Endgame - What ESO lacks. (compared with WoW)

Kevin_of_Devinshire · January 2017

Serious question: Why are we always comparing ESO to "that" game? What about being more original?

Vaoh · January 2017

Kevin_of_Devinshire wrote: »

Serious question: Why are we always comparing ESO to "that" game? What about being more original?

Because, if being "original" actually means "our endgame PvE community is almost dead due to lack of content and we love it", or "Our PvP community is easily 15x-20x smaller than it was at launch and we don't want to fix it", I don't think being original is very smart. Yes your casual PvE community is nice at the expense of all else, but it's impossible to mess that up in an Elder Scrolls game. ESO was born to succeed in this category.

Rather, learning from the mistakes of other games tends to be a good idea.

Hlaadriel · January 2017

Vaoh wrote: »

That 5% can grow tremedously. ZOS just needs to kickstart the change and support it.

That is where our opinions diverge. I do not believe that this number can grow significantly enough for ZOS to actually invest in it. If there would be 20% of the population queueing for raids in vet mode, then they probably would. But for 5 % of the population, it is not worth the effort on an economical scale (Don't get me wrong, I'd love more end game). I do not even believe we are 5%, but I have no way of proving this, though with the amount of trading guilds that are max pop, I think we are less than 5%. End-game and raid require a lot of time and dedication, that some players do not have. I hear/see of a lot of very good players that do not bother because they don't want to spend 1 hour+ in a raid to clear it. (I count the time setting up the group; which usually takes 10-15 minutes even on organized raids. + the raid + the decon;sale;bank... etc...)

Vaoh wrote: »

Same goes for PvP. They had things going great but stopped bothering to update/provide new content. Coincidentally, no one plays either anymore compared to the casual PvE. Those two communities are in pieces atm.

no idea, I rarely PvP

Vaoh wrote: »

It's fun to run with them, but there's no reason for it to be this bad. AND I'm friends with practically everyone amongst the endgame players and have tons of people I know in every high-end PvE guild. Imagine someone without the reputation I have amongst people in these guilds. Almost zero chance of even attempting this type of content for them even if they know how to complete it.

I see raid guilds recruiting and teaching, they just don't do it en masse, but usually 1 or 2 players max at a time. Otherwise it would be pugging (Although I've been in pugs doing vSO HM with average DPS being 14k on the serpent, and most of the group not knowing the mechanics and some low CPs, but yeah, that was a 2 hours+ run and at the bottom of the leaderboard

)

Again, I do believe that ZOS is trying to please a bit everyone, but they also realise where their money (hence their paychecks) is coming from, that is not endgame raiders, nor PvPers. So they will focus on what 80% of the population that plays this game wants: PvE that feels like Skyrim and Oblivion... and a new Atronach mount.

Ozstryker · January 2017

If you are a "endgame" player its fair to say we want more content....more options at max level, every MMO's forum is full of such threads... But, to compare these two games is really unfair!..
Warcraft did not get its *** together till BC, before that it was a horrid mess.. There were 5-6 dungeons, and I believe only 1 raid, and all were hopelessly buggy, maintanence went on for days sometimes, I'm sure, like me people only stayed cos there were no alternatives, in today's market.. Warcraft would not have made it, bold statement.. But true!!
So comparatively what ESO has achieved (and learned from other MMOs) at this point is not deserving of such a comparison, im sure the devs will try to please all players eventually. give it time.. It can only go one of two ways!..

Iphoites · January 2017

Hope there are no hardcore WoW fanboys out there, but;

(Haven't played Legion, so I am not fully aware of the current state of the game)

That so-called content richness in WoW was mostly deadweight. You simply did not gain anything doing dungeons at endgame, pvp was a PitA and so forth. The only thing that actually made you/ helped you feel like you progress was the same few raids which you could only finish once a week. So imagine you're in an incompetent guild; you would try the first raid again and again and maybe kill 3 bosses of the raid and quit, then do the same bosses next week because your team is undergeared and you have to farm those bosses & they're the only things you can kill.
In fact, in no other game had I been so bored with the content. So when people say `content`, I do not know what the hell they're talking about.

Wifeaggro13 · January 2017

Hlaadriel wrote: »

Vaoh wrote: »

You would also be very wrong. Many players (that dying endgame community, duh) would LOVE more trials/dungeons in a timely manner. Working on actual content instead of Crown Store-focused content like mounts or player housing. It'd actually keep people playing.

That "dying community" is actually less than 1% of the amount of players. Sure they sub, but all in all that amount of players is a negligeable amount. When Zos takes a business decision to add content, do you think that they prefer to loose 99% of their players due to gated content like WoW raids, or that they wouldn't mind too much loosing the 1% of hardcore raiders because vMoL is a faceroll.

So, yeah, I would love more end game content as well. But then, I also know that I represent less than 1% that actually want that.

As for endgame content, I believe, you forgot DSA and MA.

Ok who says it's 1%of the community. 1% of the community is doing the undaunted dailies? That's bs ,and far more do normal trials pre Tam one those normal trials were running all day every day .the only reason more people are not doing trials is because that community left the game . When the next churn base hits the wall and gets into trials more will be playing. You under estimate this player base. It's a large reason eso went B2p. The community hit the garbage end game and left in a mass exodus.

Bam_Bam · January 2017

Screw WoW.

Wifeaggro13 · January 2017

Baranthus wrote: »

Screw WoW.

I agree but it does not change the fact Zos is back door ing their customers.

idk · January 2017

akl77 wrote: »

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

akl77 wrote: »

After 6 months of ESO, that's the end of ESO life, max levelled, nothing new to learn or do. It's time to throw the game away.
But I didn't, why? Cos there's no alternative mmo medieval game out there on PS4.
Dark souls 3 is great, but not enough mmo elements.

I agree many of us are here because there is not an alternative. However, i would be surprised if one has seen all and done all in a mere 6 months of playing the game. I can tell you vMoL is a lot of fun and few that started the game 6 months ago have cleared it in HM.

