ESO vs the rest

Larcomar

Someone posted an interesting comparison of GW2 and ESO the other day, highlighting where they thought ESO really stood out and was better, and what they felt GW2 did better and ESO could maybe learn from.

I realise I'm way out of touch with the whole genre - I took a very long break from the whole show before picking up ESO - and it got me wondering about how ESO compares to the other MMOs that are out there today.

- What other MMOs do you play? (or have you played recently?)

- Where do you think ESO really shines compared to the competition, what is it about the game that really makes it stand out?

- What are the things other MMOs do better than ESO, and perhaps ESO could learn from / take on board?

Someone yell if you're not allowed to post about other games in these forums. I had a quick flick through the community rules and couldn't see anything but you never know.

WiseSky

There is no MMO that is better that ESO

All quest are voice acted

Best Lore in Gaming after DnD

Addons make it the best MMO in History

Popular other MMO I played that ESO beats by a mile:

AdventureQuest World
Aion
Albion Online
ArcheAge
Black Desert Online
Blade & Soul
Crowfall
Dual Universe
Dungeons & Dragons Online
EVE Online
EverQuest
Final Fantasy XI
Final Fantasy XIV
Gloria Victis
Guild Wars 2
MapleStory
Mabinogi
Neverwinter
Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen
Realm of the Mad God
RuneScape
2007Scape
Skyforge
Star Trek Online
Star Wars Galaxies
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Star Citizen
TERA: The Exiled Realm of Arborea
The Lord of the Rings Online
Tibia
Tree of Savior
Trove
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft: Classic

Narvuntien

ESO has some of the best questing in the business, fully voiced impactful stories. There is consistently new content the old content doesn't go away or become irrelevant. You can go anywhere in any order since there is no level or gear gating.

I consider it third WoW, FFO and then ESO.

People find ESO combat a bit hard to use since it is an action MMO so the Lag issue is a big deal and it is also extremely hard to balance compared to the old school tab targeting and abilities with cooldowns

The_Old_Goat

@WiseSky is Pantheon even out of beta yet?

WiseSky

Narvuntien wrote: »

ESO has some of the best questing in the business, fully voiced impactful stories. There is consistently new content the old content doesn't go away or become irrelevant. You can go anywhere in any order since there is no level or gear gating.

I consider it third WoW, FFO and then ESO.

People find ESO combat a bit hard to use since it is an action MMO so the Lag issue is a big deal and it is also extremely hard to balance compared to the old school tab targeting and abilities with cooldowns

WoW is like reading a book and from all craziness, it was good when I was a kid, but now lore just seams childish.

FF takes forever to get to endgame after another reading of books...

How can you mention lag when FF is like 2 seconds input delay to servers across the board no matter where you live...

Jeffrey530

WiseSky wrote: »

There is no MMO that is better that ESO

All quest are voice acted

Best Lore in Gaming after DnD

Addons make it the best MMO in History

Popular other MMO I played that ESO beats by a mile:

AdventureQuest World
Aion
Albion Online
ArcheAge
Black Desert Online
Blade & Soul
Crowfall
Dual Universe
Dungeons & Dragons Online
EVE Online
EverQuest
Final Fantasy XI
Final Fantasy XIV
Gloria Victis
Guild Wars 2
MapleStory
Mabinogi
Neverwinter
Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen
Realm of the Mad God
RuneScape
2007Scape
Skyforge
Star Trek Online
Star Wars Galaxies
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Star Citizen
TERA: The Exiled Realm of Arborea
The Lord of the Rings Online
Tibia
Tree of Savior
Trove
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft: Classic

I agree! but for me nothing can replace adventure quest world, the first mmo I ever played as a kid

WiseSky

The_Old_Goat wrote: »

@WiseSky is Pantheon even out of beta yet?

you mean pre alpha?

WiseSky

Jeffrey530 wrote: »

I agree! but for me nothing can replace adventure quest world, the first mmo I ever played as a kid

Like I say to others... The first MMO is like the first Kiss or love...

I remember playing Tibia a Full Loot PVP game... nothing beats those memories...

This was the best PVP in MMO HISTORY...

This was our guild :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d57ltAH3Zro

Still have friends playing that game level 900+ since 2002

Like all first "best experiences" I stopped chasing the dragon and sobered up and got ESO

slipciok

Soooo... ESO is best mmo because have a voiced quests? Lol.

Danikat

The only other MMO I've played recently is Guild Wars 2 (and GW1 before that), which is still my main MMO. I've played others but it was a long time ago (my first was Ultima Online, back in the 90's, unless you want to stretch the definition to include MUDs.)

