Introduce Yourself to The Elder Scrolls Online
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
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Human civilization has been around for over 5,000 years(might be longer, I'm thinking somewhere around 8,000, but I can't be certain so I'll just stick to 5,000) and only within the past 200 years have we used steam power or electricity, so the idea that it might take even longer in these lands with these great times of darkness and horrible rulers and divine and demonic intervention and all around just shit luck isn't all that hard to believe if you ask me.Mumorpuger said:
Here's something to consider: Human history spans thousands upon thousands of years, into and beyond the tens of thousands. We've only had electricity- and steam-powered machinery for the past 200 or so years. So... yeah.Mumorpuger said:
Yes, but that's why I've used the qualifier "civilized society." In my head, that usually comes down to a written alphabet, language, and agriculture (for us, I consider the ancient Phoenicans, Egyptians, etc as the start of civilized society). Usually the fantasy novels I have a bone to pick with are the ones who have been stuck in an age where they have been "civilized " far longer than we (in the real world) have even existed. Some of the worst offenders are permanently stuck in an analogue of our Dark and Middle Ages, which only lasted for 1000 years.WhiteTigerShiro said:
I'm personally wondering how well Bethesda is going to do in balancing these "Perks". How many people put many, if any, points into Alchemy in Skyrim? How about Speech, or Restoration, or Pickpocketing? (I mean aside from roleplayers.) Blizzard has been trying for years to balance skill specs and the like in WoW- and in Mists of Pandaria, they basically tossed half of it out the window and squashed the other half down into paste. And this is a company that has probably the grandest example of wildly different yet balanced game styles- Starcraft.
Also, seriously. The Argonians still look butt-ugly. Can't we get something like a mix of Oblivion and Skyrim's design for them?
Also, seriously. The Argonians still look butt-ugly. Can't we get something like a mix of Oblivion and Skyrim's design for them?
That's kind of a loaded qualifier, for a number of reasons. Not the least of which is that not being "civilized" enough is the reason that the British would attack and enslave a number of other cultures; never minding that their own culture was extremely brutish in its own ways. Then there's the fact that you could certainly debate just how "civilized" the current world is, lest I remind you of what's been going on in the middle-east this past decade or so. Also, do you think that we were a bunch of wandering nomads until a thousand years ago? Exactly how do you define "civilization" that it excludes millennia of civilized human history?Mumorpuger said:
No it's not. The advent of agriculture and the written alphabet is seen by many historians as the point in history where we stopped being a loose collection of nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes and started being "civilized" societies (which was about 5000 years ago, so no I don't think it was a thousand years ago). You're turning this into something of a commentary of society that's way off base from my point, by the way.WhiteTigerShiro said:
Eh? Skyrim was the only Elderscrolls game that didn't set you on a specific character class and keep you there.Mr.Wizard said:
Morrowind and Oblivion both made you choose what class you wanted to be.
Sure Skyrim didn't make you choose from a list of class names, but the way it played, if you tried to make an "archer-mage-barbarian-knight-thief" you were going to get your ass kicked. Not as bad as Oblivion mind you, but you still had to have some semblance of a direction for your character.
Picking a class and then using your choice of weapons armour and skills to customize it sounds.... exactly like The Elderscrolls.
So there is open pvp where one guy can become emperor? On a "megaserver" whith what, a million players?
Oh boy, the bile-spewing by PvPers and the 1000 vs. 100 battles will be golden.
Captcha: "I know nothing!" A little sour today, captcha?
Oh boy, the bile-spewing by PvPers and the 1000 vs. 100 battles will be golden.
Captcha: "I know nothing!" A little sour today, captcha?
