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[LeoLeonardoIII]

Why hire a PR person? The programmers can do that. Same with hiring a game designer to come up with solid mechanics, or an economist to help figure out crafting and drop rates, or anyone who has ever had to troubleshoot anything to create a client-side error logging utility. Just have someone on the team do it and it's fine. It's not like they're asking for our money.

[Baijiu]

Servers are up and Guild functionality is back up (they removed it for a few hours after the maintenance). So... Is there a Bay12 Guild happening or what?

[Baijiu]

You can carry them though. They're indestructible and lightweight. Actually reading them is another matter entirely.

Well that is because... and this is my theory

That the Elder Scrolls in the Elder Scrolls series... is the computer game you are playing.

So how are you going to read an elder scroll if you the player are already reading an elder scroll?

Makes sense, because playing too many video games makes you go blind just like reading the Elder Scrolls!

[Leyic]

Why hire a PR person? The programmers can do that. Same with hiring a game designer to come up with solid mechanics, or an economist to help figure out crafting and drop rates, or anyone who has ever had to troubleshoot anything to create a client-side error logging utility. Just have someone on the team do it and it's fine. It's not like they're asking for our money.

While I recognize your sarcasm, this is a major publisher we're talking about. They likely have an overabundance of non-programmer types to make sure the programmer types stay in line and don't wreck the corporate image with their nerd-ery.

Servers are up and Guild functionality is back up (they removed it for a few hours after the maintenance). So... Is there a Bay12 Guild happening or what?

Not that I know of but it's trivial to start one and we can join up to five guilds (and unlike Guild Wars 2, you don't have to represent a guild just to be in the guild's chat). I'd imagine this is a case of "If you build it, they will come", though you may be disappointed by the number and constitution of "they". Still, something's better than zone chat.

[Putnam]

Fourth wall stuff is laaaaaaaame :I

Fourth wall was broken when the Provisional House was introduced.

The Provisional House is the Dreamsleeve. It's the collective consciousness of mortals. Nothing fourth-wall about it.

[Leyic]

How was the Provisional House created?

[Putnam]

The Provisional House is a space built by Vivec in the Dreamsleeve. The Loveletter has this to say about the Dreamsleeve itself:

Here we come to the Scripture’s greatest resignation: to imagine the subcreation AFTER mortal death, which by pattern would mean an echo of Mundus, and through this imagining, the failures of so many.

The Digitals' record of the Lunar God’s involvement in all of this is called the Great Pain: “The Lunar God failed by his own devices, to show the new progeny how they might not.”

You in the Fourth Era have already witnessed many of the attempts at reaching the final subgradient of all AE, that state that exists beyond mortal death. The Numidium. The Endeavor. The Prolix Tower. CHIM. The Enantiomorph. The Scarab that Transforms into the New Man.

Simply put, as the Gods cannot know joy as mortals, their creation, so mortals may only understand the joy of Liberty by becoming the progenitors of the models that can make the jump past mortal death.

And so many of you give up.

Mortal Death to Z (Z being the state-gradient echo of Mundus Centerex): antinymic to [untranslatable].

Z is the Dreamsleeve, you see. It is a place where there is no sense and yet where much can be found. Mages use it to communicate with one another through memospores. This is all very well established in Battlespire and Nu-Mantia Intercept (a Kirkbride text corroborated by Skyrim and much more heavily corroborated by Online).

[Leyic]

Getting to the point, you are aware of the argument that Vivec realized he's in a game and discovered how to access the Construction Kit?

If we ignore that, there's still Sermon Seventeen and its "spiked waters at the edge of the map".

[Putnam]

1. That's... complete bullshit. Like, I know it's popular, but it is bullshit. He never said anything suggesting that. There was a blog post somewhere called "the Metaphysics of Morrowind", but that was also bullshit, however well-written the bullshit was. CHIM ain't the construction set. It's knowledge about the universe leading to some control over it, though you really have to want to change it to use it. The knowledge is that of the Dreamer. The Dreamer is named Anu, the brother of Padomay, who dreams due to the death of Nir. It is not you, nor is it Ted Peterson nor Todd Howard nor Michael Kirkbride nor Lawrence Schick. It's Anu.

2. That's not really so much fourth-wall breaking as taking Redguard's engine quirks and implementing them as lore. The game comes into the lore, but the lore is not aware of the game.

[Leyic]

The Metaphysics of Morrowind, for the curious.

"leading to some control over [the universe]"; like having access to the CK or something similar? The dream is a universe within a universe (a story), the dreamsleeve belies its underlying nature (computer-like), and Vivec found a way to manipulate it. Notice that it's never explained in detail how Vivec made the Provisional House, yet Vivec loves to talk about the things he's done. This suggests he didn't make the procedure to make the Provisional House, but rather that he found the tools in the "non-spatial space filling to capacity with mortal interaction and information, a canvas-less cartography of every single mind it has ever known" (Sermon Nineteen). Which is to say he searched the internet to find the tools used by the dreamer(s) to create the dream.