Thanks for the insights. I've done all the trials in normal versions, but the impression they gave me are just button smashers every single seconds for the time you spent in that trial dungeon.
I'm a healer so just basically spam healing springs and breath of life in each trials, so team mates survive. It's kinda lame, no brain and skill involved, so I prefer 4 man dungeon, where you can actually play with tactics.

@akl77 proper healing is much more than spaming healing springs and a BoL.

Additionally, the normal modes basically permit the group to ignore most mechanics so yes, it makes sense you'd see it as a basic stack and burn. They serve a differnt purpose.

Vet trials are intended to be more of a challenge. I guarantee you would find vMoL a greater challenge to heal. Good area awareness is required to keep your self alive.

Earlier you've said that after 6 months it's the end of ESO for you. And you have only done normal trials and have the "button smasher" oppinion. I can say for certain you have much left to do. Much with challenging your healing and playing the game.

Taternater · January 2017

MMO's can't perform as well as WoW by trying to copy WoW. WoW has so many resources that they would blow any copycat out of the water. So stop trying to convince the game developers to make end game content like WoW.

Hlaadriel · January 2017

Wifeaggro13 wrote: »

Ok who says it's 1%of the community. 1% of the community is doing the undaunted dailies? That's bs ,and far more do normal trials pre Tam one those normal trials were running all day every day .the only reason more people are not doing trials is because that community left the game . When the next churn base hits the wall and gets into trials more will be playing. You under estimate this player base. It's a large reason eso went B2p. The community hit the garbage end game and left in a mass exodus.

Err, we are not talking about undaunted dailies, those are not end game as most of them can be soloed. But more like vMoL HM. The OP is complaining that there is not enough new content or not enough challenging raids in different format (12 to 24 people raid). And that most raid guilds are either quite empty or left the game.

Otherwise, normal Trials are not end game content. As for why people were running nTrials before T1 is that you could scale them down to lvl 3 by using a new toon, but all other players would get CP160 gear from the reward box at the end. (I would run 8 nMoL and 8 nSO a day for that, created a new toon every day)

Nowadays you have a couple of nTrials groups being asked. but not much more. as for vSO, I PuG it sometimes, vMoL I never PuG, too challenging.

The thing is, that there is not really a wall I feel, A lot of the base (afaik, again I don't pretend to know all players, just what I can see from zoned) are actually happy running the dailies and trying the occasional DLC dungeons that are harder, or occassional nTrial sometimes. But once you ran 3 dailies on 2 alts, most likely you already clocked 2,5 hours of game time.... so not much time to do vMoL afterwards.

Dawnblade · January 2017

dennissomb16_ESO wrote: »

WoW simply runs a different model then ESO. WoW expansion are 2 years apart and you pay about $50.00 U.S. for each expansion. All the previous content from previous expansions become basically useless. It is nice to count the dozens of dungeons and raids from previous expansions except they mean nothing as they do not scale up so people only run them for old appearences and achievements (usually solo including raids)

When a new WoW expansion drops players get about a year of fun and then complain for a year about lack of content while waiting for the next expansion (and you see subscriptions start to drop).

In the end however it is simple money. WoW has had a much larger player base paying 15 dollars a month for 12 years then any western MMO on the market. Add in $250 million dollars a year from selling extras like pets etc (that number is on public records) and they can easily afford a much larger development team then ESO will ever have

Pretty much this...two major western studios have tried capture a significant chunk of the WoW market in the past five to ten years (ESO and SWTOR), both backed by very large initial investments and lengthy development, and with large built in audiences based on existing IP.

And yet both failed in the sense they were not able to capture and retain the millions of ongoing paying subscriptions required to continue to justify the investment that is required to develop and release content the size and magnitude of WoW expansions.

The financials for non-WoW sized games just don't add up to support the same level of development - it just is what it is. So games like ESO have a very large and well done base game, but won't ever see the same scale of content expansions that WoW does simply because the developer can't justify the expense against the smaller player base.

Balamoor · January 2017

Vaoh wrote: »

Everything here is based on research I did on WoW. If I got some facts wrong please let me know. Pretty sure it's all sadly accurate.

WoW is an extremely successful MMO. Though I have never played it, I'd hope someday in the future ESO could have nearly as many active players. Of course, the treatment of PvP balance and (more importantly) *game performance* has unfortunateIy crushed any hope of this ever happening. One thing that has come to my attention though recently was the sheer amount of group content in WoW - specifically Dungeons and Raids (aka Trials).

Upon doing some research, I found some shocking facts about WoW's PvE endgame compared to ESO.

This is with regards to just how many Dungeons and Raids you can run in both ESO and WoW.

ESO
Base Game + everything up until the first purchaseable DLC: 16 Dungeons (half have Tier I & II versions), 3 Raids
Imperial City: 2 Dungeons, 0 Raids
Orsinium: 0 Dungeons, 0 Raids
Thieves Guild: 0 Dungeons, 1 Raid
Dark Brotherhood: 0 Dungeons, 0 Raids
Shadows of the Hist: 2 Dungeons, 0 Raids
Total - 20 Dungeons (28 if counting duplicate dungeons via Tier I & II), 4 Raids

WoW
Classic: 20 Dungeons, 5 Raids (more than current ESO)
The Burning Crusade: 16 Dungeons, 8 Raids
Wrath of the Lich King: 16 Dungeons, 9 Raids
Cataclysm: 14 Dungeons, 6 Raids
Mists of Pandaria: 9 Dungeons, 5 Raids, 18 scenarios
Warlords of Draenor: 8 Dungeons, 3 Raids
Legion: 11 Dungeons, 3 Raids
Total - 94 Dungeons, 39 Raids

They also use different player counts for group content.....

In ESO:
Dungeons: 4 players
Raids(Trials): 12 players

In WoW:
Scenarios: 3 players
Dungeons: 5 players
Raids(Trials):
10 players only (two raids)
25 players only (seven raids)
10 or 25 players (nineteen raids)
10-30 player w/ scaling based on amount of players (four raids)
40 player (three raids)

I fully understand that WoW has been out much longer than ESO..... but why is ESO so lacking on endgame content!? This is not due to how much longer WoW has been out, but rather the pacing of ESO launching endgame content. We have 4 raids and the fifth is likely coming with our future Vvardenfell DLC, due late 2017 or even farther. In other words, we will have 5 raids (if not still 4) in ESO at the end of 2017.

