When I first started playing Oblivion, everything was so amazing I thought to myself "I can't believe Bethesda hasn't made 'Elder Scrolls Online' yet...". Now, after becoming addicted to using mods and in the learning process of modding myself, I'm afraid of them actually doing it. There is soooo much great player created content out there, I think a massive multiplayer version would have to be so watered down that much would be lost. Do I think an MMO Elder Scrolls would be a success? Absolutely, without question, and it would be able to go toe-to-toe with all the other heavy hitter mmos out there including the P.O.S. known as wow (junk). If Bethesda got innovative and introduced a way to create "instance mods" so that players could still create mods that only affected their own game play and gaming world and not anyone else's, that would be a big help. They could even go with certain max restraints for creating armor/weapons/etc so that they would have to be within certain guidelines as far as effects and abilities if they were to be used within the general gaming world, so there would be no "uber swords of doom" as far as insta-killing something, but, you could have awesome looking weaponry like Adonnays or all the many beautiful armor sets without them being overpowering. As far as quest mods, well, the construction set would have to rock and force checks to be positive the quests worked flawlessly without errors or interference, the quests would have to be instanced so as to not interfere with other people performing other quests (solo or group), but on the good side, player created questing would certainly create a huge amount of interest for gamers who love mmos because, it's never been done before (not truly). Again, I think much would be lost if Bethesda created an MMO of Elder Scrolls and didn't go the several extra miles they'd need to in order to retain the flavor of Oblivion and Morrowind (I'm a 'regressionist' ...I tried Morrowind goty after already falling in love with Oblivion...and I love both) for all of the players that have been here all along. I could get by with having 'normal' weaponry and armor as far as damage and protection, but, if I had to look at a thousand people in fluorescent lime green glass armor once they hit level 20, well, I'd puke. Variety is everything. On the other hand, I would love to see multiplayer for Oblivion, for 8-16ish people and absolutely dream of some gods of programming wizardry to figure out a way to make it happen (solid/stable networking code) with the only requirements being that all players connecting would have to have the same mods as far as any that modify stats/skills/abilities and damage/protection. There could be both pvp enabled or co-op only (simple check box) which would disable receiving damage from your buddies if Joe the Mage has some huge AE fire spell that he cooks off that you accidently walk into. I don't think it would be necessary for everybody I connected with to have all my castle mods (I'm a real estate mogul in Cyrodiil) but I wouldn't want someone NOT using Deadly Reflexes on 2.5x damage to get hit by one of my swords while I am using it. Basically, all damage and protection levels would have to be on leveled flat for everyone, but that could be forced at time of connection. I'd want more than just arena fighting with my buddies, as that's no big deal, but opening up a new construction set which has a way to make group based questing, now that would rock. Heck, just being able to go through a modified version of the main quest (to accommodate more than one person) with friends would seriously kick ass. Final words: An Elder Scrolls MMORPG would rock if done right, but doing it right would be extremely difficult, more so than what any other company has done for any MMO to date (I would think) and because of that, I doubt it could be done right and in the end would be too similar to too many already existing mmos. As for a multiplayer enabled version for 8-16 people, I think it would seriously kick ass and myself and several of my friends have said to each other on many occasions "if they'd just make multiplayer for 8 people so we could play together, I'd cancel all my MMO accounts".