Elder Scrolls Online created to rival World of Warcraft, original ZeniMax Online founder says

You'll never guess what game inspired The Elder Scrolls Online--it's a real shocker, but Blizzard's mega-hit MMORPG was the blueprint that Bethesda followed.

2

Bethesda was actually the one who came up with the idea to adapt The Elder Scrolls into an online game. In a new interview with games publication 80.lv, former ZeniMax Online Studios founder and lead Matt Firor says that ESO was originally created as a direct answer to World of Warcraft's success.

They didn't need any convincing! Seriously, they recruited me to found ZOS and build Elder Scrolls Online, and were very upfront about it from the first interview. They saw the success of WoW and wanted to turn their own fantasy single player IP into a massively multiplayer experience," Firor said.

This was around when Bethesda was working on Oblivion--in fact, the original ESO was based on Oblivion--but everything changed when Skyrim launched.

Firor goes on to say that he was hired for his past expertise developing online games like Dark Age of Camelot, and that Bethesda essentially needed someone to adapt Elder Scrolls for the MMO market.

"At the time, they had no multiplayer or live service games, so they hired me to bring that experience into the company and start the project. I think it's safe to say that the financial success of WoW showed them that this was a reasonably safe bet, in the context of live service games, which are obviously huge endeavors and carry a high degree of risk."

Elder Scrolls Online has evolved considerably since launch, manifesting into a living game that transcends platforms and subscriptions as a kind of Gestalt entity. Considering ESO has the benefit of being on multiple platforms, Bethesda might have one-upped the competition in certain regards, but World of Warcraft is still regarded as the high watermark for these types of games--warts and all.

What's interesting is that Bethesda/ZeniMax/Xbox seem unwilling to expand further into the online market.

A bit ago, Microsoft laid off hundreds of employees and cancelled a bunch of projects. One of the games that had been scrapped was a new IP at ZeniMax Online Studios called Blackbird. Once this game was cancelled, Matt Firor resigned, later confirming his leaving the company was a direct response to the game being cancelled.