How would you rate the Greymoor Chapter out of 10 - with 10 being the highest?

wnights

5

If it wasn't for the Antiquities system I would give this chapter a solid 2 (for the landscape design mostly).

Why I voted 5:
- very short and predictable main quest, bland and boring characters
- harrowstorms are a mess. they take almost an hour to respawn and people wipe them in 30 seconds. Also the rewards are just not worth waiting
- no descent place to farm blueprints (even Elsweyr blueprints were easier to find and they were a lot more unique and beautiful).
- new motifs are meh imho
- side quests are also quite uninteresting
- Blackreach is a disappointment. Yes it looks pretty but there isn't much to do there. And why the only vampire place in the whole chapter becomes locked after doing the quest there?? I want to explore it again and farm those cabinets

+Antiquities system is an interesting addition although mostly "useful" to those, who love housing. Not much to offer to others other than 2 costumes, a mount, couple of paints and motifs that are a pain to farm
+The new zone has a pleasant atmosphere and some good scenery
+I personally love Proudspire Manor
+Love those wooden cabins in Morthal. Hope they become available as houses in the future

Gythral

3

After another week I've revised my rating

1
nice graphics
shame nothing works...

Galwylin

3

I think this has a lot of interesting ideas and a character I wanted to see more of but instead decided to focus on finding ways to survive something I could already survive (harrowstorms) and a tired plot of aimless royal brat grows up. Throw in a reveal you see almost from the start and its just disappointing. It just doesn't live up to the dark heart of skyrim subtitle. I suggesting changing it to "Um yeah, okay".

Destai

5

So having completed the new zone and main story, I can confidently this is the worst chapter to date. I didn't hate my time in this expansion, but it definitely felt by-the-numbers

Pros
+ new zones that are beautiful rendered. Even the wildlife has some cool behaviors.
+ fun little collection quests like the bards college and giants cheese add personality to the expansion.
+ antiquities adds a new end game focused on exploration. there's some intelligent decisions too - like making leads account bound, using the journal instead of inventory space.
+ delves and public dungeons have some good layers to them.
+ Fennorian was a memorable character.

Cons
- Main story is largely forgettable, and even for an MMO feels quite hollow. Same copy-paste empowered princess again.
- Continual performance issues, high pings, desyncs, lag when killing monsters.
- Harrowstorms are erratic and bug out.
- New bugs galore! Interactive items seem buggy, fences are broke, jaws are now crooked, the game lags when you kill a mob, there's unkillable, the skill bars become unresponsive
- vMA weapons and vampire changes went completely counter to community feedback.
- Nagware like leads going out to players who haven't purchased the expansion and more stalking questgivers
- Wayshrines are poorly placed around the zone, especially in relation to the Harrowstorms.

Like many in the community have said, this expansion should have been delayed. Overall it feels very dialed in and reflect ZOS's priority to maintain their release schedule instead of focusing on quality content. The content seems dictated by the business model and feels very packaged to me. ESO's strength has always been the story telling. So if that starts slipping alongside performance issues, what other legs will this game have to stand on?

I think launching an expansion in this condition is not only insulting to players but does an incredible disservice to the people who've worked incredibly hard on this to meet an unnecessary deadline. If ZOS focused more on making quality content and community engagement, rather than making money, this game and its community would all be better off.

Nareya726

5

Beautiful scenery and I like the antiquities so far, but the story and dialogue lack substance. Not to mention all the bugs...

AlexanderDeLarge

If the game didn't need dramatic improvements and overhauls, this would be a 7 but given that it's just more of the same in a game that needs all this, I would say 4 (below average) on a true 1-10 scale.
Next year better be huge. Especially as the first "next gen" release.

TX12001rwb17_ESO

6

I voted a 6 and only because of the Antiquities otherwise it would be a 5, here are some of the issues I have had with it.

