I don't really get all this talk about how the stories are the same.

Person 1: "Elsweyr and Greymoor have exactly the same storylines! It's disgraceful!"

Person 2: "Really? I haven't played either one yet, so I wouldn't know."

Person 1: "Trust me, they're exactly the same!"

Person 2: "Well, I heard that Greymoor has vampires in it. So Elsweyr's storyline is about vampires, too?"

Person 1: "No, Elsweyr is about necromancers and dragons."

Person 2: "Oh. So Greymoor is about necromancers and dragons?"

Person 1: "No, Greymoor is about vampires."

Person 2: "Oh. So how are their storylines 'exactly the same'?"

Person 1: "Because! Elsweyr had a female character who ended up becoming the ruler, and Greymoor has a female character who ends up becoming the ruler!"

Person 2: "Oh. (?!?!?)"

I’m not an IGN fan, but I do think the story section of their Greymoor review is interesting. It seems to line up with the issues some of us have with the chapter.

https://www.ign.com/articles/the-elder-scrolls-online-greymoor-review

On the whole, though, it's a predictable and brief storyline that feels a little too similar to last year's Elsweyr expansion in its broad strokes. The main bad guy barely gets any screen time at all. The side quests are a bit of an improvement, but even they never hit the same high notes we've seen in the last few chapters like Summerset and Morrowind. Considering this is Skyrim we're talking about, I was expecting a little more than just "okay.

Yeah, story has a bit too much similarities. And feels more bland than Elsweyr, it had dragons, that you could see flying on the map, harrowstorms look cool, but you do not see them on map - and even if did, magical storms spawning few vampires and killing 3 pillars, uhh i mean "witch pikes".. does not feel epic like killing dragons who wipe columns of players with their breath.

That part of Elsweyr was like watching an episode of Game of Thrones, players being a random Lannister soldier, being burned to death. Zone chat was hilarious to read, when new players typed in disbelief when they saw dragons, died and had to ask for help, people asked help and they actually needed it, still do now that there are fewer people doing Northern Elsweyr especially.

But i feel that because Elsweyr was a huge profitable success for ZOS, they sorta went: "Lets copy paste this great success next year too!" and the writer had to obey the big boss (no caps lock). And Greymoor became Elsweyr 2, but less epic in the story, and no dragons. Imagine Elsweyr without the dragons, just fighting (first investigating "whats goin' on?" 2/3 parts of the main story) generic Imperials and Euraxia.. Could have been great if done right, but.. dragons "saved" (and sold) Elsweyr. Casuals like casual stories with their favourite characters having plot armor and happy ends mostly. For a "gothic story" on Greymoor, i expected deaths that would feel sad, choices that would make the player feel like they matter, making it matter if they are a vampire or a werewolf.

What is Greymoor story big bad guy? Was not the High King, but a random Redguard anti-Gandalf that no one has heard ever, who said some threats to my character from behind a shield, if no shield that dudeson would have been dead in 1 second.. then he "Streaked away like a sorc at pvp" one could say, probably to show up at the final DLC of the year. Yay, exciting times ahead. I have so much invested feelings against that enemy or the Grey Host army. Not.

What would have made Greymoor story an actual story and something to remember and to care about and be all giddy in anticipation for the conclusion DLC for real:

1. No Princess at all this time. Princess at every chapter is not needed and feels like a copy paste.
2. You, the PLAYER, Hero of many wars and your alliances Champion, would have went there with Lyris, to offer help.
3. King would be paranoid of plots, of Jorunn, of you and Lyris, but not a grumpy "cartoon villain-secretly-vampire-muahahah".
4. Grey Host army strikes at shores and invades inner land, towns are raided. Harrowstorms show on MAP. a WAR!
5. You help the King to get small victories, defending some key locations in epic battles. King starts to trust you.

6. King makes you one of the Thanes that leads a full offensive to the north coast, with an army gathered from all the Holds and recruited and fast trained units from the "miner slaves" you did get free from Blackreach. Grey Army is driven to north, where they are regrouping, fortifying up and trying to excavate (fits in, since excavating is a big part of this Chapter) something below the thousands of years old ice.. something big, that could turn the tide of war again for them.

7. You bond with the King before going to the offensive, some time and talk and in the end the King gives YOU the player a legendary heritage necklace, that has run in his family, IMAGINE getting 1 Mythic item from a main story. 1p Mythic tier necklace, that gives 2000 Frost Resistance and Immunity to regular Knockbacks. (not against Snares; Immos or Stuns). So nothing "op" compared to what the other Mythic items can do). Name could be something cheesy like Northstar. With this gift the King wishes you will be resolute and victorious in the final battle. He tells you that the gift means he feels you are the son or a daughter he never sadly had. Oh the sweet emotions of such a gift to you. You also spend a moment theory crafting if can use it on pvp.. But, oh boy you like the King now, Mythic item just for you! You wear it and break your 5-5-2 just so can wear the Northstar! You go get Master`s 2H from bank and move parts a bit so build works again.. oh sweet, to battle of the North now!

