I also play Final Fantasy XIV. I bought ESO to kill time in between raiding and whatnot. This game is really good though i only started 5 days ago. Im disabled and only having 1 MMO to play gets boring real fast when you are playing it constantly. So i guess my reason is boredom lol.

Cyrodiil alliance war. Only alternatives are DAoC(but that game is showing it's age) and Guild wars 2 (which however splits the pvp map into 4 separate instances which i don't like)

why do I play ESO? honestly...

because it's come the closest, mechanically and conceptually, to my perfect MMO. Mind you, ESO is NOWHERE NEAR perfect, as far as I'm concerned - it's seriously lacking a few key features (more tools for player-designed entertainment, customizable housing, larger regions, better structure for grouping)...but it's still closer to fulfilling all the key features I've always been looking for in a fantasy MMO than any other.

WOW was fun, but too cartoony, too flippant, and the people were AWFUL for the most part (there are always some good guys around WOW, but pound for pound, they were vastly outnumbered by the dregs of humanity)

I *LOVED* city of heroes - but it was superhero (not fantasy), and the story wasn't particularly gripping. Also, it doesn't exist anymore

LOTRO - I *love* this game, partly for the atmosphere, a lot for the environments (LOTRO is nothing short of GARGANTUAN in scope), but mostly for the people. The community of LOTRO is by far and away the best bunch of people I've ever met online

sadly, the game itself is pretty boring, so, again, it scores high on a couple of points, but really, moment-to-moment gameplay, and fighting especially, are pretty much a drag

Guild Wars 2 - guild wars 2 came pretty close to a nearly perfect MMO - an astonishing mix of really vivid fantasy environments (a really compellingly designed fantasy world is HUGELY important in an MMO for me), a really smooth movement interface (making an MMO where you can have working jumping-puzzle games is something I've only seen work in GW2), decent graphics overall, and a host of really nice anti-grind features (privately instanced resource nodes, a separate bank solely for crafting mats, xp gains from almost everything)

but combat was just a BIT too fast - I really need about another half-second of response time - GW2 combat was fast and furious, but a little unsatisfying, because it took just a hair too long to realize what was happening, pick your response, and activate it

but mostly, GW2 lost me for bunny-gnomes with auto-turrets. Good lord but I hate Asuran Engineers. I hate engineers in general (I DETEST magi-tech), I hate cutesy animal characters, I bear a long lasting hatred of gnomes in almost every fantasy genre ever made...and somehow, GW2 took 3 of the things I hate most in this world, and made it an integral part of their world. Damn you GW2!!!

NEVERWINTER - mechanically, nearly perfect to play. Fighting was visceral, but just a bit longer, long enough for me to react while still feeling very actiony. Sadly, most of the rest of the game was crap. The dungeons were sad, the environments were interesting looking but very tiny feeling, the classes were painfully limited, the visuals for characters were sub-par (although the environments were reasonably pretty), and the stink of Perfect World was all over it (I also play Star Trek Online and while a tolerably fun game as a distraction, the f2p cash-shop has basically consumed most of the game content).

then comes ESO - a world I'm familiar with and have always enjoyed. *reasonably* well realized. Excellent visual style, *some* gorgeously realized fantasy environments (Alikr, morrowind, oblivion - some other regions were a little disappointingly mundane forests, but still), nice graphics (still not as smooth as I'd like - I'm still having issues with my gtx 780 underperforming ONLY with ESO which is driving me a little nuts), a really engaging single-player story experience, and a near perfect pace for combat - plenty of actiony things to do, but enough time to really revel in what you just did AND react to what's about to come in

All in all, ESO has managed to hit most of the marks I've been looking for in a fantasy MMO, while managing to avoid making any unforgivable mistakes. It's still lacking in a lot of areas, but as long as we don't add gnomes, guns, or unforgivably intrusive cash-shops, and as long as we don't *** out game design to store gimmick items, I've got a standing sub and I can come back and enjoy ESO in whatever amounts I like.

thanks for asking - dunno if anyone will read this far, but it's a slow day at work...

These are rated in order from most appreciated to least appreciated.
1. The freedom to play as any class with any weapon and armor type.
2. I can actually play solo if I so wish for a great amount of the game.
3. Grinding is hardly a mandatory activity (most of the time.)
4. The quests are more immersive than "Kill X amount of Y monsters"
5a. Combat that requires more than merely pressing buttons in a certain order.
5b.The smaller skill bar with no cool downs for abilities
6. It is rich in Elder Scrolls lore and pseudo-lore.

I love the fact that I can use whatever weapon and armor I like regardless of class. I like the weak coupling to the traditional "holy trinity". I like being able to level specific skills. I like the fact that crafted items are as good as looted items (or should be if they maintain their promise; currently some looted items are slightly better which I don't like).

