I'm going to say right now, with a sad heart and no malice, that I predict the death of ESO. By death I mean significant decline of course, not actual servers shutting down. I've watched a great many people do this and laughed. I would have never believed I'd ever be the one prophesying doom for a game. But here I am lol. They just don't get some of the fundamentals of MMORPG's That's why they were able to do some great things with the game, but it is also why they had so many bad things and are not trying to finish killing it.

This is not based off of my personal feelings. I like this game and alot of the things it has done. ALOT. I enjoy it. I'm semi-burned out on it partially due to some of it's failings but that's not why this is here. This is here based on my understandings of MMORPG's and their mechanics that I have learned over the course of 15 years of playing and dissecting MMORPG's starting with Dark Age of Camelot and including many many others.

I watched the quake con presentation and some of the new changes are going to kill the game. But I don't expect you to really believe me, half of you are so committed to the game that you wouldn't believe me if it was on fire with you in the middle of it. But for the other half of you I'll try to explain why I think this.

Believe me or not, that is your choice. All I ask is that you stop and really think about each of these points and what they mean for the game. For you, for your friends, for your guild mates. AFTER the shiny wears off of em.


Now the really controversial part, where your initial reaction will be that these are all good things:


1. Grouping updates.

Yes, they did mention this in their presentation. However they said it would be fixed over the course of a few updates. That could be as late as early 2015 to fully fix it (if it's rolled out incrementally).

This should be their #1 priority in the game right now. It's the biggest problem that is costing the game population and it needs to be fixed now, within 1-2 months. There are alot of quests and code is hard, I understand that, people that cannot team with their friends ultimately don't care.

2. Justice System:

I actually think overall that this is really nice overall. However I think there is about a 1 in 3 chance that something significantly bad is going to happen because of the justice system. I'm not sure if it'll be griefing or an oversight that negatively effects the economy, but after their presentation I was left with a heavy feeling that there will be a significant loophole that will cause alot of problems.

That being said, this is only a chance and it could be minor, it's not near as big of a worry as the other points.

3. Stamina Builds:

Yes they are looking into them, however even if they implement the changes they mentioned without issues or bugs in the current state of the game stamina builds will still be easily inferior to magicka builds.

At least it'll be better but there are a good amount of people whose patience really is running out. I like my stamina builds, they are my favorite builds honestly, it still bothers me that I cannot build viably without magicka abilities and that won't change so long as most non-weapon skill lines are magicka based. Because they have all the utility they we need AND they use a separate resource pool.

Oh, and now we have spell crafting to make stamina builds even LESS competitive.

4. Spell Crafting:

PVE and PVP balance completely destroyed. Simple as that. PVE balance is already bad , PVP balance is still completely broken. This addition would be enough to easily break a balanced game, this one isn't even close to balanced.

PVE will still be playable and fun, don't get me wrong, but the balance is going to be even worse borked than it currently is.

5. Plans to implement a battleground.

This will kill Cyrodil populations. They are aware of that, they say they will find away to implement it where that will not happen. This is simply not possible. If you implement alternative PVP and people play it, you will lower Cyrodil populations. The better and more rewarding that alternative PVP is, the more people will leave Cyrodil. Especially because it will be instant action and balanced vs having to find it and possibly being outnumbered.

There is literally no way to implement alternative PVP without lowering the open world population, it's as simple as that.



Don't get me wrong, it's not all bad. Facial animation, new armor sets, dungeon scaling, veteran rank improvements, champion levels, improved character customization and specialization, combat responsiveness, werewolf buffs, solo being included in end game, weapon swapping.

These are all good things. But the points listed are major things that will break an already half broken game.



P.S. In case I actually get moderated for presenting my opinion supported by points that DO at least have SOME merit, I have copied this thread and saved it in a word file and will spread it in sites beyond just this forum and reddit. But I'd like to keep it very focused and exercise my free speech without undue censorship if at all possible. Regardless of whether you consider me right or wrong.