Elder Scrolls online and character migration

 'The players are never right', apparently...

The Elder Scrolls Online made it's latest proclamation during the Bethesda/Microsoft hybrid conference amalgamation, and I would be lying if I didn't say it was probably one of the least interesting sections of that presentations next to Forza, depending on what you like out of your game genres. The Elder Scrolls online is so much of a known quantity these days that it's hard to really get excited as an outsider for it's new year-long expedition into one of the various remaining nooks and crannies' still left over on the Tamriel map. That being said, the Zenimax team did reveal a new class coming to the roster, which is something that ESO doesn't do very often, so that alone is going to draw some curious eyes. But as for my eyes, even if I wanted to look back at the game I left behind, the end result would be me just shrugging my shoulders in frustration because increadibly, in the year of our lord 2023, Bethesda as a company have stubbornly refused to adopt any form of save migration.

Gaming is a rapidly evolving medium these days that regularly jumps from newer hardware to new platforms with the regularity of the tides rising, nothing is capable of staying static in the world of evolving technology. But our save data for all of these online games, where info is kept server-side, can often get themselves tied to the consoles we leave behind, preventing a problem with preservation and longevity; both key pillars of MMOs. Maybe a console gamer is now a PC gamer and the reverse. How do you bridge that gap without losing players due to the slow march of time and personal circumstantial evolution? Well, the greatest minds of our age already pow-wowed to fix this. The solution is save migration, a system which has lingered in the public consciousness since the time of Mass Effect. It isn't automatic, and hardly flawless, but for online games that encourage you to 'main' a small group of characters for years on end, you'd have thought that basic save migration features would be a necessity, wouldn't you?

But you'd be wrong, wouldn't you! Because Bethesda seem utterly allergic to the very idea of porting progress from one platform to another, in a manner that I can't help but find utterly archaic in our modern age of interconnectivity. Now days we are constantly bedecked in smart functionality devices from phones to watches to fridges and light sockets, all of which talk to each with a complex web of networks and systems designed to work as intuitively and 'invisibly' as possible. Why is it that the modern world is so keen on bringing the typically mundane and static together, whilst the games industry with it's heart forged in the fires of this technically progressive world, seems so bitterly adverse? At first I bought the excuse, that Sony's unwillingness to open up it's ecosystem spelled stunted evolution for us all; but as Sony has slowly begun to reverse it's enclosed ecosystem and yet the boundaries remained, sights have to be retrained at the individual companies themselves.

Bethesda, though typically a single player company, have themselves a couple of ongoing multiplayer titles based on their properties and neither of them are open to cross platform play or migration. Fallout 76 in particular shut down any momentum towards players having the ability to migrate platforms, even as the older generation of the game struggles to provide a decent play experience that the new gen of consoles can offer. Oh sure, you can jump from Xbox One to Series X just fine, because Bethesda have to do next to nothing to facilitate that, but Xbox to Steam? No way, buddy; that's alien tech! What astounds me so much about this is, just like with Elder Scrolls Online, Fallout 76 is a universally updated game! Each version of the game maintains itself to the same update standard more or less, so it's pretty much the same game regardless of platform. Why is migration still such a taboo, then? 

For the Elder Scrolls Online this problems seem close to an actual sin of design. The game is supposed to be MMO, the very concept of migration should be in it's very blood! I know that part of the charm of The Elder Scrolls Online is the subtle removal of visible servers which allows anyone to play with anyone else, thus removing the concept of server hopping as it exists in more traditional MMOs, but honestly that kind of reinforces my point in a different way. Can they really market the global connectivity of the game, allowing people across the world to connect with one another to some limited degree and allow enemy factions to fight alongside one another; when they don't provide even the most basic account migration option from console to PC? I understand vice versa, but not even a one way conversion? That smells like hypocrisy to me!

Each time the patterns plays out in the exact same way. These studios remain utterly staunch in their stance against external player QOL procedures until such a situation where it becomes a necessity to their bottom line. If there was a new Xbox releasing with a distinctly incompatible server makeup to the Xbox of today, you can bet that Zenimax and Bethesda would scramble over on another to build some sort of bridging technology to ensure the generational jump would occur as seamlessly as possible. But today, in peace times, Bethesda are happy to laze about and grow fat laughing about the struggle thier fans have to go through if they want to migrate their progress and characters from one platform to another. Inexplicably giddy at how their years-long games need to be completely restarted if someone simply grabs themselves a change of hardware and doesn't want to fish out the Xbox just to play their favourite time waster game. It's maddening!

Bethesda are by no means alone in their rank laziness, a lot of prominent developers won't bother lift their hand unless it's already in the fire. But after seeing how easy it was for all those companies that found out Stadia was shutting down, during which they got together and built framework for a lot of save porting tech over the space of a couple of months, it becomes a really hard pill to swallow when contemporary studios declare it's too much work to figure out a clean save migration system to be used at players' leisure, not under the duress of an entire crumbling ecosystem. So instead of lauding the new Elder Scrolls update and brushing past the shortcomings, I'm dedicating this blog to my grumbling about inequities and unnecessary systemic omissions that bug me. Thank you so much, Bethesda, for not wanting my money bad enough to convince me not to buy your game on a new platform. I guess that is, unintentionally, somewhat conscientious of you.

Did Bethesda kill Rune 2?

Objection! 

