I told my granddaughter about it but she didn't seem to care. She's only 6 months old though.

rrimöykk wrote: »

For roleplayers, casuals and exploring enthusiasts sure. For pve and pvp players no.

Exactly this. With wild meta shifting every 3 months, devs breaking things every patch and break even more trying to fix the bugs, ruining pvp for newbies, I wouldn't recommend this game to friends who are interested in pve and/or pvp.

With playing this game for 6 years, I've tried recommending it to several friends. Most friends either gave up early on or outright dismissed it. Based on their feedback and my experiences, here's why I'm unlikely to recommend it to any other friends going forward:

1. Confusing New Player Experience. The immediate entry into the game is an overwhelming experience. With years of content before them, people don't know where to even begin. Instead you zone into some new zones and there's an NPC hounding you about a quest. Inventory contents are poorly explained, so you have to go line-by-line to help your friend determine if the 5 million things in their inventory are worth saving. The new player experience is fraught with nuisances and noise that detract from a beautifully realized world.
2. Poor group questing opportunities. Due to quest phasing, it's tedious to quest with friends. If you don't complete quests together at the exact same time, you can't coordinate them. While there are public dungeons and delves, most players don't see that as the immediate activity in front of them. They see questing and they see frustration. This experience has caused at least 2 of my friends to leave the game. That's two less customers.
3. Inconsiderate monetization. Let's say I manage to get a friend or two into this game. They then have to ask themselves why a pop-up exists every time they log in. They then have to ask themselves why a house costs $100+. They then have to ask themselves why can't I readily earn that motif in the game before it's gone? They then have to ask why 2 dungeons cost as much as a game itself, and then the zone expansion, and the zone dlc. Oh that's $100 a year to play this game. But pay a subscription and you get some of it for a less-ridiculous-but-still-overpriced price. And if you want to buy something outside of the FOMO window they seem so wont to give, you can't. You literally can't GIVE THEM MONEY when you want to.
4. Performance and stability. This year in particular has been atrocious with performance. Basic features like combat, dungeon queuing, quest completion, and SITTING have all seen a lot of bugs and issues. As a technical consultant, I get that deployment is difficult; but as a consumer, it's just not acceptable to buy something that's not complete. They need to take a look at their DevOps and come up with better deployment and QA practices. It often feels like it's one step forward, two steps back with these guys and it sucks all the fun out of the new content. Old content is bug-riddled so I've seen people give up trying to progress as a result.
5. Community management. The most indifferent community managers I've seen in a game. Players will tag the CMs in posts, attempt dialogue, provide feedback, and get nothing back most of the time. They have their routine with patch notes but ignore pages upon pages of discussion on threads they've started. If they do reply, leave one line replies on the off-chance. There's no fostering a sense of community, it's just watching ZOS drive their game in a scripted manner. There's a very noticeable love-it-or-leave-it attitude exhibited that creates a cycle of toxicity that could otherwise be avoided.

All of this paints an unwelcoming experience for new players who aren't already deeply invested in the game. I enjoy the game but similar group experiences could be better enjoyed in other games. I've had some friends attempt to get back into it, but I've actually steered them away because I know what headaches we'll run into.