nudel wrote: »

I feel like the devs really missed an opportunity with the Cadwell's Silver and Gold zones. It would have been really interesting if your character was a spy and had the same quest areas but different objectives, sabotaging the enemy rather than helping them solve their internal strife.

It would have required time and more work, but it would have seriously extended the replayability and we wouldn't have had so many threads prior to DLC with people complaining about playing another faction's quests.

ShedsHisTail wrote: »

This something that's been bugging me lately and it's related to the Lore of the game and how the community relates to that Lore.

If you're not interested in the lore, stop reading now, because this could get long and you'll be bored.

Prior to ESO I, like many others I'm sure, played World of Warcraft. One of my favorite things about World of Warcraft was the way in which the central conflict of the game was presented in a fashion which galvanized players to one faction or another. Many of the adventuring zones in WoW were shared between factions; chasing similar goals and witnessing the same events, but you could see these things from opposing points of view simply by playing another character from the opposing faction. This created a real air of conflict between factions in the game world and, I think, created a sort of loyalty among players who actually valued and appreciated the story being told.

I remember I became fairly active on the WoW Lore Forum where players would discuss for days or even weeks about the political impact of a certain lore event, or the moral implications, or philosophical ramifications; trading ideas and theory crafting and, yes, even argue about which side was right and which was wrong. While it could, admittedly, become caustic at times it was an active and enthusiastic community.

That's really what I feel like is missing from ESO. If I had one, singular, gripe that would be it.

The Elder Scrolls is such a vibrant world with so very much lore to draw upon, but for some reason it doesn't seem to get much discussion on the community forums. In fact, there isn't even a Lore forum to host said discussion. Sure, there's the Fiction and RP forum, but discussion of the games story really isn't either of those things. So lore discussions are relegated to General Discussion where they become buried under this weeks bug complaint. But this really isn't an appeal for a Lore Forum, this is a question about that element which made the Lore Forums so much fun in WoW; the conflict.

Where is the conflict in ESO?

I understand that the three separate factions are all doing battle for the common goal of the Imperial City, and that that conflict plays out dynamically in Cyrodiil. But there's really not much to talk about there. Just as no one ever discussed the story of the various PvP battlegrounds in WoW. What I feel like is missing is those cross-faction zones, those points of conflict which play out on the PvE level, those shared events which spark discussion and inspire faction loyalty.

Yeah, you occasionally stumble across the odd quest where there are Dominion forces in your Pact lands. But nothing sets them apart from every other quest out there, and you just never really get the sense that there's any real conflict between these three factions outside of PvP. The factions, for the most part, pretty much keep to themselves, so busy trying to solve internal problems that you never really get a sense of any larger conflict. It's very insular.

I mean, really, it's shameful that there is -so- much lore in this world but somehow nothing to talk about.

I would love to see, moving forward with DLC, is new zones which have that sense of overlap. Zones which are maybe incrementally different depending on which faction you're playing. Maybe the Pact has a quest to take a mine from Covenant forces, but if you're playing Covenant you have to defend said mines from attack, and if you're playing Dominion your quest is to stealthily get involved in that conflict an stir up trouble? I dunno. It just feels stale and stagnant, and that stagnation, I think, keeps any discussion of that story from breaking free of the game and becoming something people talk about when they aren't playing.

Not only would it, I think, get people more invested in their particular factions' motives and agenda, but it would also increase replay value for some of these zones since they'd be different on different characters.

ShedsHisTail wrote: »

Hey... someone dug deep to ressurect this thread. I've got thoughts on this and One Tamriel, but I'm on my mobile so it'd be a pain to write out. Perhaps later.