On top of this, WoW has included all of their expansions (each of which are larger than all of ESO's DLC combined) into the base game for free except for the most recent "Legion" expansion. Sometime when the next expansion releases, they will undoubtedly make Legion part of base game WoW as well. ESO will never do something like this with their DLC.

..... I guess the point of this post is this - why is ESO so ridiculously slow at releasing endgame group content? This is why the player count is far smaller right now than it ever should've been. ZOS crippled game performance (most notably in PvP) and forced the endgame for most players into PvE since PvP turned into a mess.

We have only 4 Raids and they're all too unrewarding for most players to bother with. The Group Dungeons are all easy for endgame players except maybe some of the DLC dungeons. You also lose gold when you run Trials because there's no BoE loot and you need to chug Potions throughout your runs. How can ESO's raid content maintain a healthy endgame playerbase when there's so little of it and it serves as a gold sink?

Looking up the content WoW contains has definitely put ESO's endgame in perspective for me. The base game was perfect in terms of content, but since then there has been a miniscule amount of effort put into endgame. I can think of tons of good players I know who would've never quit if even a quarter of the amount of dungeons/raids were released to ESO in the same timespan that WoW releases them.

Please tell me I am missing somethimg huge in all of this. As far as I'm concerned, ESO would do amazingly well if it had 4x the current amount of dungeons and 10x the amount of trials including those with 2-3x the amount of players in them.

I love ESO, but it's no secret how poorly the endgame community is doing. Trials are as empty as the PvP population now due to lack of content and incentive. Personally, endgame PvE is all that's left for me. Please revive the endgame community and revise your policy of 2-4 dungeons/1 trial (max) per year. Add more and be serious about endgame to guarantee some longetivity for ESO. The "Elder Scrolls" name can only carry this game so much farther when content runs unbelievably dry and PvP is painfully neglected.

....that is all

Wow Is a Raid or Die MMO ESO isn't.

Personally I find WoW boring as hell, I love playing ESO You can have an Elder game that isn't raid or PVP centric ...it's just that Raiders and PVPers think everything belongs to them.

Opinions happen

Wifeaggro13 · January 2017

Hlaadriel wrote: »

Wifeaggro13 wrote: »

Ok who says it's 1%of the community. 1% of the community is doing the undaunted dailies? That's bs ,and far more do normal trials pre Tam one those normal trials were running all day every day .the only reason more people are not doing trials is because that community left the game . When the next churn base hits the wall and gets into trials more will be playing. You under estimate this player base. It's a large reason eso went B2p. The community hit the garbage end game and left in a mass exodus.

Err, we are not talking about undaunted dailies, those are not end game as most of them can be soloed. But more like vMoL HM. The OP is complaining that there is not enough new content or not enough challenging raids in different format (12 to 24 people raid). And that most raid guilds are either quite empty or left the game.

Otherwise, normal Trials are not end game content. As for why people were running nTrials before T1 is that you could scale them down to lvl 3 by using a new toon, but all other players would get CP160 gear from the reward box at the end. (I would run 8 nMoL and 8 nSO a day for that, created a new toon every day)

Nowadays you have a couple of nTrials groups being asked. but not much more. as for vSO, I PuG it sometimes, vMoL I never PuG, too challenging.

The thing is, that there is not really a wall I feel, A lot of the base (afaik, again I don't pretend to know all players, just what I can see from zoned) are actually happy running the dailies and trying the occasional DLC dungeons that are harder, or occassional nTrial sometimes. But once you ran 3 dailies on 2 alts, most likely you already clocked 2,5 hours of game time.... so not much time to do vMoL afterwards.

Typically in MMO's end game is the latest 3 raids in the tier and the latest dungeons at the upper tier. one trial on hard mode does not constitue an end game dynamic. we have a different understanding. mostly end game activites in MMO's constitute the content available for the max player in a group dynamic end game or single group. historically that is thats the way end game was viewed even in ESO at launch thier end game was viewed as the VR dungeons, the trials and their adventure zones. so if your basing end game of just Vmols then i would suspect its a very small percentage of players doing it. mostly because a large part of that community moved on due to lack of valuable content.

Wifeaggro13 · January 2017

Dawnblade wrote: »

dennissomb16_ESO wrote: »

WoW simply runs a different model then ESO. WoW expansion are 2 years apart and you pay about $50.00 U.S. for each expansion. All the previous content from previous expansions become basically useless. It is nice to count the dozens of dungeons and raids from previous expansions except they mean nothing as they do not scale up so people only run them for old appearences and achievements (usually solo including raids)

When a new WoW expansion drops players get about a year of fun and then complain for a year about lack of content while waiting for the next expansion (and you see subscriptions start to drop).

In the end however it is simple money. WoW has had a much larger player base paying 15 dollars a month for 12 years then any western MMO on the market. Add in $250 million dollars a year from selling extras like pets etc (that number is on public records) and they can easily afford a much larger development team then ESO will ever have

Pretty much this...two major western studios have tried capture a significant chunk of the WoW market in the past five to ten years (ESO and SWTOR), both backed by very large initial investments and lengthy development, and with large built in audiences based on existing IP.

And yet both failed in the sense they were not able to capture and retain the millions of ongoing paying subscriptions required to continue to justify the investment that is required to develop and release content the size and magnitude of WoW expansions.

The financials for non-WoW sized games just don't add up to support the same level of development - it just is what it is. So games like ESO have a very large and well done base game, but won't ever see the same scale of content expansions that WoW does simply because the developer can't justify the expense against the smaller player base.

thats a bunch of dung. Much smaller games have managed to pump out large scale Expansions, with layered AA systems, level increases , 3 x the dungeons, 3x the raid, multiple tiers of crafting , housing, new starting area's , new races, new class abilities,,3 x the solo content and questing , while managing a huge class system, multiple roles . all with much smaller sales of the game much smaller budgets and with a stable subscription base fluctiating fro 300k to 500k. they did this in the same 3 year time frame stayed profitable for years and continue to enrich and expand their games still to this day.

this is an issue of corporate genre development. make as much money as you can with as little effort as possible charge out the eyes for cosmetics while still offering a sub and prey on the foolish with gambling crates for items that cannot be obtained by playing the game. ZOS is not some innocent developer that got caught in a bad market and had a flop of a MMO. this game sold 1.2 millino copies out of the gate on PC then another chunk on console. all the while over charging DLC's on content they said would be in the game with in thier first year launch plans prior to launching.

