West Weald was the fastest Chapter I lost interest in to date.

ArchMikem

I'm a little discouraged. The teasers made me pre-order the Chapter easily enough, I was excited to explore more of Cyrodiil without having to deal with playing Oblivion, but I finished all of the casual play content within two weeks, I had issues with the zone aesthetic, and after those two to three weeks I've basically stopped logging in again. Started playing other games. That's not good, considering I spent the $40 for it. This has been the fastest I've lost interest in a chapter to date. I think I lasted a little longer with Necrom, and I don't even like Morrowind.

I'm sincerely hoping, if they decide next year's Chapter is Winterhold, or the Hammerfel Interior, that they make the zones more interesting for explorers. More caves, more nooks.and crannies, better wilds etc. Just, places to GO.

Ravensilver

Fully agree with you.

Not only is the zone on the small side, but the amount of quests is more or less minimal. We have 5 main quests and 10 side quests and that's it. That's almost as bad as Murkmire, which had 7/3, or Clockwork City, which had 8/3. Compared to Greymoor, which had 26/63, or Summerset, which hat 18/26, that's like... nothing.

Also, most of the zone is inaccessible. Most buildings are locked, the landscape is pretty bare, and aside from those mirror incursions, there isn't really anything happening.

The house is... meh. Getting furnishing plans is a mindless grind, running in circles through the inn. There isn't even a new companion.

At the moment, I'm not really interested in the current expansion...

Pelanora

First time I've walked away from a zone story uncompleted.

SilverBride

I've done every quest in West Weald on all 7 of my characters. I've also learned every scribing script on all of them. I really enjoyed the quests and have already decorated the apartment in Skingrad and am working on Merrivine Estate now. Maybe it's not everyone's cup of tea but I enjoy it.

Dax_Draconis

They bring out new chapters faster than I can finish them.

Jaimeh

Both the zone and the main story line are forgettable. It would be more suited to a story DLC release rather than a chapter. I don't think scribing makes up for how little and low quality the rest of the content feels.

TheMajority

ok

tsaescishoeshiner

I enjoyed exploring Weat Weald and doing the quests (not my favorite, though). I loved the little details like the goblin quests and the library-in-a-box out in the wilds. The Scholarium questline was my favorite in a long time. Other than the running around, I would 100% do it again for the vibes.

I'm currently on a break from ESO just because I needed one, but I'm not sure it has anything to do with recent content or lack of new content. I'm hoping the focus on QoL changes and new systems (Archive, Home Tours) pays off as we get more. We'll see what the Q4 PvP update is.

Rkindaleft

I agree, I think the zone is really pretty to look at, but in my opinion I don't think it's a zone that's worth sticking around long term in outside of writs for a few reasons:

1) The map isn't any bigger than say Western Skyrim above ground and that chapter came with essentially 2 zones to make up the difference.
2) Too many locked doors and inaccessible areas make the zone feel really unfinished and rushed.
3) Bosses and the world event are REALLY annoying with all the immune phases, making bosses into boring time sinks and thus I don't want to participate in the dailies outside of the delve quest.
4) Main questline felt pretty rushed and the ending to me was unsatisfying, we needed more way lore on Ithelia and a Q4 Mirrormoor zone to tie out the story, its not a questline I have an interest in doing on multiple characters.
5) Scribing is way too tedious and grindy and also unfriendly to alts.

Outside of the trial this is the first chapter I'm starting to regret paying for.

fall0athboy

Ravensilver wrote: »

Fully agree with you.

Not only is the zone on the small side, but the amount of quests is more or less minimal. We have 5 main quests and 10 side quests and that's it. That's almost as bad as Murkmire, which had 7/3, or Clockwork City, which had 8/3. Compared to Greymoor, which had 26/63, or Summerset, which hat 18/26, that's like... nothing.

Also, most of the zone is inaccessible. Most buildings are locked, the landscape is pretty bare, and aside from those mirror incursions, there isn't really anything happening.

The house is... meh. Getting furnishing plans is a mindless grind, running in circles through the inn. There isn't even a new companion.

At the moment, I'm not really interested in the current expansion...

Greymoor did not have 26/63 what is your math here.

SilverBride

Rkindaleft wrote: »

Bosses and the world event are REALLY annoying with all the immune phases, making bosses into boring time sinks

This is what happens when players complain that bosses die too fast.

