It seems like these days a lot of things are getting an MMOG spinoff. The most recent being The Elder Scrolls Online, an MMORPG of the popular The Elder Scrolls series. But not everyone is happy about the news.

When Bethesda posted the reveal on their blog yesterday, some fans were less than thrilled with the news that the popular single player RPG series is headed to the realm of MMO gaming. Several voiced their concerns that this would be the end of the single-player series and that moving forward the MMORPG would be the primary focus.

To try and calm some of the fans and address concerns, a Bethesda spokesperson responded in a post to explain that the teams working on the MMORPG (ZeniMax Game Studios) and the other single-player The Elder Scrolls games such as Skyrim (Bethesda) are separate.

"The teams working on these games are separate. Todd Howard's team at BGS will keeping doing the type of games they like making, and the ZeniMax Online team will focus on MMO games like this newly-announced title."

With any luck this will not impact any future single-player RPGs for the series, but fans are right to be concerned. In the past when certain game series have been adapted to the MMOG realm, work on their original line of games pretty much came to a halt such as it did with the Warcraft RTS series following the release of World of Warcraft. The same is true with the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) RPG series, which BioWare has in the past referred tothe Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG as KOTOR 3, 4, 5 etc.

Time will tell if the same fate will befall The Elder Scrolls series. There is certainly room for both types of games to grow and continue. For now, work continues on both with the MMORPG development and the upcoming Skyrim DLC, Dawnguard.

Sources: GamesIndustry.com, Bethesda Blog