- The terrible Vampire Lord depiction, it honestly looks like whoever designed it took a look at one single picture of Lord Harkon before deainging it, probbaly mistook the part of his crown where his cape was attached to for horns (Vampire Lords do not have Horns) and completley forgot both the hair on his head (yeah the Vampire Lord has hair in Skyrim, here they are just bald) and the talon on the back of the foot, then you have that brace that goes along the spine not being there despite the collar part which it attaches to still being there, it is obvious they only looked at a picture of Lord Harkon from the front.

- Blackreach is treated like a mundane location, there are way too many NPCs down there not to mention it is supposed to be miles underground beneath even a deep Dwemer ruin, not so close to the surface that the top of a building can reach the Temple of the Divines in Solitude.

- The Blood Scion form [snip] it is obvious it is just a stripped down Vampire Lord, it even has the same armor, why would Vampires of Lamae Bal wear the same armor that Gray Host Vampire Lords wear? Infact why does a certain Vampire Lord wear very similar armor to Harkon? Do they shop st the same place? They could of designed a new creature from scratch but nope, now both it and the Blood Knight's existance make the Vampire Lord look less impressive, hell the NPCs do not even give this legendary form the respect it deserves by treating it as something mundane, ZOS should never of added them to ESO and especially not to Harrowstorms as a generic boss.

- The story-line ends exactly the same as Dawnguard and reeks of bad writing, in all the DLC there is only 1 or 2 remarks regarding the player if they are a Vampire, you even get called a mortal at one point by a Vampire regardless of whether you sre one or not, why even have dialogue like that in the first place? Did ZOS forget the Vestige has been an immortal since they left Coldharbour, resurrecting is not just a game mechanic.

[Edited to remove Bashing]

zergbase_ESO

1

1. Feels like rehash of kitty land but with nords and vampires with werewolves in the mix instead of Khajiiti and dragons. Story wise anyways.
2. Performance issues still present.
3. Lack of fixing of performance issues.


So far not impressed.Maybe side content will be better than the main content.

CyberSkooma

5

Greymoor is my least favorite expansion so far. Wrothgar, Morrowind, Summerset, and Elsweyr were all better, by a long shot.The antiquity system is cool, Blackreach isn't too bad, and the trial is OK, but that's about it. I have nothing to praise about Greymoor.

rexagamemnon

3

same rundown with the princess as elswyr, ZOS give us a different storyline please this is virtually the same plot line just tweeked details.
too many bugs can not currently finish the chapter storyline because of this.
lag is way out of control.

on the flip side, good aesthetics, and nostalgia

asuitandtyb14_ESO

5

zergbase_ESO wrote: »

1. Feels like rehash of kitty land but with nords and vampires with werewolves in the mix instead of Khajiiti and dragons. Story wise anyways.
2. Performance issues still present.
3. Lack of fixing of performance issues.


So far not impressed.Maybe side content will be better than the main content.

I hope you like competent female thanes galore, bumbling Nord males, and lesbians for days.

StarOfElyon

I don't know. I'm interested in playing it but sometimes it's also boring. There's no need to think when the cursors point you everywhere. So I lose motivation to play. It's just not scratching the itch that I have, on the PVE side.

Jeremy

9

Knowledge wrote: »

So far I am loving Greymoor. It's probably my favorite expansion to this game ever.

The Antiquities system - while somewhat simplistic - is actually turning out to be a lot of fun and compliments the play style of players like me who spend a lot of time exploring the world to collect trophies for my housing. It's even got me doing treasure maps again. So I like how it adds activities to the world at large and actively encourages and rewards players who take the time to delve into all of Tamriel. No other game I have played does a better job at presenting so much relevant content to explore and I only hope they have plans to continuously keep adding more leads to the game as time progresses. It's also a nice departure from the usual add a new class addition, which has never appealed to me since the game requires to you basically start over to play a new class (and I have no desire to do that).

The new zones are beautiful. In particular Blackreach - which seems to me like Tamriel's version of Moria. It's easily the coolest area in the game so far and my hat is off to what ever developer put that place together. The vast creepy atmosphere that area presents rivals anything else I've seen on any other MMORPG.