Everyone is saying that the environments and designs look like TES, and I cant help wondering if they have actually played any of TES. In ESO, Skyrim and the bits of Cyrodiil I have seen in screen shots look accurate, so do most things that appear in the previous games, minus Durzogs and Morrowind architecture. I have played since Morrowind and I like to think I know a bit about the TES sense of style. The problem I see is that everytime Zenimax online come up with something new they steal a world of Warcraft sensibility; instead of the great Elder scrolls tradition of stealing things from the Lord of the Rings, I say that in the most loving way, but look at a picture of Whiterun next to Edoras.
when I see the armor and creature design in ESO it looks like its gone through a Blizzard art team filter, and I cite the picture of the Ordinators to back that up. the over MMO-ification of TES is really upsetting to me. Just because this is an online game, the art team has decided to water down its the style with a design seance from an MMO made eight years ago. that laziness, lack of imagination, and/or pandarus small mindedness really pisses me off.
when I see the armor and creature design in ESO it looks like its gone through a Blizzard art team filter, and I cite the picture of the Ordinators to back that up. the over MMO-ification of TES is really upsetting to me. Just because this is an online game, the art team has decided to water down its the style with a design seance from an MMO made eight years ago. that laziness, lack of imagination, and/or pandarus small mindedness really pisses me off.
I'm not turning it into anything, just saying that "civilized" is kind of a semantic qualifier since everyone will interpret the term differently. Also, you've kinda proven my point. So we've been "civilized" for the past 5000 years, yet only the past 200 or so years have we had either steam power or electricity. Yet you complain about fantasy stories where they go for thousands of years without developing steam or electricity.Mumorpuger said:
When we have fantasy worlds that have existed for tens of thousands of years, yes. I complain. You're overlooking major innovations like gunpowder, navigation, microbiology and such, but I think we're on the same page.WhiteTigerShiro said:
You know, I'm sick of all this "car" and "road" bullshit. Why haven't we invented teleporters yet? It's almost like major advancements in technology require inspiration, happenstance, and material to all come together in a previously unobserved formation.Frostbite3789 said:
Our Bronze Age lasted, what, three millennia (someone check me on this)? And these people have magic and gods, where would the inspiration come from? Anything a machine could do, magic already does better.
Daggerfall too, for that matter, and I would assume Arena also, though I did not play that one. Irrelevant, of course since taking a class did absolutely nothing other than giving you a starting skill package that you were free to deviate from, and because most people ignored them in favor of a custom class.SajuukKhar said:
Looks good, but why can't it be released as just Elder scrolls 6 with a nice single player campaign.
Also anyone else getting gw2 vibes from the look and feel of it?
Also anyone else getting gw2 vibes from the look and feel of it?
Not to be picky, but Morrowind has classes. I figure it'll probably be something like that where you pick classes and those get a stat boost initially as well as maybe governing what starter gear you get.Mr.Wizard said:
I get why people say it seems odd to them that fantasy settings don't advance, but I personally I don't see why a fantasy universe should advance in similar fashion to the real world. It's not like real life cultures all advanced in similar ways independent of each other. Native Americans didn't bother with the those entertaining "wheel" playthings until someone brought them some work animals to actually use it with. Oh yea, and they didn't have work animals. A lot depends on circumstance, and lifestyles have persisted to some extent for thousands of years in the real world. There should be changes in the culture after 1,000 years, but it's not like we went from domesticating the horse to transporter beams that fast in real life.
The Great Pyramid of Egypt was built 4,570 years ago and I know people who don't even have a flatscreen.
The Great Pyramid of Egypt was built 4,570 years ago and I know people who don't even have a flatscreen.
OT: Sounds like they are restricting PvP to Cyrodiil. And what the heck is this about 'everyone is on even footing in PvP.' Looks like another MMO to avoid to me. But then again I haven't liked an MMO since Ultima Online and the original Planetside.
18,000 years before it was founded there was evidence of pots. Which is a good marker for when societies have begun to form. Pots mean that they are forming sedentary societies. They are growing crops that need to be stored. Basically this means that villages are starting to form and civilization is essentially beginning. 18,000 years later we get the Xia Dynasty.
After the Xia Dynasty united China it took them:
1000 years to create the compass.
1500 years till crossbows.
1800 years till they were producing paper.
2300 years till they could use a rudimentary form of a printing press.
2800 years until they were effectively actually using that printing press.
