since you asked...I don't actually play for the "lore", as in the history of the world. But I do play for the story, which is sorta the lore, in some ways. Point is, I enjoy the story, and in fact, I think you'd be robbing yourself of a LOT of content if you didn't allow yourself to enjoy the story presented for you.

After all, they put a LOT of text into this game, from quest dialogue and general npc conversational dialogue, to all the material in the various books. Sure, if you're not into that, that's fine - but you're cutting out a LOT of content that exists in the game, and since you're spending your time and possibly your money in here, I think you deserve to get your money's worth out of all the game features.

But, that being said, it's not a requirement, and I don't judge you for skipping the lore if you find other aspects of the game more interesting, or lore just isn't your thing.

THAT having been said, I *DO* judge you, at least a little bit, if you demand that all lore and story content be removed from the game in favor of whatever particular thing you DO like. I'm not saying that's what you're doing, I'm just saying that if that IS what you would do, then yes, I would feel free to judge you, not that my judgement would have any real impact on your life.

The lore is part of what makes ESO TES so I think that you are missing out by not paying attention to it.

I love the lore, it is why I have all the Elder Scrolls books (novels and the library collections).

To play an mmo, I have to feel heavily invested into the world - and lore has a massive part in that.

While I have played games with a bunch of jokes and pop culture references in place of real lore (WoW, a bunch of K-Mmos, Allods, etc), I will say that the Elder Scrolls is 100% more enjoyable because of the lore. Also, because it was a game from the start, unlike LotR, it doesn’t suffer from too much burden to the original source material that would prevent fun as far as game mechanics - If that makes sense.

I can’t imagine not reading the lore, it’s practically a legit mythos. If you enjoy fantasy/sci-fi novel series, I recommend reading it. It’s no Warhammer or Star Wars EU but dam The Elder Scrolls are much closer to that point in the curve than anything else I’ve ever played.

It isn't necessary to pay attention to the lore to play. I feel that ideas about where the game should be going and what the devs should do with the game does need some attention to lore.

Lore. Always lore. Nirn is heckin' interesting.

Lore is the only reason for me to play ESO. Lore is not only books, dialogues and stories, but the world - scenery, creatures and plants, architecture, furniture and treasure items (those we can steal), costumes and armor, and sound, of course - the way different races talk, the music of different cultures.

I'll tell you about my friend: he wanted to play some game together. I suggested ESO. He is not familiar with TES games at all, he was not interested in lore. We did Cadwell's Gold together - quick run, dialogues skipped - it took us about 2 weeks. Next we did delves, public dungeons and some 4-player dungeons together. This is where he got bored. He stopped playing ESO - he said, no reason to do it, let's try some else game. An MMO without crazy rotation, with new gear making real difference, and all the content that can be done by two players. In total, he played ESO only for 6 months.

phermitgb wrote: »

since you asked...I don't actually play for the "lore", as in the history of the world. But I do play for the story, which is sorta the lore, in some ways. Point is, I enjoy the story, and in fact, I think you'd be robbing yourself of a LOT of content if you didn't allow yourself to enjoy the story presented for you.

After all, they put a LOT of text into this game, from quest dialogue and general npc conversational dialogue, to all the material in the various books. Sure, if you're not into that, that's fine - but you're cutting out a LOT of content that exists in the game, and since you're spending your time and possibly your money in here, I think you deserve to get your money's worth out of all the game features.

But, that being said, it's not a requirement, and I don't judge you for skipping the lore if you find other aspects of the game more interesting, or lore just isn't your thing.

THAT having been said, I *DO* judge you, at least a little bit, if you demand that all lore and story content be removed from the game in favor of whatever particular thing you DO like. I'm not saying that's what you're doing, I'm just saying that if that IS what you would do, then yes, I would feel free to judge you, not that my judgement would have any real impact on your life.

Agree completely. I'm not an expert on the nitty gritty of every last bit of Tamriel's lore, built up over a bunch of games I've never played. But I love the stories here They're the best part of the game to me.

I enjoy Dungeons, Trials, Arenas, PvP... group content with other people, especially guildies... except vMA only solo content that's fine...WBs too sometimes...

I enjoy the combat system and theory crafting pvp builds... and the game has some amazing looking locations..

Yet I rather wipe for hours on a boss with a group trying to figure it out than do 20 minutes of solo questing.
I much rather mat farm than have to do solo questing tbh... i get to see the world and feels like I'm accomplishing something at least...

Some random telling me to go talk to some other random all the way at that end of the zone.. then run to that end of the zone talk to someone else and discover an item.. then go way over there then kill some 'boss', that even on alts without CP assigned is not a challenge to then go back and get a usually useless reward... miss me with that noise.

Pure time sinks and feel like chores, including that sometimes you have to ride all the way around in circles around mountain, which is purely designed to take longer. Even worse when you can basically see your destination over some rock, but of course that way is not climbable or has invisible walls...

9 capped toons and I have always subbed, yet...

6 have finished the main quest.. the others part ways in...
1 has Cadwell's Silver which I put myself through for the axes from the Soul Shriven motif. Same toon finished Thieves DLC and boy was that an exercise in patience. He might do Dark Brotherhood yet...
2 toons have done the main Vaardenfell quest line with Sotha Sil
1 has finished the Summerset questline

I've done the psijic questline on 6 toons because the skills are useful...

I have friends that are completionists looking for any and all quests and can argue about nuances of lore... but I just never got into it... then again I have never been into single player games, even FPS games, I rarely ever touched the single player campaigns and I could never buy an MMO that didn't have PvP..

Maybe that's why I find the all the tears about racial changes so confusing and also hilarious... to me they are stats attached to a certain looking player model...

