Thousandcats

I looked up the who-is, and images-amazon.com is hosted by Go Daddy. What are the odds that Amazon, one of the biggest online companies out there, uses Go Daddy as their host for their image servers? [Edit] Hm, that's actually the registrar, not the host. Looking at the other images hosted on this site and the details of this story...this is looking pretty legit.

I have a (longshot) question! Did they say anything about name reservation? As in, if you take a name during CBT, does it stay associated with your account, or do we start with a clean slate with official launch? (Obviously I'd expect character wipes to happen, but there is a particular name that I'm worried about other people nabbing first.) If it didn't come up at all, I'll assume that the answer is clean slate.

Well, won't this be interesting?

Perhaps Bethesda is watching this thread and sending out C&D letters to every site they see linked?

It's an Elder Scrolls tradition. Hell, they've actually been really open with us for an Elder Scrolls game. I'm not sure if it's because it's a different studio, or because they realized their initial showing was really weak and they've been trying to prove themselves ever since. As for the beta videos being taken down, well, in all likelihood I'd do the exact same thing in their shoes. Unless their marketing strategy specifically used leaked videos as one of its cornerstones, then it's a bunch of content, much of it with negative spin, that they have no control over. (There also might be an element of pride to the thing: Sure, even if something really cool got leaked and people responded well to it, they didn't get to experience it first-hand first. Like, they're (ZOS) trying to craft an awesome experience here, and all of these players are up and ruining it for themselves before they've even finished their work!)

@ghost: What is this? A compilation video?

Keep in mind that crafting "additives" are also supposed to add traits to armor. Perhaps different armor classes will have different bonus traits available, so with crafting you can get that bonus to melee damage you're after? Do we know if Brace costs stamina? The difference could be that bracing is free, while you have to be more choosy about when to dodge. Or, it's possible that it's easier to hold aggro while bracing than while dodging (which won't really matter in PvP, but it could be important for group PvE).

That's something, though, isn't it? I'm replaying from Morrowind bringing the same character through all the way to Skyrim right now, and I'm thinking... Morrowind: Light armor will always encumber you less but provide less protection. Heavy armor will always weigh you down but offer the best protection. (And then there's medium armor -- even with expansions, always heavier than light armor but only providing marginally more protection. Why?!?!) Oblivion: With maxed armor and armorer skills, the only difference between light and heavy is that light breaks slightly more quickly. Skyrim: Heavy and light provide a master perk that makes a slight difference (dodge vs. reflect damage), and heavy takes fewer perks to max out (since it has several useless perks you can skip), but other than that there's no difference between them. ESO: Armor type is a deciding factor in your build/role in the group. I like this!

Now here's a question: Will passive skills also have morphs? That could make things real interesting!

From what I can gather, it looks like passives are always on, but most of them are contingent on certain conditions. For instance, armor passives do nothing if you aren't wearing the right armor. That said, I have no source for confirmation of this -- but I've seen no UI to indicate the slotting of passives (and I do believe I've seen all of the leaked + official footage) and most of the passives are worded to be effective only in specific situations. That said, I'm a hardcore roleplayer so I'll completely disregard this in favor of flavor. My Ebonheart character will be a Dunmer Templar, even though at this juncture Dragonknight appears to be the optimal class for Dunmer -- but if I'm a Dunmer, I'm gonna be an Ashlander, and I need my (Aedric for some reason) spears! Well, my Breton (Sorcerer) and Khajiit (Nightblade) characters are likely to have good race-class synergies, at least.

I was only half-paying attention (hard to fully watch the video while at work), but I wasn't exactly wowed by the combat. As has been said often, it still seems a bit floaty. That said, everything else (the things that I actually care about) is looking pretty damn good, so I'm still on the ESO train. And I was pleasantly surprised by stealth! It looks a lot more fun than I expected.

Anyone else think the Elder Scrolls Weekly guys talk unbarably slow? I sat through this episode for the new footage, but yeesh, I couldn't handle their previous episodes. They sound so disinterested!

