Behold the Skyrim Online Mod

[GeorgW]

I like the idea of joining up with friends to clear a dungeon, but the game isn't really built for it and I only want friends there, not some random people. Coop would be nice, but I don't think it'd add anything to the experience.
Still, gotta love the initiative, hope it works out!

 

[BlackSaint09]

Personally. Im just waiting for the inevitable Cyrodiil and Morrowind mods. I mean the ones that add those into the game.

 

[Ickabod]

Playing with a friend or two, yes that could be awesome.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

I hate to add to the nay-saying, but Skyrim will never really be playable in co-op, regardless of the best efforts of modders.

As for Bethesda adding co-op to the series: please no. First, everything about the game would have to change to accommodate it. Second, why can't somebody else do it? Bethesda can't do everything and I don't want them to try. I want awesome co-op RPGs, but not at the cost of what I have now.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

While a Skyrim Multiplayer sounds interesting in theory, I can only imagine how ludicrously easy the game would become, given how well-built characters already curbstomp about 99% of the enemies you'll see in the game. Having more than three people fighting a dragon would reduce it more to 'how fast can you kill a dragon?' rather than 'killing a dragon'.

 

[Klepa]

Didn't it take like... 3 years for them to release something like this for Oblivion?

http://csusap.csu.edu.au/~mloxto01/index.htm

Judging from that, he started work on 7th of May, 2006, and Alpha was released 21st of June 2006.
Don't know why the project ever stopped. If memory serves, the guy just vanished, without ever telling anyone how the mod is doing, or if it was even possible to complete.

 

[Draconalis]

I've been talking about how this game would probably be more interesting to me if it had like... 4 player co-op.

So hey... maybe I'll finally have an interest in playing Skyrim.

 

[noahpocalypse]

MMO with character controlled time-slowing mechanism does not mix.

Odds are they'd just disable it.

Or... Make the character using it move and act proportionally faster!

It's genius! What could go wrong?

 

[Shjade]

Full blown multiplayer? Ehhh.

Co-Op, however, would be magnificent.

My thoughts exactly. Imagine having a companion you could actually tell to do things, and who didn't go rushing into crowds of enemies at the slighest provocation!

Pretty much this...except the game is easy enough without a companion that having a human partner seems like it'd be overkill. Fun overkill, perhaps, but overkill nonetheless.

 

[Old_Bean]

I would play multiplayer Skyrim at a LAN party with friends but wouldn't delve into the internet. Just the idea of a 3 player dungeon crawl makes me tingle... Then I think of a 10 player town by town extermination of all NPC's and that tingle changes into a slightly different tingle.

 

[keiskay]

One thing that a lot of people don't realize is that implementing multiplayer is a LOT harder than it seems.

At this point, all we really have is a proof-of-concept. But with each new feature added, the difficulty of programming it goes up by an order of magnitude.

Torchlight is a good example of this. Someone came up with something similar, but the project didn't really get beyond the basic level like what we see here because it got so much more complicated to implement core gameplay features.

actually the torchlight multiplayer mod made it quite far, players connected and had their own unique gear and armor and they were fully animated and responded to player controls. it was just buggy and the main developer dropped it to make his own game. he said he would let anyone continue it if they wanted to, but no walked up to the plate. but people were able to connect and play but it was prone to crashes and the longest achieved run was 5 minutes. im surprised this mod is were its at it in progress since skyrim has only been out for like a month and some change. this one might actually make it all the way, also the naked people can chat and interact with the world they're just missing animations.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Bigger question: Are they going to modify the game to work for more then one player.

I think that's an issue most people don't consider. When you develop a game and you'd decided to make it single player its going to be designed to work best with one player and be made with one one player in mind. When start adding other players you alter the game. It's bolting on an attachment to your machine without considering if it really works with that machine. I think that's really what will determine if this mod is a success or a horrible failure.

 

[Abedeus]

MMO with character controlled time-slowing mechanism does not mix.

You probably could fix it like Neverwinter Nights did - disable or reduce the range.

Or like Diablo III, create an area of slowed time.

 

[mechman123]

I think that in a game like the Elder Scrolls series and other such sanboxy games, a limited multiplayer would fit in nicely. Not a full blown MMO as it would be pure hell in so many ways. It would help make the world seem a little more alive. Joining up with a friend or two to slay a dragon would be mighty fun.

 

[LordKraven]

They should leave multi out of it, to many new games focus 90% of there time and money on making online features for the 40% of players that play it online. Paying $60 for a game and getting 5 hours of play in solo and 100+ hours in repetitive online is crazy. This game offers at least 100+ hours so less then $1 per hour and making it online to skim that down and shrivil it up is offending to Bethesda,

 

[TheEndlessGrey]

I hate to be Johnny Buzzkill, but despite some updated rendering and AI, this is still basically the same game engine they've been using for everything since Morrowind, and the Creation Kit will not likely be much different from the Construction Kits before it. A similar looking multiplayer client mod appeared early in Oblivion's life as well. I don't recall having seen one for any version of Fallout, but a quick googling gives back a bunch of results for multiplayer mods in their alpha version. Nothing fully playable on the first page. There is no reason to think that this will get much further, with or without a creation kit. It will very likely run into the same hurdles every other effort to execute that task with this engine has hit, which is mainly that the game was never designed for multiplayer, and making it behave correctly is a lot more difficult than it sounds. It's not like the Creation Kit will feature a checkbox for Allow Multiplayer.

 

[Archl]

Like a lot of people here, I don't think any elder scrolls game ever needed any multiplayer. Especially MMO-like multiplayer would be terrible for a game like skyrim.

But on a small scale, say 2-4 players, I think it could have some potential. Taking down a badass dragon with your buddies sounds awesome!

until one of them starts teabagging the dragon... Then you just Fus-Doh-Ra-ban him.

 

[Excludos]

I don't think the game needs any kind of mmo type of multiplayer in it. But being able to play through the game co-op with a friend would be awesome!

 

[Gatx]

There is no valid argument against the creation of this mod. Don't like it, don't download it, that's the beauty of a mod. Plus that whole "taking away development time/attention from the single-player" complaint can't be applied to a mod that Bethesda is in no way a part of.

Anyway it probably won't manage to be on the scale of an MMO, at most I expect like a Diablo style up to 4-6 people running around in a persistent "campaign."