Do you remember the Rune 2 story from a while back? Clearly I don't because I was certain that the game was Rune 3 and even now feel like I've been gaslighted big time, but I wrote a blog on it so I should supposedly know what I'm talking about... Apparently it was a story that followed a game Studio who were all raptured up in the middle of game development. Or at least that's what it must have felt like, because in the months before they officially announced they were being bought up by Bethesda, Human Head Studios apparently cut off all contact with the Game's publisher, Ragnarok LTD, and refused to hand over any of the data that would be needed to smoothly transition that work to a new developer. It was a befuddling tale full to the brim of 'he said' and- well Human Head haven't really responded to any accusations so it's really just 'he said' for now, but it still feels like we're only getting half the story and that's frustrating for everybody.

As it stands Rune 2 was struck with a major overhaul process that I believe is still in the works as they try to reshape the game into something that better resembles their lofty hopes for it. New developers have stepped into the void left by Human Head and things appear to be going well for the team, and good for them I say. It's never good when fellow members of the same industry work each other over like this, it erodes trust in a damnable way, but it also creates opportunity for others to come and step in where they're needed. Ultimately I'd say this was the sort of story that the industry really didn't need, capped off with a hearty resolution that the industry doesn't deserve. That being said, I'm not really the sort of person who finds Rune or it's sequel even passingly interesting so I have no personal stake in the success of this game whatsoever.

Ragnarok Games, on the otherhand, very much are and that's what spurred them into launching a lawsuit against Human Head Studios for egregious breech of contract (I'd imagine) and probably direct harm to potential profits through everything that went on. And taking everything at complete face value, whilst begrudgingly acknowledging that we still haven't heard from Human Head on this matter, it's hard to disagree with their actions here. The game's executive producer himself laid out how this could have been an amiable transition and how things could have ended peacefully between all parties, but until we hear otherwise we can only conclude it was Human Head's negligence that has led to this. So with all that accepted and readily to mind, why is it that Bethesda and Zenimax have been pulled into this debate?

That's right, the latest development out of this saga is that Ragnarok have amended their lawsuit to include Bethesda and Zenimax for being complicate in this scheme to smuggle the Human Head staff and turn them into Roundhouse Studios. Quite the lofty accusation, if you ask me. In a breakheel turn that's sure to make one question exactly where it is that Ragnorok is receiving their information from, they have pivoted completely from their initial assertion that Human Head reached out to Bethesda and now claim that Bethesda were an active conspirator in these events. Their assertions are that Bethesda head hunted Human Head (if you'll forgive the pun) in order to effectively assassinate Rune 2 and another game called 'Oblivion Song'. (Although with a name like that and knowledge of how zealous Zenimax are, I doubt that game would have made it to launch without a lawsuit anyway.)

It's the narrative that has been asserted along with this amendment that has captured the mind of the Internet however, because not only have Ragnarok deduced that Bethesda must be the masterminds behind this, but they've revealed the reason behind it too; because Bethesda would have seen Rune 2 as a threat to Skyrim/The Elder Scrolls. (Stop laughing, this is serious!) Okay, so if this is to be taken at face value, than it's a pretty damning accusation to throw Bethesda's way and textbook anti-competitive moves. This is the sort of thing that can really cause a stink in court and I wouldn't be surprised if Bethesda were hit with more than just a slap on the wrist if they're found guilty. I mean this is serious business right here! But then must find a way to prove Rune 2 could be reasonably seen as a threat to Elder Scrolls and that's... well Ragnarok have carved out an uphill battle for themselves here.

The important thing to remember here, provided that you're willing to see things from Ragnarok's view, is to not look at Rune 2 as it currently is but what it could have been. (Which is already hard to do given how that's a vision held only by the studios involved.) Now you have to imagine whether or not a sequel to a game with history all the way back to the year 2000 (Not as long as The Elder Scrolls) and which plants itself in Viking mythology (Which is technically the basis for Skyrim's Mythology) and just happens to be an open world RPG (a genre that Bethesda have defined) would be a threat to Bethesda's work. I'm not gonna lie, I find this incredibly dubious. By the simple merit of sharing a genre it seems as if Ragnarok have positioned themselves as rivals to Bethesda, one of the biggest companies in the industry, and I can't be the only seeing a little false equivalence here. Or are Ragnarok suggesting that Bethesda are willing to attack any game similar to the one they already released 9 years ago, if so; why didn't they try to scoop up Santa Monica Studio before God of War came out? Why do they let any RPG enter the market without first interfering? It's a narrative that doesn't exactly make the most amount of sense and I have a theory as to why.

Although the 'bad-faith' argument in itself is pretty serious to lay at Bethesda's door, without any proof it's just an accusation with no traction in the court room, and to a layman this story paints a logical incentive for Bethesda's alleged actions. Now perhaps there are some secret correspondence hiding in Rune 2's defence which proves all of this beyond a single doubt, but right now it does sort of feel like straws are being grasped at. I'm no legal eagle with years of court experience mind you, so perhaps all of this is perfectly fine within the courtroom, but outside I think it's not hard for eyebrows to be raised as people wonder exactly what it is Ragnarok are seeking out of this. What started at perhaps on of the most empathetic plights in gaming has become just that little suspect and I'm unsure what exactly to make of things right now.

I've seen the proposition raised, although I hesitate to stand behind it myself, that given the timing of all of this, (essentially with the amendment coming just after Bethesda was bought by Microsoft for a record amount of money) Ragnarok might be making their attempt to secure some of Bethesda's recent windful. Now I find it a little distasteful to consider, Ragnarok were horribly fouled by this whole affair and turning suspicion back around on them hardly seem helpful, but when the timing, accusation and validity coincides this well even I have to wonder. (This is a blog afterall, I hold no journalist responsibilities) To their credit, Ragnarok are underdogs in all this and that instantly makes them more relatable, but whenever large amounts of money enter the conversation I personally find my sympathy drain. But who knows, maybe us newborn doubters will all found ourselves made fools of in the court trails to come, I suppose we all shall see.