I also love the new additions and modifications to the Vampire Skill Tree - which has always been a skill line I embraced and used (I never used it for the passives). These changes also helped me adapt to the new PvP alterations - in particular the new Mist Form - which has a lot interesting game play applications now, particularly in PvP. I can honestly say I'm enjoying playing my character now more than I have in a very long time.

I haven't finished the main story line yet. But so far it seems solid enough. That bit in the tower (spoiler alert) where you rescued Fennorian from the Vampire mad scientist was definitely a grade above the usual story mode in ESO. And many of the side quests are well done (the Pale Man as an example).

So far my only significant gripe with Greymoor's specific design is the difficulties in participating in Harrowstorms. Yes - they can be seen from far off. But they are hard to get to in time - and many of the Wayshrines are poorly placed.

More than anything, my one real gripe is that the content is too easy. But that's not a complaint I have in regards to Greymoor specifically but rather a problem I have with this game's landscape content generally. So I won't hold that against the expansion.

Tigerseye

kind_hero wrote: »

Nova Sky wrote: »

Lintashi wrote: »

Probably worst chapter so far. 1.No major performance fixes, more bugs than I have ever encountered so far, spanning through all activities, and going unfixed for weeks. Problems with access to the chapter itself. 2. vampire revamp caused most playstyles to cure vamps, people angry with maelstrom changes too. 3. main quest have too many similarities to main quest of previous chapters, big gender disbalance of npc's questgivers, and most quests are either copies from previous zones, or unmemorable. Also, no overall sense of 'Dark heart', when playing trough the chapter. 4. Wayshrines are not conveniently located, hunting harrowstorms is a pain, without good rewards. Even vampiric furniture, is almost the same as alinor one. Also, why devs tease people, saying, they added new furniture paintings, when in reality, we all know, what are the chances to get one (same as vvardenfell ones, that are nearly impossible to find)
Good things are landscape, it is gorgeous, quick fix of antiquity system, also, new models for furniture there. I also found 2 really good quests.

"Big gender disbalance of npc's questgivers ..."

Uh, what? Not enough guys? Not enough ladies?

I agree here... I like female leads, my main char is female breton, but ESO has to many tropes involving the strong female hero. How many quests feature a strong woman who is searching for her good for nothing husband lost in a delve or some place, or the husband turns to be the weak or foolish partner who made a deal with the daedra/vampires, you name it. After a while it gets so obvious. Dragonbridge features two women heroes, The Orc stronghold has a strong female chief and a doubting insubordonating male overseer... I could go on for longer if I go back to other chapters or quests

The thing is that testosterone makes people more impulsive.

When I say people, I mean all people, not just men.

Give women (additional) testosterone and they also become more impulsive, or even reckless, amongst other things.

So, of course it's more likely that someone with higher testosterone (naturally) will have done something foolish, than someone with lower testosterone (naturally).

As, if they are also someone who lacks judgment, their lack of impulse control, on top of that, will make it impossible for them to do anything else.

On the positive side, someone with low impulse control and good judgment will, typically, be seen as a hero.

As, sometimes, "He [or she] who hesitates is lost.".

Testosterone makes you more likely to act on your urges, good or bad, in general.

Whether that is a good thing, or not, pretty much entirely depends on your particular urges.

If you think of it purely in terms of dosages of testosterone, as opposed to in terms of gender, you stop worrying about which gender is portrayed as what.

Instead, you start thinking of it in terms of personality type, coupled with how different levels of testosterone can affect that type of personality.

shadyjane62

1

It's so boring, i went the first day and have tried to go back but I decided to play on the EU server as sort of a classic server game. Start with nothing as I have 24 million on my usa account and nothing is a challenge. Even my level 6 chars are wearing legendary items.

