The only MMO I've ever liked. Here's why.

Spryngsnowstorm

Preface

In general, I don’t like MMORPGs. The auto-combat is boring. Grinding is boring. The quests are boring. Everyone looks the same. I’ve never gotten to end-game (because of the boring), but I have seen friends having epic 30 person fights with giant beasties and it seems more like doing math and less like playing a game. I’m just not into it. Therefore, this review is only applicable to the low levels of the game and my impressions thus far. I don’t have a lot of experience, but I want to explain why I like this MMORPG.

I love the Elder Scrolls series, which I picked up at Morrowind and never looked back, so I was a sucker for the game world. That’s what convinced me to try it in the first place. I was hopeful but also skeptical. With nothing to lose (my roommate who loves MMORPGs let me make a character on his account to see how it felt), I dove in.



Actual Review

Character creation was a blast. It’s one of my favorite parts of a game. I had been disappointed with the limitations MMOs had concerning look. This time I was glad to see an aspect of ES games carried over (my strong hope being that much of the feel of the games translated [and it did]) in the character creation station. Oh, the glorious sliders! I’ve made 3 characters and they each took 30+ minutes to make and they don’t look like everyone else. I was off to a good start.

The tutorial was a little ambiguous. Some things only brought up an explanation if you happened to click on it. Most of the tutorial was meant to teach you how to equip a weapon and fight with a rudimentary understanding of the battle system. The narrative broke down a little bit as I was being rushed through with this sense of urgency, but then there are 20+ urns with stuff to loot all over the place.

So I got free and was in one of the faction’s starting isles. This was something that bothered me. I want to play a Kajit, but I wanted to be on the same team as my friend. It was not clear to me that the races can only be in their assigned faction (unless I had spent more money on an upgraded account), so I played this character for 5 levels before my friend tells me he never saw that island and I’m not on his team. Damn it! So I can either play the race I want OR play with my friend. I made another character.

Time to talk about combat. This is one of the major selling points for me. It’s point and click per hit, rather than auto-fighting. It livens up the experience and requires more of my attention. Also, the first person option is another carryover I was happy to see. For a lot of the time it feels like playing single player as far as combat. The controls were already familiar to me, so I got the hang of it quickly. I’m not a fan of hotkeys, but it’s a symptom of not being able to pause which is my #1 hang up about MMOs, but there’s nothing for it.

That leads me to my next smiley face, XP distribution, aka Freedom From Grinding. Killing things is fun and sometimes necessary, but that’s not going to get me levels or gold. Missions and little story lines are what this is all about. Yes, the missions start out somewhat trite, but they’re clever and cute and not “go get me 10 of these” level of banal. You know where you’re going, what you’re doing, and there’s an at least moderately compelling reason you’re doing it.

Also in the realm of XP, I am so grateful for the shared kills. We get the same XP and the same loot if we take something down together, making this a co-op venture. There’s not petty squabbling about who gets the stuff or the kill. I feel a camaraderie when I see someone else is on the same path, killing the same things. We have each other’s backs because there’s no reason not to. There’s no more trepidation when I’m playing peak hours because, “Cool, other people to enjoy this experience with!”

Crafting is another thing I love. At first I was daunted by all the huge amounts of instruction, but then I read through a bunch of forums and wikis. Turns out explaining the system is more complicated than the system itself. I was hoping for a little more visual customization, but there are enough mechanics (many, but simple) involved. (I saw someone in a Kajit helmet and I Want It!! I’ll be learning that racial armor style since I can’t be a Kajit because I’m broke [whine].)

To sum up, EOS is a MMORPG I don’t hate, and that’s a glowing recommendation in my book. I’ve always wanted to be able to quest with my friends, but been too annoyed with game play to get there. Now if I can get my friend to stop leveling until I can catch up, I’ll be set.

Thank you, Bethesda.

Dovel

I am also enjoying it so far. A great new world to explore.

Thete

I view all content in an MMO as an increasing skill curve tutorial preparing you for end game. As such, I don't consider myself to have played an MMO properly unless I've take part in the end game (end game being the organised raiding or pvp, not random group stuff).

That being said, if you don't enjoy the levelling content, then the game itself is not right for you; so you're quite correct to abandon any game where you feel the first time levelling to be a chore.

