Another hint: Full voice-acting in a MMO

From this classic post:

And Bioware? Don’t make me laugh. They’ve spent more money making the Old Republic than James Cameron spent on Avatar. you not. More than $ 300 million! Can you believe that?

And you know what they’re most proud of? This is the kicker. They are most proud of the sound. No seriously. Something like a 20Gig installation, and most of it is voiceover work. That’s the best they have. The rest of the game is a joke. EA knows it and so does George Lucas,they’re panicking , and so most of Mythic has already been cannibalized to work in Austin on it because they can’t keep pushing back launch.

I don't think there's any reason full voice acting couldn't work if it's done correctly, it's been done well on some ordinary RPGs such as Knights of the Old Republic.

But I think it hints at a MMOs failure because it shows a fundemental misunderstanding of how players act and how to manage resources. Nearly every player in The old Republic would click through the dialogue rapidly. Even most players interested in the lore do so, because leveling as a fast speed is important to them, and has to take preference over listening to voice-acting.

The other reason that I can confidently say "waste of resources" is that these fully voice-acted MMOs always seem to have a lot of missing/upcoming content at launch, things which players would of got a lot more enjoyment from. I only think full voice-acting is a good idea when there is nothing else that needs to be added to the game.

Wow-Cloning quotes

Why do devs still try to copy WoW? they just CAN NOT WIN if they copy it. People will always prefer the original. If you want your MMO to be successful, give it an unique, innovative gameplay

Corporate executives are fucking stupid. They see WoW's success and want a slice of the pie without understand it.

I want all these clones to fail miserably and for the whole genre to crash. Only then will we return to an age of diversity.

The whole wow killer business is ironic because if companies came out more original mmos, wow wouldn't have dominated as much as it did.

Early warning signs - lore

I think a strong sign of bad game design is when developers openly rewrite lore just to make development easier. Good developers care about their world and the characters they create, bad ones just do what they need to in order to bring out a final product and collect a paycheck.

There are some situations when a lore change might be really necessary, making the above paragraph untrue. But I think it is a good rule of thumb:

3 faction "pvp" with each faction consisting of lore-breaking alliances

The actual factions don't even need to be stated, you can't put the Tamriel races in any sort of three without it looking ridiculous. But the setup is as follows:

The Ebonheart Pact: Nords, Dunmer, and Argonians from the Northern and Eastern regions.
The Aldmeri Dominion: Altmer, Bosmer, and Khajiit from the South and South West regions.
The Daggerfall Covenant: Bretons, Redguards, and Orcs from the North West regions.

So the Dumner, currently with the tribunal in control (even more-so then in Morrowind), with whole plantations full of Khajit and Argonian slaves, have allied with argonians. It is like allying Europe with Africa at the height of the slave trade.

The imperials are planned to be an unplayable antagonist factor:

Weakened from constant wars in Cyrodiil, these two form a pact with Mannimarco, King of Worms, who promises to reanimated the fallen soldiers to keep fighting for control.

The executives have really done their market research. Do you remember the complex politics and ethics in Morrowind? The imperials were colonialists, yet they at least tried to outlaw slavery (which the natives fought to keep). Choosing who to support was a tough decision.

But that's far too difficult for the new audience, imperials are just the bad guys. Actually I highly doubt slavery will even be in the new TES, it's too much of a sensitive issue. I'm preparing to see Zenimax cower away from complaining soccer-moms by removing things like racism, prostitution and slavery. While making a crap simplied WoW clone in order to get money off their kids. And ignoring fans who have to watch one of their favourite artistic creation get destroyed by an attempt to make money.

It is hard to ignore the coolness of Nord and Dark Elf fighting together with the Argonians

The quote above is a good reason I rarely read mainstream game reviewers. It is not their fault though. Most offices are unlikely to have someone who has played the prequels enough to understand why fans would have issues with this.

This game will definitely fail. It has no audience. Elder Scrolls players won't want to play it because it plays nothing like Elder Scrolls, and the lore sounds retarded so it won't get the hardcore lorefags. It will flop harder than TOR.

they make an alliance with mannimarco, the king of worms to get stronger
but what a twist, the king of the necromancers has his own goals and just uses them (who'd have think it?), because he himself has a deal with molag bal to take over tamriel (daedric prince invading tamriel. original idea do not steal)
also the reason you you the player gets revived when he dies is that the daedric prince of torment and rape doesn't keep you, his enemy, in his own realm like every other soul he gets, but sends you back to tamriel. (not like it took azura ~1000 years to at least send nerevars soul back)

Aldmeri Dominion exists centuries before it was founded

Nords, Dunmer, and Argonians working together in a time where Nords hated the elves for their humiliation at Red Mountain, when the Dunmer had three physical gods and believed most other races to be annoying animals, and when Argonians were slave fodder for Dunmer

Orcs working with humans despite it taking a couple thousand more years for them to be recognized as anything more than smarter goblins in standard Imperial guides

Molag Bal, Prince of Domination, GIVING people their souls back

Image I found