The Elder Scrolls Online will have separate servers for console, PC and Mac players in order to ensure a level playing field for PvP combat.
Bethesda Softworks is developing The Elder Scrolls Online for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC and Mac, but sadly that doesn’t mean we can look forward to an online commingling of buttons and mice in the world of Tamriel. While the game will be multiplatform, it will employ separate “megaservers” for Xbox One and PS4 players, while PC and Mac gamers will share a third, separate online realm between them.
Creative Director Paul Sage told Polygon that the separate server environments are being used in order to ensure fairness in PvP encounters. The mouse and keyboard setup used by PC and Mac gamers would presumably give them a serious advantage over controllers, which – speaking in broad generalities and without meaning to cause offense – are a slower and less precise way to get things done.
“PC is still untouchable, it’s the PC,” said Sage. “We’re working to perfect UI and gameplay specific to the PC version of Elder Scrolls Online and the console version will have its own UI and be more controller-specific, but PC is going nowhere.”
This isn’t actually the first time PC and console gamers have been kept apart over issues of control; in 2010 it was reported by “reliable sources” that Microsoft had pulled the plug on cross-platform play between the Xbox 360 and PC because PC gamers were “destroying” controller-equipped console players with embarrassing regularity.
Sources: The Elder Scrolls Online, via Polygon
