Pre-Order Bonus: Join Any Faction with Any Race

[David]

Following the leaks and speculation surrounding an Imperial Edition (now official), ZeniMax has made a second notable announcement - pre-ordering ESO will allow players to choose which alliance to join regardless of their character's race.

Today we unveiled the pre-order bonus for The Elder Scrolls Online for PC, Mac, PS4, or Xbox One, available at any participating retailer! We’ve also launched our new online store, where you can pre-purchase digital editions of the game for PC or Mac. Every pre-order and pre-purchase comes with the Explorer’s Pack, which includes these great digital bonuses:

[*]The characters you create can join any alliance, no matter which race you choose

[*]The Scuttler, a tiny but loyal vanity pet

[*]A bundle of four bonus treasure maps

In addition to the above, early adopters will be given five days of early access.

If you pre-order or pre-purchase a PC or Mac edition of The Elder Scrolls Online, you’ll be among the first to begin your adventures in Tamriel with early access! Five days of early access will be rewarded to anyone who pre-purchases through The Elder Scrolls Online Store, and additional early access programs will be available through participating retailers.

The article rounded up the surprising news with a new cinematic trailer.

Click here to view the article

[Fergal]

Never actually took note that the whole "any race any alliance" thing was a pre-order bonus on Francis' thread. I just assumed they changed it when I saw the trailer.

 

Okay, so not much of an impact (still massive, mind you, I'm sure there is a large pre-order crowd) as I previously said; however, still don't favour it. I'm not pre-ordering anyway, because I won't be able to play much around launch time and want to no-life that initial free month. (Assuming that hasn't turned into a pre-order bonus...)

 

Does anyone know if we are limited to one character per account/subscription or is it 4 as in the beta? Come to think of it, that could have just been there for the sake of glitches preventing from further playing on a character. If it's multiple/4, I'm more than happy to have different races for different alliances.

[David]

My initial thought was "this is going to completely kill immersion." That's probably true to an extent, but I feel that this is a good move overall. People were relentlessly complaining about not being able to play with the friends, and splitting your player-base three ways with fairly significant isolation is never a good thing.Now, this doesn't mean they won't completely screw this up. This can't just be a "pre-order bonus" that only some people acquire. Likewise, they can NOT charge extra for this after pre-ordering ends. With how blatantly they've been money-grubbing recently, though, I doubt they'll handle this how they should. In that case some of the panic I've been seeing is probably more justified.Pretty much every Imperial Edition bonus is complete bullshit though.

[Guest Guest]

Just seems like a scummy way to get people pre-order the game based on pure hype (all pre-order bonuses are like that but anyway), Imperial Edition is 100% retarded, all races for all alliances is and isn't retarded, depending on point of view. What is undoubtedly retarded, however, is the fact that all this is based on pre-ordering. Even if it ends up in a cash shop later it undermines the point of subscription. And also just the fact that it's confusing and unattractive to new players. Want to play? Buy the game, then pay $10 or whatever if you want to play on your friend's alliance with your favorite race. Isn't the base game enough? Subscription based games are getting enough bad press already from the F2P masses.

 

So either they'll listen to the backlash and announce Imperials and all races available for free to everyone, and they'll be praised as heroes, and get positive PR. Or people will take the bait and pre-order their CEs away to get their Imps and the others. As of now the former seems unlikely, there are many people actually singing praises to ZOS for the "option" to play as an Imperial.

[Earl Grey]

I kind of hate that there will be all races represented in each faction but it might turn out to be a good thing (maybe they were having a hard time balancing roles/population?). I was also hoping the experience rings would not cost extra

[Fergal]

My initial though was "this is going to completely kill immersion." That's probably true to an extent, but I feel that this is a good move overall. People were relentlessly complaining about not being able to play with the friends, and splitting your player-base three ways with fairly significant isolation is never a good thing.

