Play TESO with Lise!
As I mentioned elsewhere, I was lucky enough to be in the closed beta of TESO (The Elder Scrolls Online) this past weekend, a game which is (theoretically) coming out in April. I can't talk much about what I saw there, because it's all under a non-disclosure agreement, but I was very, very pleased with it.
Now, I say this as a bit of an Elder Scrolls junkie. I've been playing the ES games since Morrowind, and for almost as long as I knew what the games were, and knew what MMOs were, I've been wanting to combine the two. So I would probably play this game at least a little no matter how shit it was.
But it's not shit. It's innovative in some really interesting ways, I think, and I'm eager to see where it goes.
And I hope you will join me.
My experience in earlier MMOs was that finding your friends was an effort in frustration. Either they were on a different server than you, or they were a different faction than you, or they wanted to be in a different guild than you, when you could only belong to one guild
I'm really excited about some of the things that TESO is doing to make it so much easier to play with your friends. This is all public knowledge stuff, so I can share that:
- there's one mega-server per platform (PC/Mac vs. PS4 vs. Xbox One). I'll be playing on PC. This is seriously the biggest dividing factor, as I know lots of people who played previous ES games on the console. I hope the technical requirements are such that it's accessible on PC to a wider range of people than the (usually very graphically demanding) single-player games are.
- You can belong to up to five guilds at a time. So I can play with my larp peeps and yet join that lore-liek-whoa Morag Tong guild I've been eyeing.
- Guilds are cross-faction. So no worrying that your desire to play a Khajiit will conflict with my desire to play a Dunmer. We can't group cross-faction, but we can at least have snarky guild chat. And, really, isn't that what MMOs are all about?
All that said, I would really like to put together a guild of people I know in real life and trust. This seems to be the only way I can stay accountable about how much I play, and not get embroiled in the (oft-misogynist) bullshit of MMOs at large. This has worked well for me in SWTOR, where I mostly play with Matt and lightgamer and rigel and Chrisco; where the rules for the guild are "only invite people on whose doorstep you can show up if they do something dickish."
So, who's with me? I expect that most of you who are potentially interested already know more about the game than I do, but here are some informational links, if you don't:
http://elderscrollsonline.com/
http://uesp.net/wiki/Online:Online (if you don't feel like wasting hours on the TESO main site, this is a good summary of what the game's going to be like)
In case it further matters to your decision to play...
- Matt wants to name the guild something like lorewise like Disciples of the Golden Path (a Sheogorath reference; "the golden path" being the path to madness), and hey, I'm down with that :)
- We will be playing Ebonheart Pact, because Dunmer. (Also Nords and Argonians, if that takes your fancy). There's really no other sensible choice for me. I do kind of regret, in an ES hipster way, that this will likely be the most popular faction, thanks to all those people who have only played Skyrim (*puts on hipster glasses*).
(My character for this beta weekend was a Khajiit, and I think Aldmeri Dominion--which also includes Altmer and Bosmer--will also be very strong, too, though, so don't let my enthusiasm for Dunmer distract you too much).
- SWTOR taught me that I like healing in MMOs--but I also like sneaking, and as in the single player games, you can do both in TESO. I will probably opt for the Templar class--I've heard it synergizes well with the Dunmer racials--and then go for sneaky skills, like Medium Armor and Dual Wield and Alchemy.
- Oh, and I've already created a name (Falanu Dren) and an entire concept for my first character. Like you do, if you're me. The remainder of this is kind of a half-baked post, because I wrote this up a long time ago--but I never finished her backstory. It sure has footnotes, tho. And lots of random squeeing about how much I love the Dunmer and Morrowind. Just excuse where it trails off.
Falanu Dren is young for a mer, 29, having been born in 2E 5531. Her parents are the owners of the Dren Plantation, a netch farm2 in the Ascadian Isles of Vvardenfell--thus, minor nobles (probably some younger scion of Ebonheart), retainers of House Hlaalu, and wealthy slave-owners.
Her parents were warriors before settling down to the farming life--and, in fact, they met while serving in Vivec's army during the Four-Score War in the First Era3. Young Falanu grew up on tales of that war, being especially fond of Vivec's ruse at Bodrum, where Vivec ordered the River Pryai dammed to flood the Imperial forces.
Indeed, starting from an early age, Falanu had quite the fascination with the man-god Vivec. Like all proper noble Dunmer, her family revered the Almsivi and kept the traditions of the Tribunal Temple, but Falanu took it much farther. Vivec wasn't just an impersonal deity, but a personal hero to her--someone she aspired to be like, as she grew in maturity and mastery. She read extensively of Vivec's history and of his anticipation, Mephala, and embraced the contradictions in their natures. Whenever her family made the trip to his holy city for reasons of state, she always hoped she would catch sight of him.
Falanu's fascination with Vivec and dedication to the rituals of the Temple was somewhat untoward, and gained her the nicknames "Saint Falanu" and "Falanu Indoril" among her childhood friends. Later, when she was a young adult, her lack of interest in the pleasures of the flesh--quite unlike most young female Dunmer--was also the source of humor. She is saving herself for Lord Vivec, her friends joked behind her back; to her face, they just showed confusion and growing suspicion.
Outside the spiritual realm, young Falanu trained in sorcery and swordplay, like any young noble. She learned enough of the sword to avoid embarrassing herself, but her natural talents were in the direction of restoration magic and alchemy. As she grew to adulthood, these skills made her a skilled healer. Embracing the contradictions of Mephala, it also made her a skilled poisoner.
