Strong Possibility of ESO Being Rated M

For those of you who have watched the recent videos, when you watch the desert scene with the orcs and breton fighting pirates you'll notice that every time someone is struck blood squirts out. The animation doesn't really look right and I'd rather not have it all all. Anyways this is a possible hint that the game could be rated M.

skip to 3:43





Edit: I checked the ESRB site and here is the criteria for the Teen and Mature ratings.

TEEN
Content is generally suitable for ages 13 and up. May contain violence, suggestive themes, crude humor, minimal blood, simulated gambling and/or infrequent use of strong language.

MATURE
Content is generally suitable for ages 17 and up. May contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language.

So blood can fall into both categories but the game could be rated teen if blood is minimal. I'm not sure if the blood depicted in the video would be considered minimal.

There's blood in every game. Even WoW has blood, heck Garrosh even called Sylvanas a bitch, they have Weapons of Mass destruction, chemical warfare, torture, slavery, human testing and lots of parallels to nazi's (if you ask a certain group of idiots), and thats all from the Forsaken, the alliance is even worse - it's got domestic violence and child abuse - and it's still rated T.

a bit of blood will not turn it into an M rating.
This is an MMO. they will NOT want an M rating.

actually the only 2 MMOs i know of to have an M rating are AoC and Mortal Online.

Don`t care, I`ll be 18 by the time ESO comes out. :D

I'd expect a T for teen. It takes a lot for a game to get the M rating and it makes it virtually illegal in some countries. I remember how the secret world had to tone down their content so it wouldn't be outlawed in Australia. As much as I'd like a hardcore M rated game, this won't be it.

Blood, not the issue. I would say that the brewing part of cooking and skooma use/trade would have a greater affect on the game's rating. Usually online games can get away with a lot of stuff though because you can't rate how other players will act.

What Grape said. If there is use of drugs or alcohol that will usually do it in games lately. I do think it will be M, but not because of blood. Yes there are games that get away with drugs and alcohol without a M rating, but I'm pretty sure that is usually an oversight and one that TES games haven't gotten by with in the recent years.

(March 21st 2013, 04:57 AM)Sordak Wrote: actually the only 2 MMOs i know of to have an M rating are AoC and Mortal Online.

The Secret World, TERA, APB, Shaiya, Ultima Online, Asheron's Call 2

CCP's World of Darkness wouldn't surprise me.

About how the blood looks: the in-game footage is still beta remember so I'm guessing everything will look a lot better come launch. SWTOR did when i did the beta for that at lest. as for whether this game will be rated M: I dont think that would be a huge issue, considering the last few ES games have been. Blood may not make it M, but even if it was rated that high i think that would just show that the developers wanted to make sure this game was true to its roots and I thik it would help set ths MMO apart. Make it a bit grittier and for an audience that would appreciate it.

I actually hope it will be rated M, even if ESRB is a flawed rating-system. To have to tone it down to T would make it rather dull.

I'm kind of torn here. As Sordak pointed out, it seems only reasonable to say that to get the maximum audience, they would want it rated T. That being said however, Skyrim was an M game and did just fine...and although Oblivion was originally T, it was changed to M later on, and I don't recall much of a fuss or a drop in sales. But what really made them M, and would it be worth toning it down for a potential boost of audience? Those are the questions to be taken into account here.

Oblivion is a great one to study here, as it started as T and was changed to M. What did it? Not the alcohol - the ESRB was fine with that. It was hidden art contained on the disks and a couple of in game scenes that ESRB felt where 'grossly misdescribed.' Personally, I think that Bethesda may have feared this at first, but decided to not really give a damn when it came to Skyrim after seeing how few people actually cared about the raiting change.

Now, what in particular earned Skyrim the M raiting?

Quote:"As players engage in melee-style combat, some sequences are highlighted by slow-motion effects, particularly for decapitations," the official report reads. "Large blood-splatter effects also occur during combat, and some environments are stained with blood or body parts (e.g., heads impaled on spikes). Some sequences allow players to injure/kill non-adversary characters, including prisoners chained to a wall; they scream in pain amid splashes of blood or fire."

It then continues: "As the game progresses, the dialogue and on-screen text contains references to sexual material (e.g., ". . . all the whores your heart, or any other organ, desires," "She . . . raped the men as cruelly as Bal had ravished her," and "Remember when you thought [he] was . . . intent on making you . . . into his personal sex slave?")."

So....on one hand, it's possible that Bethesda just doesn't care anymore, and that ZoS will follow Bethesda's lead in an apathetic stance towards ESRBs raiting. On the other hand, slow mo sequences are probably out for the most part since that doesn't really work in an MMO where someone could just start whaling on you during a cut scene. That leaves blood spatter/stains and sexually explicit dialogue. Blood spatter and stains could easily be toned down, left to be enhanced by the modding community, or even have better textures for these things leaked on day one by ZoS/implemented in an M version of the game.

Dialogue is where things get tricky in my opinion, especially when you consider that the game is fully voiced. Yeah, I'd rather hear 'you whore loving bastard' than 'you're a poopy face!', and I feel like this, in all honesty, will come down to how much ZoS, or Todd Howard for that matter, agrees with that opinion of mine.

All in all, I think it's 50/50 given that Bethesda has set a precedence for not caring coupled with how true they're wanting to stick to the lore.

And at the end of the day....it could all come down to that lusty argonian made.