lazykoala

A buddy of mine got into the beta and played this weekend. I had the chance to sit down and watch him play it, and I wasn't impressed in the least.

The game plays like a mix between Skyrim and Oblivion (mostly because it looks more like Oblivion than Skyrim graphically), and just feels like an Elder Scrolls single player game with a multiplayer component (he played in first person the whole time, so maybe that was it?)

In the game world there's no real distinguishing features that separate NPCs from PCs, so you really can't tell who's another player and who's an NPC other than their behavior clearly distinguishing so. Maybe that's another aspect that makes it feel kind of like a single player ES game.

The combat was just like Skyrim, except a lot more difficult since it has an MMO leveling system. But it feels familiar, as the more he used his sword and the shield the more those skills increased. Everything about the game feels really familiar and it doesn't look like it's going to bring anything new to the table other than an MMO with a first person view.

It depends. If you are simply getting a replacement motherboard, then no.

Or, if you are simply getting a newer motherboard of the same type - that is, you are replacing a  Z77 based motherboard with a different Z77 motherboard - then you can get away without needing to re-install Windows, but you may get some glitchiness until you update the motherboard drivers.

If you are going to a completely different chipset, such as replacing an AMD based motherboard with an Intel, or even updating a socket1156 to socket 1155 or 1150, etc, you may find that the machine won't even boot until you do a re-install.
And, in this case, you should do a re-install. (You don't necessarily need to re-format, however.)