Both ESO and Swtor are run by corporate greed , big money publishers.

dday3six · January 2017

Kevin_of_Devinshire wrote: »

Serious question: Why are we always comparing ESO to "that" game? What about being more original?

Because being original or different doesn't always translate to game being worth long term investment.

Also ZOS marketed ESO as an MMO, and like it or not WOW is the standard by which most judge MMOs. Yes timing played a big part in their success, but so did a collection of elements that as of yet no one has been able to replicate to equally measurable success.

LegacyDM · January 2017

Vaoh wrote: »

Everything here is based on research I did on WoW. If I got some facts wrong please let me know. Pretty sure it's all sadly accurate.

WoW is an extremely successful MMO. Though I have never played it, I'd hope someday in the future ESO could have nearly as many active players. Of course, the treatment of PvP balance and (more importantly) *game performance* has unfortunateIy crushed any hope of this ever happening. One thing that has come to my attention though recently was the sheer amount of group content in WoW - specifically Dungeons and Raids (aka Trials).

Upon doing some research, I found some shocking facts about WoW's PvE endgame compared to ESO.

This is with regards to just how many Dungeons and Raids you can run in both ESO and WoW.

ESO
Base Game + everything up until the first purchaseable DLC: 16 Dungeons (half have Tier I & II versions), 3 Raids
Imperial City: 2 Dungeons, 0 Raids
Orsinium: 0 Dungeons, 0 Raids
Thieves Guild: 0 Dungeons, 1 Raid
Dark Brotherhood: 0 Dungeons, 0 Raids
Shadows of the Hist: 2 Dungeons, 0 Raids
Total - 20 Dungeons (28 if counting duplicate dungeons via Tier I & II), 4 Raids

WoW
Classic: 20 Dungeons, 5 Raids (more than current ESO)
The Burning Crusade: 16 Dungeons, 8 Raids
Wrath of the Lich King: 16 Dungeons, 9 Raids
Cataclysm: 14 Dungeons, 6 Raids
Mists of Pandaria: 9 Dungeons, 5 Raids, 18 scenarios
Warlords of Draenor: 8 Dungeons, 3 Raids
Legion: 11 Dungeons, 3 Raids
Total - 94 Dungeons, 39 Raids

They also use different player counts for group content.....

In ESO:
Dungeons: 4 players
Raids(Trials): 12 players

In WoW:
Scenarios: 3 players
Dungeons: 5 players
Raids(Trials):
10 players only (two raids)
25 players only (seven raids)
10 or 25 players (nineteen raids)
10-30 player w/ scaling based on amount of players (four raids)
40 player (three raids)

I fully understand that WoW has been out much longer than ESO..... but why is ESO so lacking on endgame content!?

budget cuts. Bethesda spent a lot of money upfront making eso with certain features. The today's model is sink 150 mill into making an mmorpg and then go into a sustain/maintenance mode with a dev skeleton crew after launch. Zenimax trickles just enough dlc content to entice new players and keep the most dedicated. They just don't have the dev bandwidth to play dungeon catch up to wow. It's a budget decision.

Dreyloch · January 2017

Vaoh wrote: »

Everything here is based on research I did on WoW. If I got some facts wrong please let me know. Pretty sure it's all sadly accurate.

WoW is an extremely successful MMO. Though I have never played it, I'd hope someday in the future ESO could have nearly as many active players. Of course, the treatment of PvP balance and (more importantly) *game performance* has unfortunateIy crushed any hope of this ever happening. One thing that has come to my attention though recently was the sheer amount of group content in WoW - specifically Dungeons and Raids (aka Trials).

Upon doing some research, I found some shocking facts about WoW's PvE endgame compared to ESO.

This is with regards to just how many Dungeons and Raids you can run in both ESO and WoW.

ESO
Base Game + everything up until the first purchaseable DLC: 16 Dungeons (half have Tier I & II versions), 3 Raids
Imperial City: 2 Dungeons, 0 Raids
Orsinium: 0 Dungeons, 0 Raids
Thieves Guild: 0 Dungeons, 1 Raid
Dark Brotherhood: 0 Dungeons, 0 Raids
Shadows of the Hist: 2 Dungeons, 0 Raids
Total - 20 Dungeons (28 if counting duplicate dungeons via Tier I & II), 4 Raids

WoW
Classic: 20 Dungeons, 5 Raids (more than current ESO)
The Burning Crusade: 16 Dungeons, 8 Raids
Wrath of the Lich King: 16 Dungeons, 9 Raids
Cataclysm: 14 Dungeons, 6 Raids
Mists of Pandaria: 9 Dungeons, 5 Raids, 18 scenarios
Warlords of Draenor: 8 Dungeons, 3 Raids
Legion: 11 Dungeons, 3 Raids
Total - 94 Dungeons, 39 Raids

They also use different player counts for group content.....

In ESO:
Dungeons: 4 players
Raids(Trials): 12 players

In WoW:
Scenarios: 3 players
Dungeons: 5 players
Raids(Trials):
10 players only (two raids)
25 players only (seven raids)
10 or 25 players (nineteen raids)
10-30 player w/ scaling based on amount of players (four raids)
40 player (three raids)

I fully understand that WoW has been out much longer than ESO..... but why is ESO so lacking on endgame content!? This is not due to how much longer WoW has been out, but rather the pacing of ESO launching endgame content. We have 4 raids and the fifth is likely coming with our future Vvardenfell DLC, due late 2017 or even farther. In other words, we will have 5 raids (if not still 4) in ESO at the end of 2017.

On top of this, WoW has included all of their expansions (each of which are larger than all of ESO's DLC combined) into the base game for free except for the most recent "Legion" expansion. Sometime when the next expansion releases, they will undoubtedly make Legion part of base game WoW as well. ESO will never do something like this with their DLC.

