I had to post this. Was hoping others noticed this or perhaps other non-standard MMO cues.

It will definitely be something I will try to reproduce and will look for more eyes and ears cues.  This tasks me even further to slow down,  Maybe even try first person.  :)

I was riding in Cyrodill, frantically trying to catch up to my group there, when out of the corner of my eye I saw a wolf and was rather relieved that it did not take chase. Thankfully it was during the daytime as I cannot imagine what tragedy would have fallen upon me if it were by the light of the moon.

You'd be amazed at what a crab can get in their shell.

 bah thats nothing  I still remember the snakes in EQ  kicking and bashing me haha .

Moss Snakes kicking, indoor mobs able to SoW one another... oh yes, I remember it well.

(There was only one thing in that game more humiliating than dying to a moss snake... dying to a fire beetle.)

well that was my axe, I try to kill that crab a few weeks ago and my axe got stuck in his shell and I couldn't get it free, got chopped in the leg a few times so decided to just make a run for it :)

LOL I'd forgotten all about the infamous "moss snake kicks you for 5 damage."

I love the interactivity of ESO's AI and environment. I didn't realize how much of an MMO grinding mindset I'd developed over the years until now. I was running around exploring in Bleakrock and absent mindedly killed a pig near one of the farms (ambient creature kills generate achievements in WoW so it's an ingrained response for me). The farmer ran out shouting and started to cry over the dead pig. I felt so bad. Then I went to harvest one of those maple wood nodes, and somehow managed to misclick and kill a squirrel that was sitting on the node, and all its little squirrel friends screamed and ran away.

The degree of immersion you can achieve in that kind of environment is amazing, and such a nice change from the "kill everything in the room including the structures" formula.