Jaraal

Yes, it's shocking how deserted the zone is so soon after it dropped. When I play it's rare to see more than 3 players at an incursion, and two of those are usually AFK at the mosaic waiting for other people to spawn the champion. And good luck getting enough people to kill the world bosses. Not to mention the purple plan drop rate and the availability of containers is a severe downgrade from Necrom.

katanagirl1

I still haven’t done the main story yet but almost all other achievements are done. I usually wait a long time for the crowds to die down but I think I might start soon. I really do want the Merryvine Estate. I’ve been farming furnishing plans for it but I’m getting so bored with that I am falling asleep. It will keep me busy once I am done with everything else.

I would have been happier if they had more zone content than the scribing stuff. I don’t want to bother with it and it has been the icing on the cake for the further imbalance of Cyrodiil PvP.

Treeshka

I personally liked the zone and the new raid is so good compared to previous raids. Especially the last encounter where you have to carry something to starting location.

Anifaas

SilverBride wrote: »

Rkindaleft wrote: »

Bosses and the world event are REALLY annoying with all the immune phases, making bosses into boring time sinks

This is what happens when players complain that bosses die too fast.

That's why the devs added immunity timers to the delve bosses too, right? Oh wait... Lol. That's silly. The bosses all spawn minutes later. The immune phases are just lazy design meant to artificially stretch out the fight. Much like the grind in GR is meant to stretch out the less abundant content compared to previous years.

AlienSlof

Rkindaleft wrote: »

I agree, I think the zone is really pretty to look at, but in my opinion I don't think it's a zone that's worth sticking around long term in outside of writs for a few reasons:

1) The map isn't any bigger than say Western Skyrim above ground and that chapter came with essentially 2 zones to make up the difference.
2) Too many locked doors and inaccessible areas make the zone feel really unfinished and rushed.
3) Bosses and the world event are REALLY annoying with all the immune phases, making bosses into boring time sinks and thus I don't want to participate in the dailies outside of the delve quest.
4) Main questline felt pretty rushed and the ending to me was unsatisfying, we needed more way lore on Ithelia and a Q4 Mirrormoor zone to tie out the story, its not a questline I have an interest in doing on multiple characters.
5) Scribing is way too tedious and grindy and also unfriendly to alts.

Outside of the trial this is the first chapter I'm starting to regret paying for.

Absolutely this!

I would add 6) Inclusion of the wood elf stuff was a huge disappointment - for me anyway. I was hoping for more Imperial stuff, but instead half the zone was wood elf nonsense. I detest them and their green pact.

And absolutely 100% this: 3) Bosses and the world event are REALLY annoying with all the immune phases, making bosses into boring time sinks and thus I don't want to participate in the dailies outside of the delve quest. Boring, boring BOOOOORING! Lazy padding for drawing out a pointless fight.

However, as I've mentioned before, the new trial is FABULOUS! It's now my favourite trial by far!

Lugaldu

What bothers me most is the extreme reduction in content for the same price. I have no problem paying 50 Euros for a new chapter, but then I want to experience something new for a while, not just for 1-2 weeks! The map of West Weald seems tiny when you can ride through everything in a few minutes and this time there is no other region/ Oblivion plain for the whole year (neither in the chapter nor as Q4 DLC)!

Regarding Scribing, I already knew that I wasn't really interested in it and I haven't set foot in the Schola since I finished the quest. But this quest was also just a rush through old areas, just as bad as the Psijic or quest line...

But that wasn't the end of the disappointments for this year. The big announcement for Q3 for housing is another extreme disappointment. As an extreme housing enthusiast, this doesn't bring me anything new on the PC, nothing new in terms of building and decorating, for me it's not something housing-related if people can now look at my houses.

So, all in all, the whole year so far has been one big disappointment. The only positive surprise was the free house.

BlueRaven

It’s not that bad. Necrom was the one that almost made me quit.

My only real complaint is the ink drop rates.

agelonestar

I have to be honest, the main quest in West Weald is the first I've completed in three years and I loved it. I even went back to do Necrom's main quest line so I could finish West Weald.

I think Gold Road is the best chapter since Summerset. I agree it's a bit on the small side, but I'd rather have quality content than massive map size any day of the week.

Thumbs up from me.

CoronHR

Lugaldu wrote: »

What bothers me most is the extreme reduction in content for the same price. I have no problem paying 50 Euros for a new chapter, but then I want to experience something new for a while, not just for 1-2 weeks! The map of West Weald seems tiny when you can ride through everything in a few minutes and this time there is no other region/ Oblivion plain for the whole year (neither in the chapter nor as Q4 DLC)!

Regarding Scribing, I already knew that I wasn't really interested in it and I haven't set foot in the Schola since I finished the quest. But this quest was also just a rush through old areas, just as bad as the Psijic or quest line...

