"Is ESO worth buying?" replies

HeroOfNone · April 2015

Morning,

Something I get asked constantly during stream and as a gamer is "is ESO worth buying". Playing since beta I normally take a screenshot of time played and emote a shrug. For those that don't exactly understand my passive aggressive response, I thought it might be nice to cover a few replies folks might have to the stated question.

"Is ESO worth buying?"

As an MMORPG, yes its worth it. But it does depend on your taste in games and some personal preference. ESO is an MMO, it is not a single player RPG like skyrim, not a sandbox MMO where you can build anything like minecraft, and not a gore and sex infused game like other M rated games like the Witcher. Carrying the mantel of a TES game there are a lot of preconceptions that you need to break down and look at the game for what it is, an MMORPG.

What it does well is telling stories, letting you explore the TES lore & realms, questing by yourself & with others, achievement systems, challenging dungeons, 12 man raid trials, open world PVP, a reaction based combat system, no/limited global cool downs, a simple but rewarding crafting system, stealing and & killing, first person mode, open ended classes, werewolves & vampire options, and alternate achievement trees that span across characters. Being an old school gamer of MMOS from Everquest, Asheron's Call, Dark Age of Camelot, Warhammer Online, Guild Wars 2, World of Warcraft (some), and many other MMORPGS I can say this is probably one of the most complete MMOs out there for content and mechanics. If you really try and play the game and get into some quests, exploring, stealing. Dungeoning, or PVPing, you'll probably find yourself spending a hours a day (if not hundreds in a few months).

There are things to improve on however, but change is on the horizon. Currently there is no player housing, no instanced tiered PVP battlegrounds, no dueling, there can be a lot of lag in large scale PVP battles, few tutorials on certain mechanics to the game, a few equipments sets have little pupose, some skills are not useful, and there are some annoying persistent bugs. Being a constantly changing game a lot of priority issues, based on the stability and player majority, have been corrected, mitigated, or tweaked. Also in their road ahead presentations, ZOS has recognized these shortcomings and has shown plans to address most in future patches and DLC.

With it going buy to play with convenience and cosmetic items (now pay to win equipment shops) this is probably a good time to get in try it out. If you like it, new DLC and content will be coming in the next few months, probably around console release, so you'll have time to get to end level. If your still on the fence, check out a few youtube videos or twitch streams to get a better idea.

So, anyone else want to share their response, or common response, to this question?

MCMancub · April 2015

Value is subjective to the buyer.

Danikat · April 2015

MCMancub wrote: »

Value is subjective to the buyer.

I agree.

How I'd answer this question entirely depends on the person who is asking me. Ranging from "What? You haven't bought it already!?" to "No, I don't think you'd want to put yourself through that."

kevlarto_ESO · April 2015

This is really a question no one can answer, depends on what your looking for in a game, you can read though the forums there are issues with ESO like all mmo's have, depends if your open minded have a tolerance or a perfectionist that expects the game to be bug and lag free.

I have gamed for many years, since the commodore 64, I have many boxes of games, some were great some sucked, some got great reviews from other players and game reviewers, I found a lot of those games were the worst in my opinion, I found some games that got really bad reviews but the theme of the game interested me and turned out to be the best games in my library, all personal opinion.

ESO for me in my opinion, great game, I have played all the single player Elder Scrolls games since Dagger fall, and I think ESO is a good edition to the family, ESO is not perfect and has some issues, but I get to play in Elder Scrolls world with my friends which is the best thing about ES for me, I like the pvp, and have learned where to pick my battles to avoid a lot of the lag in Cyrodil, but I still enjoy large battles and a good ole siege.
I find the npc voice overs interesting at times, the game has good immersion, I can get lost in the story lines and I like to complete achievements, to me ESO offers a little something for most type of play styles but once again it is all opinion, in the end it depends on what you want. For me it was money well spent, I will admit my biggest complaint at this moment is how everything pc is on hold until the consoles release, I just think that was a bad move for the customer.

BloodWolfe · April 2015

To me, yes it was worth the purchase of the Imperial Edition (physical copy) last year. I love the game, but it's not for everyone so it would depend who is asking me.

lihentian · April 2015

if you don't have computer or internet, eso is definitely not worth buying..

SHADOW2KK · April 2015

lihentian wrote: »

if you don't have computer or internet, eso is definitely not worth buying..

Words of wisdom.........

noobfury · April 2015

For the true MMORPG enthusiast the game is worth every penny. It would be safe to say that over the course of maybe ten years, ESO is the closest I have found to games like EQ 2 which was my personal favorite for a long time.

One of the factors to consider when purchasing a game is the level of support offered. ZOS is responsive to the community and motivated to improve the game while listening to feedback and keeping the player base informed. They are always moving forward with improvements and perform updates frequently.

I would much prefer a subscription based business model as opposed to a buy to play with cash shop however , this seems to be more prevalent in today's market.

I would be delighted if large expansions will be available for purchase maybe once a year featuring more in depth content . There are some shallow points with regards to questing in the current environment , re paints of NPC's and repeat tasking that can become stale at certain points.

The PVP and Alliance War game play is quite good , as with all PVP in MMORPG'S however it is not without need for balancing and incentives .

Overall , ESO is a game you can feel confident to put your time in to .

Oh , I also miss swimming underwater and having that part of exploration but that's just me.

