Hmm that's disappointing to hear. I'll wait until it goes on sale on Steam.

I personally enjoyed the Companions & new Mythic items more than the actual story of this new zone.

I loved Blackwood - the writing is far better than last year's, and the zone is beautiful.

I agree strongly with what people have been saying about the deforested blackwood - they really missed the mark on making the landscape feel much like the original blackwood: upping the contrast between the Blackwood section and the Gloomire part (which itself was perfect, feeling somewhat like Murkmire, which you would expect) by putting in that signature Blackwood treescape would have been better, made the landscape feel more varied and given that Blackwood identity we were hoping to see.

(As an aside, its strange that no part of it seems to resemble the "Blackwood Borderlands" we saw in DB expansion. Where is that supposed to be? Where's the continuity?).

But the cities are amazing and they were spot-on with the structures. Lewayiin felt very authentic, even when they've taken (sensible) license with its design, and Gideon was interesting and believable, spanning 2 worlds (both in the cultural and the geographic senses).

The main story was compelling, and kept me coming back for more. I enjoyed the pacing and it didn't feel forced. I think they missed some marks on some of the side-quests: Gideon ghost lover objective was awkward and cringey, and opportunities to explore interesting issues in other quests was neutered, but its better than it has been. The Renjijira Kriin were a big oversight, given their importance to the lore and the character of the region. They were written (marginally) into basegame lore, so their absence in the lands that actually defined them was an oversight.

I'm honestly happy with the followers - they were a fun addition for questers and I think that anyone who wanted to hardcore sweat over performance builds for them was likely going to be disappointed; its pretty clear that's not the niche zos was going for here. When soloing some of the Blackwood World Bosses, Bastian often dies if I'm not focussing significant energy on healing him, but in all other content he stands up, including soloed normals. Which feels about right. As to their personalities, I don't have a problem with either of their likes/dislikes - I think it will be good when we have a greater range of them to pick from, so people can choose ones that fit their playstyle.

I didn't find the overworld to be too empty - not having to wade through metrically-spawning mobs was refreshing. There was lots of stuff to explore, including dozens of locations, interesting vignettes, quest givers; world bosses everywhere. It was anything except empty unless you need grind over every square inch of the map, I suppose.

As for the Portal events, I honestly think they were excellent. I'm stoked that they're playing around with making world events more dynamic. I think part of the problem is some people expected them to be more expansive, but they were only ever meant to be at the same scale as dolmens, geysers, dragons etc - quick, bite-sized, repeatable content. I love that you have to explore for them - they hit the nail on the head with that. The concept is excellent imv, but they probably should look at tweaking some of the numbers, I think. For instance, they might benefit from more frequent spawn times, or a better way to broadcast spawns. I've encountered the disappointment of jumping into one and finding everything cleared, or if its your first time and you're so excited that you race through just to get to the end and there's just a bunch of people standing around waiting for a boss spawn just like every public dungeon and world boss ever. Not epic. I think its probably a problem with the whole MMO compromise thing and something I'm not sure how they will fix. The other thing with them is, yeah, the final boss is ***-easy and the forced waits are not a fantastic solution to too-high burn. I'd much rather it was a lot tougher - like Dragons or Harrowstorms. But in their defence, people have complained a lot, and will do so whichever way they go. People are upset by the ease of overland stuff, but people were also furious about the world bosses in Elsweyr, and many have complained about the accessibility of the events - which, after all, are meant for everyone to have fun with.

I think this is the crux of the issue, because for almost every issue listed here as being disappointing, others have found them to be just what they wanted. Straddling that compromise between very different communities must be a very tricky challenge.

Roztlin45 wrote: »

It definitely was not their best but not terrible either. I really wish they would focus in on performance and improvements for a year instead of new content.

MMOs need a stream of new players, so ZOS isn't going to just stop making new content.

They do cut down on the scale of what they want to achieve to focus on performance...and that's how we get chapters like Blackwood with recycled assets and two Companions as a special feature.