DrScott59

5

5 - Antiquities is interesting, but the scrying "puzzle" is too easy. I suspect they only added "scrying" so there would be two skill lines, which will later be sold individually in Crown store, but I'm a cynic. The story line is boring, the group dungeons are a joke -- way too easy with bosses going down in 3 seconds solo -- they shouldn't be real difficult, but c'mon these bosses blow over in the wind. The World Bosses are good, and the scenery is good.

Kalik_Gold

5

Upgraded a few days back, and still haven't taken 1 character to Western Skyrim, not interested in anything. Removed Vamp from my tank. Kept it on my Bomber...

Not ready to start the questline on my main, finishing up another zone atm. Will have to PUG Kynes normal tonight as I already see groups forming in Craglorn and gchat. Overall.... not excited.

5

fierackas

1

When it launched and was accidentally made available to non-purchasers I went and had a look to see if I would change my mind about buying it. I came across the same terrain rendering issues I saw at times in Elsweyr and Cyro. Levelled the scrying thing to level 3 and got bored with it. Looked at the vampire stuff and cured my main as there was nothing there for a stamina warden. Glad I didn't buy it.

LannStone

5

I rated it a 5 = not sorry I bought it but not as good as I expected
Main story - I found myself asking myself over and over as I was going through the main storyline (which I finished on a character that didn't need more experience per se), "Why am I doing this?" No emotional connection to the story or the characters. Nothing memorable. And it seemed like it quit halfway through, with the main vampire still running loose. I suppose that's coming in the next chapter?
Antiquities - I was excited to level scrying and excavation and think they did a great job on the new house furnishings, some really cool designs. I'm very disappointed with the grind required to get some of the leads. For instance, going through the leads for the Dwarven Ebon Wolf, I had to kill one delve boss 16 times to get the lead, and that meant waiting up to 5 minutes between each one.
Another lead required running around in a circle killing trash mobs for more than an hour. My left wrist hurts today. Yeah, you could say I didn't have to keep going until I got those leads, but I don't see why we should have to go through 16 kills or an hour of running in a circle clicking and hitting buttons to get a lead. RNG needs to be fixed or some sort of maximum kill count system implemented.
Harrowstorms - enough said.
Landscape - I don't like snow and rocks, seemed liked another Wrothgar, so I'm biased on the overland. Blackrock OK, but I felt much more immersed in the Blackrock in Skyrim.

coletas

1

Game is so buggy that is unplayable

Starlight_Knight

1

Performance got worse or in some cases stayed the same.. Abysmal

Absolutely no incentive for me to play the quests as i'm already max CP and have enough sky shards for the next 12 years.

Antiquities are the only selling point ( Vampires are base game )

Trial is quite nice, that's why it gets a 1

richo262

1

I for one cannot wait to team up with Generic Strong Woman, Generic Clever Woman, Generic Princess and some sort of Standard Homer Simpson Nord for the next adventure.

The trailer and prologue had me believe a gritty story, a clash of kings, and I'd be fighting in an army of Ragnars, instead I got a Scooby Doo story, another princess theme and an army of Righurts.

FierceSam

5

After the best part of a month... still basically unenthused.

Successes -

Antiquities may be a bit cheesy and phone game in its mechanics, but the basic concept has been massively successful and by a mile the most engaging part of the chapter. I see friends and guildies highlighting their successes in both lead and item acquisition all the time. The way the system draws you back to zones you’ve completely cleared, or dungeon content you thought you were bored with is impressive. As is the range of rewards with something(s) for everyone. And it’s stupidly easy to ‘just get a quick bit of scrying in’ while waiting for your friends to get a coffee...

Maelstrom weapons in normal. Works great, encourages players to do some of the most challenging non-vet single player content and provides a way to reduce the massive power imbalance at the endgame PvE level. Sadly, there’s a massive downside to this too (see below).


Very average -

Skyrim feels incredibly small compared to the single player game. Blackreach is just a bit dull. Solitude is way too laggy to base any characters there and the crafting area is, once again, full of loading screens, so not the best place to base your crafters.