8. You arrive to the north coast and talk to the Warlord there, and get a cut scene on what happens at Solitude:
- King Jorunn`s armies march towards Solitude when it has sent most of all its armies to north with you.
- Catapults rain fire on Solitudes walls and Lyris who was supposed to guard the King.. is shown to strike down the King with her axe in an act of betrayal.
- Well, it was not an act of betrayal for Lyris, since she has been loyal to King Jorunn ever since the original end to the Five Companions and the Coldharbour. She has been loyal to Eastmarch. And while she is not an assassin or an "evil killer", she was given this mission by Jorunn, her King. And by killing the leader the war would end fast and Solitude would surrender and Western Skyrim would be united to Eastern and both would be under the rule of Jorunn the Skald-King.
- King Svargrim was right to be paranoid, King Jorunn WAS out to get him after all.. and did in the end.

9. Knowing all this, you still has to fight the Grey Host at north, and whatever they are digging up from the ice..

10. After massively epic battle at the north you return to Solitude as a hero to all the Western Skyrim people, as the last Thane and with just a small legion of soldiers left. Your friend, King Svargrim is dead.. you have the Northstar on your neck and people on the city whisper when you pass them that you should be the new Ruler of Western Skyrim, instead of Jorunn who came and conquered the lands when it was weak due to the Reachmen invasion.

11. Your legion is not allowed inside Solitude, so you go in alone and talk with Jorunn inside the King`s chambers, he is heavily guarded. Jorunn thanks you for your efforts on driving the Reachmen, Vampires and witches away from his lands and rewards you with gold, and offers you a title and a place as his officer. You can accept or deny it. (with some very bitter options on the talk as a possibility if you feel that way, or if you are EP loyalist, then you have option to say congratulations to Jorunn for well executed war plan and that uniting the Nords, even by a war was tough, but the right choice.

12. Lyris had left Solitude before you arrive, knowing you and King she killed were close.. and you did not know about the plan and the order she had from Jorunn. She is now on the next DLC zone, where you have 2 options, to go have epic battle with her (make her tough like a trial boss to solo) to avenge for the betrayal you felt it was, or leave her in peace to her retirement (she felt she had done enough killing and fighting, especially after the tough last mission she had.)

13. Make next DLC Zone be about Skyrim rebels, who do not like the new rule of Jorunn, on a zone where YOU end up as the new ruler, after you build it (capital city keep) strong by doing quests and stuff (imagine how you did build Dragonguard back, if ZOS wants a template to compare). Imagine having a zone where people would treat you like royal. And some npc comments around Tamriel could say: "Hey, thats the ruler of ______!" instead of the usual "Champion of the Blessed Crucible!" or "Dragons, in your own homeland.." (ugh, hope it was removed already..) So no biggie thing to do.

Zone DLC would not have any "cartoon villain main boss", there would be Lyris Titanborn epic battle if chosen by YOU to do so.. and an "ending battle" with Jorunn who marches his armies to your gates demanding your region to be also under his rule and stop the mad rebellion.. just well written characters, rebels that support YOU as the new Northstar Ruler! it would be about you, the player. Quests and battles in the area so you would rebuild and unite it as a strong zone. You could even collect a small amount of taxes from your zone every now and then after proper amount of grinding to be worthy of it haha. The more you would complete of the zone, the more support and bigger army you had in the end against Jorunn.

Something like that would be for my taste..

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

Czekoludek wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I don't really get all this talk about how the stories are the same.

Person 1: "Elsweyr and Greymoor have exactly the same storylines! It's disgraceful!"

Person 2: "Really? I haven't played either one yet, so I wouldn't know."

Person 1: "Trust me, they're exactly the same!"

Person 2: "Well, I heard that Greymoor has vampires in it. So Elsweyr's storyline is about vampires, too?"

Person 1: "No, Elsweyr is about necromancers and dragons."

Person 2: "Oh. So Greymoor is about necromancers and dragons?"

Person 1: "No, Greymoor is about vampires."

Person 2: "Oh. So how are their storylines 'exactly the same'?"

Person 1: "Because! Elsweyr had a female character who ended up becoming the ruler, and Greymoor has a female character who ends up becoming the ruler!"

Person 2: "Oh. (?!?!?)"

