Aldmeri Dominion Zones.

Aluneth

This is my personal opinion, feel free to share yours.

I've gone through both the Covenant and Ebonheart Pact zones, and I fully enjoyed them. I read through all of the quests, I found the characters interesting and the overall story was enjoyable. I've been working on the Aldmeri Dominion zones now, and it's been such a boring experience. The overall story isn't that interesting, the characters (with a few exceptions) are forgettable, and at times it feels like they're downright stupid. While I've read through most of the quests, I did skip reading through certain quests, as I had gotten so bored of them. I don't know if it's just me, but I'm having a hard time completing these zones (I'm finally at Reaper's March). I kept changing to my other characters, to postpone having to quest in them.

I would rate the zones the following.

Auridon - 7/10
Grahtwood - 3/10
Greenshade - 6/10
Malabal Tor - 5/10
Repaer's March - ??? (haven't completed it yet)

Am I the only one feeling this way?
Did you feel something similar with another factions zones?
Were you able to change your opinion on certain zones? If so, what changed?

ezio45

Aluneth wrote: »

This is my personal opinion, feel free to share yours.

I've gone through both the Covenant and Ebonheart Pact zones, and I fully enjoyed them. I read through all of the quests, I found the characters interesting and the overall story was enjoyable. I've been working on the Aldmeri Dominion zones now, and it's been such a boring experience. The overall story isn't that interesting, the characters (with a few exceptions) are forgettable, and at times it feels like they're downright stupid. While I've read through most of the quests, I did skip reading through certain quests, as I had gotten so bored of them. I don't know if it's just me, but I'm having a hard time completing these zones (I'm finally at Reaper's March). I kept changing to my other characters, to postpone having to quest in them.

I would rate the zones the following.

Auridon - 7/10
Grahtwood - 3/10
Greenshade - 6/10
Malabal Tor - 5/10
Repaer's March - ??? (haven't completed it yet)

Am I the only one feeling this way?
Did you feel something similar with another factions zones?
Were you able to change your opinion on certain zones? If so, what changed?

I will agree some of the characters are forgettable but over all i liked the story, zone designs

SpiderCultist

you should come to Shadowfen, just to get aggro'd and hit by an alligator underwater.

Ley

On my first play-through I started out as DC, which meant that AD was my next campaign, and finally EP. I loved DC, enjoyed AD, but by the time I got to EP I was a bit burnt out from questing. I ended up rushing through EP story and for a long time thought that EP story sucked.

My second play-through was more of the same, DC, AD, then EP. Again got burnt out by the time I got to EP.

Once One Tamriel came out and I could play the campaigns in any order I wanted, I decided to take a fresh character thought EP first. I ended up enjoying the story much more than I expected.

I'm not saying that the AD story is going to be for everyone, just saying you may want to consider your entire journey. Could be that you just ran out of steam by the time you got around to AD.

I think each alliance story line is good in its own way.

xeNNNNN

I agree with grahtwood - navigating it can be a painful experience and the only reason I know why is because I've done gold for cadwell as EP over 5 times.

I now have my own "navigation" circuit now so I can speed things up running around in that place but even that is limited.

I personally think shadowfen is much much worse however. Simply because the swaps are full of mobs that seemingly have unlimited range (This is of course an exaggeration).

Lake

Auridon is my least favorite. A gray, boring zone - and every other quest seems to feature a glowing ghost or a cave.

Aluneth

I find Queen Ayrenn to be completely inept as a ruler. The storyline with her brother was painful to go through. This might be one of the reasons for my dislike of Grahtwood and to lesser extent Greenshade (though at least this zone had some saving qualities).

Bonzodog01

I agree with your assessment - DC is by far my favourite set of zones as far as storylines go, with Rivenspire being my absolute favourite. EP also has some interesting areas, and the quests are a little more difficult there as it has a lot of areas where the environment itself will kill you.

In fact, stonefalls has one of the hardest quest bosses in game IMO, and thats coming from someone who has completed every single quest, no exceptions that this game currently has at least three times (over 15 times in some of the zones!). Yeah, the end zone boss (Sadal) is a nightmare to fight and I have died trying to kill him more than once and that was with a full CP char and running sets and doing more than decent DPS. The only boss I found more of a challenge was Primate Artorius at the end of Dark Brotherhood.

AD is very vanilla, and the quests are, like you say, for the most part boring. I would say that Reaper's March is the only zone where the storyline is at least interesting.

Hallothiel

Nah. AD my favourite zones. Even with having to put up with excruciatingly annoying bosmer everywhere.

Stonefalls was one I found incredibly dull. And also the other EP ones based in 'Skyrim' (sacrilege! ).

DC are ok. Alik'r has grown on me, as has Bangkorai.