But that wasn't the end of the disappointments for this year. The big announcement for Q3 for housing is another extreme disappointment. As an extreme housing enthusiast, this doesn't bring me anything new on the PC, nothing new in terms of building and decorating, for me it's not something housing-related if people can now look at my houses.

So, all in all, the whole year so far has been one big disappointment. The only positive surprise was the free house.

hold on a sec ... what was the free house in west weald? the one in the inn? did i miss out on a free house???

xylena_lazarow

The zone is very pretty and I love the Scribing system. Unfortunately, the Scribing grind takes you away from West Weald and obligates you to repeat base game content you cleared a decade ago, so not only am I very bored doing this, but I don't even get to explore the new zone with the new content? Absolute fail. Been trying to do the main questline for the purple Ele Sus, really wish it was more story and less snoozing through overworld trash mobs and simplistic minigames.

shadyjane62

Definitely the last anything in ESO I pay for.

AnduinTryggva

ArchMikem wrote: »

I'm a little discouraged. The teasers made me pre-order the Chapter easily enough, I was excited to explore more of Cyrodiil without having to deal with playing Oblivion, but I finished all of the casual play content within two weeks, I had issues with the zone aesthetic, and after those two to three weeks I've basically stopped logging in again. Started playing other games. That's not good, considering I spent the $40 for it. This has been the fastest I've lost interest in a chapter to date. I think I lasted a little longer with Necrom, and I don't even like Morrowind.

I'm sincerely hoping, if they decide next year's Chapter is Winterhold, or the Hammerfel Interior, that they make the zones more interesting for explorers. More caves, more nooks.and crannies, better wilds etc. Just, places to GO.

As for the landscape I thought it was very well accomplished except the overdone orange tone to some of the regions. This is really the only complaint that I have about this overdone orange tone.

Otherwise I really appreciate the landscape. I may also be wrong but the rocks look like they got an overhaul. They now have scattered lichen on them which makes them look so natural.

On the quest side: The main quest has more than 5 quests iirc. On the side quests I agree they are a bit less than on other chapters.

Otherwise you have normal numbers of open dungeons, normal dungeons and world bosses as far as I can see.

AzuraFan

Lugaldu wrote: »

What bothers me most is the extreme reduction in content for the same price.

Same here. I didn't like the price given the reduction in content.

Having said that, I enjoyed what was there and thought the zone was well done. The scribing quest line was great, even though I doubt I'll do much with scribing, given that I'll never have enough ink to experiment. At the pace I'm getting ink, it'll take me years to get enough to play around with it and by then I won't care lol. The only thing I would have liked with the quest line was more variety in what we needed to do for each wing.

I did not like the mirror incursions and WBs, though. All the encounters feel the same and they're tedious. This is not the way to satisfy the "we want a harder overland" crowd. It just makes the encounters tedious (for everyone!), and from what I can see, there aren't hordes of players who wanted harder overland at these bosses. Watch what players do and not what they tell you they want.

As a mainly solo player, I also feel there's less for me to do with antiquities because of the way a lot of them are gated. So that also reduces the content for me.

As much as I enjoy ESO, I doubt I'll pre-order the next chapter, and if possible (meaning I manage not to cave on this), I'll wait until the chapter goes on sale. I don't want to pay the same price again for less content than we've received in the past.

Elsonso

ArchMikem wrote: »

I'm a little discouraged. The teasers made me pre-order the Chapter easily enough, I was excited to explore more of Cyrodiil without having to deal with playing Oblivion, but I finished all of the casual play content within two weeks, I had issues with the zone aesthetic, and after those two to three weeks I've basically stopped logging in again. Started playing other games. That's not good, considering I spent the $40 for it. This has been the fastest I've lost interest in a chapter to date. I think I lasted a little longer with Necrom, and I don't even like Morrowind.

Gold Road looks pretty, and I took a ton of screen shots of trees and scenery, a few of which I posted on Twitter.

However, the zone is like living in that picture. Stagnant. No depth. Lacking in substance.

For the zone itself, they made a bunch of decisions, both with game design and cost cutting, that seemed very strange. I stopped trying to figure out why the Outcast Inn was designed the way it was. There were too many set dressings, like Skingrad Castle. The Leftwheal Trading Post was laid out more like a dungeon than a "trading post" and probably should have been just some cave, or maybe a precursor to what will become Infested Mine. Varen's Watch, which is just the most recent name for the fort, seemed too extravagant for the space and didn't fit the area. I'm not sure what it thinks it is watching, either. Sutch? Fort Hastrel? Varen's Wall gate into Gold Coast? Certainly not Hammerfell. Then there is Varen's Wall, which is a real wall in Gold Road and a makeshift wall in Gold Coast, probably with some "lore" to justify it all.

