Many things can be debated about Elder Scrolls Online. We can talk all day about whether you enjoy the combat, the crafting system, the classes, etc. But as my subscription comes to end, which is one I will not be renewing, I prefer to talk about the philosophy and idea behind some of the mind boggling decisions behind the core systems of this game. There are whole design decisions that are bad. This is not something a patch can fix. No, this is something deeper.

Some of these things below are basic MMO things that just have to be there.

• Lack of nameplates above NPCs. Or at least the option to show them. This leads to ridiculous situations when you go to a bank, all you see is 20 or 30 players crowding around a buried NPC banker and you can’t tell who is who.

• No “search” feature using the guild store (auction house) where you can type in the name of what you are looking for.

• Main website and its forums do not have a “server status” up or down indicator, something that every single MMO website has.

• Other players finishing my quests in some areas. You want immersion Zenimax? Well thanks for me getting credit for walking into a room and watching other players do my quest. How is that?

• There are many quests where you should be alone but aren’t. There are also some instances where you are alone for no real reason and should be with a group to fight some battles which have brutal difficulty.

• The grouping tools are a chore to use. Nothing is easy in this game. Ge tin a group, you might not see them. Go to a dungeon and accept the quest. Someone teleports in, they can’t get the quest. Regroup, try again. Too many other oddities to mention. This system NEEDS to be perfect for an MMO.

• Bosses that don’t “reset” properly after you die a couple times. They eventually bug out.

• Cant track more than one quest at a time. I have massive issue with this. Why? Well the immersion thing must have been why it was left out. But tell me this, why can’t I be the one to choose if I want multiple quests showing up on my UI? At least give the option.

• Quest rewards that are not select-able, most of the time you will get an item that does not work for your class or spec.

• No buff or debuff icons, so you can’t tell what you have been afflicted by

• No option for NPC subtitles. This was stubbornly left out of the game for “immersion”… It is in fact, the first modern story driven game I have ever seen in my life where a subtitles option did not exist. I know you can add NPC speech in the chat window, but seriously?

• Reporting a gold seller or anything in chat, Is not a one click thing like ALL other MMOs. In ESO you need to actually create a ticket for each chat spam you report, and you even get a ticket number! Why is this so convoluted? Why can’t you just right click and ignore and report?

• Still issues that MMOs faced 20 years ago. Players standing around, waiting for a special mob to respawn. In some cases so many are waiting you don’t even have time to get a hit in.

• BOTs that are now out in the open world. Many times you will see a “BOT train” where they run on a set pattern. Want to report them? Again, it’s convoluted and not user friendly and discourages me from taking the time to do it. Why are NPC mobs on a set respawn time? This only makes it easier for BOT companies to create these “trains”.

• You can’t level up in multiple areas AND you are pretty much “forced” to explore every single square inch of your zone, or you will fall behind in levels. Leveling should not be a pain. GW2 and WoW make leveling fun; you can go into another races starting area at any time and quest. Zenimax has gone out of their way to make sure you level at exactly the speed THEY want you to level at. Mobs in dungeons also give no experience!

• NPCs are a bit too chatty. Not once did I find an NPC with a simple quest to give me. No, he had to go into detail about the whole history of everything that has happened to him, his companions, the lore of the area in general, and just anything else he wanted to talk about. What happened to me actually “seeing” what is going on?

• Almost every single public dungeon is the same counter-clockwise loop. You walk in, the door you come out of will be on the left side, always.

• A little humility goes a long way. It is refreshing to play Guild Wars 2, World of Warcraft, Rift and Wildstar. When you start the game you aren’t bombarded by two or three splash screens with logos, telling you who made the game.

• Major changes to a class after a patch but did not offer a respec for free. This is a MAJOR MMO no/no and a golden rule.

• Almost every quest is the same. There is always a “spirit” who needs to be put to rest, chalices that need to be lit to summon a bad guy, etc

• Just about very injured NPC is holding their right arm. I guess too much money was spent on voice talent to get more “injured” animations.

• Downloading a 2gb patch. Try clicking on “patch notes”. It takes you to a blank page with this: Patch notes can be read here. No discussions were found. Try clicking on patch notes on any other game, you get a list of detailed patch notes. Even Wildstar in beta. This might be a nitpick, but it is little things like this, little details that say a lot.

Okay so a lot of my complaints might seem trivial. But always remember this. It is better to do 1,000 things 1% better than to do one thing 1,000% better. It is the small things. This is what made games like WoW so popular. They get all of these little details right, and the sum of those details makes for excellent gameplay.

A lot of my complaints can be answered by one thing. Zenimax wanted immersion, and this is why so many things are missing. However, in a stroke of brutal irony, Elder Scrolls Online ends up actually being one of the LEAST immersive MMOs I have ever played. Why? Because I AM the central part of the story. I AM the savior. I GET to kill Molag Bal. Oh yeah, and so does EVERYONE ELSE.

How can you as a company sit there and talk about leaving key things out of an MMO for immersion sake and at the same time have a million of us “heroes” all doing the same thing? Think about interesting it would have been if we were just part of the puzzle, trying to do our best. Imagine a massive fight, like in the cinematic, where the three faction heroes are fighting Molag Bal in the background faded away in glorious depth of field, while we are fighting off Molag Bals army? Would I be upset that I didn’t get to kill him? No way. I would happy because I know I helped. I helped slow down his army along with many other players while the main heroes killed him.

But that’s just one idea really.

So the first major patch, Craglorn and again, another bad idea. A full zone where you are pretty much REQUIRED to explore in a group. That’s right EXPLORE in a group. Does Zenimax not know that exploring is such a personal thing? No two people in the world explore the same. I might want to see whats around this corner and you may not. You might want to climb this little cliff, while I may not, and so on. It’s almost like someone threw the idea out there and not single person really thought about it.

I could go on and on. But believe me, the worst part is, sometimes I love this game. The sunsets, moonlight on the water, and some quests are amazing. That is what makes this even more frustrating. Zenimax had something good here. There are good pieces here, but not all of them fit together.

Someone on the forums said it best the other day:

Its the entirety of their ignorance, lack of foresight, the constant avoidable mistakes, the never learning from their mistakes, the lack of communication, ignoring their players and testers, their messed up priorities, the incompetence of their fixes, lack of effort in dealing with bots, bugs that last for months, and endless bad ideas/designs.

This game could have been amazing, it really could have.