..... I guess the point of this post is this - why is ESO so ridiculously slow at releasing endgame group content? This is why the player count is far smaller right now than it ever should've been. ZOS crippled game performance (most notably in PvP) and forced the endgame for most players into PvE since PvP turned into a mess.

We have only 4 Raids and they're all too unrewarding for most players to bother with. The Group Dungeons are all easy for endgame players except maybe some of the DLC dungeons. You also lose gold when you run Trials because there's no BoE loot and you need to chug Potions throughout your runs. How can ESO's raid content maintain a healthy endgame playerbase when there's so little of it and it serves as a gold sink?

Looking up the content WoW contains has definitely put ESO's endgame in perspective for me. The base game was perfect in terms of content, but since then there has been a miniscule amount of effort put into endgame. I can think of tons of good players I know who would've never quit if even a quarter of the amount of dungeons/raids were released to ESO in the same timespan that WoW releases them.

Please tell me I am missing somethimg huge in all of this. As far as I'm concerned, ESO would do amazingly well if it had 4x the current amount of dungeons and 10x the amount of trials including those with 2-3x the amount of players in them.

I love ESO, but it's no secret how poorly the endgame community is doing. Trials are as empty as the PvP population now due to lack of content and incentive. Personally, endgame PvE is all that's left for me. Please revive the endgame community and revise your policy of 2-4 dungeons/1 trial (max) per year. Add more and be serious about endgame to guarantee some longetivity for ESO. The "Elder Scrolls" name can only carry this game so much farther when content runs unbelievably dry and PvP is painfully neglected.

....that is all

I will start off by agreeing that ESO lacks severely in end game raid type areas. There is also a major lack in the complexity of the scripts and encounters as compared to many other MMO's I've played. (never played WoW myself either, but Rift, EQ1 and 2 make up for my thoughts here). I've run all of the ESO trials at least once. But I came to ESO for the PvP. More on that later.

It's my opinion that the ESO Dev''s wanted to get away from the traditional "new expansion, go get new gear" grind that most previous games employ to keep subscribers going. For the old MMO's, this was the carrot we all strived for. Especially full time PvE raiding guilds. There was also the pride in "defeating it first" when it came to the boss mobs. None of this compares to the very earliest games like Everquest 1 where you sat in a dungeon for hours (sometimes a day or 2) just to get an RNG drop off a special spawning mob that occurred maybe once an hour. No one wants to do that anymore.

This is also why all of the content now scales to your level. There is no more grinding of levels with each DLC/expansion. The problem atm is getting the CP's specc'd right, and having enough of them to overcome some of the harder content like the DLC dungeons.

But I came here for the PvP. When I tried the beta I was totally hooked. Siege engines being used to destroy walls and doors? Anti-personel oil pots and catapults? Are you kidding me? This was the best pvp I've ever witnessed. I don't think I could say that about any other MMO out there except Aion (winged players fighting in ariel combat), and perhaps DAoC. Which I didn't play long enough to get into the siege and keep combat. It was a pioneer in that respect, and many believe the best PvP to exsist. We all pray CU will pick up the torch soon.

bulbousb16_ESO · January 2017

What ESO lacks... compared to WoW...

A whole lot of SUCK!

Letholdrus · January 2017

Many hours of repetitively wiping and zerging for at least two evenings a week, every week; plus grinding other PVE content to farm mats for alchemy flasks and enchants during 'off nights' is all that WoW really have as an end game.

You need to run normal dungeons over and over to gear for heroic dungeons. Then you need to run heroic dungeons over and over to get the right ilvl for raiding. You need to repeat this so that everybody in your guild have the right ilvl.

Now you can start raiding just to wipe and zerg your way through normal to be able to do the same in heroic and then to be able to do mythic raids.

Buy the time you start doing mythic raids you are so sick of the content and burned out on its sameness that it does not even feel fun playing anymore, the thing is you invested to much time already and the rest of the guild as well, that you push through even though everybody really dislike the content at this stage.

Only the very best professional (these guys do it as a job) guilds can clear all the content up to mythic in a couple of weeks, but downing the final boss on mythic does not mean everybody in the guild is wearing BIS mythic gear yet, so to do that the mythic raid's same bosses are repetitively done over and over to gear everybody in BIS mythic (if you are lucky and the guild did not break up yet due to being burned out in the content).

So yeah, I had my fair share of WoW raiding, initially it was fun learning the boss mechanics and trying to be as high up on Recount as possible, but after running the same boss for the 50'th time it becomes very stale.

Blizzard does competitive raiding extremely well, there are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly they make all the spell and ability info publicly available. This allows tools like simulationcraft to exist. They continuously on a weekly basis tweak the classes via hot fixes to ensure that there are no abnormal OP classes (yes some classes will perform better on single target and some will be better on AOE targets, but they even this out). They continuously tweak the boss fights and mechanics. They take immediate decisive action when guilds used exploits on boss fights. The combat system with a global cool down of 1.5 seconds between abilities as well as having skills with various cool downs for all classes helps to 'absorb' latency due to networking, this is due to the fact that although the global cool down is 1.5 seconds you can press the next ability after 1 second and it will be 'queued up'. A person with a lower latency will still have an advantage due to seeing things faster, but it is not that much. You can test this in simualationcraft by increasing your latency from 20 ms to 250 ms, it is only a 2% loss in DPS for most classes.

The above is some of the things that makes WoW an E-sports grade MMO.

But is this really fun? Well it depends on what you want to do. If you are the extremely competitive type and the actual game lore and questing is less important to you then the 'fairness' of the game mechanics then you will love WoW. You will actually do yourself in buy not playing and taking part in progression raiding in WoW. Nobody can out-WoW WoW.

If however you want to roam a fantasy world and develop your character on multiple levels and not just BIS gear, meet new and interesting NPCs and other players. Enjoy the ride from level 1 to 50 + CP instead of trying to get to max level as soon as possible to start the endless gear mill over and over and over and over then ESO will give you much more enjoyment.

