User blog:Zippertrain85/Why Zenimax, Why?

So, you've all probably heard it, that when you get the Elder Scrolls Online pre-ordered you get numerous perks for it. There have been blogs popping up about this, about users giving there personal interpretation of this whole thing, and now I'm going to do the same thing.

In case you don't know, let me explain the perks you'll be getting. If you Pre-Order the Elder Scrolls Online you get to play as an Imperial in any faction you want, can get married to other players, and can join any faction as any race, for example an Altmer could join the Ebonheart Pact and a Nord could join the Aldmeri Dominion, there are some other things too, but those are the main ones I want to talk about.

First, let's talk about the Imperial. I personally like the idea of playing as an Imperial in any faction, an Elder Scrolls game should have all the races available to the player, and it makes sense why they could join any faction, since Cyrodiil is in the center of all the conflict and would probably have people picking numerous sides. The thing is, why did this have to be a perk for Pre-Ordering the game? This sounds like something that should've been in the game by default, since there are a lot of Elder Scrolls players who would've wanted to be an Imperial, and now in order to do that they have to pay more for a Pre-Order? Same goes with marrying other players, these features shouldn't have been outside the main game. What if someone never heard about the Pre-Order and missed it? They just wouldn't be able to play as an Imperial or get married to other players? But that's not the worst part. But of course, now with doing this they can make a lot more money off of the Imperial Fans who are going to pre-order to the game in order to play as there favorite race. Ridiculous and shady if you ask me.

The thing I really dislike about all of this is how they're letting people who Pre-Order join any faction they want as any race they want! This is dumb for many reasons. First, because it completely defeats the sense of uniqueness in your faction, each Faction's identity was based off of the races that made up that faction. For example, The Ebonheart Pact had a very Eastern Tamrielic theme, since it was made of the Eastern Races, while the Aldmeri Dominion had a very southern theme, since it was made of people from South-Tamriel. But now with anybody being able to join any races it just screws everything up and makes the factions pointless at the end of the day. That's not all though, a lot of the lore is contradicted with this, as Draevan13 brilliantly brought up, it wouldn't make sense for a Nord or something to join the Aldmeri Dominion since they're so Anti-Human. It also wouldn't make sense Vice-Versa, why would an Altmer fight for the Ebonheart Pact? Which consists of two races the Altmer dislike. This is just a pointless change to appeal to regular gamers that don't care about lore and just want to be any race in any faction.

To be honest with you, this all sounds like some cheap ploy for money on Zenimax's part, as these PRe-Order exclusives are either stuff that should be added in the game, or are just lore-breaking to appease to average gamers who don't care about lore. As UselessArgonianMage said, "Zenimax... Remove the letters Z, N, I, M and X and you get... EA!" It couldn't be more accurate now.