Nerfbat mentions that Bethesda Softworks’ parent company, ZeniMax, is opening an online studio. It’ll be headed up by Matt Firor, producer of Dark Age of Camelot for Mythic.
I’ll have to agree that an Elder Scrolls MMO would allow far less freedom and open-endedness. In order to appease the masses, thievery would be nerfed so bad that they might as well take it out. That’s why you don’t see a true “Thief” class in MMOs, because it doesn’t appeal to the mass market. If it were available, everyone would steal from everyone else, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together – mass hysteria. Thievery is what I love the most about Oblivion. Thievery could work in an MMO without allowing PvP stealing, but only if the NPCs were smart, as they are in Oblivion. This is a problem in MMOs because AI is usually not that great. NPCs are either vending machines, practice dummies, or aggro.
That said, if you added MMO play on top of Oblivion, that would be enough for me to start playing an MMO again. If it were made for XBox 360, that would be even better.