 

Now, this doesn't mean they won't completely screw this up. This can't just be a "pre-order bonus" that only some people acquire. Likewise, they can NOT charge extra for this after pre-ordering ends. With how blatantly they've been money-grubbing recently, though, I doubt they'll handle this how they should. In that case some of the panic I've been seeing is probably more justified.

 

Pretty much every Imperial Edition bonus is complete bullshit though.

 

Considering this will come into play, you could argue that it should obviously be available at some point after. Still could have bloody just introduced it for free, as it should. The idea in general, can be viewed as both positive or negative though.

 

Yes, it allows friends of different races to play together, that's a nice feature. But I still feel that it just ruins the idea of race-exclusive alliances, and as such, have little meaning unless the vast-majority of the alliance is still based on their original 3 races.

 

Are we limited to the alliance's territory or is that not an issue in general?

[Guest Guest]

One Imperial AND/OR one alliance-free character for everyone... fixed.. That way everyone has the chance to make an Imp/cross-alliance character but it won't homogenize the sides too much, since the rest of the character slots are restricted to alliance-bound racial selection. And get rid of this Imperial Edition + Explorers Pack race nonsense.

[Blake]

I just really like the idea of playing as an Imperial. Most likely won't  buy the Imperial Edition, but Present-Day Blake has been known to screw Future Blake over many a time. The early access items are kind of bullshit, though.

 

And for some reason, I don't like the idea of just any race playing any aliiance, though the idea isn't entirely lore-unfriendly. This does let people who want to play different races play together, but only if that option is available after launch, which I hope/don't think it will be.

 

I do hope that they don't make these types of things a habit though.

[Guest Guest]

There has been in every TES (Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim) every race in each area of tamriel.

 

Lorewise it's totally ok. There always were bretons or highelves in Ebenheart/ Morrowind?

 

Even in Beta: I played in Daggerfall and there were many npc's argonians and woodelves for example there. So why not player charakters? Refugees? Traiters? Hired?

 

I like the plan: Every race in every faction.

 

 

[Fergal]

Hmm.

 

From the lore perspective of things, yeah. That seems fine. It's just - What if we see an Ebonheart Pact guild made prodiminately of orcs and khajiit's - (Although that doesn't seem very realistic, it could happen if originally all the staff were Nords or something).

 

In general, I'm kind of on the bar with this one, and I'm not entirely sure where I stand after thought. It is interesting, but again, I just wish they would just stop trying to grab every cent out of our pockets. It's just damaging their reputation.

[Blue Koolaid]

For me this is a good thing because I always pre-order MMOs that I plan on playing. I know many people want to wait and read forums/reviews but honestly this is a bad idea for an MMO. I have played countless MMOs in my life and if you wait for reviews and forums you might as well not play. Most reviewers will give the game a positive review no matter what because they don't want to hurt their advertising revenue. Forums are the complete opposite you will get terrible reviews with countless people complaining and threatening to quit the game even though many of them will continue to play for a year or longer. Getting your own opinion on an MMO is the only way to know if you are going to like it. This sucks because after this you have already spent money which is why free to play MMOs are so popular. But F2P MMOs are always pay to win via an item mall. Many will still complain that the pre-order and collectors edition is a form of pay to win but in my experience it is not. The imperial race might have a passive that will anger you because you really want it but do not want to pay for it, but come end game I would bet the impact will be much smaller than you would imagine not to mention it is highly likely they will release imperial to all at some point. I hope they don't force us to pay for this although some recent MMOs have done that with collector edition bonuses because if they don't then the people who did buy the collectors edition will fill the forums with tears. This is all very normal for MMOs and very predictable to be honest. I don't like all of it but at the same time I figure if I pre-order the game and play for 6 months to a year then the price of the entertainment is worth it. Most console games are $60 and when I am playing an MMO I buy almost no other games because of the time sink anyway.

 

I do however understand the complaints on this stuff and of course for console gamers this all is going to come as a shock.

