Ragana wrote: »

I played 15 years of WoW and finally decided to give ESO a shot after having some time off due to the COVID crisis and I must say, I am extremely impressed.

I never bothered reading the quest text in any MMO before but this game is different. I was legitimately invested in the Coldharbour storyline and my rescued companions, the side quests are usually great and I'm truly impressed by the villains I encountered so far.

Just finishing the intro story, got teleported to the Redguard island and I'm pretty excited to see where the game goes from here.

I'm sure no one cares but cheers! This game is a breath of fresh air for me.

-Tom

Welcome to the amazing world of TES lore! Be careful - it causes strong addiction!

Yes, the story is mostly well-written. It's the matter of its consistency. Too many freedom leads to "fractured but whole" game experience as I call it. If you, obviously, don't know an order in which it's better to proceed with the story.

Also, I want to provide you with several examples of badly written stories in ESO. Spoiler alert, I guess...

Story is good in most zones except one.. Stormhaven.. chasing a "dream shard" and getting "dream potions" is the corniest story. It seems like something an 8 year old would come up with.

Just you wait until you do Clockwork City! Its part of Vvardenfell> Clockwork City Storyline.

Also, don't forget to speak to those npc's too which are involved in the quest, I always do that some are really hilarious, some show disappointment over your decisions, or some show gratitude. The amount of work that ZOS put in the quests and stories lines is too damn high..which is awesome. Have fun on your journey, fellow traveler!

You ever play swtor? It was more story focused too, and I think it even had more points that felt like real choices. Oh man I just made myself want to reinstall that game... but ESO has way better combat imo.

Kel wrote: »

You don't even have to read it.
ESO has fully voiced quest dialogue.

This is a vital point.

While I come from a background of being in WoW since 2006 (permanently leaving all Blizzard games in 2019) My other main MMO is FFXIV.

FFXIV has an equally great story. In fact I'd say the main story there is vastly better. But most of it is unvoiced. The main story gets sparse voicing until the 4.0 expansion - and is even still only a third voiced there.

If you read it all; it's amazing... but even for a lore fiend who is extremely into their story reading it all wears you down a lot...

Here the voicing pulls you in right away - you notice logic flaws a lot less as a result (I spotted issues in FFXIV on my first play through, it's in my second character to repeat any given part of ESO that I start analyzing 'writer hacks' that don't hold up).

Plus all the random NPCs with voiced commentary - As long as they aren't telling me how long they have been looking for me... they're great.

I know the Star Wars MMO (SWTOR) also had full voicing when it came out, but fell flat on players until years later and a lot of revisions. I guess ESO also was a failed MMO until One Tamriel - but not due to the voicing cutting into the story budget (if it did, I don't see it - and everybody claimed to see it when Star Wars came out).

The voicing here is amazing - it keeps your eyes from glazing over from long walls of text like this post of mine here of mine... which happens to me constantly in FFXIV.


(As a side note, it is funny that some of the best MMOs these days were all 'failed MMOs' when they came out: ESO, FFXIV, and I hear SWTOR.)

I want to check out the DLCs so I need to find a guide as to which order I should do them in.

If you do the DLCs in the order of their release you can be sure to have it right. Since I'm not much of a group-content player I can't say much about the dungeon DLCs. They have a story each, but usually that's not (much) connected to anything else.

For the actual DLC zones the order should be as follows:
((- Imperial City)) - This is mainly a PvP zone, so I'd skip it, unless you have friends to do it with or are interested in PvP. It has some nice quests, too, but you can still do those later, when you've done all the others, instead of loosing playing time to being killed by PvPers while trying to do so.
(- Orsinium)
(- Thieves Guild)
(- Dark Brotherhood)
- Morrowind
- Clockwork City
- Summerset
(- Murkmire)
- Elsweyr
- Dragonhold

Those in brackets are stand-alones that don't have any connection with any other's story.
Morrowind, Clockwork City and Summerset have a common story arc, as do Elsweyr and Dragonhold.

Since ESO is full of recurring characters it's the most fun to keep to the sequence, though. For example, when playing Elsweyr I met a character again (in a side quest) that was part of a side quest in Orsinium, and his story was continued from there. The character and the quest do work just as well when you haven't met him in Orsinium before, but it is much more fun to recognize him, having been there when he made the decision that led him here.
The same goes for some characters from the base game zones, so maybe you'd want to do the zones of Cadwell's Silver and Gold first. But I have to confess that I couldn't bring myself to finish Cadwells Gold up to today, despite having played through all the DLC zones. Gold for me would be the Ebonheart Pact storyline, and... well, I just don't like the guys. And lots of their quests. Just didn't want to do those things, so I left them out. (I did lots of side quests there, but only some of the main quests.)
I'd strongly recommend playing through Reaper's March (part of the Aldmeri Dominion) before going to Elsweyr, though. Since it introduces your character to the Khajiit and their culture, forging quite the bond, it is a beautiful prelude to going to their homeland (Elsweyr, Dragonhold) later.

And yes, there are a very few quests that are written very, very poorly, railroading the player into stupid decisions that would have been avoidable in half a dozen ways if the writer hadn't gone for cheap drama or even cheaper forced bad-assery. There even are one or two where the dialogue leads to your character deciding things that are the very opposite of what you wanted, because the dialogue is interpreted in a stupid way. But those are few and far between !

So, in whatever order you decide to do it - enjoy the wonderful world of stories and characters that is an Elder Scrolls game ! (Even if it's just the MMO version. )

Nice! I love the questing in ESO too. Last month, I finally got up to date with every quest (except IC) in the game. I did them in order too. I actually did all 3 alliance faction zones before starting DLC, as there are recurring characters from the various faction stories that show up in DLCs.

Otherwise I did them like this:
Orsinium > Thieves Guild > Dark Brotherhood > Morrowwind > Clockwork City > Summerset > Murkmire > Elsweyr > Dragonhold.

I also ran the Wrathstone dungeons before playing Elsweyr and the Scalebreaker dungeons before Dragonhold. There is some connecting story there, so it felt relevant.

Also, I did Craglorn after all of the above, when I ran out of DLC zones. The story doesn't really relate to anything else going on in the game, and (unless you have a group) you need to be higher level to do most of the content.

I've done the Harrowstorm dungeons, and now I'm just waiting for Greymoor!

One last question for you guys.

Is there an addon that describes which quest is part of what zone/guild? For instance, I never know which quests are related to the fighters, mages guild, etc...

Best thing about it is yes the story lines are fantastic, but the world physically changings around you which helps bring emotion and impact to the story line, even on minor quests!

new towns will appear, you can change who occupies certain settlements and all this stuff is fun to watch.

gepe87 wrote: »

Try Clockwork, Hews Bane, Gold Coast and Summerset. Best storylines. Imperial City as honorable mention.

Orinsium not getting a mention?