The Elder Scrolls Online's Matt Firor considers Skyrim, which launched before ESO while the MMO was still in development, "very much a virtual world game just centered around one player." I know this because he told me as much during our interview at Game Developers Conference (GDC) back in March. He also says that the launch of Skyrim had an absolutely massive effect on ESO and ultimately led to radical changes.
"When we started developing ESO 17 years ago, there was no Skyrim; Oblivion had just launched, Fallout 3 hadn't even launched yet," says Firor. "I mean, Bethesda was only like 75 people, it was a long time ago. And then when Skyrim did launch, it had a massive effect on ESO because suddenly everyone's perception of what an Elder Scrolls game is changed, and we had to change because of that. Because the game that we were working on that was ESO wasn't viable anymore. And we had to radically change lots of things."