Edited, wrong Thread

(TL;DR)Some Game History about me:
Being invited to ESO beta was like opening up a whole new world to me. I'm a pretty intense fan of the Elder Scrolls games since "Morrowind", and I was craving a new MMO to sink my teeth into. However the thing that attracted me to most of the MMO's I played was aesthetic and cosmetic conditions. I cared very heavily about how my character looked. How powerful a piece of armor or weapon was not as important to me as looking good. In fact a couple of characters I played in other MMO's were well known for their deceiving appearance, meaning that they're armor and weapons were often low quality, but I chose them because of how they looked. I often made my characters much more powerful in ways that were not visually apparent, so it was quite common for me to walk onto a map and be laughed at because of my gear appearing low level but then those same players would often be surprised and even chased off of the map because my characters were in fact not weak at all.
The moment I started playing the ESO beta, the first thing that made me incredibly excited was finding out I could make incredibly powerful armor and also customizing the appearance of the armor into any fashion, mixing and matching was a beautiful thing that I had never seen before in an MMO. Most MMO's I played before ESO involved class dictated armor. If you were a Rogue, you wore Rogue armor, if you were a Warrior you wore Warrior armor. ESO said to hell with that, and that was a beautiful thing for them to do.

ESO allows me to do everything I used to love about my older MMO's but ESO does most of those things better. My other MMO's felt like games, but ESO feels like a world. There are locations that I go to because... I just like them. Yes I am that Veteran Rank 3 player running around in "Stros M'kai" with the level 1-5 players, because it's a beautiful area. Sometimes when I'm riding my horse down a road in "Auridon" I will tilt my camera angle up so that I can view the landscape and see the moons travel across the sky.
My characters that I've built (three so far) are all relatively unique. I don't follow builds or well known skill combos, I just look over the skills and come up with a build based on what I personally think would work. So far that's actually working for me. The "Play your Way" theme is no joke, the first character I built with out any help is quite competent in higher level activities. I mean I'll admit, participating in Beta gave me a taste of what to expect ahead of time, and coming up with my first character's build on a skill calculator also gave me a slight edge to figure out what would work together efficiently skill wise, but still when I build my characters, I do what ever I feel like and to hell with anybody's opinion. ESO is the only MMO that has ever given me the ability to do that and honestly it's quite liberating compared to the MMO's I used to play.

The other thing that makes this game a must play for me, that actually has nothing to do with the game play specifically, my family plays ESO. I'm not joking, after beta closed and the game was released, my sister started playing the game, her boyfriend and close friends started playing it, my sister had this idea to build a huge family guild and began to convince my father, my stepmother, and myself to play the game. My Stepmother started playing it and she has become absolutely obsessed with the game (in a good way lol), and then about a month or two after my stepmother started playing I began to play as well (mostly because she was playing it every day and I was really feeling the pressure to play the game since she came to me with every question she had about the game because my sister is harder to contact). Now we're trying to get my father to hop onto the game, and we are so close to getting him to start playing the game, but he's a very stubborn person, but I know he'll pick the game up pretty soon, he's feeling a lot of the pressure I did before. So I do play this game because it has (no joke) become a family activity for us. I'm very serious when I say that ESO has brought my stepmother and I closer together, I've learned so much about her recently just because I play alongside her in ESO.

The last thing I want to say is that, this game is improving. I believe in this game, everything it has currently is better than any MMO I've ever played before, it has so much room to expand and do great things, and I want to be here to see where it goes (even if that is a swan dive straight into the asphalt). The player base for this game is wonderful as well. Part of playing so many F2P games is learning to ignore immature players, it's not an option, it's a requirement. ESO though has such a clean player base, it's not perfect but who cares when the majority of people on the game just want to enjoy the game like everyone else and use the game to relax/escape rather than to instigate/troll.
I can get over the down sides of this game pretty easily, because I believe in the concept that the game has to improve because if not it will just fail. I'll report bugs, minor annoyances, and take sides on issues such as ChP debacle, but there's no reason for me to get frustrated over such things, because the anger is not going to change those problems. What will change those problems is time and money, otherwise the game will just fail and I'll move on to something else.
Though the positives and enjoyment that I get from this game currently out weigh the negatives to me, so I'll play away until they do something really bad which I doubt will happen.

Because it's set on Nirn. That's it.... if it wasn't for this. I wouldn't be playing.

Character builds.
I'm all for removing classes if that could happen. Because I love classless RPGs. Champions Online is fun for creating and testing build concepts. But that relies on skill line synergy and cross synergy and the correct balance of each. ESO just doesn't get this concept right, and so we're stuck with classes.

However, because of the various weapons and guilds, you are effectively 60% classless. Give weapons ultimates, add spellcrafting, and add more guilds, and we may see builds that don't use class skills (oh please please).

I also like that you can play how you like. Ignoring the people who say you can't, because what they really mean is that you can't min/max with whatever skills you like. You can effectively wear part light, part stamina, and have a staff in one bar and a sword and shield in another bar. Sure, bow makes more sense as a sneak attack build, and nothing beats pulsar and steel tornado, but you can make almost any build work, if you accept sacrifices.

These games will always reward diversity, however. And which ES game didn't. Don't tell me you're a pure archer in Skyrim when you blacksmithed/alchemy/enchanted a game-breaking bow, then also used pots or restoration to heal.

So, I think there's a healthy amount of play how you want to, if you're willing to accept a performance hit in one area or another. There's also enough non-class skills to make builds interesting and less class locked. There's also enough small gains to give you plenty of avenues of character progression. My favorite game for that concept was Kingdom of Amalur, so many mini-buffs to collect.