Laura

I feel much the same way. its always difficult for me to get into MMOs but I love this one

MaGicBush

Hah same thing here, and I thought I was the only one :P. I tend to buy MMO's and get burnt out after about halfway leveling up and never max characters(making a bunch of alts as well). So I stopped buying MMO's a year ago and gave up. A bunch of my friends were getting this though so I decided to give it a shot, and I am at that spot I would normally be burnt out but I still look forward to logging in each day.

My main frustration so far though is it is very hard to co-op through the game with someone. A lot of the quests are solo instanced bosses which is where you would want help. Also they have to be in the same phase as you to be able to play together. I wish we could reset quests or switch your phase if you beat that quest somehow.

Mick2018

I've played MMO's for a long time but a lot of what you point out is something I've always felt as well! I enjoy levelling to a point because I like seeing the new lore but my only goal in other MMO's is to get to max. level because the levelling just isn't exciting at all! They were all the same and while you might of had a few interesting, unique and funny quests/moments, the majority was kill x, collect x, make x...

Here though, I'm loving the level experience. I don't feel like I'm in any rush to level and I'm always looking forward to getting to the next quest to find out what's happening! So far I've only come across a couple of quests that I just wanted to be done with and most others I've got a great sense having accomplished something and taken part in an event that matters!

Only thing I don't like at this time, which isn't actually that bad a thing in the long run, is that there are so many different skills path I can go down and I still haven't decided what I want to focus on lol Keep changing what I want to do and enjoying all which is making it more difficult to settle on one!

jesterstear

Coming from Lord Of the Rings Online, the only other MMO I've played (four about 4 years!)

The plus sides for Elder Scrolls

1) As the OP said, character creation kicks so much ass.

I don't like the way Elves look in this universe, but it gives you enough control to make them look Tolkienesque if that's your thing!

2) Class flexibility and hybrid builds

I love my tank/healer. I've also been having a right giggle, swinging a 2handed sword, using a bow, and decking myself out in heavy armour and a shield on the sorcerer.

3) Crafting levels up at the same pace as your character, you can actually wear the stuff you make (unlike other games, where you can only learn one profession per character and end up crafting level 10 items at level 30)

4) I like the fact that the races are all created equal, more or less.

LOTRO gives small but significant buffs to certain races which strongly predispose them to certain classes. Some races are banned from playing certain classes altogether.

I was particularly annoyed at elves having less hp in LOTRO than any other race, despite the lore indicating that they were likely more durable than any race with the possible exception of dwarves.

ESO wisely, is agnostic on this issue. In LOTRO my Elf Guardian has to put up with being less durable than a man or hobbit. Really!

Elves in LOTRO almost invariably play squishy damage dealing classes as a result, where they are not expected to survive close combat anyway.

The downsides

1) User interface is horrible, designed for consoles

2) The lore is not In the same league, but nothing else ever would be.

Azzuria

Agreed almost across the board.

This is the last MMO-feeling MMO I've played ... and I've play most of them.

There is a sense of cooperation in combat and, having run my first dungeon just yesterday (Banished Cells on my Bosmer Nightbow ), the combat was a lot more involved, active and engrossing than most MMO dungeon crawls I've experienced.

I am enjoying the hell out of questing. Very seldom do the quests seem onerous or boring. A bit annoying when there are too many people running around waiting for quest items to respawn but that's just the nature of the beast and tolerable. The freedom to just run off and explore also reminds me of the big sandbox of the Elder Scrolls RPGs and that's a huge plus for me.

Csub

I'm glad you like it and you are not alone
To be honedt, I am always a bit jealous when people write how they started the game with their friends, play together etc. None of my friends bought this game and I am usually a lone wolf in mmos, I mean I always look for a guild, people to talk to etc but still

Ravinsild

I leveled "slowly" (I'm already vet rank 1) and I listened to every story, all the dialogue, found every sky shard, wiped all the black marks on my map to white to be in a status of "completed" and just in general did everything there was to do, and now I made a new character to do it all over again.

