DraQ
they started developing this concurrently with an ongoing trend in the MMO scene favouring the 'old time' eras of MMOs..namely more open settings, sandboxy feels, and richer, meaningful faction PvP;
that the case, again during the time they started developing this, someone decided they could hire members of the old DAoC (Dark Age of Camelot) MMO, as even today it is one of the 2 'best' MMOs ever, the other being Ultima Online. So the trend goes. Why the DAoC devs? It sported 3 faction warfare, pseudo world-wide consequences according to war status, an ongoing alteration of a shard's status according to what its own players had achieved in the PvP element..so they decided that making a spin off of that while maintaining the style and lore of Elder Scrolls would be what would allow them to succeed where SWTOR failed (see new trend i mentioned above, SWTOR failed for reasons -
other- than most of us here like to think)..the decision to form TESO as a 3 faction game is what brought along the alliances eventually, and the necessary lore butchering, as they needed to try back up the split somehow
the rest, be it mechanics or gameplay, is either your standard MMO fare (client-package limitations, etc etc OR what the 'fans of the genre' have come to 'expect') + gimmicks so as to attract the single player TES demographic..example being soft-aim combat..being an MMO developed with tab target combat, it was too late to change it all..so in order to make sure no one got alienated, they altered it so as to appear that combat aiming is done as in Skyrim; am mentioning this as what we get to see overall will be the necessary mixture of the MMO blend with the TES elements
hence the assured fuck up
(am trying to keep it dense, but willing to answer in detail any questions you may happen to have)