[FunkheaD]

I've pre-ordered today the CE today.  I'm more than happy to pay up to support Zenimax and Bethesda.

 

TES is an IP I've followed since I first laid my grubby teenage hands on Daggerfall. The non digital content in the box is worth the price of purchase alone.

 

I don't have a problem with this type of cash grab as long as it's not p2w and I highly doubt that Imperials are going to be some genetically engineered super-race capable for face-stomping more than others.

 

EDIT: and I think the 'train wreck' banner on this article shows a little bias.  Many people have no issues with this CE.  Some of you are tighter than a fishes' arsehole!

[ReVeaL]

@Fergal Wrote:

 

From the lore perspective of things, yeah. That seems fine. It's just - What if we see an Ebonheart Pact guild made prodiminately of orcs and khajiit's - (Although that doesn't seem very realistic, it could happen if originally all the staff were Nords or something).

 

In general, I'm kind of on the bar with this one, and I'm not entirely sure where I stand after thought. It is interesting, but again, I just wish they would just stop trying to grab every cent out of our pockets. It's just damaging their reputation.

 

 

 

Fergal Sir,

 

I'm in agreement with your post.

I fight on Daggerfall Covenant side.

 

My Question with this, it takes away the uniqueness of everything now.

Yes, your right.  There is now a possibility for a Orc Guild or Orc & Khajit combination to arise on

Ebonheart Pact.

 

I think the only thing this decision will do at the end is raise Faction numbers 

that's already on  "Ebonheart Pact & Aldmeri Dominion"

I think Daggerfall Covenant will suffer more from this decision because I'm already hearing

players that were stating they were going to play on D.C.

or

Split groups which half of the group were A.D. and the other half were D.C.

 

Now, I'm hearing these groups state well we're going to play on A.D. now since our members can create DC characters on A.D.

Well now we're going to play on Ebonheart Pact now since DC characters can play on EP.

 

Unfortunately, I haven't heard one single person the other way around.

 

I like the idea, but think it will hurt Daggerfall Covenant more than any other Faction/Alliance

[shinn]

well i see positive and negative aspects.

 

At first Daggerfall was clearly the underdog in beta (but we fought well in rvr!) and the Norddudes were clearly overpopulated. They may want to mix it a bit.

But i thing there could be balanceproblems bc of mixing the races in the fractions. but well thats their problem.

I like the option.

[Guest wintermute]

Why can't I play any race in any alliance?  that didn't even last til release

[DarkOne]

Why can't I play any race in any alliance?  that didn't even last til release

This was already made from start, the thing is that people are forcing to much so they can get answers.

[Abardomas]

I think it's great to have the option of choosing any alliance regardless of race. It allows for many more interesting combinations, and a three faction PvP will make the game far more fun.

[Bagwaan]

Hello all,

 

I played in the Ebonheart Pact this past Beta test, and distinctly remember one of the quest involving a Khajit. So there are obviously NPC's who have switched alliances, and are openly operating in foreign territory. If it's good enough for NPC's, then it's good enough for PC's. Maybe you are just a mercenary at heart, or maybe you just want more opportunity to say "stay moist" to Argonians.

Whatevers

 

B

[Vladimir Cristo]

Most people will definatly stay the races of the original factions though. Also considering if your favorite race was a Altmer than chances are you will see a lot of them in Aldmeri dominion and so on unlike the other factions and that applies for all races. So you can choose to be any race but if you go to another faction that your race does not belong to than you will rarely see people of your race and culture there,  So it still brings in the pride of the factions and wanting to be around people who have similiar goals and tastes as you. Of course when you become a high lvl you can quest in the other zones and experience them but I imagine most people will want to fit it and have that faction pride when they start out there first adventure of the game. I plan on forming a Vampire only guild so I consider it sort of a 4th faction haha but ya Aldmeri Dominion will be my starting journey.