I'd like to begin by saying that, overall, I do, indeed, love this game. I love the richness of the lore. I love the beauty of the world. I love the simplified combat system, and the incredibly variety of classes that can be created from the class skill lines. I'll also point out, at the beginning, that there are many things I think need repair (skills that don't work properly, quests that you have to log in at 0300 to complete, and so on) that I'm not going to touch on here. What I am going to touch on covers two topics: quality of life, and changing game mechanics to "fix" problems.

I worked in IT for nearly 20 years. I've coded, but not coded game systems. But I am at least passing familiar with the theories behind coding, so understand when I say that I realize there are some issues which have no "quick fix."

Let's start with quality of life.

Guild bank. You've created a guild bank that can't store money, and because of a duplication bug, doesn't auto-stack. When the dupe bug hit, rather than eliminate the bug, you changed the mechanics so we are forced down one of two paths to maintain space in the guild bank: either we remove and restack everything manually, or we utilize an outside addon to do it for us. Because of a bug in your code, you made the banking process more difficult, not less, and completely overlooked actually repairing the bug that caused the problem. In effect, you changed a game mechanic because, I suppose, it was easier than fixing the problem. This is poor design, and poor implementation of a fix. And further! You designed the guild bank to be incapable of storing money. Why? This one completely baffles me. You see, guild band funds are used for myriad things, such as repairs for group runs, or paying stipends to guild officers or crafters. Guild funds are used for purchasing siege equipment, and other equipment, again for guild group endeavors. In order to collect funds, I've been forced to create a character that does nothing but store money, so that the guild funds can safely be kept separate from my monies. This, also, I don't understand the thinking behind. I venture a wager that if you removed these two issues, it would improve quality of life greatly, making the game less, not more, cumbersome for people to play.

Guild store. Dear gods, what a mess that is! We'll start with the clunky-as-all-getout UI, and go from there to the inability to do a text search for items. Or the fact that you can't successfully click on Name to do a search that's at least alphabetized by name. Again, we're forced to go to outside parties (addons) to begin to get some semblance of use from this "feature." Then, if you do find what you're looking for, and use it for price comparisons, and list items for sale ... when you receive the mail that says "Item sold," it doesn't tell you which item. So, in my case, as a crafter/gatherer AND guild banker, I have no way of separating out the sales made by the guild bank vs. the sales I make for myself. You guys seemed hell-bent on attempting to keep people from having an easy way to make money. I suppose the mentality behind this was that it would magically keep bots and gold farmers from being able to capitalize on things ... how's that workin' for ya? It is my contention that, if you are insistent on keeping us throttled to only being able to use a guild-based auction system, you at the very least improve the functionality. Again, you're hobbling us, your paying customers, and this is very much another quality of life improvement that could help make the game more enjoyable. I don't know if you guys quite realized this or not, but you have a lot of players who enjoy playing merchants. We enjoy playing the market, as it were. You've made this part of gaming damned-near impossible for us.

Mail auto-fill. This is just ... off. Let's say I wish to send mail to my husband, Possum. Possum is both in my guild, and on my friends list. I begin entering "Po ..." in the field, and a list comes up with EVERYONE currently online whose name has "po" in it. This includes Pootang, Eponyms, and others. My question is -- why? If I'm not guilded with Pootang, and I'm not friends with them, why, for the love of the gods, are they showing up in my auto-fill? I either have to completely type out "Possum," or I have to scroll through a (sometimes lengthy) list to select his name. Again, quality of life. It's the little things, trust me. If it worked well, we wouldn't notice it. It's working not-well, and we definitely notice it!

Whisper responses. I'm having a conversation with Possum, and Wynslo whispers me to ask me a question. I click my "respond" key (I've mapped mine to R), and the response actually goes to Possum, whom I've not whispered in over five minutes. Why? Where is this logical, or sensible, or anything? Quality of life, guys.

Last. Let me tell you a bit about role-players. We enjoy creating characters that have a story with them. For instance, I have my main characters in AD, and they each have a story. But I also had (key word here, HAD) characters in EP and DC. Why? I wanted to experience that story content, as well, but from within the story. For instance, my EP character was a Nord. She was, so-to-speak, born within the region that would become, with her help, the Ebonheart Pact. But now, I've gotten my healer up to veteran levels and guess what? She's going through the EXACT same storyline my Nord would have gone through! Why should I wish to continue with my Nord, when my Altmer is doing it? Let me see if I can put this in a perspective you may understand. You assumed that players wouldn't want to be bothered with creating more than one character, so you created a system in which that one character would experience every bit of everything the game has to offer. You didn't take into account players like me. See, not only do my characters have different stories, but one of the joys of gaming, to me, is playing each and every class, in as many ways as possible. I love nothing more than exploring a class from the ground up, deleting if i don't like it, and fiddling with it until I do. My characters' growth is based on their faction, their class, and the subsets within that class.

But now, I'm forced -- in order to experience some content, or to be able to play with guildies who've experienced some content -- to play every single character through exactly the same content.

To put it mildly, you've just removed a lot of the desire to explore the different methods of play, because when I contemplate playing eight characters, successively, through the exact same content, I'm just depressed. Another think to think of, guys: If you have someone who's leveled one character solely through PvP (it does happen, lots!) you're throttling that player, if/when they choose to embark on dungeons or other content with their guildies. If they do not do this specific set of quests they will be unable to play with their buddies.

I want this game to succeed. I fear for its success if you guys don't take a cold, hard look at some of the things you already have in place. If you don't resolve some of these quality of life issues, people are going to get tired of the cumbersome systems that exist, and lose the desire to play. If you don't make hanging out with your friends much easier, you're going to lose whole groups of people who go to a game that makes this easier. If you don't change your requirements for end-game, specifically forcing us to plod through the same bloody thing, character after character, you're going to lose those of us who wish to explore ... but can't stomach the daunting task of doing the same thing, yet again.

Please. Hear us. We want this game to continue, successfully. Changing game systems to fix bugs, keeping faulty or clunky systems in place? These things won't help this game remain a success.