Yes, TESO will use a similar leveling system to those of Oblivion and Skyrim.

After a hands-on preview of Elder Scrolls Online Massively has reported that, per Matt Frior, "full hand and weapon animations in first-person perspective will be available for launch."

Enjoy. 

Expansion or DLC... really arguing semantics here. No written rule states the extent to which an "expansion" has to expand the game content. In fact most expansions now days are DLC (Downloadable Content). 

I wrestle with this myself. On one hand I hate paying a monthly fee for a game. I personally find it unjustifyable. To all those of you who will say "well it's so they'll make better content" or "that's how they maintain the servers and QoS" I say this:

What games, other than MMOs, make money from montly fees?
What games, other than MMOs, don't have regular updates and expansions?

Take a look at the list of games for which you answered no to both of these questions. It will be quite sizeable... what's more, many of those games (Try most popular RTS and FPS games, for instance) have very large online servers that are maintained by... The developers! Or sometimes by the community or various other ingenious ways.

The truth is MMOs don't have to have recurring monthly fees. If they really came up with so much content so frequently they could easily live from selling expansions. Before you say that will cause a rift in the community do some simple math and work out that if instead of charging $10 a month they simply released a $30 expansion every three months they would make the same amount of money while giving people the choice of whether they can really afford that extra content right this second or if they can maybe wait it out for a month or two.

On the other hand, every MMO out there that doesn't charge monthly fees falls into some nasty "free-to-play; so long as you don't mind grinding 20x as long as those who do" type of deal, which irks me even more. I mean even those MMOs out there that only charge for "visual" updates generally leave you with a murky grayish-brown pool of crap to pick from if you don't pony up some cash. Most other games limit your ability to play or greatly inhibit your progress unless you spend the money. Some of these wind up being even more expensive than pay-to-play games if you really want to get serious!

In an ideal world ZenimaxOnline would charge $60 for the initial game and release steady streams of payed content to keep cash flowing. In the real world I'm sure they will charge a monthly fee... and if that fails they'll drop that leaving all those who paid for it feeling like fools and dooming the game to perdition.

     Sure.  Lets go ahead and completely abandon a game series because a subsidiary company of Bethesda that specializes in online games (and whose members have quite an impressive amount of experience) is making an online game.  

     Nothing new or innovative?  Running, crouching, sneaking, blocking, and diving are all in the game for every class.  Every class can use each and every weapon, spell, and piece of equipment found in the game.  Smaller user interface with only six active abilities.  Synnergy system allowing multiple gamers to combine their abilities to make more powerful moves.  Extremely intelligent, reactive enemy AI that works with one another making real-time decisions to kill you.  No magic numbers or indicator bars when fighting.  Not to mention the 200 player pvp battles, castle sieges and all-out open-field warfare.

     Please dont pass on this game when there has yet to even be any gameplay footage released.  And if i buy this game it wont be because of my loyalty to the Elder Scrolls; it will be because it looks like a good, fun game.

And here's where i found all of that info in case anybody wants to read up:

http://www.gameinformer.com/p/elderscrollsonline.aspx

jrgoalie33

gotta say i hate retards that think their is a such thing as a WoW clone... WoW IS A CLONE of a bunch of different good mmo's combined into one... if you think WoW is original your sadly mistaken.

jamesryan99

While you make a good point, here's a thought that I often find people who are accused of "trolling" miss:

Yes, there is merit in originality. However, there is also merit - perhaps even more so - in improvement. Take, for instance, my favorite game series - Metal Gear Solid.

Metal Gear Solid, the original game, was breeming with originality. There's never been a game quite like it. That's one of the things that drew me to the series in the first place. However, Metal Gear Solid 2 was a better game. Sure maybe you didn't like it as much because of the change in protagonist and this and that. Say what you might it was simply a better game overall. I'm not talking about graphics either. 

There's nothing wrong with Call of Duty. I loved the original Modern Warfare... heck if it hadn't been killed by all of it's carbon copies I'd probably still be playing it. Battlefield 3 is just an improved copy of previous Battlefield's, I still greatly enjoy it.

So yes, would gaming be better with more originality? I think so. Should every single game out there be a completely distinct brand new thing that shared as little in common with other games as possible? I don't think that's possible and much less productive.

If you're burnt out from money-milking franchises (Halo, Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty, etc. etc.) then don't buy them...

See the below:

http://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en/news/post/2013/03/01/your-beta-questions-answered

Skyrim was the latest TES game and, let's face it, the most popular one. A lot of people that played Skyrim hadn't heard about TES before, much in the way that a lot of the people that played Oblivion hadn't heard about Morrowind.

I'm not arguing that Skyrim is better, but it's certainly smarter for them to advertise the Nords and the Ebonheart Pact more prominently from a marketing standpoint.

The more people jump on this game's bandwaggon the better it will be. If that means the Nords have to be a bit overplayed then that's something I can certainly live with. 

I myself am conflicted between Redguard and Orsimer for my dual-wielding tank build (yeah, I've been thinking about it a bit... :oops: )