Next year will see Bethesda launch the first MMO set in The Elder Scrolls universe, and it’s coming to PC, Mac, PS4, and Xbox One. It’s nice to see the next-gen consoles catching up to PCs and embracing MMOs, but that doesn’t mean you’ll get to play with and against gamers on other platforms. Bethesda and its parent company Zenimax Online has confirmed that when The Elder Scrolls Online is released in Spring 2014, the Xbox One and PS4 versions will be limited to their own servers. PC and Mac versions will share their servers (known as a megaserver). The reason for the split is one of fairness. Bethesda thinks that the difference in game control, that being keyboard and mouse on Mac and PC, and dedicated controllers on PS4 and Xbox One, means that Player vs. Player (PvP) battles across different systems would be unfair. Trying to balance that based on type of controller would be hard to impossible to pull off well. So the split is necessary. It also makes it much simpler to roll out updates for the game on a platform-by-platform basis. It’s a shame that has to happen as it means Bethesda has to maintain more servers doing the same thing and you are destined to interact with fewer gamers in the game. It also means if one platform proves to be less popular and sales of the game are poor, the experience for everyone who did buy a copy on that platform could suffer. Although The Elder Scrolls Online is scheduled for a Spring release on PC and consoles, if it did get delayed on consoles for a few months it wouldn’t be a huge deal as the player base needs time to grow to really make the game a success long term. Source: www.geek.com Author: Matthew Humphrie
