[Spoiler] Is Cadwell's Almanac a lazy move? Or a brilliant way to let you stick to one character?

Aeradon

I want to experience all the content, but I prefer to make an alt and go through the alliance quests with a character that's made in the respective alliances.

The Almanac forces me to be an undercover of which I do not want to be. It's obviously a design that could not be reversed, but if possible, I would like an alternative alliance related VR1-10 content. (Not Craglorn grinding)

I'm pretty sure the alliance leaders could have more strategies for us to carry out after killing that weakling Molag Bal. Maybe send us into a zone with the presence of opposing alliances to attain more resources? Steal some ancient relics that could aid us in war? I just find the idea of being a spy but it means helping the opposing alliance gain edge over own believes is stupid.

What do you think, fellow adventurers? Any ideas that you would like to share?

Thunderchief

It's brilliant!

I'm glad that I will have the opportunity to see the whole game without have to split allegiance.

pinstripesc

It's brilliant!

Not everyone wants to make 3 toons. It makes their content go a lot further for people who stick to one.

BrassRazoo

It's brilliant!

The best move ever.
I wish it was mandatory to follow it before you could leave a zone.

Ulvich

It's brilliant!

While I think some of the VR questing should be rewritten to better fit my state in the game, I still enjoy it.

Ser Lobo

It's brilliant!

I'm loving it. Buuuttt ....

They could easily begin to add zones that are neutral, and allow you to remain obviously loyal to your alliance.

Side-by-side content isn't necessarily a bad thing. You can do a neutral zone at VR1, or go do the next alliances start zone at VR1 and wait to do the neutral zone at VR12.

Kayira

It's a lazy move.

I am kind of torn. I wished they would have made it available for the people that want to see the alliances but also would have given the opportunity to level in a different zone (not craglorn) for the people that didn't want to do it (due to alts etc).
But I guess that would have required to make double the content and was therefore impossible to achieve by release.
It is not the end of the world, but not the best solution in the long run.
(If you have alts you have to play the entire game 2 times or more... kind of gets boring)

Tannakaobi

It's a lazy move.

It's lazy as hell and why would you want to stick with one character? you would miss out on loads of different combat techniques.

It's the kind of idea a 5 year old would come up with. The one saving grace is that the combat is very good and actually tests the player. But then it's not really a saving grace as I won't be ruining my immersion with such tripe, so will miss out on the extra hard combat. Pah! PVP it is then...

LIQUID741

It's a lazy move.

Utterly lazy, terrible grouping tools, no incentive to use grouping tools in game. And the dungeons have a one and done theme. It's laziness 101.

p.hurst1b16_ESO

It's brilliant!

Nice move to get the chance to see all the content no matter the starting faction.

Need more structure to the game for VR though. Daily dungeon quests and the like.

subecsanur

It's a lazy move.

Due to the fact that there was or still no real end game, this was their easy solution to keep maxed out players to have something to do. Just have them start over in the 2 other starter zones, oh while your at it see what other bugs you can find in the game.

lavosslayer

It's brilliant!

I think its actually a bit of both. I think it presented itself as an extremely easy opportunity to triple the content for a single character in order to buy time to create more, new and interesting content in future patches after launch. It also allowed them the ability to give the players the chance to explore all of Tamriel on one character instead of being locked to just the territories owned by their faction.

I say give the game a bit more time and I'm sure they will have other ways to level without running through all the other factions quests on one character. They have a ton on their plate right now with fixing bugs, creating new content and trying to finish the console ports by the end of the year.

I think (and hope) that once the Justice System, Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood are all in the game, that the concept of having to reach max level (VR12) to participate in "endgame" might begin to dissipate as a necessity for endgame content (except for asinine user/guild requirements) and become more of a status symbol instead of a progression requirement.

ShADoW0s

It's a lazy move.

I rather make ults and experience the game in an another perspective using a different class, rather than using the same spells over and over again.

infraction2008b16_ESO

It's a lazy move.

I think it should be optional tbh, playing the other factions should compliment endgame not be it. They chose the lazy route of recycling levelling content instead of creating new content for vets.

I feel for any vet 10's who actually want to roll an alt...

HorsePhysics

It's brilliant!

What people fail to realize, lorewise, is that it's not putting you in some random situation where none of the things you've done in other quests matter.

'BLAH QQ I HAS NO SOUL WAI U LORE MISTAKES RAAWGHH'

It's not making you go undercover, Meridia explained, "What if you had washed up on different shores, etc etc."

From that alone, you should probably understand that that means you're going to witness what would happen if events had been different, not necessarily straight up putting you in that situation.

Xexpo

It is my understanding that the choice to not have to reroll alts to explore all content was requested by the PTS players.
Thus VR was born. I don't think it's a "lazy move" as they thought they were doing what the players wanted.

It was neither lazy or brilliant.

It's execution was pretty bad though. A needlessly tedious grind that sucks all the fun out of the story.

Sandmanninja

I love it. I have a favorite class and designate a toon as my 'Main'. I like doing all the achieves, etc on that toon. So when I had the chance to do all of the quests, get all of the skyshards, get all of the lore books...on my Main!?!?! yeah, I love it.

Some people I know are power grinding Craglorn bosses. Good on them but I'm getting SO many skills (from shards), more Mage Guild rep (from Lore Books), and just enjoying the other races' quests.

mndfreeze

It's brilliant!

I hate alts. After all the work I put into one I dont want to start over again on a new character, its just not fun for me. I'm glad they found a way for me to be able to experience ALL that other content wihout having to reroll

isengrimb16_ESO

It's brilliant!