There's some small things I think ESO does better (for example I prefer the system where you unlock a hairstyle and then can swap to it whenever, in GW2 you have to use basically a cheaper appearance change token which is just for hair and then use another one to swap it back if you want to).

But the main reason ESO appears to me is because it's an Elder Scrolls game. Without that I wouldn't have even looked at it. I play this game because it lets me explore more of Tamriel than any single game before (including some bits we haven't seen before) and I'm hoping eventually it will include all of Tamriel and maybe other parts of Nirn as well. Especially since hopefully after the next chapter they'll have run out of old games to rehash and will have to start looking at doing new things again.

BisDasBlutGefriert

There has never been another mmo that I've played, where I've stopped dead in my tracks in the middle of an intense mission because the landscape has me awestruck. I must have hundreds of eso landscape screenshots by now. All saved into a separate folder, and shuffled as my desktop background. The world/level design in eso is absolutely breathtaking at times!

Going to also add what others have said that makes it stand out: fully voiced quests. And, it's very easy for me to get sucked into the lore and lives of the npcs of ESO.

Recently played: (within the last 6 months)

Guild wars 2 (because of the eso vs gw2 post. Hadn't played it before that)

Rift (played many many hours at launch. Tried my original character again for nostalgia. Cash grab.still, a fantastic game though)

Aion (same as rift. Played many hours years ago. Has best looking player characters in my opinion. Also has turned into a cash grab. Another awesome game time was not kind to)

Jaxious79

slipciok wrote: »

Soooo... ESO is best mmo because have a voiced quests? Lol.

Well SWTOR has voiced quest.

SWTOR is pretty much a hub game. They have a main story and each zone has a small quest chain but after that you just chill on fleet and queue or go do dailies on their small new areas.

So out of the two all voice quest MMO ESO is light years ahead of SWTOR.

omegatay_ESO

Delete mods

omegatay_ESO

I will skip doing a wall of text and just say.. Eso is the ONE mmo I keep coming back to. That says something.

I will say one thing, the graphics/art team NEVER fail at making breath taking landscapes for us to explore.

Auztinito

Recently, it has been Black Desert followed up with FFXIV.

If we're talking total. I've played the two mentioned above plus Neverwinter Online, TERA, DCUO, Vindictus, Bless Unleashed, Star Trek Online, Planetside 2, Guild Wars 2, Elsworld, EVE Online, and Skyforge.

If I were to top 5.

1.) FFXIV does everything pretty well. For a tab-target it feels fluid as you unlock more abilities to jobs. It keeps you engaged through its story, music, and boss encounters. It's great at teaching the player how to do vital roles like healing and tanking. The community is usually just nice in general. It probably one of the only MMOs that allows me to just hangout in a public area and socialize with complete strangers.

2.) Black Desert has the complete package when it comes to being a video game. It has really great action combat that is smooth and reactive. It's PvP is pretty solid besides gear being the end-all of power. It's completely vertical in that regard. It's extremely grindy but it's combat can cover that up easily. Character creation is top notch. Story is meh but it has unique concepts that are awesome (Black Spirit, Conversation unlocks, No fast travel, Sailing and Desert Mechanics).

3.) Neverwinter is great free-to-play action MMO. It's combat system is like ESO but feels more grounded and fluid. Classes have unique identities. Story is standard fantasy but it has the D&D lore to use which is unique to me and really interesting.

4.) DCUO has that super-hero power fantasy of becoming a hero or villain like Batman or Joker. It allows just enough customization to allow your character feel unique. It has the best Transmog system I've ever seen. You just need to find and wear a piece of gear once and it's added to a collection of styles that you freely change or apply anytime you want. The inclusion of hideouts and ect in that game made it feel more like a super hero/villain game over time. Besides that, it's alright.

5.) ESO is great for two reasons. The first being it's a elder scrolls game that you can play with friends and ect. The second reason is the abundance and relaxing aspect of questing in the game. The questing aspect is the best part. Where it fails to me is in group content and its combat system. Group content that I have played lacks anything that suggest a group is needed besides the damage and sponginess of enemies. Essentially they have lacked interesting attacks that players must dodge or use specific mechanics. For example, FFXIV raid fights with Exdeath and another with Ghost Train. The mechanics involving Blizzard 3, Thunder 3, and Fire 3 are interesting. These unique encounters and mechanics make group content fun. As for combat, it's too much about spamming X until you apply/re-apply your DoT/Buffs/Debuffs. It comes off as "spammy" and lacking any weight. These two factors make pretty terrible in comparioson to many action MMOs in the past decade and make the game feel like a low budget indie game made by 10 people.

VoidCommander

slipciok wrote: »

Soooo... ESO is best mmo because have a voiced quests? Lol.