Raash · April 2015

I think its a good buy and especially now when monthly sub is gone.
But I think this game should be looked upon as mainly a solo game with some multiplayer features and not as an mmo really, phasing system is/was (Been gone from game for 9 months and ALL my friends left so have not tried questing togheter with someone lately.) the worst thing they possible could come up with if your main thing is coop-playing with more then one friend.

Edit: the background to my issue with phasing system

lets say I am player A
then we have players B C D and E and later on casual players F, G and H

Player A start first (5 day headstart) on ebonheart pact and reach lvl 21, at launch player B start but say he/she want to go aldmeri dominion because player C,D & E want to play some special race and dont have the explorer pack, so player A reroll, finds players D & E to be lvl 20 due to heastart access so player A+B tag team a while waiting for player C(game newb) wich need lots of help,

A few days later player C join. A & B are close to lvl 20 by now and we find out we are unable to help player C to catch up due to phasing system.
Player B choose to reroll to help player C while player A(me)& D+E want to focus on 1 char so I choose to try catch up with D & E.

When finally players F and G joins the game players D& E are chocked with boredom when climbing VR-levels and quit, player B rerolls once again to be able to play with F & G and now plays something like 4 different characters in different " levling groups" while i hit VR lvls and start grinding. I hit vet 12 and now player H joins the game and everything splits up once again, new lvl group with alts take form and people start get tired for real about this dumb system keeping people apart from playing togheter.

In the end: All quit. And even worse; none is interested in returning even when game is free to play.

glak · April 2015

lihentian wrote: »

if you don't have computer or internet, eso is definitely not worth buying..

10 Mbps or better Internet

Jaxsun · April 2015

No, the current state of the game does not allow for it to be sold to anyone. It should be free to play the way it is now. If they fixed the lag, lack of UI for guild store functionality, guild management, mail system functionality, the UI in general aomg other issues then yes it would be worth buying. The PVP is really fun, when you can stay logged in, of course....

Heruthema · April 2015

Yes it is. There are a lot of nay sayers but I say this is the best out there. I have enjoyed it from the beginning.

Dragonphart · April 2015

Yes, but with a caveat. Please be aware that many are having a lag and crashing issue since the 1.6 patch. This may affect how you perceive the game, like or dislike. So the game is good but has some serious issues at the moment, so come prepared and with a hard skin for when you lag or crash in Cyrodiil and it gets you killed.

Shadesofkin · April 2015

Generally, when I'm asked that question my initial response was "Yes"
More and more as I've gotten tired of hearing the question I get a little annoyed and respond with "If you're asking me that question you probably won't be playing in 3 months, so don't waste your money".

Ley · April 2015

For a simple question I'll give a simple answer.

$60 for hundreds of hours of game-play seems worth it to me, even if you just play it like a single player game, finish the story and never touch the game again.

firewatch · April 2015

Yes, as long as you have realistic expectations when it comes to PvP. ZOS has not been able to deliver as advertised when it comes to large scale battles in PvP - especially post Update 1.6. Cyrodiil is very laggy and many experience various types of crashes during larger battles.

Robbmrp · April 2015

firewatch wrote: »

Yes, as long as you have realistic expectations when it comes to PvP. ZOS has not been able to deliver as advertised when it comes to large scale battles in PvP - especially post Update 1.6. Cyrodiil is very laggy and many experience various types of crashes during larger battles.

Cyrodil lag has to do with only having 1 PVP Zone and nothing PVP related outside of it. Cyrodil would be the same as any other zone had they opened up "World" PVP in the game. Once they get some small scale PVP outside of Cyrodil hopefully the lag will go down, but even then it's doubtful. As the quote mentions, ZOS fell short on the promised large scale PVP battles.

Preyfar · April 2015

MCMancub wrote: »

Value is subjective to the buyer.

People complain about the price of a game, but will still buy a $5 cup of Starbucks, but will you still have that cup o' joe in four hours? No. It'll have run through your body and literally will end up flushed away. But $60 for a game that can give you 100s of hours of enjoyment is "too expensive".

HeroOfNone · April 2015

There are also cheaper locations to buy it than 60 dollars but it's nice to hear folks opinions on where they would price mark it for potential gamers.

Thanks for the replies folks, even the negative ones, nice to cover a few sides when linking folks into an opinion piece.

Makkir · April 2015

Outside of it's issues, the game is stunning and absolutely beautiful. I loved the main storyline quest and I love the whole concept of AvA in Cyrodiil.

Coming from playing WoW for 10 years this game has been an absolute pleasure.

titanofdoom · April 2015

Absolutely. It's got it's little issues but it's a great game.

Jayne_Doe · April 2015

Whew! Nice to see such an overall positive thread. There are so many negative threads out there, that I was beginning to think that most people hated the game and would not recommend it (and made me wonder why they were still playing). Frankly, I was expecting as much from this thread.

But, as I said, it's nice to see that there are plenty of folks out there who enjoy the game and would recommend it. I would also recommend it, but as many others have said, it depends on who asks me. If it's the type of game they would normally enjoy, then yes, I would highly recommend it, especially since there is no longer a subscription fee.

Psychobunni · April 2015

Very Casual Player: Yes, absolutely worth the buy
Hardcore, Progressive Gamer: Wait a few years and if still here, and better end game, then buy. Or burn out content in a month or two.

IMO anyway