It just means I can play badguy while doing vr content on alts. My EP lizard sez screw the green pact, he won't be as understanding as my AD nightblade is.

Shaun98ca2

It's brilliant!

Its a brilliant move. People that want to roll alts still can. Rolling an alt is now repeated content welcome to every mmo that's ever been released. As the game matures more im more than confident there will be alternative ways to level your character. But regardless you still have to do the quests to get the skill points.

Sucks for altaholics

Great for people that hate alts.

How do you propose you please both groups?

Skjoldur

It's a lazy move.

If the game had no classes or the class trees were available to all characters and we could really do and play how and what we want, then it would have been a great move.

As it is, I don't like it. I can't bring myself to play my V1 Templar because I am not 100% sure that this is the character I want to play and doing all this questing and grinding to v12 more than once is, for me, out of the question.

Guppet

It's a lazy move.

I think how they did it was very lazy. That said I'm actually coming round to the idea of not having alts and being able to do everything on my one character is a nice idea.

You just have to be very sure that you are happy with the class you intend to play for the next couple of years. I think that's what causes a lot of issues. A lot of MMO players are very used to having alts for different roles and this is a huge change for them.

I'm actually starting to respect the devs for saying it was to be able to do if all on one character (and this is coming from someone who had 5 characters at max level in most previous MMO's). I kind if hope they flat out say "this is a game to only have one character in, unless you are happy playing an ungodly amount"

They could have implemented if much better though. At max level it should be your faction capital you hang in not another factions capital. I think they will actually fix that though, just may take them done time.

Wolfshead

It's brilliant!

I have say it nice idea to be honest take WoW there is good example that if want to know the other factions story lines you have roll a new char this way you can still progress your char and still see the other factions story lines and why not?

You are not limited to factions when you make a new char/race in ESO so i don't see why this would not work

Bhakura

Didnt vote, dont find it either lazy or brilliant, it just is.
Said this before on another thread. At first i was like, bastud <insert enemy faction here>, for messing with people in my homeland, burning villages, releasing daedra, murdering looting and pillaging and what not.
But then you get to see it from the enemy's point of view and see that your own faction is doing exact the same thing.
Not really a lore geek or anything but i always thought of Meridia as the only good daedra, never had to do anything questionable, never received questionable rewards for questing for her.
Since its Meridias light that takes you to the other alliances one can only assume its Meridias intention of showing you that there is no good side in this war as all sides are guilty of warcrimes. I havent finished the last one yet so dont know if there is mention of this by Cadwell or Meridia after you do, if there is, then i would vote brilliant.

Yakidafi

Can not vote, neither brilliant nor lazy.

I like my game so far.

Imryll

The problem with it is that it's not a choice. I'd rather experience other Alliance content on alts, leaving me with a lack of options for maxing character levels.

I agree with @Bhakura that it's neither brilliant nor lazy. Indeed, "lazy" is on my personal list of forum turn-off terms, along with "disappointed," "promised," "lied" and others I'd list if I had the time. ;-)

RylukShouja

It's brilliant!

"Brilliant" is a bit too severe, but I appreciate being able to experience the other factions' storylines without rolling an alt. I like my character.

And if I ever want to roll an alt, everything will be way faster as I won't have to pay attention to the story again.

Corithna

It's brilliant!

If you're not interested in doing all the content craglorn is a perfect option to grind your way to VR12, you can enter the zone and start up as early as VR1. Just run with your guild, the experience and gear rewards are more then worthwhile. Or build your own groups, large groups work just as well for completing quest content unlike many other mmo's that shall remain nameless. Even if you just jump into combat with those around you it still works out well as everyone gets credit for the contribution they put in.

From a story line perspective it's also brilliant because then everyone is coming from the same starting point instead of from three divergent viewpoints when new content 'hits the shelves' so to speak. *Assuming you've not taken the above advise of course.

I think it also recognizes the fact that the primary source of interested players are arriving from a single player based game. To cut off 2/3rds of the content from their 'hero' would seem an unconscionable betrayal of the series. As players move into VR content if they have not already done so they will find more and more the benefit of teaming up with other players to overcome the content. After all any mmo only really shines when you get players matched up and coordinated, working together to win. This is being approached in the gentlest of possible ways. Giving the die hard solo act plenty of really tough content to work their way through if they are up to the challenge. Craglorn of course is the cut off point where soloing is no longer feasible. But it had to come at some point.

The longer I play this game and indeed any of the elder scrolls games the more I realize that the entire series really is brilliantly put together and thought out. Even if on the surface it seems very simplistic.

Svann

It's brilliant!

I do remember before release the vast majority of complaints about faction regions were that you could not go into the other faction territory to do their quests. I think this is a good way to resolve that complaint. You can do their content, or if you dont like that you can go grind in craglorn. Or you could even do the content in cyrodiil. Its not as difficult as you may have heard.

edit: Im guessing the real problem people have is that they want to get their main to "end game" quickly and then play alts and they feel that running 3 factions worth of questing makes it take too long to reach end game.

red_wolf_sb14a_ESO

It's a lazy move.

IF I wanted to kill members of my chosen faction..... I would have chosen another faction. It is lame and makes me feel like a traitor. Stupid move to be lazy on content development.

Zershar_Vemod

It's a lazy move.

It's lazy.

They should have just done a "you saved the world, we grant you access to our lands, etc." kind of route and followed the aftermath of the events in Coldharbour..

I mean, nothing is wrapped up after defeating Molag Bal...everyone is just standing around in Coldharbour still for all I know.