I was also a bit sad that they seem to have totally dropped the whole grappling mechanic. If ever there was a place that could have been enlivened by this it would be Blackreach. To not have a single area with this in seems like a massive loss.

Below par -

The main quest is just awful. And about halfway through, just as it threatens to get interesting, it degenerates into a rapid run-and-gun fest that feels like an extremely light version of White Gold Tower.. and then it’s over.

Harrowstorms. Boring, badly designed, poorly implemented, badly located, with astonishingly low grade loot, these are just mind-bogglingly awful. Add to this the general attitude from ZOS that this was just a player whinefest rather than an atrocious piece of game design (which they’ve subsequently rolled back on big time) and you have a major pain point.

Perfected Maelstrom weapons. Not upgrading players’ already acquired Maelstrom weapons was a mistake (as was the response to players’ reaction to it). It told long time players that their (often considerable) efforts were not valued and, like the initial reaction to Harrowstorms, spoke volumes about ZOS’ attitude to their playerbase. They could only have put the boot in further by offering a ‘Maelstrom Upgrade Token’ in the Crown Store for, say 5,000 Crowns a weapon.

Vampire skill line. Utterly unengaging. The 4 hour feed time is too short (although I’m sure they’ll do a roaring trade in that bit of furniture that lets you set your vamp level when they release that). I don’t know many people who want to play vamps any more... maybe that’s a good thing.

KyleTheYounger

1

volkeswagon wrote: »

Cause a 1 would just be ignorant

Because 10 is not nescient

ImmortalCX wrote: »

I paid 39 for the upgrade.

I've been doing antiquiries, for the past week, have 80% of the goodies.

It added about 40 hours of content.

The new zone is meh. Just feels empty from a quest perspective.

That said, antiquiries got me to explore many zones, do world bosses, public dungeons, etc. It is a welcome additiin. Without it, new zone would get 4 / 10.

^^
Perfect analysis except you forgot one tiny detail.

You basically need to own virtually all the Chapters and/or have ESO Plus. So you can gain access to the DLC/Chapter zones in order to grind the new skill line.....

joseayalac

10

PVP balance is better than ever! It's literally the best patch to pvp if you can get past performance issues.

Starlock

6

Something to keep in mind with how I rate things - I mark the middle of a scale as "average" and assess that average relative to appropriate comparisons. In this case, I the comparison is solely to ESO and its other content. Relative to other content in the game, this chapter was simply average. Content expansions in this game have become very formulaic, following a predictable template that does little to innovate or improve upon itself. That's not to say this is bad, but it does make it difficult to justify much of anything beyond average ratings. In short, Greymoor is a solid addition to the game that is dragged down by technical issues and forced adherence to release deadlines. General impressions I had:

• Main Quest. I've criticized main quests in past expansions for trying to do to many things with not enough room to let the story breathe. I applaud Greymoor for taking a longer narrative approach and I think this structure is much better. However, the execution was middling to poor. Some of this was a result of tying side quests into the main quest, which creates major narrative challenges if the player doesn't do things in the "right" order. The player could figure out much of the mystery by doing all the side quests first, for example, which made the main quest feel less dynamic and impactful. Kudos for trying, though.
• Side Quests. The side quests, with a few exceptions, were much more forgettable than previous expansions. chapter expansions have consistently had excellent side quests that tell interesting stories so this was pretty surprising to me. That's not to say they were bad, but they were not the level of "wow" I've become accustomed to expecting. It's clear the team knows how to create quests without having them feel too much like fetch-quests, but that didn't come out in a lot of these side quests.
• Landscape and World. The unevenness of quality here suggests to me that running up against deadlines cost this its usual polish and flair. Some areas shine while others feel empty and unfinished. Western Skyrim in particular is missing those little details and unmarked points of interest that reward exploration and make the world feel alive and lived in. Blackreach on the other hand is brilliantly done, in spite of the odd inclusion of surface dwellers instead of automata.
• Antiquities. While the antiquities system is a decent addition to the game, it falls short of its potential and is marred by some questionable design decisions. This system feels like it should have been released as a base game feature given the requirement to make additional purchases to find and finish high-tier items. Some may be bothered by how trivially easy the mini games are and the lore codex doesn't add much to the system. Look to the modern Tomb Raider games for how antiquities could have been done better - being able to turn a 3D model over in your virtual hands to discover its secrets would have gone a long way to making this system feel more interesting.
• Technical Issues. The development team in the past has consistently delivered polished chapters that are nearly free of glaring technical issues, but Greymoor is a notable exception. Between missing dialogue and duplicate NPCs running around during the main quests, it's obvious that the release should have been delayed. When quests aren't repeatable, technical issues with them really ruin the experience. You have my permission to tell the investors to put a sock in it, because I have no doubt they are to blame for pushing this release before it was ready.