3000 years until they created gunpowder
3200 years before they started creating guns.
3600 years until they had access to electricity in any real scientific/industrial capacity.(And actual power plants weren't around till hundreds of years later.)
So as a historian. I would have to say no. I wouldn't expect that a medieval fictional civilization would advance that quickly at all, especially not when juxtaposed against human history. You can't use the past 200 years as a metric by which to judge technology. We have made more progress in the last 50-70 years than the rest of the human timeline combined.
Even 600 years ago people were developing the steam engine. They would work on it and then die. Someone else would pick up the idea 30 years later, find that persons research and try to learn everything from it. Then they would die and maybe 50 years later someone would work on it some more. It took hundreds of years of work before the Watt Steam Engine was finally worth manufacturing.
The reason its different now is because the internet connects research in a way that previous societies did not have. Information is freely available to almost everyone in the 1st and 2nd worlds so rather than one person digging up information from a library 50 years after someone died; we have hundreds working on similar projects often sharing information between them. You didn't have to ride by horse for two years from China to Europe, copy everything by hand, and then try to teach the important bits to yourself because the education system wasn't specialized enough for you to have learned it elsewhere.
So anyways sorry for the extreme tangent. Getting back to the actual subject; it makes perfect sense that the societies in Elder Scrolls and Game of Thrones would barely have advanced at all. What does not make sense however its that the Elder Scrolls armor looks pretty much exactly the same. In a real society given 1000 years there would be pretty clear stylistic variations. The armor might still be made from ebony or iron but it wouldn't look the exact same 1000 years apart.
The Chinese Xia Dynasty was founded in 2070 BC. It marked the founding of one of the worlds oldest civilizations(Though societies and even kings existed long before it in China.) And off the top of my head it's probably the longest lasting civilization(Though not under the same dynasty nor always with the same founding principles. But Chinese civilization itself has definitely been around since then.) They were also involved in some of the biggest advancements in human history.Mumorpuger said:
18,000 years before it was founded there was evidence of pots. Which is a good marker for when societies have begun to form. Pots mean that they are forming sedentary societies. They are growing crops that need to be stored. Basically this means that villages are starting to form and civilization is essentially beginning. 18,000 years later we get the Xia Dynasty.
After the Xia Dynasty united China it took them:
1000 years to create the compass.
1500 years till crossbows.
1800 years till they were producing paper.
2300 years till they could use a rudimentary form of a printing press.
2800 years until they were effectively actually using that printing press.
3000 years until they created gunpowder
3200 years before they started creating guns.
3600 years until they had access to electricity in any real scientific/industrial capacity.(And actual power plants weren't around till hundreds of years later.)
So as a historian. I would have to say no. I wouldn't expect that a medieval fictional civilization would advance that quickly at all, especially not when juxtaposed against human history. You can't use the past 200 years as a metric by which to judge technology. We have made more progress in the last 50-70 years than the rest of the human timeline combined.
Even 600 years ago people were developing the steam engine. They would work on it and then die. Someone else would pick up the idea 30 years later, find that persons research and try to learn everything from it. Then they would die and maybe 50 years later someone would work on it some more. It took hundreds of years of work before the Watt Steam Engine was finally worth manufacturing.
The reason its different now is because the internet connects research in a way that previous societies did not have. Information is freely available to almost everyone in the 1st and 2nd worlds so rather than one person digging up information from a library 50 years after someone died; we have hundreds working on similar projects often sharing information between them. You didn't have to ride by horse for two years from China to Europe, copy everything by hand, and then try to teach the important bits to yourself because the education system wasn't specialized enough for you to have learned it elsewhere.
So anyways sorry for the extreme tangent. Getting back to the actual subject; it makes perfect sense that the societies in Elder Scrolls and Game of Thrones would barely have advanced at all. What does not make sense however its that the Elder Scrolls armor looks pretty much exactly the same. In a real society given 1000 years there would be pretty clear stylistic variations. The armor might still be made from ebony or iron but it wouldn't look the exact same 1000 years apart.
