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.
Mumorpuger said:
That's usually my one gripe with fantasy settings. Some of them (and in my head I'm thinking about the Game of Thrones Universe) have had civilized society for thousands of years, yet still rely on horses, fire, etc. No steam, no electricity, nada.
You would think they'd have more technology by then, if you juxtaposition it to the real world's timeline of events regarding human civilization and inventions.
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.
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.