Same plot and story structure, characters from main story that are pretty similar in both chapters (not by apperance of course but by behaviours and some characteristics), same bad writing that results in really bad dialogues, mad ruler trope, focus on "strong, independent women" not by making character actualy strong in a good way but by plot holes and stupid enemies (but must admit, prefer greymoor edition then Khamira who was too much mary sue for me). Just because you change necromancers to reach witches and dragons to vaampires doesn't mean that story cannot be the same.
Was person 1 from your example dumb? And second one too? It's not hard to figure similarities out

The number of dissimilarities between the stories far outnumber any perceived similarities. And as far as I've been able to tell from reading the posts from people who claim that they're "the same stories," their whole beef seems to boil down to the fact that both chapters have "strong, independent women" (as you put it) who end up as rulers, which they perceive as evidence of some kind of agenda on the part of the writers.

As for your questions about whether persons 1 and 2 were "dumb," resorting to insults in a discussion is not a sign of superior intellect and does nothing to prove your case or disprove the other person's case.

Haven't played Greymoor, but from what I've watched of it, both of them have:

The return of some ancient, unexpected evil (dragons/Gray Host)

A ruler who's aligned themselves with a greater evil power, even though its obviously not going to end well for them (Euraxia/Svargrim)

The plucky band who must save the realm from the evil and fix the wrong the evil ruler did, focused on an NPC princess and a recurring character from the Main Quest (Khamira, Tharn/Svana, Lyris)

A big bad who gets teased, but who's final defeat is saved for the Q4 DLC (Kaalgrontiid/Ashen Lord)


That's not to say there aren't differences, of course. Greymoor seems to have a much more investigative bent and hidden threats, while Elsweyr focuses more on the liberation of the nation from an obvious threat. Still, there are enough broad stroke similarities in the narrative structure that I can see the complaints.

Iccotak wrote: »

there are not really any moments with any characters that feel emotionally engaging

there are no moments like when in WoW when Varian Wrynn dies because WoW is over-the-top soap opera storytelling
Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLUOTNkGVho

WoW focuses on characters to invest players but Elder Scrolls has historically been only about you the player so they never really put any effort into engaging characters. When there aren't really any characters to engage players the story wilts.
You need to have consistent characters for players to connect.

One of the reasons WoW is still king MMO is because they understand the value of presentation. I don't care how good your story is - if you have poor presentation then people will not care.

Ugh, please do not remind me of that. Blizzard is STILL dealing with the fallout of THAT storyline...

For those who haven't followed Blizzard:

And it's thanks to Blizzard and their inconsistent storytelling that players continue to leave en masse for this, that, or the other reason...it took WoW Classic to stop the bleeding, and even then, many WoW refugees continue to enjoy other games, ESO being a main beneficiary of WoW refugees. And it's thanks to this sudden influx of WoW refugees that is the reason why Zeni is working on a bunch of performance improvements.

**************************

Ok, this turned into a bit of a rant, but hopefully you folks understand what I'm saying. If not, I'll be happy to explain more later.

I'll be back a little later once I get my darn lawn mowed.

I'm on Quest 3/7 of the Main Quest and I have to say it is the same kind of story as Elsweyr with different beats.

There are some very good beats, Lyris is a delight, Karthwatch was really cool, going into Blackreach was brilliant, but I can't shake the feeling of deja vu. Another comically evil leader and the good "underdog" who will help us solve it all.

Elsweyr also had a huge wasted opportunity - The Dragons that were released was partly the fault of The Vestige and it was basically swept under the rug. There was an opportunity for our character to have some actual story and it was thrown to one side.

We know ZOS writers are more than capable of good storytelling, look at Orsinium. Look at Summerset. Clockwork City. All really good and swimming in really cool lore stuff, and characters that you remember.

I think Greymoor suffers from the burden of Nostalgia with it being Western Skyrim, they had to do something really different and it never quite breaks away from the burden of the nostalgia hit.

The sidequest at Kilkreath Temple was far better than any of the main quests so far. That posed actual questions like why Meridia abandoned her followers and let her temple get wrecked.

So far the only question I have from the main quest is .... Well, none. It's fine, but feels like it was an afterthought after the zone was pitched and created. Apart from Lyris, I don't think I am going to remember any of the characters after it is done.

Another problem is at times in the last couple of chapters, The Vestige feels completely surplus to requirement. If just Lyris or Sai etc had gone to solve this, it would probably have played out the same. I would really like to see some actual reason The Vestige keeps fighting these battles that do not necessarily require them to. What makes them so damn special? Also, they've saved half of Tamriel by now, how about acknowledging things instead of more "who are you?? Why should I trust you with this?" beats.

More Orsinium and Clockwork City type writing next year please, ZOS. That was where your storytelling was at its strongest.

srfrogg23 wrote: »

Lyserus wrote: »

Also, glad to see I am not the only one noticing and discussing this.

