AshySamurai wrote: »

... I found a few mates which agree to help me and they just couldn't because they didn't have this quest. So, it's not only about people, but also about quest design and the game itself.

ramasurinenpreub18_ESO wrote: »

I'm willing to bet that a core element of the problem for traditional TES players is that all we really wanted from ESO was the ability to play through Tamriel with a friend... ONE friend.. perhaps two at most. Many of us had wonderful experiences in past Elder Scrolls games that we wanted to share with a close friend or partner... as they happened... not discuss and compare after the fact over a coffee.

What we wanted was Skyrim/Oblivion/Morrowind CO-OP. Bethesda flat out wouldn't give it to us (despite cooperative play being the single most requested TES feature for 15 years), so we came to ESO in the hopes of finding some of that experience.

That isn't what we got. Instead we got a phased mess full of trolls and bots, but there are some magic moments in this game, when it all comes together, so we stuck with it anyway, and tried to carve out that experience we wanted.

Now we've reached the end of the road of what can be achieved with our play style and that's rubbing a lot of us the wrong way. We are the core fanbase that allowed this game to have any chance of success to begin with, the real fans of Tamriel in all its incarnations, not the standard MMO players whose interests are often very fleeting.

Craglorn should have been released with soloable quests or activities, or a solo/duo friendly zone should have been released along side it at the same time. Some Craglorn quests *require* four people for no valid reason whatsoever, and a group of four is simply more than many of us are comfortable playing with, or can even be bothered to try to organize at all. As someone mentioned previously, life interrupts. It's absolutely no issue to stop play briefly because of kid/spouse/cat or whatever when you're duoing something, but when there are three other people waiting on you... well then you are now an "inconvenience", and when there are 11 others waiting? Now you're kicked and alone again. A lot of us just aren't interested in or able to give that kind of play commitment. The absolute *mess* that Craglorn quest stages imposed was the nail in the coffin for that region for us.

Back in my WoW raiding days someone once said to me "Forty people don't willingly get together on a weekend without a paycheque." and that's stuck with me ever since. Big group play is ultimately about the reward, not the adventure. I don't think its really possible to retain that 'magic' when you're grouped with more than two others. Optional grouping is fine, even big grouping, but forced grouping goes against the very essence of TES in my opinion. Also, given that all we wanted was co-op TES, the forced soloing in ESO is just as dumb. I should have been able to take on Molag Bal with my best friend, and it should have scaled accordingly.

Yes ESO is an mmo, but it's also an Elder Scrolls game, and this friction is going to continue and increase until TES players have a viable way forward along with the rest of the standard mmo crowd. Maybe the champion system will help a bit but I doubt it.

At this point I think Wrothgar should be made their number one priority as far as new regions go, or Murkmire had better have a ton of solo/duo friendly content.

ZoS, please put the big guilds of 'professional' mmo players on hold for a few minutes and remember where your bread is buttered.