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An Elder Scrolls MMORPG Could Be Out As Early As Next Year

There's an intricate web of ploys here, which is very Elder Scrolls-like

Jan 21, 2010 09:47 GMT  ·  By
An epic Raid in Vivec would make the Earth stand still and awe as a sheer awesomeness
   An epic Raid in Vivec would make the Earth stand still and awe as a sheer awesomeness

While Blizzard tried to make it very clear when it kindly suggested to the developing community to stop cloning World of Warcraft, it seems like this is one piece of advice that just won't stick. More so, it looks like the one that feels defiant is a big developer, one that has direct ties to one of the biggest RPG developers in the business, Bethesda. In 2007, Zenimax Media, the owner of Bethesda Softworks, put together a new company branch, Zenimax Online. While the company never officially revealed what it was working on, we do know that it secured around $300 million in funds, and that, later on, it registered the elderscrollsonline.com URL.

The only thing it could have planned was an MMORPG set in the fantasy universe, but nothing beyond this was ever leaked. That was until this week. During its legal conflict with Interplay over the Fallout license, a testimony from a preliminary injunction hearing held on December 29 between the two parties revealed a few details concerning the online project. According to Duck and Cover, the studio has "tens and tens of millions of dollars" and "close to a hundred people" involved in creating a "World of Warcraft"-like MMORPG. It's like Zenimax Online is doing it just to spite Blizzard.

The testimony also revealed that the project first began to take shape in 2006, entering actual production a year later. Duck and Cover also said that the project had a four-year development prediction, meaning that it could be ready as early as next year. Unfortunately, the one thing that we really wanted to know, the exact universe setting for the title, was not revealed by the court testimony.

What it did clarify, however, was that the game was not related to the Fallout license, so all thoughts go back to the Elder Scrolls. This assumption is further supported by VG247, which claims to have been "very reliably informed," and that this will indeed by an ES MMORPG. According to the site's sources, the game was supposed to be announced in 2009, but that was scrapped for undisclosed reasons.