“Inside sources” have allegedly confirmed with tech blog Tom’s Guide that Bethesda Softworks is preparing an Elder Scrolls Online massively multiplayer game and is set to reveal it in May of this year.
The MMO will take place 1,000 years before the events of Skyrim, during or around the “Second Era” of the Elder Scrolls timeline.
Elder Scrolls Online is said to feature three playable factions, with the only known information being that each is represented by a lion, a dragon, or a bird.
The blog report claims this information was “corroborated by two additional sources before publication.”
Bethesda’s plan to create an MMO have not been a secret, but many expected the title would take place in the Fallout universe. Parent company ZeniMax recently secured the rights to a Fallout MMO, further fueling the expectations of a post-apocalyptic online adventure. But perhaps it was the company’s attempt to sue Minecraft creator Markus Persson over the word “Scrolls” that should have had us reading between the lines.
While this is potentially exciting news if true, Bethesda can barely craft an ambitious single-player console game without it being technically rotten at the core, and unplayable altogether on certain platforms. The idea of Bethesda selling one of its signature unfinished games to a bunch of unsuspecting MMO beta testers doesn’t sound particularly enticing.