I know this might seem silly, but I recently wanted to catch up on the lore of Runescape after having not playing the game for almost 8 years now. I decided I wanted to passively watch some lets plays of the quests, only to remember that they don’t have voiced quests, and the dialogue boxes are damn near microscopic. At that moment I learned that I would never take full voice acting for granted again.

JinMori

Wow at it-s worst is still better than eso now.

Eso had a chance to become really good, it didn't take it.

At the end of the day it's just a mediocre mmo, right now.

Right now, i don;t really wanna play an mmo, but when i put things into prospective from an ojbective point of view, wow wins, eso has less grind which is good, but wow has more and better of pretty much everything else.

Jaxious79

JinMori wrote: »

Wow at it-s worst is still better than eso now.

Eso had a chance to become really good, it didn't take it.

At the end of the day it's just a mediocre mmo, right now.

I don't know it really depends on where you are at with each game. If you find running the same world quest over and over and over being gated with 2 levels of your covenant each week and then spend 6 hours in a raid to not get a single piece of gear and then the vault gives you a measly 200 piece waist that is only a fraction better than your 197 covenant piece fun than you might be right.

Personally I don't find that fun at all.

DreadDaedroth

My favorite was Warhammer Age of Reckoning. Shame EA handled it bad.

MinnesotaKid

Cleanest sheet in the dirty MMO laundry atm.....

vestahls

Funny how few mentions SWTOR gets in this thread. Not only are the NPCs voiced, but your character is voiced too, and you get actual options of answers which can be "good" or "evil" plus other personality types, which is more than ESO or any TES game ever managed honestly. And the questlines are pretty well written there too, for an MMO.

And they had companions from the very beginning, and iIrc you can romance them and everything, so even more dialogue choices for the PC.

Honestly, the best part of SWOTR is that you have so many origin options, and can be with the "good guys" or the "bad guys", kinda like WoW but more openly evil, which a lot of MMOs, to the extent they even have elaborate quests, tend to avoid. And every origin story has its own consistent storyline and so on, they clearly put a lot of work into it. Meanwhile in ESO, you can kill an NPC and a few DLCs down the line they're magically alive again.

SWTOR is actually a really good game, it's just dated.

Inaya

LOL at even mentioning Pantheon when it's barely pre-pre Alpha!

Jaxious79

vestahls wrote: »

Funny how few mentions SWTOR gets in this thread. Not only are the NPCs voiced, but your character is voiced too, and you get actual options of answers which can be "good" or "evil" plus other personality types, which is more than ESO or any TES game ever managed honestly. And the questlines are pretty well written there too, for an MMO.

And they had companions from the very beginning, and iIrc you can romance them and everything, so even more dialogue choices for the PC.

Honestly, the best part of SWOTR is that you have so many origin options, and can be with the "good guys" or the "bad guys", kinda like WoW but more openly evil, which a lot of MMOs, to the extent they even have elaborate quests, tend to avoid. And every origin story has its own consistent storyline and so on, they clearly put a lot of work into it. Meanwhile in ESO, you can kill an NPC and a few DLCs down the line they're magically alive again.

SWTOR is actually a really good game, it's just dated.

Once you get through the story though its not a very good game. Sitting in the fleet (which is one of the most toxic areas in all of MMOs) waiting for a queue or running around in circles is not fun. Outside of the story, new areas its maybe 3 hours worth of content every couple of years, there is nothing to do in SWTOR. Sure you have FP, OPS and PVP like every other game but the planets are small, linear and there is nothing in them. SWTOR is just a good HUB game until you get through all the story and then its nothing.

ThorianB

There are things i hate in ESO and think other MMOS do much better. Battlegrounds, mounts, class system, PVP in general, roles, etc. But ESO is much better at keeping my attention than those games and a lot of that is due to the active release schedule, the immense work they put into creating stories, lore, and general eye candy, and the fact its the only game i have been able to get my wife to play is a big plus. Also housing in ESO has so much potential if they would just fix it.

I think Eve Online is up there with ESO for me. But to me these are totally different genres. I play one when i want to play a space game and the other when i want to play a medieval fantasy RPG. But there are certain elements they contain that appeal to me that i feel others fall short on. Challenging solo content( i count soloing group content as solo content), group content that isnt required but available when i want to do it, healthy and robust player economy, active dev team that is constantly adding new content, and the lack of need to grind to keep up( really hated this in WoW but Last Chaos was the worst at grind).

I still play Eve off and on but i have played ESO continuously for years and i am not getting burned out on it yet. That content drop schedule is a big reason i haven't got burned out yet.

Agalloch

ESO could have some additions that worked well in other MMOs.

Agalloch

We really need a revamp of all the areas with random meta events , public quests , invasions like other MMOs have.