The slower pace of the central narrative and integration of side quests into this narrative is a welcome change, but troubled in its execution. My suggestion to fix this would be to have areas of the game change and evolve as the main quest progresses. The engine is capable of doing this - we've seen it before on Bleakrock Isle for example - and it could be a way to lock side quests tied to the main quest until the main quest reaches a certain stage. Karthwasten, for example, could be an intact, bustling hold before reaching a certain quest stage - the side quest there wouldn't be available until you are told to visit the place in the story. Getting to know the place before it's destroyed would create a very different emotional dynamic when you later return to find the place covered in strange, red mist.

The other major blight on the storytelling to me was the superficial treatment the villains got. A few things are explained if you read lorebooks (and of course I read all the lorebooks) but in the absence of that the villains are shallow and fall flat. The main quest really fell apart for me during the "big reveal" of the betrayer - it was at that point I started understanding the criticism the story in Greymoor has received from the community. It was just bad. I kept waiting for some follow-up to understand the motivations, but it never came.

Dark_Lord_Kuro

9

One of the best expantion
Way better than orsinium in my eyes
Zone desing is awesome
Almost no impassible mountain
2 zones that feel completely different
Antiquity give so much to do and is enjoyable not like psijic
Wayshrine are ok at lesat they are better than elsweyr one
Harrowsstorm look good, are fun to do but dont reward much, come are really far from wayshrine, are hard to track down due to random spawn rotation(but at least you see them fromm really far away)
Big problem is the full loading to access some crafting station, they arent the typical door loading
No new character slot
Game performance is getting better for me(back in dragonhold i was getting blue screen 3-4 times a day, didnt get one since gremoour released 2 weeks ago)

Athyrium93

5

It would have been a pretty great DLC but as a zone expansion it's just meh? The antiquities stuff is neat but you can't sell or trade the leads, and is pretty much useless. The story quest seemed really short with a predictable plot but, the new dungeon is pretty fun.
I would have much preferred a new skill line/class/anything that effected play and not just a collecting quest which is all the antiquities are.

markulrich1966

3

I'm a "latecomer" (late release on xbox).

After playing a few days I have not even started the mainquest.

Wanted to explore the landscape, get the old skyrim-feeling by doing some sidequests first.

To make it short: I even forgot about the mainquest, as the experience was so disappointing, that I left each day after riding around a little.

what disappointed me:
- broken harrowstorms
- too timeconsuming, as it is hard to actually reach one (despite cp810 with rapid manoever)
- laughable rewards (chance to get vile to craft vampiric furniture too low)

- the "dialect" hurts, sounds as if zos is mocking german language (why can't they speak like Titanborn?).

- sidequests I found are plain boring

- blackreach cavern very different from the skyrim layout. It looks more detailed, but is extremely confusing. In skyrim you did not get distracted from finding your way, so you actually could enjoy the beauty of the cave, whereas in greymoor you tumble around, confused and frustrated


Summary: landscape above looks nice (more skyrim-like than eastern skyrim), that's all. Not enough to avoid disappointment.

Sarousse

3

No difficulty ruined EVERYTHING.

Destroyed content in 3 days.