TESO has elements with no counterpart in "pretty much any other MMO"

Matt Firor, game director for The Elder Scrolls Online, has said the MMO ZeniMax Online is working on is not as WoW-ish as many seem to think.

Speaking with Kotaku, Firor - who was a producer on Dark Age of Camelot - said when more information on the game comes out along with the beta, players will be able to see for themselves the game is not a World of Warcraft clone.

"Making an MMO is making an MMO," he said. "I worked in the industry before World of Warcraft, so I can tell you that World of Warcraft had a lot of influences from a lot of games.

"Our priority is to make a great game and not to make a clone of anything. A lot of things [in the game] have no analogue in pretty much any other MMO. I think the answer there is: the more information that comes out about it—and when people sit down and play it, they'll realize it's different. Like our whole real-time combat system of blocking and dodging is all pretty much new. And the fact that it's based on health, stamina and magicka—you have to maintain your stamina bar to block and it's all real-time—gives it a completely different feel from any MMO.

"I think, really, [people] just need to sit down and play it when it goes into beta. Games are a lot about feel. When you see them in a magazine it's hard to get an idea of exactly what's in it and how it plays and what features work."

TESO is slated for release in 2013, and a beta date has not been set.