Hey there,

I think (if I remember correctly), I played ESO for 3 or 4 months in 2024. I really enjoyed it and I was a premium subscriber for the $15 per month, and I am again now. None of the characters I made back then ever made it to 50 although I did get close! Since I didn't play for very long I also didn't get to experience most other parts of the game. I played through Aurodon and the Summerset Isle campaign on my Imperial Dragonknight and loved, but I'm not sure that I ever actually finished it because I was watching a youtube review of ESO and it featured a clip of the final boss of the DLC and I don't remember fighting an enemy that looked like that. So I might go back and see if I can finish it on that character. But that presents a problem- I am not really interested in playing that character anymore. Which brings me to my first point.

I know it is designed like this for the safety of your account/characters, and to help prevent botting, etc, but... I really dislike not being able to delete characters, like to have to wait to delete them. Like I REALLY dislike it, and it may be enough to make me quit the game again. Yes, the character selection screen and its limitations is making me think about quitting.

Making characters and then playing them for a little bit is how I decide if I like the name/class/gender combination that I came up with, and the associated lore in my head about the character. For instance, I made a new Argonian, his name was interesting to me for like... 2 days. And then I realized I actually don't like that name. It might take me 15 characters to finally feel comfortable enough with one for it to become my new main, or a new alt, permanently on my roster.

And I am trying to find a new main because I am now only interested in ONE character from my previous roster of characters. Only one. All the others are now dumb and stupid (lol). All the others have something wrong with them that would either need correcting with a purchase from the crown store (a unspeakably wasteful expense if the character only isn't even level 50 yet), or by deleting the character and making the desired adjustments.

I didn't remember that there was a soft limit on character deletion, so I just kinda went wild with it. I even made a character named "Breaker Character" just so I could more easily sort through the roster list of characters visually. If a character is above the breaker character, I've decided to keep it - for now. If a character is below it, it is due for deletion or I am considering it. Now, because I know now how valuable character deletion is, I see that breaker character was a mistake. To give you an idea, there's 8 characters that I have to delete, and as I delete them I will be wanting to try out new characters, which will probably also need deletion.

It is going to take *months* for this to be settled. And that's actually kinda infuriating - to know that I won't have a character that I will enjoy playing until that long from now. Just let me PLAY the character creation and deletion process. It is currently my main source of enjoyment in the game.

--- Separation for a new topic ---

I've played these games for a long time. Morrowind was my first, and it'll always be magical for me. It's a great game with a lot of really cool philosophical and metaphysical concepts. Michael Kirkbride is the goat.

I've also played wow for a very long time, so naturally I end up comparing them. Of course the two fantasy franchises are vastly different and, if you can believe it, neither are very satisfactory. Just for different reasons.

Wow is like the... I dunno... The Mcdonalds of Fantasy. You know, very mainstream, very generic, very much takes everything from other franchises and tries to do it better/brighter/faster etc etc etc. It's annoying, but you can look past it and the game is genuinely fun. As you may have guessed from the above essay, one of my favorite things about wow is the variety of playable races. Compared to ESO it's night and day. In wow, you actually have options. In ESO, it's all just slightly different versions of the same bland "human thing". Even Orcs are just kinda humans in ESO. In fact, due to this blandness in options, I'd say the most interesting options are Argonian and High Elf, for me personally. And that's fine at least I have something I like.

But this line of comparison applies towards the world as well, which is arguably the second most important part of immersion/gameplay/story telling. After the people.

In my opinion an easy question to asses a fantasy world is how fantastical is it actually? Every fantasy world must balance believability with imagination, so a very easy litmus to answer that question is... trees. Yes trees. Trees are one of the best measuring devices of fantasy worlds. And ESO's trees... just aren't that cool.

I've been to Grahtwood. Played through quite a bit of it back when I first played. Didn't finish the zone. It was very uninspiring. My whole life, I had been wondering what that zone would be like. Tales of the enormous trees of the land, etc. It sounded so incredible. Then I went there and the biggest trees were only like... what? 500 feet tall? Even 500 feet is peanuts in a supposedly fantasy world where legends of this place say that the trees are absolutely unimaginably huge. Yes they're big. But not big enough. 1,000 feet? 10,000? Now you're talking. Now you're talking about what the Wood Elves are supposed to be all about.

Yes, game design limitations, etc. I don't buy it. Wow came out in 2004. Tel'Drasil is so large that it probably would reach into space if it were on an actual planet. And the whole tree is in the game. Most of the time you get there via a loading screen because portal is the most practical way of getting there, but you CAN fly up to the top from ocean level, if you wanted to, no loading screens.

Tamriel is probably the largest continent on Nirn. It's a supercontinent. I think it would be as large as both North and South America together if they there were squished right next to each other. Yet it feels absolutely tiny... And I haven't even been to 2/3rds of the zones yet. Elder Scrolls is legendary for a reason and it deserved a game world that actually adheres to the lore and setting. And ESO just... doesn't. It feels very theme-parky. All I'm saying is... yes, I don't expect a real 1:1 scale play environment to an actual continent, but... they could've tried harder.

To put it another way- It's like nothing in this game feels like it is turned up to 11. Like it is all just so meh. No single aspect of it makes you go "woah". The swamps could be more swampy. The giant trees could be more giant. The towers of Summerset could've been more prismatic/rainbow in color, to actually match the lore. The plains of Elsweyr could've been more vast like the great plains in America. Etc.

The game's saving grace are the realms of Oblivion. They offer expansion of the playable world in a fantastical way, in ways not already set into concrete by the world map of Tamriel. There's creative potential there.

--- Conclusion ---

Those are some of my thoughts. I will probably continue to play the game because there's still a lot I haven't experienced, and the main reason I came back is because of the game's housing which I still haven't dug my teeth into yet in any significant capacity (wow's new housing system is really disappointing in many many ways, lol, $75 for a house exterior !! So stupid).

Anyway, thanks for reading.