Sime of the things he hits on I believe are spot on. Exploring being constantly fun to do , meh cities , his take on questing. Overall the review just felt overly vague. He could have been talking about either version of the game imo as he really doesn't hit on anything console specific. Mentions the controller. Big whoop. Where's how lack of text chat takes the mmo feel right out of the game? The trading system isn't even mentioned. Unless you're in a guild you wouldn't even know EsO had a trade system.

The whole "I want to love it , but then something takes me out of the game" is a running theme with the review but again , very generic. Kinda how I catch myself feeling when I'm talking about the game.

It's never a good sign when a game can Ajay be found for $40-45.... Heck, Amazon had it during prime day for $35.
I enjoy ESO, but the price is dripping faster than all the CoD games do

Pretty spot on review in my opinion. They didn't come close to bashing it, just stating where it's lacking.

"With The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited, ZeniMax Online Studios has crafted a virtual playground of great scale and beauty, but you're always one second away from seeing the skeleton beneath the game's shimmering fantasy facade."

I feel like that's a great overall view of the game in it's current state. The game is so close to being fantastic, but then it's riddle with these little quirks/bug/etc. Or big problems if you consider all of the Cyrodil performance woes and such. It's almost like some aspects got rushed, or they simply said "good enough" and moved on. I'm sure if they had more time it would have turned out differently.

EDIT: Honestly, if they never bothered with consoles, I think we would have a much more polished game on our hands. The better part of the past year was them working on the console release.

While I do think that this review is slightly over the top (from the first sentence you can almost tell he's about to start a ****-storm), I believe that ESO gets judged as an MMO unfairly. Why? Because it's held to such a higher standard than FF14, WoW, or any of the other cookie cutter MMOs. That's all ESO was supposed to be: an Elder Scrolls themed cookie cutter MMO with slight variations here and there.

But, because it has "Elder Scrolls" in the title, people expect more of it. They expect it to be as great an experience as the single player counterpart, and it was never, ever going to be that. That's the reason people don't like ESO. It has its problems, sure, but I would argue that it has no more than any other MMO I've ever played. It doesn't get bad reviews because it's a bad game, but because it didn't live up to everyone else's unfair expectations.

EDIT: This comment pretty much encapsulates why ESO gets such bad reviews time and time again.

For me it's just not an Elder Scrolls game and so it fails, the single player games are basically better MMOs and I don't understand why they stripped out everything that was good with those games, then replaced them with the crap parts of MMOs. It's just a linear theme park MMO, nothing sandbox about it and all the quests are boring "kill ten rats" style of crap. I don't even see the point in it since none of the quests are made for you to do them in a group, you end up soloing and so they might as well have just made the single player game.

Pallmor wrote: »

If the reviewer is tired of hearing stilted, cliched dialogue, he has probably picked the wrong profession in reviewing videogames. It's the VERY rare videogame that DOESN'T have stilted, cliched dialogue. Most of his other complaints are niggling too, and he even admits at the end that he still wants to keep playing it.

Ironically, the areas of the game most deserving of criticism (lack of communication options and poor guild support) aren't even mentioned.

Thank you for pointing this out. All in all, ESO has real problems, and he mentioned few if any of them.

Just another opinion, I agree with some of it, but in the end my fun factor is the only thing that matters to me and people play these games for all kinds of reasons and not all games are for everyone even if they are the most polished game on the planet, I feel the article is honest from the writers point of view.

I think he captures the overwhelming sense of wasted potential pretty well. He's focused on the questing/leveling experience mostly and doesn't delve into the mechanical problems that are the game's true downfall at all though.

The bugs, exploits, and broken mechanics, some of which persist from early PC beta, with yet more persisting from the various updates and patches are what I'd focus on as a player, these are things that can be fixed, the core game he's focused on is what it is which may be why it's what he decided to review.

As a player I'm more interested in what new things are broken this week, and which exploits the playerbase has discovered today. (getting six snipes to land at the same time with a dozen stacks of hunter on at once, as it turns out, which wouldn't be nearly as annoying if there weren't equally game-breaking bugs that have persisted for two years now and I had some reasonable expectation that such things would be fixed anytime soon.)

I really enjoy the game too, which is why it's so disappointing.

Sallington wrote: »

MCMancub wrote: »

I was reading through the comments of the people comparing it to Skyrim. Do people just have some sort of post-pregnancy nostalgia with that game? Personally, I don't find Skyrim that much fun without addons. It's the alteration of the game that makes it fun to many people, not the game itself.

100% agree. Skyrim wasn't that great of a game. It's actually my least favorite of the series.... until you start messing with addons. Then the game becomes absolutely incredible.

I know! Everyone keeps trying to compare ESO to Skyrim, but what they're really doing is comparing it to 150 addons.