Thanks for sharing, Masdas! Hmm, let's see here... Ebonheart -- All this time, when I heard Ebonheart Pact, I thought of Castle Ebonheart in Vvardenfell. This makes no sense, obviously, since Castle Ebonheart wasn't built until late in the Third Era. Now we see that it's actually referencing Old Ebonheart, on the mainland. Anyway, nice looking city! Mournhold -- A little disappointing that the city of Almalexia (the metropolis that Mournhold is only the center of) isn't there, but I guess it must not have existed 800 years before the events in Tribunal. And I like the redesign of the city itself. It actually looks like a place where people live, now! That said, the Ordinator helmet was pretty fugly. Nerevar was clearly not a pretty guy. Random Quests -- I'm loving how quest NPCs are kind of calling out to the player as he rides on by. I don't love that you can just abandon a quest mid-progress and all of the relevant NPCs will just reset to their starting positions. That said, I absolutely understand why they made that choice, and in the absence of a better option, I can live with it. First Person -- Looking pretty slick! The explorable world also looks pretty good. I'm waiting for the last 10 minutes of the video to load, but all in all, I'd say this is the best leak I've seen so far.

I think we feel the same way about the combat, with the difference being how important combat is to each of us. =P That said, the action-y MMOs you're looking for largely rely on heavy instancing. This generally doesn't bother me, but in an Elder Scrolls game I'd like to have public dungeons, too. I'm also troubled by all the last minute changes they started making when the fans cried out. I mean, I think they're good changes, but it seems like they were originally trying to develop DAoC 2 instead of ESO.

Okay, to other people who saw this: Is it just me, or was he able to give his Argonian character just a first name, no last name? It's possible that the current build doesn't have last name support, but I'm pretty sure the previous leak featured a Breton with both first and last names. Maybe they caved in to us lore nuts (again) and are keeping that part of the game lore-friendly!

Right now I'm sitting at 8 or so? Perhaps I'm being too generous, but there you have it. The one thing that hasn't exactly wowed me has been the combat. I haven't seen any leaked footage where the player was taking the combat seriously*, but what I have seen doesn't fill me with hope. That said, combat is the least important element of the Elder Scrolls experience to me, so it doesn't bother me. Otherwise, I've liked what I see. I like the way the characters look, I like the way NPC interaction goes, I like the environments we've seen so far. I want to get in there, get to know the people, and explore. I guess I'm pretty hyped! * Come to think of it, they don't take any of it seriously! They run around erratically so you have a hard time taking in the environment. They LMB-spam their way through fights. They click through all the dialogue. At least this last person took time to actually play with character generation.

After hitting play, I get this error: "The video has not been uploaded yet or th" <cut-off> I'm just gonna post here so I get a notice when you sort it out.

Here's a question for you: I read some commentary on one of the leaked vids that indicated that certain classes aren't available to certain factions or races -- for instance, in the video, you couldn't create a Nightblade for the Daggerfall Covenant/Breton race. Now, I assumed this was because Nightblade hadn't been released yet and not because there's any sort of class locking (which would go pretty heavily against Elder Scrolls design philosophy). Now that Nightblade is out on the test server, can you confirm if all races/factions can use all classes?

It doesn't matter what level you are. The Companions faction has the weakest story out of all factions in Skyrim, in my opinion. There is a mod that tries to fix this (Companions Faction Enhanced or something?), but I never got around to giving it a try. Heck, I've even run the Civil War quests more often than I've run the Companions. But unlike in previous games, I really don't feel a burning desire to join any factions in Skyrim.

Blur disappoints me. I was under the impression that their design philosophy was "no automatic missing." That said, I can live with one skill out of many that grants that ability. And yeah, thanks for sharing!

"Will there be dragons?" seems to come up in about half the media interviews they give. I don't know how helpful it would be to add that, though.

Oh, that works too. I looked at the screenshot and assumed the dungeon entrance wasn't rendering for some reason. Now I see that the quest givers are the ones who are missing. Um... Did you get the rumor to go look for them? I don't think they spawn until you've heard that rumor.

Can you COC to the dungeon interior?

Download the Galsiah's Character Development mod. Then you won't have to understand the leveling system.

Perhaps NPC Factions (even though only things we really know are the Mage and Fighter Guid skill lines and that Thieves and Dark Brotherhood won't be in at launch)? A page on everything we know about gear so far? A page on what we know about crafting?