Also, "Simply put, as the Gods cannot know joy as mortals, their creation, so mortals may only understand the joy of Liberty by becoming the progenitors of the models that can make the jump past mortal death." In other words, game creators can't know what it's like to be game characters despite having created them; similarly, game characters can only understand their existence by attaining awareness of the computer on which they exist.

Granted, it's never explicitly phrased that the dream is a computer game, but the lore is open-ended and metaphysical enough to allow for such an interpretation. And it doesn't necessarily have to be our universe or our CK that the lore could be referring to. Also, C0DA.

Speaking of which, we apparently have a new C0DA: During a period of the Second Era, horses were known to (de)materialize on command. Game becomes lore.

Also, no love for Julian Lefay?

[WillowLuman]

Personally, it always annoys me when people take game quirks and make them integral parts of canon, coming up with convoluted explanations for them. It can be funny sometimes, but gameplay and story segregation isn't a bad thing, and trying to negate it like that implies that we have to take the world at face value as presented in the games. People feeding each other conversation pie instead of actually convincing each other, passing solid weapons right through each other because their skills are too low, etc... I don't want those to become part of objective reality in the setting, because that's just stupid.

[Vendayn]

How is the AI? Typical special ed AI in every mmo?

Or skyrim ai that talks when you go by. Ai fights each other (like wolves attack cows etc) and roam huge areas. In skyrim herds travel for miles and don't teleport back like crash test dummies that are stupider. Ai helps each other instead of watching friend get killed.

Oblivion is ancient and has better ai than new MMOs. Even gw2 is so scripted and bad ai.

But maybe ESO is different. Only reason I avoid MMOs. Stupid vegetables called AI. And I don't like PvP except in fps games where its skill and not level or button mashing or equipment.

Ryzom ai is amazing. Only mmo with real ai and real dynamic world. More dynamic than gw2. Only mmo I ever liked. I would buy ESO if it had similar ai. I'd go buy it right now. Any feedback on this?

[Putnam]

"leading to some control over [the universe]"; like having access to the CK or something similar? The dream is a universe within a universe (a story), the dreamsleeve belies its underlying nature (computer-like), and Vivec found a way to manipulate it. Notice that it's never explained in detail how Vivec made the Provisional House, yet Vivec loves to talk about the things he's done. This suggests he didn't make the procedure to make the Provisional House, but rather that he found the tools in the "non-spatial space filling to capacity with mortal interaction and information, a canvas-less cartography of every single mind it has ever known" (Sermon Nineteen). Which is to say he searched the internet to find the tools used by the dreamer(s) to create the dream.

The Dreamsleeve is the internet, yes, but it is not our internet. It is mage internet, a magic internet that was introduced and put forth in-universe in Battlespire. No fourth-wall here. You seem to be getting the stories backwards; the creation of Aurbis is a story inside the Aurbis (the Anuad), not the other way around. The Dreamsleeve doesn't belie its true nature nearly as much as the fact that Nirn's underground is a whole buncha cogs n' gears, but that is called "Memory" and "The Wheels of Lull" for a reason; it's a mnemonic device for Anu to remember Nir, not a video game.

Also, "Simply put, as the Gods cannot know joy as mortals, their creation, so mortals may only understand the joy of Liberty by becoming the progenitors of the models that can make the jump past mortal death." In other words, game creators can't know what it's like to be game characters despite having created them; similarly, game characters can only understand their existence by attaining awareness of the computer on which they exist.

I never thought I'd say this with ES lore, but... you're taking that too metaphorically. Lorkhan can't know what it's like to be a mortal despite having created them; similarly, mortals can only become Amaranth by cutting themselves off entirely from the world in the Dreamsleeve and feeling nothing so they may dream (something Vivec failed at with the Provisional House, by the way).

Granted, it's never explicitly phrased that the dream is a computer game, but the lore is open-ended and metaphysical enough to allow for such an interpretation. And it doesn't necessarily have to be our universe or our CK that the lore could be referring to. Also, C0DA.

Fourth wall is boring, C0DA is not an excuse to avoid a debate on such issues (if anything, it's encouragement; where canon doesn't exist, truth must be found through traditional methods of finding philosophical truth E.G debate, as opposed to "oh great Bethesda, does CHIM real?")

[Leyic]

Mage internet up until the point where Vivec did something that didn't make sense within the context of the lore that had been established up to that point. Where else do we ever find someone using the dreamsleeve to create something? Like I said before, it's the introduction of the Provisional House that broke the fourth wall; everything before that, including the dreamsleeve, is fine up to that point. As for Nirn literally being clockwork, that only refers to Nirn and not the whole of creation (plus, it only shows up in C0DA the GN and isn't corroborated anywhere else in the lore).

[Putnam]

(plus, it only shows up in C0DA the GN and isn't corroborated anywhere else in the lore).

Except for Sotha Sil's Clockwork City being consistently called "The World-Mechanism" in Online.

Where else do we ever find someone using the dreamsleeve to create something?

The entire concept of Amaranth. Besides, how is it fourth-wall breaking to... introduce something new to the lore?