Tickerdoodles, Edler Scrolls is making a 3 faction PvP MMO!  I have mixed feelings here.

First, I’ve played all the Elder Scrolls from the shareware back in the 90s through Daggerfall, Morrowing, Oblivion and Skyrim.  All told, I think I have somewhere close to 1000 hours in all the series.   I think only Civilization comes close to that number.

The games have always been designed for single player sandbox adventuring.  Independent leveling, expansive worlds, great story and lots of nooks and crannies.  There’s just always something to do and usually your decision at point X has an impact at point Y, making the game have some replay value.  Though in honesty, you’re better off just working on one aspect, then moving on to another with the same character.  It’s more fun seeing people recognize you all over.

The hiccup I have here is that the last successful sandbox MMO was Ultima Online and that was nearly 15 years ago.  Expansions later ruined a fair part of it for me.  The last good 3 faction MMO was Dark Age of Camelot, a 10+ year old game and again, the Atlantis patch ruined it for me.  The risk here is absolutely immense and to be honest, the fantasy MMO has been done to death.  Heck, the core idea of MMOs, keeping people together, goes against everything that Elder Scrolls has prescribed in the past – a single hero with a party.

This doesn’t even begin to talk about the power creep that exists in single player MMOs.  At the end of Skyrim I was taking on dragons in a few hits, blasting entire armies out of existence.  This is why I have such a problem with TOR – you’re a great hero, near invincible, but there’s a thousand more around you.

On the flipside, it would be cool to have some multiplayer aspect to the Elder Scrolls – allowing some sharing of exploits in a giant world.  There were many times where my brother and I would chat about Skyrim and the other would go “wow, that sounds frigging cool”.  The “awe” factor is simply crazy in those games and sharing that would be awesome.

Some mechanics would move over well though: guilds, player housing, dungeon instances (random!), crafting, exploration, travel.  Heck, most of them were lined out in the Elder Scrolls games in the first place!

With some healthy skepticism I am awaiting further news.  At this point I say we have another 2 years before anything possibly launches.  The MMO landscape is still too volatile and it’s in their best interests to simply wait it out and polish what they have.  Oh, and give me Fallout 4.

As most gamers know, Diablo 3 will be launching with a Real Money Auction House (RMAH).  You’ll be able to sell and buy items, with real money, in game.  What was unknown until now was the cost of doing business.

All wearable items (armor, weapons, etc..) will come with a 1$ transaction fee.  Commodities will cost 15% of the value per transaction.  It will also cost you 15% of the value when you post.  Finally, when moving money to a 3rd party (like PayPal) will again charge 15%.  Oh, and you can only post 10 auctions at any given time.

This essentially puts a bottom on the entire market where people will put a value on their time.  Let’s say you want minimum wage of 6$ per hour or about 50$ a day.  You need to make 5$ per transaction profit, so you need to sell items at $7 and commodities at $6.50 per stack – or thereabouts.

Now as much as this seems like a good deal, you have to figure if people are going to pay $7 for a shield or for a gem.  So if you sell everything you “make” $50 but it also cost you $15 to make it.  Undercutting by a few pennies will be required but that just means that the next person to post increases your odds of not selling and you’re still out of pocket.

This isn’t EBay where there is great diversity and little competition on the actual items.  The actual posting fees are fixed too.  Blizzard is going to make a killing on this and people are going to make pennies – if that.