This will bring to ESO a refresh every day.

Inaya

Jaxious79 wrote: »

JinMori wrote: »

Wow at it-s worst is still better than eso now.

Eso had a chance to become really good, it didn't take it.

At the end of the day it's just a mediocre mmo, right now.

I don't know it really depends on where you are at with each game. If you find running the same world quest over and over and over being gated with 2 levels of your covenant each week and then spend 6 hours in a raid to not get a single piece of gear and then the vault gives you a measly 200 piece waist that is only a fraction better than your 197 covenant piece fun than you might be right.

Personally I don't find that fun at all.

Add to all that:
A terrible community
No housing
Useless professions
Boring professions
Nothing to do except end game
Gear becoming obsolete every expansion
Terrible graphics
Did I mention the horrendous community?

Mojmir

If ultima online had eso graphics, id have never left.

Danikat

vestahls wrote: »

Funny how few mentions SWTOR gets in this thread. Not only are the NPCs voiced, but your character is voiced too, and you get actual options of answers which can be "good" or "evil" plus other personality types, which is more than ESO or any TES game ever managed honestly. And the questlines are pretty well written there too, for an MMO.

And they had companions from the very beginning, and iIrc you can romance them and everything, so even more dialogue choices for the PC.

Honestly, the best part of SWOTR is that you have so many origin options, and can be with the "good guys" or the "bad guys", kinda like WoW but more openly evil, which a lot of MMOs, to the extent they even have elaborate quests, tend to avoid. And every origin story has its own consistent storyline and so on, they clearly put a lot of work into it. Meanwhile in ESO, you can kill an NPC and a few DLCs down the line they're magically alive again.

SWTOR is actually a really good game, it's just dated.

I've heard that part of the reason games don't offer moral choices as often as some players would like is somewhere between 60% and 90% of players choose the good option, and a significant chunk of those who don't are doing a repeat playthrough specifically to see how it's different. From the developers perspective it's difficult to justify putting in the time to make different versions of the quests (and keep track of the impacts for later events) for something most players will never do.

I suspect SWTOR is different in that they pretty much had to give you the choice because it's Star Wars. Of course there have been Star Wars games where you don't get a choice, or choose once at the start (although that might just be strategy games where you pick a side to play as). But a Star Wars MMO without lightside/darkside choices would seem weird and I think the absence would be more noticeable and commented on than for other MMOs. I also suspect because it's Star Wars a lot more players would be inclined to make an evil, or at least morally ambiguous character. Not just because of the Sith, the bounty hunters, crime lords etc. have always been some of the most popular and exciting characters.

But the fact that they're working with a (literally) black and white morality system also makes it easier because you can have villains who are evil purely for the sake of being evil, because that's where their power comes from. Whereas in a lot of fantasy I think people want a lot of villains who are more nuanced and fall into that grey area where what they're doing is wrong but you could maybe sympathise with them, especially if you're being given the choice to side with them. So it's more work to create the characters and storylines...for something most people won't want to do anyway.

(That's not a criticism of Star Wars BTW, I think it's got some fantastic characters, including villains, but a lot of it works because of all that world building and lore around how morality works and the consequences of that. If you don't have that it's harder to get players to buy into it.)

THEDKEXPERIENCE

One thing a lot of MMO players might not realize is how close to an MMO many standard sports games now. NBA2K’s my player park is an MMO with an economy. Furthermore things like Ultimate Team, MyTeam and Diamond Dynasty have all, in one way or another, copied the economics of MMO’s with their auction and trade houses.

There is a surprising number of ESO players with limited MMO experience (me included) with a 20-30 year history of sports games who simply liked Oblivion or Skyrim and gave this one a shot.

I always knew that I would like MMOs but WoW, Star Wars, Star Trek, Neverwinter and the few others I tried couldn’t scratch the itch I was looking for. From BEFORE day one, ESO did.

I still leave and come back frequently to play my sports games. I’ll probably be MIA from ESO in April when The Show is released. But I’ll come back. I always come back.

iksde

for me...the only thing which keep me so much in ESO and cant keep in other games like ESO is mainly just combat design, in overall it is just TES world + burned out of other games along this this

for me I would never play ESO for so long as how it is managed if not TES title in it along with bored after years of other same games + this combat which is in no any other online game

as I like ESO in overall how it just looks I like every other game I have played in terms how it looks from inside, how it is well managed, done etc....
in practice most most games for me are much more comfortable to play and enjoyable
(cash shop system, trading system, account chcaracters management, gear/items/bank space etc management, devs support - all of this for me in ESO is just worse version or outdated version which was in old era of games where everywhere it evolved with QoL but in ESO it just stopped like for old, old school games while ESO neither is old or old school version of some game)