For the love of Elder Scrolls, a journey

Rylana

First off, this is not a goodbye thread. This is a summary of my adventure as it relates to Zenimax online from the beginning of my time in Beta until now.

Last July I heard that ESO was scheduled to go into closed beta soon. I went to their website some time after this and signed up to be a beta tester. I waited patiently for the first round of beta invites, and I was not among them. However, in late October (actually Halloween night, as it happened) I got my beta key emailed to me. I was so excited. I joined the game during the early november session, and the forums the same day (these forums, not reddit)

So we beta tested, and I told all my friends about how awesome the game was (while not revealing too much, per the NDA we had to sign). I got my whole inner circle of online friends excited for the game, some of them even signed up to beta test. And test we did. We went from level 1-10 at least 10 times. I personally leveled the early content a dozen times during closed beta, testing every detail, making reports, commenting on the game, interacting with the developers, etc.

Two weeks before launch we went into Open Beta and the floodgates opened. Oh my god there were so many players in the game. So many in fact that the servers couldnt handle the load and we would get a real taste of what stress testing feels like. Loading screens, frequent disconnects, but hey it was in beta, this was intended right? During this time Cyrodiil was absolutely fantastic. Whole armies (literally 100+ players on all sides) doing glorious battle everywhere on the map. Battles could last hours (some even lasted days!)

Then it came time for launch and early access, everything was wiped, and it was time to get serious. I was a little behind getting into the retail version of the game as I am paid quarterly and not monthly/biweekly. So I got into the game in mid April after my friends had been playing a while. When I got into the game...

Oh let me tell you about the fiasco of just getting into the game. I had to get ahold of customer support not once but twice, just to get my 30 days game time that came with the boxed edition I bought at gamestop. I had the game on the 14th, I could not play until the 17th. Fortunately I was comped a few days of game time for my trouble, as well as some more because of another issue that cropped up with everyone being unable to log in for a few days, it was nice. Free week basically.

Anyway back on point, the whole first two weeks of live were an utter disaster. Between the subscription credit card billing issue, the overload of the servers, and the exploits (duping, botting, phishing, spamming, broken PvP quests that let players farm millions of AP in a few days, etc) the game was imbalanced in favor of the exploiters from day one.

its just a new MMO, this stuff happens. Okay, give them a mulligan. Then me and my friends work our way up to vr10 on our mains, this was the only time in ESO i felt productive and like I had been playing the game as intended (vet content being recycled BS nonwithstanding) i genuinely enjoyed the game, immersion, graphics, combat system, even the broken skills.

Two days later craglorn hits. I had just made vr10 2 days before this and spent a fortune making what I thought would be my end-game equipment. ... now the cap is vr12 and nose to grindstone again, anomaly exploit, dungeon exploit, vet zones deserted, a complete disaster, but at least I got to VR12 in less than 48 hours like so many others.

The "balancing" done to the game at this point, which was really a series of some of the biggest nerfs I have ever seen to classes/skills in MMO history, pissed off more people that I could even imagine. We warned you, you did it anyway.

Then people started quitting. It wasnt subtle either. Guilds I was in literally lost half of their members overnight. I assume it was the first billing cycle after the free time expired for most people. The contrast was staggering. We went from a healthy populated game with people everywhere, to a dead corpse in less than 24 hours. Disillusioned, disenfranchised, just plain bored people left in droves.

Still I continued on, stubborn and determined to make the most of a game I had fallen in love with six months prior. Then the caltrops issue in PvP wrecked that, then the silver shards fiasco, the nerf to DKs (my main is actually my VR9 DK not my vr12 nightblade), I was wearing thin on patience. Every patch became an exercise in damage control and scrambling to fix things broken, adaptation became a running joke. Builds broken, time invested wasted, we might as well have been player wiped and rerolled in some extreme cases.

But I digress, even after all of this I pushed on.

Then 1.2.3 hits. The FPS bug makes Cyrodiil and anything large group oriented completely unplayable. Three weeks pass while Zenimax tries (or so they say) unsuccessfully to eliminate the issue. Ideas are posted, silence is the response, polls and threads are made, more people unsub, the game spirals down.

Today my friends list has three people online, this is in comparison to my first week when I had over 15 online at any given time. All five guilds I am in have lost half of their active players or more, I dont see people where I used to in the numbers I used to, Cyrodiil has become an utter joke. Through all of it I had remained patient, loyal, I had faith.

Then you decide to nerf veteran difficulty into oblivion. World bosses soloable with complete ease (what? I did those in groups my first two runs, that was fun enough, but to nerf it THAT HARD?)

Today I lost that faith. This is not goodbye ZOS, I am still here for the next 17 days, but I am informing you that even after being THAT patient for you to fix your game, I have unsubscribed.

17 days ZOS, and you lose even me, a stubborn bullhead that doesnt know when to quit. Time is running out, and you need to get on this now, not tomorrow, not next week, not after QuakeCon.

That is all. Let the trolling commence. Also inb4lock (not a goodbye thread btw mods)