I had a severe depression (could not even play games) from mid 2015 to the end of 2016. I started taking antidepressants and they worked, depression started receding. As i started recovering i first fully completed Oblivion GOTY, then decided to finally try ESO. One of the symptoms of depression is inability to feel pleasure from activities that should provide pleasure, like gaming. When i started taking antidepressants this effect reversed and i was feeling too much pleasure where there should not be so much. I started a redguard DK tank with all points and equipment set for max health, and with its miserable dps completed about a half of existing at that time solo quests. Lowest possible DPS, no companions, no addons, still i was happy playing eso. During that period i became a werewolf, found a large social guild and several friends. Then antidepressants-caused apathy kicked in and i quit ESO.

In 2020 i became friends with a person who was actively playing ESO. I bought all existing to date DLCs and started playing again, this time as a breton Warden healer. No addons, quite poor DPS, i was just listening music and doing solo quests (without reading them). After about a half of all solo quests done i stopped doing them (main factor was my slow killing speed) and started logging only to lvl up riding. After some time i stopped doing even that.

I have a hobbie of recording video game playthroughs. Due to the mining craze of late 2020 / early 2021 i was unable to upgrade my GPU (AMD RX 480) and i could no longer record relatively new games (2018 and later). So i decided to stop recording and return to ESO, to my existing breton warden healer. While doing the second half of existing solo quests i randomly joined a guild that turned out to be a PVE veteran content raiding guild. They tought me about addons, DPS, equipment and crafting, DPS dummies. So now i had addons to collect skyshards, lorebooks, psyjic breaches, i could see raw materials and collect them for tempers, i could see my dps and improve it, so my killing speed became good. My PVE capability improved so much that i started fully completing maps and public dungeons solo. ESO was no longer a boring grind and i keep playing it daily for 6 months by now. All this info was essential to me and i regret not having it when i started playing. Not long ago i discovered that veteran dungeons have much more sociable players than normal dungeons, so this is another thing that keeps me playing

@Sylvermynx, thank you. Off course! Enjoy.

I was one of those people annoyed they made an MMO instead of another single player Elderscrolls game, not to say I didn't look into the game at all but what I saw during the early years held little interest to me.

It wasn't until December 2018, I had finished my seasonal job for the year a few months earlier was looking for something to do in my spare time when not job hunting.

I had been playing SWTOR for years and was starting to get bored of it mostly due to their slow release of new content that I finally decided to look for alternatives.

I tried a number of buy to play MMO's found they held little interest and eventually decided to give ESO a try, I was initially thinking of getting in on PS4 but when I looked into things further and learned about add on's I went with PC, it helped that I had just bought a decent PC so I didn't have to worry about performance.

After starting the game and playing for a bit, I think it was about 3 days in, before I caved and got ESO+ Been subscribed since.

My main has finished all the overland quests I could find, I eventually used add on's to make sure I had not missed anything. Mostly did the side quests recently to unlock the house purchasing achievements. My mains at the point where they are waiting for new story content to be released now, that forced me to start putting more effort into my alts.

I was stubborn about joining guilds, think it was at least a year in before I finally joined a trade guild.

I proceeded to load up my trade slots with bits and pieces I had found while questing, hadn't figured out the pricing add on's yet, so I was fairly stupid when it came to pricing stuff for example I had those basic racial motifs up for 10K, wasn't until they didn't sell that I looked into TTC for my pricing.

Of course then I ran out of stuff to sell, that got me making a lot of characters to do daily writs on, at first I just got them to level 6 and did tier 1 equipment writs to get surveys that I could do on my main, to have something to sell.

I took up thieving to help me pay my weekly dues for my first trade guild, after my dues I spent the gold on intricate gear to level the crafting skills on my alts. I gradually leveled my alts to 50 to max out the gold they were generating.

Somewhere along the line I had enough gold to be able to do max level daily writs on all my alts, I was able to give up thieving as something I felt I needed to do to pay my dues, my daily writs covered my expenses and sorted out my stock problems for my first trade guild.

Once I had enough gold to work with I made a point to do the trait research on my main, wasted some crowns on research scrolls at the time, to be able to make sets I wanted badly at the time that in reality were awful choices. I was one of those people so obsessed with making my character un-kill able, always wearing heavy armor, that I did next to no damage and had terrible sustain.

I finally got out of that habit in early 2020, now I use light armor more often than not, no longer have the damage or sustain problems and know enough to keep myself alive, I am no top level damage dealer but can kill stuff quickly enough in overland to understand why people find it boring and want more challenge.

Sometime after finishing my trait research I made a point of getting the grand master crafter achievement, other than that I rarely go out of my way to get achievements, spent a lot of gold on motifs, almost bankrupted myself at the time.

Then I realized that almost no one ever asks for specific motifs when they are looking for a crafter, most are just happy if you know all 9 traits, that was a little disappointing. Still hasn't stopped me collecting most motifs in the game though, I make a point to wait for them to be cheap.

Stuck my toes into dungeons when I was around CP600+ lot of trial and error I slowly got better at it, quickly learnt why tanks avoid the random group finder. I am by no means a trial tank or even a vet dlc dungeon tank, but most of the base game vet ones I can manage just fine these days.

My willpower failed me at least 3 times over the years, first was when I bought that Dark brotherhood sanctuary house in the gold coast, second is when I bought the Wraithome in Rivenspire, third was when I bought the Vampire Castle in Blackreach fully furnished. Bought a few mounts too.