Undefwun wrote: »

I enjoy Dungeons, Trials, Arenas, PvP... group content with other people, especially guildies... except vMA only solo content that's fine...WBs too sometimes...

I enjoy the combat system and theory crafting pvp builds... and the game has some amazing looking locations..

Yet I rather wipe for hours on a boss with a group trying to figure it out than do 20 minutes of solo questing.
I much rather mat farm than have to do solo questing tbh... i get to see the world and feels like I'm accomplishing something at least...

Some random telling me to go talk to some other random all the way at that end of the zone.. then run to that end of the zone talk to someone else and discover an item.. then go way over there then kill some 'boss', that even on alts without CP assigned is not a challenge to then go back and get a usually useless reward... miss me with that noise.

Pure time sinks and feel like chores, including that sometimes you have to ride all the way around in circles around mountain, which is purely designed to take longer. Even worse when you can basically see your destination over some rock, but of course that way is not climbable or has invisible walls...

9 capped toons and I have always subbed, yet...

6 have finished the main quest.. the others part ways in...
1 has Cadwell's Silver which I put myself through for the axes from the Soul Shriven motif. Same toon finished Thieves DLC and boy was that an exercise in patience. He might do Dark Brotherhood yet...
2 toons have done the main Vaardenfell quest line with Sotha Sil
1 has finished the Summerset questline

I've done the psijic questline on 6 toons because the skills are useful...

I have friends that are completionists looking for any and all quests and can argue about nuances of lore... but I just never got into it... then again I have never been into single player games, even FPS games, I rarely ever touched the single player campaigns and I could never buy an MMO that didn't have PvP..

Maybe that's why I find the all the tears about racial changes so confusing and also hilarious... to me they are stats attached to a certain looking player model...

Literally the exact same. I'm just thinking about what stats I will be able to get on my character depending on the race. 😂

I don't think either choice really applies in my case. I like the lore, and appreciate that it's there; however I simply cannot keep it all in memory. I envy people who can say off the top of their heads, "Well such and such occurred in the third era and..." Maybe if I was younger I could retain more of it, but it's all a blur to me.

I certainly am interested in the ongoing stories though, and never skip dialogues.

I'm here because it's an Elder Scrolls game. I do enjoy the gameplay of course, but if an identical game was created with a setting I don't like - post-apocalyptic survival for example - I wouldn't be interested in playing it. (I certainly wouldn't have gotten into it as soon because the first I heard about it was an advert for the beta on Facebook and given the number of utterly terrible MMOs advertised on Facebook - mostly short-lived browser based cash-grabs - I wouldn't have given it a second look without the Elder Scrolls name attached.)

When I'm playing I always take the time to read/listen to the dialogue, read books and explore (although I like exploring in all games even when that's not intended). I like the combat too, and I actually prefer periodic fights I find difficult and have to try multiple times to everything being easy, whereas I know some people who play games purely for the story who get frustrated if they think the combat is getting in the way. My husband is a lot like that, it was kind of fascinating when we were playing Dragon Age: Inquisition because it could have been two different games - he got into combat and he'd zoom in close behind his mage to watch the cool spell effects and do the entire thing in real time. I'd immediately pause, go into the top-down tactical mode and start issuing commands to my party, pausing every few 'turns' to update them and often repeat the fight 2-3 times because even if I won I thought I could do it better. Sadly most games don't offer that range of options, and we've often had arguments over who is "doing it wrong".

But even when I'm enjoying the combat the story and setting is my motivation for doing it, and if I'm not enjoying that I'm going to lose interest. I remember the days when games were pretty much "you are the triangle, you shoot lines at the squares (which are aliens)" and any plot was 1 page of text in the manual or on the back of the box. I remember playing Doom and about 10 levels in being presented with 1 screen of text updating you on the story so far, to which my reaction was "There's a plot? Really? There's a plot to this?" but none of those games ever held my attention the way RPGs do. Even when the graphics weren't much past "you are the triangle and the squares are evil monsters", character customisation meant picking 1 of 5 portraits to see on the character sheet and frankly the stories could be a bit lacking it was still more interesting to me. I was playing as much to find out what happened next as to find out if I could do it, and it's the same now. Just with considerably more elaborate worlds and story telling.

Admittedly TES lore can be quite overwhelming when you first get into it. Which is weird considering how it started. Not quite a story some guy made up on the toilet as someone above said, but it was Bethesda - a studio then know mainly for racing games - pretty much going "We're going to make a fighting game...actually now it's an RPG, yeah it's a last minute change but it's not like all that lore stuff is hard right?" and somehow spitting out what was already well on it's way to becoming one of the more detailed fantasy worlds out there (although a lot of stuff was added later - the orcs were pretty much generic monsters, khajiit were just bosmer who painted stripes on their faces etc.) and that was back in 1994, they've been adding to it ever since.

But you can learn most of the lore in the game itself. At first it will be horribly confusing (I started with Morrowind and found the religions especially confusing - for a long time I thought "good" daedra and the 9 Divines were the same thing because of how people talked about them) but there's a good chance you've already picked up more than a little of it just from the stuff that spills over into game mechanics like the different races and how they're spread around Tamriel (actually just because able to see the whole continent in-game makes it potentially less confusing than in previous TES games where you had 1 race from 'here' and loads of others from 'somewhere else'...including 1 literally from 'else where'), and some of the politics behind the alliances.

If you want to learn more about it my advice is to take the time to read books. Not just the lore books which count for the Mages guild line but all the books. Even if it seems to be something boring and irrelevant like a bosmer recipe book it might include a random fact which is the one missing piece that will allow a bunch of other stuff to make sense.