TelvanniWizard

For me, Auridon and Reaper´s march were awesome, the both of them. But Valenwood regions were super lame. The quests were boring, and I never had the feeling of being in a real forest or a jungle. The trees are too sparse, and the foliage isn´t dense at all. More than the misty and misterious Valenwood, It felt like a shady groove.

AlnilamE

I find that for AD, the main quest lines pick up in Greenshade, Malabal Tor and Reaper's March. I really enjoy the Reaper's March quest line.

Auridon and Grathwood have some good quests, and I like how the Falinesti sites spread across the zones.

I've done all quests in EP 4 times already. need to work through DC a bit more diligently.

Radinyn

I think AD has the best zones.

VaranisArano

The Aldmeri Dominion has the most cohesive, coherent, linear storyline of the three factions. Its the most focused on its characters and their growth, so I imagine whether or not you like the characters has a big impact on whether you like the storyline.

I generally liked the AD characters (Gwaering is my favorite, from Malabal Tor) so I enjoyed the stories, especially compared to the very fragmented storyline of the Pact.

Katahdin

AD is my favorite of all the factions

djyrb

The triple forest zone order of Grathwood -> Greenshade -> Malabol Tor can get really old fast, especially considering how difficult it is to get around some of them, especially Grahtwood with all of its cliffs. Whenever I finally got to the open expanses of Reapers March, it was like escaping the sewers in the TES IV:Oblivion tutorial.

I am also not into the Bosmer or Khajiit from a lore perspective, so the focus of these zones made it pretty tedious for me as well. But over time, Greenshade has grown on me for some reason. It has a nice coastal feel and lots of green rolling hills in the southern parts of it. Still not a big fan of Grahtwood or Malabol Tor; returning to them for surveys and treasure maps is usually a hassle.

Narvuntien

I think its just because you did it last.

I agree Auridon is really good though, although not up to expansion level.

I think EP is the worst personally.
DCs stories are very character based, you collect a cast of characters and you have the bright spot of Rivenspire. But mechanically the stories are kind of bland and the zones don't flow well. But having great characters makes up for that.
EP has all the problems of DC but is lacking in the recurring characters department, Naryu being an exception, when compared to DC.
AD has the most cohesive connected story. The Queen and Raz are great characters, the Silvenar is interesting enough I guess but there aren't that many recuring characters the way DC uses them and perhaps you respond well to those. The zones are compartmentalized but connected. Auridon has the best flow while zones like grahtwood is kind of a zone wide fetch quest. I like the zonal moving through Greenshade . These three all connect together as a single problem that wont die. I can see how Malabar Tol can be a bit neh its a much more one note story compared to other AD zones and its mostly self contained with a little interconnection to greenshade. Reapers March is a mix of the compartmentlising of greenshade and the self contained story similar to malabar tor. Its really two stories interconnected.

Zachary_Shadow

For me I started in AD and the AD zones are my favorite. After that was the EP zones, which I enjoyed. Now I'm at the DC zones and I'm just completely burned out. I still haven't gotten through Stormhaven because I'm focusing on Summerset and leveling my alts as an excuse not to do it. I think it all depends on the person and user. I love the Queen and Raz as characters, they definitely have more personality than other characters. Other characters in the zone also go through a lot of character development from us helping them, which is a great sight to see in a video game.

I can see why others don't like the AD quests or zones, I think it just depends on what you enjoy. For me, I really love the Bosmer's storyline, especially with the new Silvenar and everything. I find them an incredibly interesting culture, but others might find it boring and bland. That's completely your opinion, just like mine is that I currently find DC boring only because I'm burned out at the moment. I'm going to play through every AD quest again on one of my alts to try and relive the magic I had when going through all of them on my main.

AefionBloodclaw

Aldmeri Dominion Zones have so much better writing quality and more interesting characters, Ebonheart Pact is next, and then finally Daggerfall Covenant is the utter worst, with the most boring, tedious grindy garbage content.

JobooAGS

Not a fan of the AD zones or quests, too much jungle/uber forest and characters except for raz and the queen are quite forgettable

HeathenDeacon

AD is my fav storyline & EP my least favorite
i have fav zones in all 3, but more in AD and DC than EP.
DC in general has grown on me the most over time, but i i still love AD the most.
Only thing i really like about EP is the rift/eastmarch snowy and grasssy areas. nice and tranquil, good for farming at night.

Rebirthment

I have to agree with AD being the most boring/basic story wise and environmentally. Especially with almost every zone becoming stale, after experiencing almost nothing but the same exact forests, trees, quests that feel almost the same, etc.

Once i managed to make my way to Reapers march however, that's when it all changed and the storyline had finally gotten somewhat interesting. Especially with the new savannah like biome. It's the only zone i was mostly fond with out of the whole alliance, and felt Unique in its own way.