Yeah, sadly the "play in any order" concept with the Chapters, along with the "always start with the latest Chapter" rule, did not come with lore and dialog updates for older content. Sometimes it works out, other times, not so much.

If the player does not know that they need to break from what ZOS recommends and do content in the order it was created, then they will do the lore/story part of the game out of sequence and have to ignore or reconsile these things. If they care.

The game asks if you want to play the intro. Why not asking if you want to play timeline or progression ? It would be cheap to implement.

Yeah that would be quite disappointing I'd imagine I was lucky because I played through the game since the cold harbour start, and when I played Elsweyr on my main, Cadwell recognised me in that sense, which was really cool. So it works that way round, just not if you start with Elsweyr. I'm not even sure if it's something that can be easily fixed. Short of forcing people to play a certain order or re writing a lot of dialogue...

lordrichter wrote: »

Kingdaboss123 wrote: »

This is why the game needs to start from the prison in coldharbour.

Yes, at least for new players. BUT... People who buy Morrowind/Summerset/Elsweyr probably don't want to be told "sorry, your shiny new purchase will have to wait while you do hours of content we created 5 years ago when you didn't care about ESO". Understandable perspective, but results in lore/story disconnects. Again, if they care.

For existing players, the game should ask where to start, like it asks if you want to skip the tutorial.

I completely agree. I think it is better they give the player the option to choose what content they want to do first. If you are joining the game at the release of a new Chapter, it's probable that there is content 5 years back that might still be relevant to this new chapter. If it bothers people so much then they should go back and do all of the content in order if the dialogues really matter to them. For ZOS to go back and change these dialogues for all of the quests based on whether or not a player completed Morrowind before the Main Story, Elsweyr and Summerset before Morrowind, etc... it's a lot of time and money, and that's only to appeal to the people who actually read the quest dialogues.

Thats "technically" your fault for playing content out of chronological order.

Asking players new to the game where they want to start would be like asking a 3-year old American child who has never traveled whether they want to vacation in Australia or New Zealand next year. A lot of explanation about the available options and the reason you're asking the question would be necessary. I played Elder Scrolls games before starting ESO but when I got here I had no idea about the gameplay, storyline, time frame within the lore canon, or anything else. I made my character and was thrust into the tutorial with no idea what to do. If you had asked me if I wanted to play the current expansion or the original story I probably would have chosen the expansion like a kid with a shiny new bike being asked if she wants to ride her old tricycle. Common sense might tell you one option is better but you always go for the most exciting. A wall of text about "the story actually starts here but if you start there you might get confused when some things are out of chronological order...." Yeah that would be read by very few I think. People just want to jump in and play their new game and they'll button mash past any options and questions and disclaimers as fast as they can to get to their new game. It's just how people are.

Its a shame they have not bought in an NPC who pops up when you start 'older' content and says "Hello! So, little thing, you are travel back in time. They will not know you. It's wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff!"