World boss design did not impress me, and I certainly can't see wanting to fight them again. Invulnerable phases are just a way to annoy players.

The character of Ithelia was interesting as she evolved, but she was in a story that was largely average. I can now add "forgettable" (pun intended) as I had to look up the story on UESP just a month and a half after finishing it. Looking back, I now realize that a lot of the action in the story was fighting the Recollection, people who knew less about Ithelia than I did, and things just seem strange. It was like a side story took over and became the main story. The Recollection was boring. Nantharion was boring. It was the standard "rescue the world from crazy cultists" story. Like Greymoor. Like Blackwood.

There wasn't a lot of wiggle room regarding how the sub-story of Ithelia was concluded, and that is as it should have been. This was not the place for ZOS to run off into the weeds and beg us to follow.

I think the team that did Necrom/Apocrypha could have helped, as just about everything in Necrom Chapter was done better than Gold Road except for the fall foliage, (edit) and Bastion Nymic.

As for Scribing... I found the unlock quest annoying. Very annoying. The use of "daily endeavors" was not inspired or fun, and I expect this sort of thing will happen a lot more in the coming years. For me, the whole system was incomplete and nothing more than a grind-fest. There is nothing in the system that I actually feel will improve any of my characters, so I have little interest in it. Less than "little", actually. Tales of Tribute is better content. I have little interest in that, too, but more interest than Scribing.

I should mention "buggy" but there isn't a day in the game that I don't come across a half dozen bugs, anyway. Gold Road had a lot at launch and I don't know (or care) if they fixed them.

Bottom line for me is that this is a Chapter that I feel is still too expensive at half price.

Zodiarkslayer

It definitely feels like they simply upscaled a DLC and sold it as a chapter.

I don't like it one bit. West Weald and Colovia were my favourite parts in Oblivion. Such a disappointment to see the iconic landscape ruined.
Not even Skingrad feels the same. I wanted my Rosethirn Hall! 😡

SilverIce58

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

It definitely feels like they simply upscaled a DLC and sold it as a chapter.

THIS. West Weald has the feel of a Q4 dlc and not actually a chapter like Necrom did. This was probably the plan in the beginning when they said they'd stop doing Q4 dlcs, to release what was supposed to be a Q4 zone, but repurpose it into a chapter to make more money off of it. I just hope they don't do that for the 2026 chapter. 2025 will probably have a "real" chapter, but 2026? We'll see.

Ravensilver

fall0athboy wrote: »

Greymoor did not have 26/63 what is your math here.

You're right, insofar as I counted The Reach/Arkthzand and Western Skyrim/Greymoor Caverns as double - but upon checking again I noticed that the quests for both are identical.

Nevertheless, counting the two main areas:
Western Skyrim plus Blackreach: Greymoor Caverns: 7 Main Quests, 23 Side Quests (also known as Points of Interest)
Blackreach: Arkthzand Cavern plus The Reach: 6 Main Quests, 17 Side Quests

So we end up with 13 Main Quests and 40 Side Quests. Which is still more than Golden Road, no?

alternatelder

Same, I love Autumn landscapes, and I thought I'd spend more time in this chapter. But I guess it could be other games and my increasing distaste for the game's direction it has been heading that is keeping me out of ESO the longest I've stayed away in the 9 years I've been playing, not necessarily the chapter, but it should have hooked me in more.

Necrotech_Master

CoronHR wrote: »

Lugaldu wrote: »

What bothers me most is the extreme reduction in content for the same price. I have no problem paying 50 Euros for a new chapter, but then I want to experience something new for a while, not just for 1-2 weeks! The map of West Weald seems tiny when you can ride through everything in a few minutes and this time there is no other region/ Oblivion plain for the whole year (neither in the chapter nor as Q4 DLC)!

Regarding Scribing, I already knew that I wasn't really interested in it and I haven't set foot in the Schola since I finished the quest. But this quest was also just a rush through old areas, just as bad as the Psijic or quest line...

But that wasn't the end of the disappointments for this year. The big announcement for Q3 for housing is another extreme disappointment. As an extreme housing enthusiast, this doesn't bring me anything new on the PC, nothing new in terms of building and decorating, for me it's not something housing-related if people can now look at my houses.

So, all in all, the whole year so far has been one big disappointment. The only positive surprise was the free house.

hold on a sec ... what was the free house in west weald? the one in the inn? did i miss out on a free house???

theres 2 non-crown houses in west weald, the inn room, and merryvine estate

the inn room is free, the estate can be bought with gold once you have the required achievement

SilverBride

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

...the inn room is free...

The inn room wasn't free for me. It didn't cost a lot but I had to pay for it.