I love it! I REALLY enjoy this game and look forward to coming home and logging in for multiple hours a night after work. This is just a great game in my opinion. I don't think I can ever go back to WoW

lonetac

Well I agree but I disagree. Ive played almost every MMO out there and it boils down to this:

1. Char Creation is kind of moot. The look of your char is negligable because you will have armor on and all the tattoos and other cosmetics will be covered 99% of the time unless you are in some RP event where you dress down.
2. You dont have kill x amount of baddies and turn in? I dont know what game you are playing but this game has those quests just like every other MMO. Ive had several of those so I am wondering how much you actually played this game. Not knocking you but there are plenty of errand quests where you run to point A and kill x amount of baddies to go return to NPC.
3. The combat is awesome. This is Age of Conan to the next level. The fact there is no tab targetting makes this scream awesome to me!
4. I find the class system a bit limiting. By end game everyone will be using the same cookie cutter builds, i dont think there really is a lot of variety but that has yet to be seen. There are limited classes and limited paths you can take not to mention enough skill points around that you can pretty much take whatever you want. By end game everyone will have the same skills and will be using the same ones.
5. I too had an issue with my friends choosing another faction and now we are unable to group together. nobody wants to start over as they dont want to waste their time invested and that causes a huge problem. I hope that ESO never allows faction changing but I wish they didnt force that on you at char creation because new players dont know the consequences of choosing it and its not very clear.

All in all a great game and its replaced Rift as what I consider the highest quality MMO on the market. But they need to justify that 15$ a month and keep that content coming. I dont think the business model will succeed with todays gamers but hey, they can try.

*edit* I think you feel the quests are less mundane because most of them are like quest areas. Completing series of quests and turning the tides of whatever ailment was posed at that spot. This is revolutionary and I love it.

Azzuria

lonetac wrote: »

All in all a great game and its replaced Rift as what I consider the highest quality MMO on the market. But they need to justify that 15$ a month and keep that content coming. I dont think the business model will succeed with todays gamers but hey, they can try.

Rift was awesome, to be sure. It was the ultimate WoW-clone in that it did every thing that WoW did only infinitely better, prettier and more in-depth.

I think on the subscription you're angle, though, you're wrong. The game isn't even a month old and they're already talking about new content with Craglorn. Group-based, pseudo-end-game content. This is a good thing! They've even said some of it is re-playable. Between that, other Veteran content and Cyrodiil, there are plenty of reasons to pay $15 a month, at least to me.

nudel

@lonetac‌

1) You can hide your helmet under ESC-->Settings-->Gameplay. Then everyone can see your lovely character creation. Also, many disguises can be used if you'd rather have the armor benefit and still be able to see some of your character's tats/ scars. I believe they changed them towards the end of beta so that combat in Cyrodiil does not remove the disguise at all, which makes sense since the enemies it was designed to fool are not the ones you're fighting in Cyro.

2) While the kill x amount of baddies and fetch quests etc are present, they are less annoying partly due to having to only kill say 4-5 as opposed to 20-30 and partly due to good storytelling. I think you can forgive the OP for not realizing they were fetch quests or kill x dude quest b/c he/she was simply wrapped up in the story of the quest.

3) Awesome I agree

4) The class system is really not limiting. I think most people saying this have not accessed all of the possible skill trees yet. There are a LOT more than just the class/ weapon/ racial/ crafting lines you start out with. I don't want to spoil how they're found, but I'm sure you'll come across some of them in the course of normal play. Needless to say, you cannot max everything even with every skillpoint in the game. At endgame, people run very very different builds even across the same class/ wep/ armor selection.

5) Faction choice at startup is kinda necessary since the zones your character can enter are defined by it. However, I would like to see the Imperial bonus of playing as any race be the standard. I did get the Imperial version, so I'm not missing out here. But I would hate to see players later on forced apart by their choice of race. The Alliance you pick is more important anyway.

Eps

Spryngsnowstorm wrote: »

Thank you, Bethesda.

Grr! How many times must we remind you people that it isn't Bethesda? It's ZOS.

That aside, I think that ZOS achieved their goal in creating a different MMO. Different in the sense that it appeals to completely different people to the standard MMO fare. If you came here for the min-max combat, you're out of luck. If you came here to actually do questing, you chose wisely.

That fact means it won't be cannibalized by the existing big dogs of the MMO world, and I'm quietly optimistic that the subscription model can actually be sustained as a result.

Spryngsnowstorm

Eps wrote: »

Spryngsnowstorm wrote: »

Thank you, Bethesda.

Grr! How many times must we remind you people that it isn't Bethesda? It's ZOS.

OP sees the Bethesda logo on the bottom of this here page. They are who led us to this place and made possible the world we're enjoying. They built the ship, even if they didn't drive the last nail. I don't think I'm wrong to throw some thanks their way.