When I had plenty of gold from writs I bought a large number of different sets to try out different builds, although the introduction of the stickerbook cut my hoard down somewhat still have a large amount hoarded in storage chests and in an alts inventory, you know for just in case, on a rainy day when the stars are aligned and a blood moons in sky that I suddenly decide I want to use them. There golded out I am not parting with them, quite a few only went into storage recently due to the proc set scaling, since I mostly play magicka characters, my builds got hit hard)

Bought almost every house that can be purchased with gold, once I realized I had 50 million in gold sitting the bank from doing daily writs and selling stuff regularly in the 5 trade guilds I ended up joining, stuck with my first trade guild till the day they became a social guild before moving to one of their sister guilds, their guild house was too good to give up. Only just now is my gold balance recovering from that spending spree.

Once I realized they were not going to release any more character slots for awhile I made a point of putting more effort into my writ crafting alts, made a point of doing their daily riding lessons and having them all learn 9 traits in everything with the in game research scrolls managed to get all 17 of them done in 6 months. (I had/have all my alts equip with speed gear so they could do writs a little bit faster, now they all have their own Wild hunt ring, just so I don't have to mount when doing daily writs)

Made a point of getting at least one of each of the other classes to the point where I could do writs and fetch gear out of my bank equip them and use them without having to do respecs. Got 12 others I will someday finish leveling the weapons and light armor skill lines on and hunt down enough skill points to make them useful beyond daily writs as well, someday maybe.

I have gotten past CP1900 have everything I want from the new CP trees so that has largely killed the desire to level, much more.

Still hoarding easy master writs though for the next double XP event planning to level my alts remaining weapon/armor skill lines to max, currently passively doing that by having skills on their bar as they do daily writs, once that is done I will be well and truly out of excuses to go hunt down enough skill points for each of them to be able to do daily writ and be useful in other content.

Once they have maxed out there skill lines though I am not really planning to go out of my way to grind until they add more character slots, see no appeal in getting to CP3600 if the game is still around in 8 years and the leveling system does not undergo any changes in that time, I will probably get there just by playing as I normally do.

Settled for blue gear on my companions can't be stuff buying purple gear for them, as it is now that I have there collectibles that give their perk I rarely summon them.

Started farming more healer sets, since I have been playing that role a lot more in dungeons, I know I am not quite up to stuff as a damage dealer in group content but still want to do some damage once and awhile instead of tanking all the time.

Been doing PVP on and off since I started playing, likely going to give it more of a go soon since I am running out of stuff I want to do in PVE, mostly because I hate repeating the same quests again on different characters due to the lack of difference the choices most quests offer doing them again.

As for why I keep playing, haven't really seen a good alternative ESO and SWTOR both had something that I knew of beforehand that drew me in, for example, WOW and Final Fantasy and other big MMO's lack that for me, if I were to play them that would be for the most part my first introduction to there lore and world building, that's a big hurdle to me to get interested enough in them to spend a long time playing them.

And honestly can't be stuffed starting another MMO from scratch at this point, sunk over 3600 hrs into ESO, its just something to do when I am bored don't see that changing anytime soon.

That's about all I can think of at the moment. I know a lot of it was probably boring I always tend to get too focused on making currency in games, I am one of those people that like to be as geared up and ready as possible before doing anything, I always end up out leveling the recommended level for doing the story line in RPG's and other games, just a bad habit of mine.

I observed ESO for many years until I finally gave it a try in 2018. TES IV Oblivion was the first role-playing game of its kind, which totally fascinated me, before that for 20 years I only played strategy games and building games like Heroes of Might and Magic, Age of Empires, Caesar, Pharao etc. and back then Oblivion felt like the video games-version of my pen-and-paper and LARP activities. I had no interest to start with ESO at once when it launched because I didn´t liked MMORPG (had some very bad experiences in connection with Guild Wars), but then the years passed by and there was still no Elder Srolls VI. Meanwhile in 2018, one could read everywhere that there was enough content for solo players and so I decided to start with ESO. At first I was just confused by all the quests and content and played everything in a totally chaotic way, I wasn't immediately enthusiastic about it. But then in the Christmas holidays 2018 I had two weeks in which I could play every day and then Murkmire really grabbed me. What can I say, since then I've been "addicted" to ESO.

This is the first screenshot I ever took of my main Lugaldu, sorcerer and archer:

Tnx, guys. I really appreciate it. Different players, different stories.

I played Skyrim for about 160 hours over 3.3 months last year, to keep me sane during these oppressive COVID-19 lockdowns, then followed up with Oblivion (I know, it's back to front), then started ESO 3 months ago and exceeded the Skyrim hours on the weekend, and have no plan to quit it anytime soon I'm almost at level 48, and I'm hardly the best player, but I really enjoy the questing and PvE conflicts.

The only major problem I've had playing it is occasional lag (the ping is about 300ms down here in Melbourne, Australia), but otherwise, no complaints.

@vsrs_au, thank you very much.

Yes. You can edit you posts. Look at little cog (options) in you message.

Enjoyed other Elder Scroll games and stumbled across a coming soon announcement somewhere for ESO. I started with the early access and this is still my go to game.
Last year I started a 2nd account so I could take a new character through all the content my very first character did in the same order. Has been fun.