Imperial edition gives access to the Imperial Race, not the DLC, as you said.

IC is PvPvE. Lots of NPC mobs in a tight quarters PvP environment. It can be a lot of fun, but is often either sparsely populated or overrun by a zerg ball group.

PvP balance is the best it's been in a long long time. There are still a few outlier cases, but nothing too extreme.

Morrowind gives access to Battlegrounds, which are a blast, assuming you aren't pugging with noobs and getting rolled by elite premade groups.

If you sub, you don't need to pay for DLCs at all, just Morrowind. I don't sub, but I'm also a cheapskate.

The devs are responsive, but they move slowly because of a lengthy development and quality assurance process. So while they do get lots of things done that the community wants, it's often after the community has given up complaining about it and moved on to complain about something else.

Welcome back!

Depends on the kind of PvP you're looking for, but I think you'll probably get more out of battlegrounds tbh. The sewers are unofficially more PvE, with people farming mobs, but it's great if you're a ganker. The city itself is a mix of buildings & avenues, and I have quite literally run into players by turning a corner. There are usually people around, either groups of 1-3 or a guild boss zerg, but we can be hard to find; you can capture a district flag as a great big "I am here, come fight me" signal, or run around looking for fights. Again, lots of gankers if that's a play style you like.

The "problem" with IC is that it has a bad reputation. Most PvE people I know avoid the zone because they hear about how ~awful~ it is, so getting even a small group together can be difficult. For PvP it can be hard to find people to fight, and those of us who are in the zone are frequently in stealth whenever we're out of combat.

I agree with Bryan, I rarely see unkillable-but-damaging players in Cyrodiil anymore. You might need to gang up on an emperor, but only like 1v3 instead. I like non-CP the best because there are fewer min-maxed builds and I can compete on my skill instead of my build, so I can't speak to the state of CP campaigns. Battlegrounds are a whole different thing; they're non-CP, in case you didn't know, and you can build differently from open-field PvP. You can pug successfully but like the above said you'll be roflstomped by organised pre-made groups; supposedly the group finder tries to match groups with groups, but I don't know how often that happens.

Dev responsiveness is hit and miss. There are changes they make based on player feedback, but they also have a definite vision of how they want combat to work and have been making sweeping changes to bring that vision about. If something makes it to the PTS then they might tweak numbers based on feedback, but only rarely do they go back on or significantly alter the changes. (E.g. the devs significantly changed Siphoning Attacks with Morrowind, making it a heal over time; over the PTS cycle they increased the resource return a little bit, but you still have to spend stamina to get stamina/spend magicka to get magicka and no longer get your secondary resource back.) The patch notes usually include dev comments alongside the combat changes, so we can see the reasoning even if we don't agree with it.

I recommend subbing for a month, honestly: you can sample the regular dlc, and if you decide that you don't like IC you'll have saved yourself some money.

Good luck with your decision!

victoriana-blue wrote: »

Depends on the kind of PvP you're looking for, but I think you'll probably get more out of battlegrounds tbh. The sewers are unofficially more PvE, with people farming mobs, but it's great if you're a ganker. The city itself is a mix of buildings & avenues, and I have quite literally run into players by turning a corner. There are usually people around, either groups of 1-3 or a guild boss zerg, but we can be hard to find; you can capture a district flag as a great big "I am here, come fight me" signal, or run around looking for fights. Again, lots of gankers if that's a play style you like.

The "problem" with IC is that it has a bad reputation. Most PvE people I know avoid the zone because they hear about how ~awful~ it is, so getting even a small group together can be difficult. For PvP it can be hard to find people to fight, and those of us who are in the zone are frequently in stealth whenever we're out of combat.

I agree with Bryan, I rarely see unkillable-but-damaging players in Cyrodiil anymore. You might need to gang up on an emperor, but only like 1v3 instead. I like non-CP the best because there are fewer min-maxed builds and I can compete on my skill instead of my build, so I can't speak to the state of CP campaigns. Battlegrounds are a whole different thing; they're non-CP, in case you didn't know, and you can build differently from open-field PvP. You can pug successfully but like the above said you'll be roflstomped by organised pre-made groups; supposedly the group finder tries to match groups with groups, but I don't know how often that happens.

Dev responsiveness is hit and miss. There are changes they make based on player feedback, but they also have a definite vision of how they want combat to work and have been making sweeping changes to bring that vision about. If something makes it to the PTS then they might tweak numbers based on feedback, but only rarely do they go back on or significantly alter the changes. (E.g. the devs significantly changed Siphoning Attacks with Morrowind, making it a heal over time; over the PTS cycle they increased the resource return a little bit, but you still have to spend stamina to get stamina/spend magicka to get magicka and no longer get your secondary resource back.) The patch notes usually include dev comments alongside the combat changes, so we can see the reasoning even if we don't agree with it.

I recommend subbing for a month, honestly: you can sample the regular dlc, and if you decide that you don't like IC you'll have saved yourself some money.

Good luck with your decision!

Thank you! Curious if you can make a Warden without purchasing Morrowind by subbing now