ESO started great. 1-50 was a fun experience; I was hooked until Molag Baal. I took a month-long break, came back, got to vet 2 and bleeeeeeerrrrrrghhhh... I just can't face it.

But why? There is still a decent game here. The skill system is entertaining and flexible. The quests are pretty good (despite the weird switching of sides at vet). The PVP zone is epic and can be spectacular.

So what is it? Why is it not fun?

Then I played another recent game whose name I won't mention, and it hit me.

The magic sauce of the best MMOs is independent of the skills and the quests and the art and all that goodness. (That's important, don't get me wrong, but it isn't the crack that keeps you coming back for months on end.)

No, the magic sauce is about the psychological pull of multiple interlocking strands of achievement, all giving a range of difficulty spikes and then rewards, laced into an immersive whole. It's about the variety of pacing, and pitching the reward levels appropriately. Done right, you forget the mechanics and find yourself just... well, playing. For fun. Whee!

In vet ESO, the core combat and questing mechanics are fine. The graphics are lovely. The performance is pretty much OK.

It's just that everything stays at exactly the same pace. It goes on, and on, and on, and on. The pacing never changes. It's an endless trudge down a featureless plain.

Trash mobs and elite mobs and bosses are simply too similar. A three pull of vet trash mobs in the open world is hard work - one mistake and phoop. (I am not talking about the OP builds here, but your average character). ie There is no sense of muahahah! I am mighty. Conversely, the world bosses are pitiful. Two people go whack whack whack and they are done.

There is no pacing. Nothing is a hilarious OP massacre. Nothing is an epic brown trousers moment. It's all the same.

That's not how human reward systems function. We like a 'fun' easy phase - haha aren't I powerful! - followed by a medium phase - whoops, phew that was a close call - followed by an occasional spike of awesomeness - holy cow! what was that creature, wow - before back to easy...

At vet, I want an easy time with trash. I want to wipe out dozens with a swing of my zweihander. I want a medium time with elites - you know, skin of the teeth but manageable. (About where we are with vet 3-mob trash pulls now). And I want a terrifying hard time with world bosses - dolmens or the unique guys - requiring half a dozen people all sweating to survive.

What I get instead is the same time with pretty much all of them. On and on and on. No pacing.

In PVP I want similar variety. I want small, medium and large objectives. A small objective I can solo. A medium objective requiring one or two squads of 4. A large objective demanding a full raid group. And I want to switch between them, and get commensurate rewards.

But ESO PVP doesn't offer this. It's effectively zerg v zerg or nothing.( Yes, you can create a small gank squad etc, but it's hard for the more casual player to find that.)

Winning a castle should be an epic massive high. But as the servers turn to uncontested keep swapping it's mundane, and the rewards are puny. Conversely, winning a medium scale objective - like a resource yard - should be tricky but manageable with 4 people. (Good luck with that, with 'normal' characters'). It should also have a medium reward. And for some reason, in a game very much geared towards solo play (1-50 questing), there is no solo/2-man PVP objective at all. What were they thinking?

There is no pacing; no commensurate reward.

I cant comment on Craglorn, as I only poked my nose in there, but from what I hear it's all about running in circles and grinding with a zerg. You couldn't drag me there with a barge pole. Circle jerk grinding? You have to be kidding.

The best games give us easy access to multiple strands of achievement which follow the easy, medium, hard pattern, with commensurate rewards, and let us switch easily between them. All offer progression, both in their individual strand, and in the overall character progression. Sweet spot might be around 3-5 of those strands.

The other game I won't mention hits this sweet spot. Even though its graphics are verging on nasty, its skills less varied, its quests less immersive, it is a much better game - because it understands pacing of risk reward across multiple strands of activity.

And then it sprinkles in presents. Dozens of crazy mounts, for example, as opposed to a choice of drab horse, drab horse or drab horse. Random bursts of pure unexpected fun. Boxes of mayhem. Surprise!!!!

Meanwhile, ESO plods on, and on, and on, and on. It plods endlessly towards nothing.

It can tweak all sorts of things to be better, but at its core - if ESO cannot find a way to offer a varied sense of pace across multiple strands of activity, it will never manage to keep people wanting more.