I really do not want ESO try to become WoW, I want ESO to keep on giving me more TES goodness in the form of voice acted interesting quests, excellent world exploration, great crafting system (now with homestead even greater). The fact that I can (and I do every single day) join up with people and run dungeons, trails or just help a friend level a new character without penalty to me due to level scaling is awesome. ESO provides me with a fantastical world away from reality for a couple of hours every day.

When I get the competitive urge feeling I fire up WoW and pug some raids, however with the massive grind they caused due to artifact power in WoW, this is sadly becoming more difficult as all of the pugs need you to have a minimum amount of artifact knowledge and ilvl. Due to WoWs extremely competitive and very toxic community (largely due to its competitiveness) people very rarely want to give you a chance in a raid spot if you don't have ahead of the curve achievement plus at least 15 ilvls above what is required for the raid you want to pug...

tl;dr
WoW only has its endless gear mill as its only endgame.
ESO is a fantastical world away from reality.

Robbmrp · January 2017

I played WoW from 2003 until 2009. It was a great game at first but then got old really quickly. Not as quickly as ESO got old though. After starting in 2014 and playing for two years I find myself on the game less and less. The End Game content as you mention is clearly not there as it was with WoW.

Blizzard has taken a long time to get to where they are and deserve to reap those rewards. If WoW had combat mechanics like ESO does, I'd have never left them. You can't dodge, block or really attack as they were all automated attacks with spell casting and GCD's. The graphics for WoW are really good but ESO is more adult oriented and realistic to me while WoW seems cartoony.

Also to note, Blizzard puts out almost as many dungeons in each expansion as the game was originally released with. ZOS is lucky to do 4-8 per year. Granted these WoW expansions took longer to come down to us, but contained a lot more content. One of the WoW expansions is equivalent to all of the DLC's that have been released to date. All of the bold listed below are expansions.

Vaoh wrote: »

WoW
Classic: 20 Dungeons, 5 Raids (more than current ESO)
The Burning Crusade: 16 Dungeons, 8 Raids
Wrath of the Lich King: 16 Dungeons, 9 Raids
Cataclysm: 14 Dungeons, 6 Raids
Mists of Pandaria: 9 Dungeons, 5 Raids, 18 scenarios
Warlords of Draenor: 8 Dungeons, 3 Raids
Legion: 11 Dungeons, 3 Raids
Total - 94 Dungeons, 39 Raids

WoW has had 13 years to get to where they are now while ESO has only had 3 since release. Considering where ESO is at now, I can't imagine that ZOS will be anywhere close to Blizzards level of WoW a decade from now. In that time, we'd be lucky to have half of the dungeons and raids available to us in comparison to WoW after 13 years.

The studio just doesn't have the manpower, direction or it seems the desire to get to WoW's level of a MMO. This is my viewpoint on them from what I've seen the past 3 years.

xenowarrior92eb17_ESO · January 2017

nice post and sadly zos will ignore it 100% as always... I choose to quit eso after 15h/day play since early access cuz I cant take it anymore I am a pvp player yet pvp was destroyed so I was forced to sit in pve but the pve lacks content and rewards sure we have some *** 4 trials but reason why ppl don't bother becoming good and get serious at it is cuz u don't *** need *** from them unless u want alkosh gold jewelery and if u need Ia/VO gold jewelery u hm vso since serpent is the best way to do that and super ez to do it... this is *** and as a vet player I can say that I am *** done... I spent money I spent time I spent hope and every time since the game got 6 months old I only got disappointment covered with sweet lies and false hopes... "we changing and improving pvp" look how far that got... cyrodill is a barren *** wasteland and IC is nothing but a broken plane used by some lazy weed farmers on EP , actually I wont even start talking about it... everything got said in this thread and tbh I still hope ESO will change but I'm afraid zos doesn't have the luxury of time for that..they already *** it up for 2 years over and over and community lost faith...unless a drastic change will happen and I doubt it will cuz that requires time and money investment...2 things zos will never do cuz they only think of fast ways to squeeze fast cash out of filthy casuals... best players for them? thee who buy the game and never play the game.

Malamar1229 · January 2017

#1 reason i play this game is because it is not WoW.

im not a teso fan, never really played titles prior to this

Wifeaggro13 · January 2017

Letholdrus wrote: »

Many hours of repetitively wiping and zerging for at least two evenings a week, every week; plus grinding other PVE content to farm mats for alchemy flasks and enchants during 'off nights' is all that WoW really have as an end game.

You need to run normal dungeons over and over to gear for heroic dungeons. Then you need to run heroic dungeons over and over to get the right ilvl for raiding. You need to repeat this so that everybody in your guild have the right ilvl.

Now you can start raiding just to wipe and zerg your way through normal to be able to do the same in heroic and then to be able to do mythic raids.

Buy the time you start doing mythic raids you are so sick of the content and burned out on its sameness that it does not even feel fun playing anymore, the thing is you invested to much time already and the rest of the guild as well, that you push through even though everybody really dislike the content at this stage.

Only the very best professional (these guys do it as a job) guilds can clear all the content up to mythic in a couple of weeks, but downing the final boss on mythic does not mean everybody in the guild is wearing BIS mythic gear yet, so to do that the mythic raid's same bosses are repetitively done over and over to gear everybody in BIS mythic (if you are lucky and the guild did not break up yet due to being burned out in the content).

So yeah, I had my fair share of WoW raiding, initially it was fun learning the boss mechanics and trying to be as high up on Recount as possible, but after running the same boss for the 50'th time it becomes very stale.

Blizzard does competitive raiding extremely well, there are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly they make all the spell and ability info publicly available. This allows tools like simulationcraft to exist. They continuously on a weekly basis tweak the classes via hot fixes to ensure that there are no abnormal OP classes (yes some classes will perform better on single target and some will be better on AOE targets, but they even this out). They continuously tweak the boss fights and mechanics. They take immediate decisive action when guilds used exploits on boss fights. The combat system with a global cool down of 1.5 seconds between abilities as well as having skills with various cool downs for all classes helps to 'absorb' latency due to networking, this is due to the fact that although the global cool down is 1.5 seconds you can press the next ability after 1 second and it will be 'queued up'. A person with a lower latency will still have an advantage due to seeing things faster, but it is not that much. You can test this in simualationcraft by increasing your latency from 20 ms to 250 ms, it is only a 2% loss in DPS for most classes.

