So first of all, I’m pretty new to the game and am loving it thus far. I’ve mainly just been questing, with some brief (and admittedly largely unsuccessful) dabbles into PvP. I’ve still got a lot of zones I’ve never been to yet. But what strikes me so far is how the questing in some zones is actually very different from others. I’m not talking about the storylines (which obviously differ between zones) or the terrain (which also obviously differs). Rather, the structure differs in certain subtle ways that I want to talk a bit about, because I think certain zones’ questing is just more well done. To be clear, my comments are mostly geared towards the side quests in each zone, as opposed to that zone’s main quest line.

Let’s take the following zones as examples: Vvardenfell, Auridon, Grahtwood, and Stonefalls.

Vvardenfell’s side quests are unique in this group, in that each town’s major side quest is actually quite long and involved. For instance, the Balmora side quest is quite lengthy. As is the Sun-in-Shadow one, or the Scarlet Judge one. I could go on. These quests are actually full, self-contained stories with multiple acts that take quite a while to get through. There are certain exceptions (for instance, the Ruddy Man quest is a bit more of a typical quest), but by and large, Vvardenfell goes for long-form quest lines. These end up being quite memorable.

Grahtwood does not do long-form questlines. The questlines for each town—while often pretty good IMO—are relatively straightforward storylines that don’t really have multiple acts. But what Grahtwood does do that seems relatively unique is have the different side quests actually tie into each other in interesting ways. I won’t go into details because I don’t want to risk spoiling things for anyone, but there are multiple instances where characters from one side quest are quite relevant to another. IMO this makes the zone come together as a coherent whole.

Auridon does not do either of those things, and I think it suffers a bit for it. The side quests aren’t necessarily short, and they can have some interesting objectives and dynamics. Many also fall under the same very basic framework (they’re Veiled Heritance-related). However, in the end, each side quest is not a particularly involved storyline like in Vvardenfell, nor do the quests tie together in interesting ways like those in Grahtwood. So it’s really just a series of solid one-offs.

Stonefalls is even a step further down from Auridon (though I’m not all the way through it, so I guess quests could tie together still, a la Grahtwood). The side quests have stories but they aren’t long storylines like in Vvardenfell. And they don’t tie together in like in Grahtwood. Furthermore, though, the quest objectives are too often not particularly inspired. I’ve seen a lot of “Kill 10 of ____” or “Collect 5 _____” kind of quests in Stonefalls, which I don’t remember seeing almost any of in the other three zones. This is typical fare for MMOs and can still be fun, but it was a bit surprising to me after seeing so much of ESO so far that wasn’t like this.

I would hope that some of the other zones I’ve not done resemble Vvardenfell or Grahtwood in this regard, rather than being like Stonefalls. I would also hope that, moving forward to new DLC and Chapters, ZOS makes an effort to have the kind of inspired storylines we saw in Vvardenfell and Grahtwood.