With the exception of their views on the quests I agree with the review. This game could have been so much more but it was rushed to be completed so they could start making money. And when it "flopped" so to speak, they had to change the format to B2P and start putting in things that should have been there from the start. The layout of certain places as they mention are exactly the same and used over and over and over and over again. This is just unprofessional and probably a management decision to cut corners to get the game out sooner. Well, now those decisions are biting them in the a$$ and have been since launch.

The fact that the games been out for almost 18 months and we still have to use an addon to find out what we sold in a guild store pretty much says it all.....

ESO is cool to hate. People tend to hate big companies and extra critique them. Some smaller unknown company makes a games and its best thing since bread and butter.

BBSooner wrote: »

MCMancub wrote: »

I was reading through the comments of the people comparing it to Skyrim. Do people just have some sort of post-pregnancy nostalgia with that game? Personally, I don't find Skyrim that much fun without addons. It's the alteration of the game that makes it fun to many people, not the game itself.

Agreed. Skyrim needs addons. The base game (like oblivion) still has game-ending bugs that can tank a save file. Not to mention the dumbing down of the questing system in to "point face towards arrow ... walk towards arrow" that has sadly overtaken the series.

It's that so many people likely started with Skyrim that gives it weight in these discussions.

I wish playing Morrowind was a prereq for even installing Skyrim, just so people would see how lacking Skyrim is in just about every single RPG element. Even Oblivion introduced more hand holding, but still had a lot more of the "RPG feel" from Morrowind intact.

Sallington wrote: »

BBSooner wrote: »

MCMancub wrote: »

I was reading through the comments of the people comparing it to Skyrim. Do people just have some sort of post-pregnancy nostalgia with that game? Personally, I don't find Skyrim that much fun without addons. It's the alteration of the game that makes it fun to many people, not the game itself.

Agreed. Skyrim needs addons. The base game (like oblivion) still has game-ending bugs that can tank a save file. Not to mention the dumbing down of the questing system in to "point face towards arrow ... walk towards arrow" that has sadly overtaken the series.

It's that so many people likely started with Skyrim that gives it weight in these discussions.

I wish playing Morrowind was a prereq for even installing Skyrim, just so people would see how lacking Skyrim is in just about every single RPG element. Even Oblivion introduced more hand holding, but still had a lot more of the "RPG feel" from Morrowind intact.

I've got a good friend who doesn't like any of the other Elder Scrolls game because he felt they lacked in comparison to Morrowind, and yet he plays with more than 300 addons. I begin to wonder if he's still actually playing Morrowind.

VtCwby07 wrote: »

MCMancub wrote: »

While I do think that this review is slightly over the top (from the first sentenu can almost tell he's about to start a ****-storm), I believe that ESO gets judged as an MMO unfairly. Why? Because it's held to such a higher standard than FF14, WoW, or any of the other cookie cutter MMOs. That's all ESO was supposed to be: an Elder Scrolls themed cookie cutter MMO with slight variations here and there.

But, because it has "Elder Scrolls" in the title, people expect more of it. They expect it to be as great an experience as the single player counterpart, and it was never, ever going to be that. That's the reason people don't like ESO. It has its problems, sure, but I would argue that it has no more than any other MMO I've ever played. It doesn't get bad reviews because it's a bad game, but because it didn't live up to everyone else's unfair expectations.

I'll agree with that. ESO does have a lot to live up to.

The problem people have with it, at least with the console version, is why would you release it knowing there are things from the PC version that are missing, lacking, or otherwise not functioning correctly? It would have made more sense to hold off and release a more compete version.Look at what happened to Assassin's Creed unity

Business. ZOS is owned by investors and investors don't necessarily see things as a developer sees things. Investors want the pay out as soon as possible. That's why I think the game got rushed on both PC and console. The executives were probably pressuring the developers to just get the game out there. The "kids" will buy it because it comes from a great brand. Consumers are getting smarter than that and there's a lot of competition. Taking a dump in a box and putting a brand name on it will only get you so far. In the long run, it's bad business.

He only played AD and thinks PvP is required to level? I love AD but that's only a third of the game. He didn't seem like he gave the game an honest try. Some things he was spot on, and others I couldn't disagree more.

BBSooner wrote: »

Sausage wrote: »

ESO is cool to hate. People tend to hate big companies and extra critique them. Some smaller unknown company makes a games and its best thing since bread and butter.

Eh, WoW is "cool to hate". I would say ESO is still a moderate player in the MMO industry as opposed to a major one at the moment. As much as I enjoy ESO (though less of late) I don't think it has the staying power of a top MMO since the best part of the game is still the beginning/middle.

WoW wasn't cool to hate for the first 3-4 years it was out. Most of its player base is either left over from the early days or those wanting to try out the new "F2P until a certain point and then you buy time with gold" stuff. I would argue if WoW were re-released today it would fall flat.

ESO is on par (note: not better, just on par) with pretty much every name-brand MMO except for WoW.