The above is some of the things that makes WoW an E-sports grade MMO.

But is this really fun? Well it depends on what you want to do. If you are the extremely competitive type and the actual game lore and questing is less important to you then the 'fairness' of the game mechanics then you will love WoW. You will actually do yourself in buy not playing and taking part in progression raiding in WoW. Nobody can out-WoW WoW.

If however you want to roam a fantasy world and develop your character on multiple levels and not just BIS gear, meet new and interesting NPCs and other players. Enjoy the ride from level 1 to 50 + CP instead of trying to get to max level as soon as possible to start the endless gear mill over and over and over and over then ESO will give you much more enjoyment.

I really do not want ESO try to become WoW, I want ESO to keep on giving me more TES goodness in the form of voice acted interesting quests, excellent world exploration, great crafting system (now with homestead even greater). The fact that I can (and I do every single day) join up with people and run dungeons, trails or just help a friend level a new character without penalty to me due to level scaling is awesome. ESO provides me with a fantastical world away from reality for a couple of hours every day.

When I get the competitive urge feeling I fire up WoW and pug some raids, however with the massive grind they caused due to artifact power in WoW, this is sadly becoming more difficult as all of the pugs need you to have a minimum amount of artifact knowledge and ilvl. Due to WoWs extremely competitive and very toxic community (largely due to its competitiveness) people very rarely want to give you a chance in a raid spot if you don't have ahead of the curve achievement plus at least 15 ilvls above what is required for the raid you want to pug...

tl;dr
WoW only has its endless gear mill as its only endgame.
ESO is a fantastical world away from reality.

I dont think the op wants it to become WOW he wants it to become a MMO, Right now its a online RPG with a MMO pricetag and some pretty shady practices with reporused content.

srfrogg23 · January 2017

Vaoh wrote: »

Everything here is based on research I did on WoW. If I got some facts wrong please let me know. Pretty sure it's all sadly accurate.

WoW is an extremely successful MMO. Though I have never played it, I'd hope someday in the future ESO could have nearly as many active players. Of course, the treatment of PvP balance and (more importantly) *game performance* has unfortunateIy crushed any hope of this ever happening. One thing that has come to my attention though recently was the sheer amount of group content in WoW - specifically Dungeons and Raids (aka Trials).

Upon doing some research, I found some shocking facts about WoW's PvE endgame compared to ESO.

This is with regards to just how many Dungeons and Raids you can run in both ESO and WoW.

ESO
Base Game + everything up until the first purchaseable DLC: 16 Dungeons (half have Tier I & II versions), 3 Raids
Imperial City: 2 Dungeons, 0 Raids
Orsinium: 0 Dungeons, 0 Raids
Thieves Guild: 0 Dungeons, 1 Raid
Dark Brotherhood: 0 Dungeons, 0 Raids
Shadows of the Hist: 2 Dungeons, 0 Raids
Total - 20 Dungeons (28 if counting duplicate dungeons via Tier I & II), 4 Raids

WoW
Classic: 20 Dungeons, 5 Raids (more than current ESO)
The Burning Crusade: 16 Dungeons, 8 Raids
Wrath of the Lich King: 16 Dungeons, 9 Raids
Cataclysm: 14 Dungeons, 6 Raids
Mists of Pandaria: 9 Dungeons, 5 Raids, 18 scenarios
Warlords of Draenor: 8 Dungeons, 3 Raids
Legion: 11 Dungeons, 3 Raids
Total - 94 Dungeons, 39 Raids

They also use different player counts for group content.....

In ESO:
Dungeons: 4 players
Raids(Trials): 12 players

In WoW:
Scenarios: 3 players
Dungeons: 5 players
Raids(Trials):
10 players only (two raids)
25 players only (seven raids)
10 or 25 players (nineteen raids)
10-30 player w/ scaling based on amount of players (four raids)
40 player (three raids)

I fully understand that WoW has been out much longer than ESO..... but why is ESO so lacking on endgame content!? This is not due to how much longer WoW has been out, but rather the pacing of ESO launching endgame content. We have 4 raids and the fifth is likely coming with our future Vvardenfell DLC, due late 2017 or even farther. In other words, we will have 5 raids (if not still 4) in ESO at the end of 2017.

On top of this, WoW has included all of their expansions (each of which are larger than all of ESO's DLC combined) into the base game for free except for the most recent "Legion" expansion. Sometime when the next expansion releases, they will undoubtedly make Legion part of base game WoW as well. ESO will never do something like this with their DLC.

..... I guess the point of this post is this - why is ESO so ridiculously slow at releasing endgame group content? This is why the player count is far smaller right now than it ever should've been. ZOS crippled game performance (most notably in PvP) and forced the endgame for most players into PvE since PvP turned into a mess.

We have only 4 Raids and they're all too unrewarding for most players to bother with. The Group Dungeons are all easy for endgame players except maybe some of the DLC dungeons. You also lose gold when you run Trials because there's no BoE loot and you need to chug Potions throughout your runs. How can ESO's raid content maintain a healthy endgame playerbase when there's so little of it and it serves as a gold sink?

Looking up the content WoW contains has definitely put ESO's endgame in perspective for me. The base game was perfect in terms of content, but since then there has been a miniscule amount of effort put into endgame. I can think of tons of good players I know who would've never quit if even a quarter of the amount of dungeons/raids were released to ESO in the same timespan that WoW releases them.

Please tell me I am missing somethimg huge in all of this. As far as I'm concerned, ESO would do amazingly well if it had 4x the current amount of dungeons and 10x the amount of trials including those with 2-3x the amount of players in them.

I love ESO, but it's no secret how poorly the endgame community is doing. Trials are as empty as the PvP population now due to lack of content and incentive. Personally, endgame PvE is all that's left for me. Please revive the endgame community and revise your policy of 2-4 dungeons/1 trial (max) per year. Add more and be serious about endgame to guarantee some longetivity for ESO. The "Elder Scrolls" name can only carry this game so much farther when content runs unbelievably dry and PvP is painfully neglected.