There are some hints about where the story is going in ESO:

If a king/queen has a daughter:
Chance of the old daddy gonna die one way or another: 90%
Add it to 100% if said daughter expresses strong desire to NOT inherit

If a king/queen has a son heir in game:
He will be the protecting light of his royal parent,
but at the same time 90% useless,
do things like be a racist
getting captured over and over again
or turn to daedra

If someone (especially a noble) act like an ass:
90% that's the traitor
And if he/she turned traitor he/she will deal with daedra, vampire, steal candy from kids, sleep with animals etc so any chance of redemption is gone (because, ZOS is not gonna make another option to redeem, two options are too many options)

Yes, the storytelling is very formulaic, but it's not any more formulaic than most Disney movies, imo. I just think Zos' stories tend to be a bit more obvious about it because they try so hard to show the rest of the world that they're forward-thinking progressives who support marginalized peoples that they've kind of painted themselves into a literary corner. They don't want to offend people by putting the inherently privileged straight white males in a position of power in too many quest lines, but there's only so much you can do with the product when you have to adhere to the SJW checklist for fictional characters and what they're allowed to do. /shrug

Let’s be honest though. At least the non straight characters aren’t annoying with their partner choices any more than the straight ones. What characters are annoying, is basically all the argonians. You want to feel bad for them because slavery is bad, but I can’t think of a single argonian character that I have ever liked. I dislike the slave traders too, but argonians are incredibly annoying especially that quest in Vvardenfell.

JD2013 wrote: »

Another problem is at times in the last couple of chapters, The Vestige feels completely surplus to requirement. If just Lyris or Sai etc had gone to solve this, it would probably have played out the same. I would really like to see some actual reason The Vestige keeps fighting these battles that do not necessarily require them to.

While I get where you're coming from, I actually find this somewhat refreshing. Obviously I want my character to be involved but I'm glad they are dialling back on the Chosen One angle since the original main quest ended.

Also I just thought of this before I start up my Altmer character. How’s it for continuity’s sake that Veya dies or whatever (I don’t remember I just know it doesn’t end well either way) in Summerset yet would be alive in Morrowind? Or does playing Summerset first eliminate that quest line from Morrowind? Does anyone know? I would hate to continue on the Summerset chapter with him if it’s gonna break continuity by playing Morrowind later. If it doesn’t change anything and continuity is broken I’ll have that character start out in the Aldmeri Dominion.

VaranisArano wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

Czekoludek wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I don't really get all this talk about how the stories are the same.

Person 1: "Elsweyr and Greymoor have exactly the same storylines! It's disgraceful!"

Person 2: "Really? I haven't played either one yet, so I wouldn't know."

Person 1: "Trust me, they're exactly the same!"

Person 2: "Well, I heard that Greymoor has vampires in it. So Elsweyr's storyline is about vampires, too?"

Person 1: "No, Elsweyr is about necromancers and dragons."

Person 2: "Oh. So Greymoor is about necromancers and dragons?"

Person 1: "No, Greymoor is about vampires."

Person 2: "Oh. So how are their storylines 'exactly the same'?"

Person 1: "Because! Elsweyr had a female character who ended up becoming the ruler, and Greymoor has a female character who ends up becoming the ruler!"

Person 2: "Oh. (?!?!?)"

Same plot and story structure, characters from main story that are pretty similar in both chapters (not by apperance of course but by behaviours and some characteristics), same bad writing that results in really bad dialogues, mad ruler trope, focus on "strong, independent women" not by making character actualy strong in a good way but by plot holes and stupid enemies (but must admit, prefer greymoor edition then Khamira who was too much mary sue for me). Just because you change necromancers to reach witches and dragons to vaampires doesn't mean that story cannot be the same.
Was person 1 from your example dumb? And second one too? It's not hard to figure similarities out

The number of dissimilarities between the stories far outnumber any perceived similarities. And as far as I've been able to tell from reading the posts from people who claim that they're "the same stories," their whole beef seems to boil down to the fact that both chapters have "strong, independent women" (as you put it) who end up as rulers, which they perceive as evidence of some kind of agenda on the part of the writers.

As for your questions about whether persons 1 and 2 were "dumb," resorting to insults in a discussion is not a sign of superior intellect and does nothing to prove your case or disprove the other person's case.

Haven't played Greymoor, but from what I've watched of it, both of them have:

The return of some ancient, unexpected evil (dragons/Gray Host)

A ruler who's aligned themselves with a greater evil power, even though its obviously not going to end well for them (Euraxia/Svargrim)

The plucky band who must save the realm from the evil and fix the wrong the evil ruler did, focused on an NPC princess and a recurring character from the Main Quest (Khamira, Tharn/Svana, Lyris)

A big bad who gets teased, but who's final defeat is saved for the Q4 DLC (Kaalgrontiid/Ashen Lord)


That's not to say there aren't differences, of course. Greymoor seems to have a much more investigative bent and hidden threats, while Elsweyr focuses more on the liberation of the nation from an obvious threat. Still, there are enough broad stroke similarities in the narrative structure that I can see the complaints.

Lul