A longtime (hopeful) rumor of PC Savants and MMO-addicts alike, the recent court filings of Bethsoft’s lawsuit against Fallout IP-holder Interplay have – perhaps accidentally – revealed a massively multiplayer online game based on the Elder Scrolls franchise. Found, as always, by series fansite Duck and Cover, the parent company Zenimax had hired Dark Ages of Camelot producer Matt Firor to head an online division of the company in 2007.
Since the hiring, the transcript revealed that “tens and tens of millions of dollars” have been injected into the project of “close to a hundred people.” The injunction script also mentioned that the Elder Scrolls MMO has been developed on a four-year production lifecycle, which would put its prospective release at some point in 2011. VG247 has since confirmed the project as carrying the Elder Scrolls brand. Bethsoft has not returned any call for comments from Elder-Geek.
If I was Bethesda I’d be very careful about my release time on this game.
You don’t want to be too close to The Old Republic or Cataclysm. Cataclysm should be out around November this year and The Old Republic in Spring of ’11… but I could see TOR being pushed back a month or two for fixes since I’m sure BioWare want’s to have as solid a release as possible.
MMO gamers (in large scale) are always willing and eager to try new games. Look at Warhammer Online getting 1.2 million purchases off the bat… yet they dropped to 300k subscribers in a few months after Lich King came out. Wasn’t hard to believe either due to how bad the PvE/End Game was and the horrid balancing practices.
Essentially for The Elder Scrolls MMO to make a big impact it would probably need to come out Christmas 2011 to Spring 2012 (I’d lean towards 2012). This is assuming they have the continued funds to delay this and continue development/fixes the entire time.
This would allow for said fixes/polishing not to mention time for gamers to get in the mood to try something new… then again they could get entrenched as well. Still, I don’t see going up against BioWare/EA/LucasArts and the Star Wars series strait up as an intelligent move.