....that is all

I've played WoW off and on since it released in 2004. I currently have an active subscription because I played through the Legion content.

I'm not going to speak poorly of WoW, it has been a game I've played for almost 13 years, but I'm going to say that numbers are not everything.

WoW is a very different kind of MMO from TESO, especially since the One Tameriel patch was released. WoW is the standard zone-to-zone progression MMO and it is very heavily reliant on daily quest grinding. And yeah, it has tons of dungeons, but most of them are irrelevant because you're either too high in level or too low in level for them to matter. And while they can be fun, they're not particularly awe-inducing or imaginative.

The combat system is also a standard tab-target system without much room for the more action-y types of gameplay, which probably explains why their dungeons are bit on the "dry" side. There isn't a heck of a lot they can do aside from throwing some telegraphs around on the ground or messing with buffs and debuffs.

The game is over 13 years old, though, so I'm not saying that to be negative, just stating a fact. WoW does have a lot more of those little non-combat side-activities than most other MMOs, but those things were a product of over a decade of development and their financial success as the top MMO.

WoW may be huge today, but it started off pretty small. Probably smaller than ESO. And while it had a huge amount of dungeons to start off with, the rest of the game was a hell of a lot emptier than ESO at any point. It really was a a massive grind fest, and it still is that way. They just didn't have a lot of competition for a very long time, and that led to a massive and dedicated fan base. WoW's size is largely a product of its age.

ESO is doing pretty well for itself and Zenimax has done a pretty good job of giving ESO enough of its own identity that the game is popular.

Trust me, ESO is a popular MMO. It's not WoW popular, but it's still packed with playersand it's still expanding at a reasonable rate. That's what counts.

srfrogg23 · January 2017

BlackEar wrote: »

Kolache wrote: »

BlackEar wrote: »

TotallyNotVos wrote: »

Because the endgame raiding community in all mmos is at an all time low. Most of the top wow raid guilds have all disbanded as well.

While I personally would like to see more and bigger raids, eso does not have the community to warrant zenimax spending all of that time on multiple raids per year.

A very very small percentage of eso raid guilds have even cleared maw hardmode

I don't think this justifies hardly having any trial content. It is a positive feedback cycle. No raids mean no raiding guilds and it is selfenforcing. I would like 1 or 2 more in the near future. The dungeon difficulty is nice though and going 5 people is very rewarding.

Has taking a moment to focus on raiding ever helped an MMO? I know there are people that want it, but it sure didn't help GW2's numbers. It didn't make Wildstar a success. WoW made it easier like every expansion just to make it less like raiding and more like a pug mosh-pit cluster****. Raid instances in WoW have never seen as much use as they have since people could solo them for transmogs.

Just my opinion, but if it were up to me I'd throw PvP'ers a few more bones before I worried about my raiders getting bored with ESO. They just don't float MMOs.

Yes, it has helped WOW immensely. Focusing on other stuff is what made the numbers decline. MMOrpg and raiding is intertwined and is the cornerstone of the MMOrpg genre. I disagree that they are not important. Pvp is important too, but is inherently second place to pve.

Actually, what helped WoW the most was focusing on ALL of those things. Blizzard didn't take a "this is more important than that" approach. They knew their customers came in all types and they worked to provide as much as possible for all types, unlike Carbine who's sole goal seemed to be to create a raiding game with Wildstar.

Hell, WoW has a pretty hopping LFR because they didn't try to sacrilize their own content. They just created multiple difficulty levels of their raids and it turned out to be pretty popular. Same with Arenas vs BGs vs oPvP.

Never know what kinds of fish you can catch, so use as many types of bait as possible. Turns out, you'll catch a hell of a lot of fish that way.

NightSky · January 2017

Just saying...Hello Kitty Island Adventure is still better!..

Drelkag · January 2017

I'd take actual game systems over raids. Give me more housing, more crafting styles, level scaling, Justice system, etc.

And yes, I think they're pretty much mutually exclusive. Can't have everything.

kyle.wilson · January 2017

Every time I hear someone compare this game to WOW It reminds me of this episode.

https://youtu.be/ho5br73xj1w

NightSky wrote: »

Just saying...Hello Kitty Island Adventure is still better!..

Stormbeebe · January 2017

I played wow for 10 plus years, started at launch and quit before Legion came out. Loved the game but it just got to be too grindy. Each xpack meant two things, new content that lasted about 3-4 months and most of that time was spent leveling and grinding to get the new gear set in the raids. Yes they had a ton of dungeons but with each new xpack the old content was absolutely obsolete. Players would only go back to solo it or clear an old raid for achievements/mounts and at that point the content was trivial.

I quit Wow because the grind got old. You would progress your character and get it all in epics with the best gear that xpack could offer only to have that gear be obsolete within the first hour of the next xpack and you'd start the grind to level and gear up all over again. There is a reason they sell close to level cap characters in the store because the pre-level cap content is obsolete which each new xpack.

I played ESO in beta and never bought the game because it was so buggy. I recently in the last month started playing after a long break from MMO's. I personally find ESO refreshing. One because I love the Elder Scrolls games and two because of the level scaling. Being able to explore the whole world and not feel like a zone is obsolete when you reach a certain level is nice. Gives me lots of things to do in the game world. I am sure I may run out of things to do eventually but for now it has provided many hours of great entertainment. It is a lot more buggy then Wow which is a bit disappointing, especially with basic things like jumping, LOL. However I look forward to logging on for now and feel like even now I've got my money worth even if I get bored with it eventually.

As far as end game content goes I've yet to experience it in ESO but I hope it is less drama filled then Wow. Trying to coordinate 10/25/40 players to log on and be prepared and learn each fight got very old as the years went on. It was almost like a 2nd job trying to keep a raid together, from loot fights to people not showing up or lagging out etc. It was nice to get boss kills under your belt but half the time you'd have to farm the boss forever to get a piece of loot only to have it go someone else when it finally dropped, LOL. That or you'd finally get it just weeks before the next xpack was out and you'd be sharding it instead of using it. I had some great times in wow but the people more then the game itself kept me coming back. Funny thing is several of the people I played wow with are now playing ESO with me so even here it is more about the community then the game in the long run.