^This
I dislike the way ZOS is treating timeline now, they want to make the story make sense whichever order you are playing, but they are not doing a good job, and it's almost impossible for them to do so.
The problem with current way they are doing things:
1.Immersion will break anyway if you return to older zones. To provide full immersion, NPCs in older content need to add dialogue, for example if you first meet the dunmer silblings in clockwork city, they should recognize you in vanilla zones and coldharbour. But it's a complicated task and ZOS so far did not implement that, instead they are only trying to let the newest content make sense if you play it first. The immersion is not there once you finish the new content and go back to older content
2.NPCs can't truly die and your choices wouldn't matter. In the current way they are doing things, ZOS simply cannot let any important (re-appearing) NPCs die. The prime example being, since ZOS didn't make up their mind about timeline when they started vanilla, so even if you kill Sai Sahan he will return in Dragonhold with barely any explanation given. And the worst part is, you know none of the re-appearing NPCs will die, becuase then it wouldn't make sense if you meet them in older content and no explanations are given about how they returned. Not that I want any of them to die, but knowing 100% they won't certainly doesn't help getting me into the story (especially when they are like "this is where I die, love you goodbye but I gotta sacrifice myself" and I'm like "haha no you are not dying")
I think ZOS should keep making sure starting in any zone would make sense, but they need to let players (especially new ones) understand that older contents happened in the past. First Molag Bal, then Triad, then dragons. You are Vestige so time traveling is not something cannot be explained, as long as people are made aware of the timeline, they can accept why some dead characters return in older zones, or your old friend NPC doesn't recognize you at all in older zones etc
Should ESO embrace the fact that timeline is moving forward? 46 votes
Yes, time need to go forward, ESO world should go on ahead and older content should be viewed as "happened" in newer content
Yes, but only if players are made aware of the timeline order, so they understand why some NPC won't recognize you, or return from death in older zones
No, they should keep the way they are doing things now, providing explanations everytime a dead NPC reappear (even if illogical)
No, also they should go back to old contents to provide better NPC interations if they met the player in newer contents