Phasing. We’ve all heard of it. To some extent, we MMO players have all experienced it as well. Developers advertise it with catchy phrases such as “dynamic content” or “a world that changes with you”. As gamers, we get these and other marketing keywords pushed down our throats by various developers, hoping that we digest enough of their marketing dollars to go out and buy their product. Maybe we, ourselves, are to blame – always imploring companies for more content, faster content, different content -- always crying over imbalance, accusing them of faction or class favoritism and being giant, throbbing dicks towards players. Maybe they come up with these “new” things to distract us, hoping that we’ll stare at the new shiny object enough to where we won’t badger them with criticism over a bug here or an oversight there.

Okay, let’s be real. It doesn’t matter what you think about the issue, phasing is here and it’s here to stay. So, since we aren’t getting away from the idea, lets at least try to understand it better, shall we?

Phasing is, at a very basic level, a means through which a player experiences game content differently than another player by crossing certain thresholds which lead to observable changes in the game environment – that’s the Reichmar’s Dictionary version for those keeping track. Essentially, we do things like completing a quest or taking part in a world event and the game world changes to reflect the lore results of what we just did. It allows for the individual player to see the world change as a direct result of what he (or she) did, whether it was saving a farm from wild boars, saving an outpost from the undead, or triggering a world even. This, supposedly, enhances the single player experience by allowing players to watch as things change around them.

Phasing is not an in game event. This isn’t something that you just miss if you don’t log in one night. You can’t log in the next morning and see the changes in the world for yourself. Let’s take the opening of AQ in World of Warcraft as an example. In that world event (which, by the way, was pretty damned fun if you happen to have been there), players on both factions performed contributing actions towards a set goal. After the goals were reached, players all descended on the world zone where this Egyptian-themed temple was set to open. They all congregated in front of the temple gates and formed ranks (on my server, at least). When the gates opened, large, hulking NPC mobs fought the group -- which proceeded to kill them all ... then turn and kill each other (though the dedicated raid groups were sure to jump inside as soon as possible). If you missed the event you could still enter the raid; sure, you missed the ceremony, but you weren’t kept from experiencing the content.

This is not phasing.

Let’s take another example from World of Warcraft, for the sake of familiarity, this time of a true phasing event. When players began the quest line in Icecrown, the lore had you defending a small crusader outpost from attacks by the undead. That outpost, at first, was in shambles – fires all over the place, walls falling, and undead everywhere. After the player completes the quest chain, they’re awarded some decent piece of leveling gear, and suddenly, the world changes. The outpost goes from being rundown to getting a facelift. The undead are gone, the good NPCs are advancing, and you feel pretty good. Now, if I were to stand at specific coordinates, and if a player who hasn’t completed that quest line were to stand right next to me, we wouldn’t be able to see each other. I couldn't experience his content. That is phasing, folks. My decision to complete that quest led me to experience different content than the player who didn’t make the same decision.


Is phasing a good thing or a bad thing in MMOs? Well, it’s tricky. In my view, MMOs are designed around you playing with other people and quests shouldn’t lead to artificial barriers put up between players. However, if you’re a developer wanting to make people who play alone for the most part happy, changing the game world based off of individual decisions is quite useful as an immersion-creating and story-telling tool. I should be clear, not everyone that gets really into questing and lore wants to play alone – but if you do, why play an MMO? Phasing puts up lore barriers between players that don’t complete certain content, but it also takes them down by creating some individual story immersion. It makes player’s choices significant, but it also isolates them from others of different perspectives. It makes the world come alive around the individual, but also makes the world inconsistent.

What we’re left with is a system that giveth yet taketh away; a system that offers lots of possibilities for quest and story development, but one that can seem immersion breaking to some and pointless to others.

Since I am writing this for an Elder Scrolls Online fansite, the appropriate question to ask here would be how will this affect ESO? Based on what we know thus far, ESO is sounding to be both quite conducive to phasing and not obtrusive to player interaction. Let’s dive in…

The Elder Scrolls, as a series, is based around player choice and player development. Your choices impact the world in various ways, albeit good or bad. You can steal, murder, save, marry and generally follow the role you want your character to have. These features, in themselves, aren’t very conducive to the MMO world. But phasing allows the individual player to retain a certain degree of uniqueness by deciding the outcome of certain game events. Do you want to save the town? It’ll be here every time you return and people will be chanting your name in the streets. Or do you want to join the raiding party instead? The town will be a wasteland every time you ride by. Your faction mates will appear in your “phase” based upon the decisions you all made.


While this isn’t revolutionary, your ability to cross “phases” at-will is. Normally, phases put up an artificial barrier between players that do X, and players that do Y. In ESO we’ve been promised a system that encourages phase-affecting choices to be made, but allows you to join your friends in their “phase” at will. This basically lets debaters of the mechanic to have their cake and eat it too – you can make all the single-player choices you want, you can choose to progress the story in any way, but if you want to group with people, you can switch “phases” and get to work. That option – that choice – instantly breaks down whatever barriers you thought phasing created.

Does this mean phasing is going to be great in ESO? Well, not necessarily. This phasing system sounds both intriguing and intuitive at the same time, in my opinion. You have the freedom to make choices, but also the freedom to make those choices as relevant or irrelevant as you’d like. This mechanic can most certainly work well in questing zones and questing areas…

What about in Cyrodiil? Will there be phasing there too? This is what makes me most nervous about this system. If all of Cyrodiil – from towns, farms and villages, to cities, keeps and castles – is as crucial to PvP as we’ve been led to believe, I absolutely don’t want loading screens, or any delay resulting from phasing, in my PvP zone. If my trip from keep A to keep B takes me through a town that also serves as a quest hub, will phasing affect my ability to travel through the town without encountering a loading screen (if said town has quests that cause phasing)? If that is the case, will my raid group have to “sync” in some way to make sure we don’t encounter loading screens?

I love TES, more than any of you can likely imagine, but this possibility tames my excitement for this game simply because I want my faction PvP to be seamless…..like I’m already accustomed to. Phasing is a great technology and really opens the floodgates for developer creativity. I think it can be implemented very well in ESO, but I also certainly believe that its success, and acceptance, will not be decided in the valleys of Morrowind or the beaches of the Summerset Isles, but rather on the plains of Cyrodiil where noo-- umm ... players rush to their slaughter.

If I have to wait through loading screens as I’m rushing to a keep in Cyrodiil, I swear I’m gonna flip tables....


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What do you think about phasing in The Elder Scrolls Online? Should it be done in Cyrodiil?




The views in this editorial are those of Reichmar12 and do not represent those of TESOF, Zenimax Online Studios or any of its subsidiaries.