When Falanu was nineteen, the Akaviri invaded Morrowind. As he had during the Four-Score War, Vivec commanded an army to repel the invaders. Of course, Falanu wanted nothing more than to join up; her parents, with whom she still lived, obliged, and even bought her a commission.
As a result, Falanu had a dream come true--she got to Vivec face-to-face. It was under less than auspicious circumstances. Having an officer's commission, however lowly, she wasn't allowed to simply admire him from across a battlefield, but was brought to his attention, so that he might assess her skills. She had never been all that skilled at swordplay, and had only the most basic understanding of tactics, and how could she excel, under the gaze of a god?
Falanu feared there wouldn't be a place for her in the army of the warrior-poet, but he seemed to have a plan in mind, and put her command of a small corps of mystics and alchemists. In his usual enigmatic way, his only explanation was, As I learned to my chagrin at Lake Coronati, sorcery provides mastery of the oblique approach.
Falanu learned what he meant when his engineers set to work on another dam--like the one at Bodrum, but on a greater scale. At the same time, Falanu's corps was set to work on another task--a massive deployment of spells and potions of waterbreathing.
Vivec, it appeared, intended to do battle on the bottom of a lake. The engineers were building the lake; Falanu was building the weapons.
The plan worked; when the waters subsided, the Akaviri who survived found they had no taste for Dunmer tactics, and retreated. Falanu's role in the battle didn't make her a hero, but it did gain her a word of gratitude from Vivec, which was all she required. That final encounter haunted her dreams for weeks, even months after, and seemed to beg something else of her... but what, she did not know.
Of course, it was ultimately impossible to keep a young mer with a cunning mind like Falanu on the plantation once she'd seen the face of a god. Falanu was bored; she was pampered and cared for and the only work she had to do, as the daughter of a wealthy family, was ceremonial in nature.
Dren are known for their secret businesses as much as their public ones, and so Falanu took one up, to amuse her--mixing and selling poisons. Conveniently located close to Vivec's holy city, many nobles knew to come to "Falanu the Poisoner" if they needed a brew to take out one of their rivals. The Morag Tong had been abolished, everyone said, and the petty squables of the nobility needed some other method of resolution.
This was a satisfying enough lifestyle for Falanu for the next few years. Then one day, a cornerclub owner in nearby Suran was murdered. Remarkably, the murderer handed himself over to the authorities, presenting something that had not been seen in a long time in this part of Vvardenfell--a Writ of Honorable Execution. The local magistrate fumed, but there was little he could do, now that the murder had been committed; to deny the writ was to deny the will of the Temple and of Mephala.
The possibility that the Morag Tong was still operating--if more secretly than the days when they scrolled their name in the blood of kings--intrigued Falanu. She knew, or thought she knew, a fair amount about them, because she fancied she knew more of the Webspinner than her kin did. She knew enough of the mysteries to know the role they played was sacred, creating the sort of strife whose existence defined an orderly society.
It was only a small step to imagining herself playing the part of one of them. It was not much different than what she currently did, selling poisons, was it? It was merely more personal, a level of abstraction removed. What was harder was imagining herself playing the part of an assassin--skulking in shadows, lying in wait, hiding behind a mask.
But there was hardly anything of the Morag Tong that required that, was there?
About the time Falanu was pondering this, her dreams became troubled again. As she often did, she read Thirty-Six Lessons of Vivec before retiring, and so it was not entirely unsurprising that her dreams were inspired by those enigmatic lessons
[[this is where I got bored. sorry. feel free to suggest awesomeness that occurs here. Considering she was reading the 36 Lessons of Vivec, maybe she was dreaming of schtupping Molag Bal. My love is accidentally in the shape of a spear, and all that]]
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1 (Unlike other sorts of elves, mer seem to mature relatively young; there's a mention in the Naughty Bits of The Real Barenziah of them being sexually mature at around 17)
2 Yes, that Dren Plantation. Although I don't think in this era the Camonna Tong is around, and anyway, they aren't leading it, as far as this back story is concerned.
3 Here I squee about how amazing a piece of lore 2920, The Last Year of the First Era is. Moreover, it's good writing. I looooove it. I love Vivec's strategizing. I love Sotha Sil's "Everyone bows to supply and demand, Night Mother." I love how the tiniest events ripple so far--a bard pisses off some noble, so he summons Molag Bal, who destroys Gilverdale, which delays Almalexia and Sotha Sil's return from Summurset, which fulfills the prophecy that Vivec will lose the Four-Score war unless Sotha Sil is in Morrowind... I love the deception of the Akaviri, and how they set up Prince Juilek's assassination (all in light of Vivec's reflection that Morrowind and the Empire would be at peace if Juilek were Emperor!) Soooo much love. It embodies what I adore about the Elder Scrolls.
(Also embodying what I love about the Elder Scrolls: how amazing is it that there's a DIEGETIC EXPLANATION for there being an MMO? Like, the back story is all, "Molag Bal is trying to suck Nirn into Coldharbour, so all the player characters are basically soulless puppets?")
And that's not even getting into the incredibleness of the Dunmer as a culture. I see lots of places that try to make comparisons between different human cultures and the Dunmer, which completely ignores how incredibly alien they are. That's what people love about Morrowind that Oblivion and Skyrim didn't have--this alien world where people live in giant mushrooms and the shells of giant land crabs; where they ride around on giant sand fleas; where they farm tiny dinosaurs and flying jellyfish and giant colony insects; where they live constantly in the shadow of a giant volcano inhabited by a pissed off demigod, and all the ash and blight that implies.
Yeah, Blizzard doesn't do this shit, I'll tell you that.