My brother refuses to play. he did try it for all of about 2 hours but then declared it was a poor mans World of Warcraft and won't come back. Little background: I played WoW for over 10 years with my brother, his wife, my wife and a lot of our real life friends. Even people my brother served with in the Navy, came over and joined our guild and as his kids grew up, they started playing too.
That being said, we have an immense amount of friends that play video games for hours each night. When my brother agreed to try out ESO, he talked to his friends still playing WoW about it as many of them had burnout from that game. It's why I came here, as I just got burned out of raiding each night for years on end. However, almost all of them had negative things to say about ESO. They had either tried it or knew someone that did and did not like it.

Some of the main reasons listed by my brother as to why he did not want to continue playing it. I also heard some of these echoed by our old guild members as well.

1. His biggest complaint was no auction house. Although I showed him how Guild traders worked and told him I had no trouble making millions using that method, he could not get over the fact, that he could not search every items listed, server wide. Also running around to check the prices of an expensive item was not his idea of fun. I told him about TTC, but having to use a 3rd party website was also not as slick as a server wide auction house.

2. Guild loyalty! This was a huge one for me as well, but I got over it. He and MANY of our guildmates that still play WoW, had this as one of their complaints in this game. Here is ESO, you can join multiple guilds. Coming from WoW, where people join only one and usually stay loyal to that guild for years and years, that is sort of a shock. In over a decade of playing WoW, I was only a member of 2 guilds and we fought, we raided, we cried, we laughed, we felt each others real life sorrows and joys, etc. I made lifelong friends there and could not imagine splitting my time between 2, 3, or even 4 guilds. Here I have to, because the trader is limited to 30 spots, so I have to join more than one. Although my ESO guilds do a lot of stuff together and there are friends to be made and discord conversations, many of my guildmates do belong to other guilds and split their time. It makes the bonding a little less to be honest.

3. Flying mounts! Yes, this was a disappointment to me as well, when coming here. I was used to flying mounts in WoW and some other games. How cool is it to soar above these vast lands you enjoy questing through? Not here! I came to live with just the cool ground mounts we have in ESO, but my brother and many of our old WoW guildmates, complained about the lack of features in this game, flying mounts being one of them.

4. Raiding and Dungeons: Although we have a lot of dungeons and they are somewhat comparable to WoW's, our trials and world bosses are no where near the scale and fun factor as theirs. Are you sick of me comparing this game to WoW yet? I could go on and on, but my point is that games like that are a direct competitor to games like this. If ESO wants to appeal to more of the gamers that like these types of games, they would have to change their features to the point that this game would go in a vastly different direction. You may think they are 2 different games and appeal to different types of players, but look at their similarities. Questing, guilds, world bosses, dungeons, mounts, fishing, skill points, lore background, etc. They are different in a way, but appeal to the same type of players. So why would my friends come play in a kiddie pool, when they have access to an infinity pool at a mansion? The lore is different here, but the enjoyment of raiding/trials, doing quests, exploring the lands on mounts, farming, etc., are the same in the player. When i try to recruit my friends, they consider this a toned down version of WoW and refuse to see it any other way

My husband was day one player. The bot problems then drove him out, he refuses to even try again.

The rest of my friends play other games.

UGotBenched91 wrote: »

Hey everyone,

I’m curious what other experiences people have had recruiting friends and family to play ESO.

I’m sadly 0/3. Got two friends to try it years ago and they gave up after a day.

Anyone having any success recruiting other players?

I tried it with some MMO and Elder Scrolls fans that I know. Over time, everyone who I recruited to the game departed. I stopped trying to recruit people years ago because of this. One of them never got out of the Wailing Prison. They've been in there 85 months, now.

Elsonso wrote: »

UGotBenched91 wrote: »

Hey everyone,

I’m curious what other experiences people have had recruiting friends and family to play ESO.

I’m sadly 0/3. Got two friends to try it years ago and they gave up after a day.

Anyone having any success recruiting other players?

I tried it with some MMO and Elder Scrolls fans that I know. Over time, everyone who I recruited to the game departed. I stopped trying to recruit people years ago because of this. One of them never got out of the Wailing Prison. They've been in there 85 months, now.

That's what I call a win for molag bal.

I don't try to recruit people to MMOs either. I did once, it was for WoW, which I had played for several years then. I successfully got my stepson to try it, he got hooked on it, got his girlfriend to play it, she joined, and all 3 of us played that for maybe 5 years straight.

Then they switched to FFXIV, got me to try it, and I went along, dropped WoW, played FFXIV for about 3 years. But then I got nostalgic, came back to WoW, got burnt out or disgusted because of Shadowlands, dusted off ESO (which I'd tried before for a year or so). ESO has now kept my interest for the last 18 months or so, and I can't get my stepson and his GF to touch it with a ten foot pole, they're so *married* to FFXIV (no kidding, they had a wedding ceremony for their characters in FFXIV).

I've played all of the TES games, except for Skyrim, which I started but never finished. ESO is really nice and low-pressure, for me at least. I do miss WoW's Auction House and its Transmog system, and flying mounts. But overall, I'm happy with ESO and am content to be the only one in my family to enjoy it.

I've tried to get like 4 or 5 people into this game.
They never came back after that first time.
All the answers I got was that it was really boring.
They all play MMOs so it being an MMO was not a negative.

Game is too old, too tired and too graphically outdated to recommend it to anyone in 2023. If you didnt play it in the last decade and have no emotional connection to it, you wont be playing it.

ESO, unlike many other MMOs, requires a lot of knowledge from player to enjoy the game.
In other games you need to use all skills available to the class, while in ESO need to select which skills to use.
In other games you just get better and better class gear, while in ESO you need to know which sets to use.
In other games you just loot better gear, or buy it on market, while in ESO BIS gear is transmuted and upgraded, which requires leveling craft.
ESO requires addons for increased enjoyment, but need to know which ones to use.
I could try to get people i know into ESO, but i dont know how to teach them all this knowledge, so i don't even bother.

I recruited some a few years ago from EQ1 and WOW but they left after a year or so. All the above stated complaints, auction house, forced delay on crafting, horse training etc, and apparently the monetization is worse than daybreak(I played EQ1 the first 13-14 years, but haven't played since, so no idea how it is now)

The biggest complaint was the back and forth, complete 180's from the balance team. Having to completely redo/gold your build in some cases every few months was a turn off. Changes were too extreme, too fast.(zos has gotten a LITTLE better on this)

Mostly I think people are just loyal to where they started and it's hard to give up 10+ years in many cases of experience, resources, knowledge, etc. I know I played for a few years longer in EQ even after being disgusted with some of the changes due to all the above and guildmates/family.

I don't try to recruit friends or family because if they want to play the game they will. In the past with other games I had mixed results getting people to play so I tend to focus on finding like minded players to join who are already playing the game. I have much better results and a much better player experience playing this way.

SimonThesis wrote: »

Also, if Wow can have flying mounts why can't Eso?

I think it has something to do with the game's basic engine and its inability to handle vertical or elevated movement that isn't tied to the surface of something. Or maybe it's because of the anti-cheat algorithm rather than the basic engine. I think that's also why we don't have swimming underwater.

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

SimonThesis wrote: »

Also, if Wow can have flying mounts why can't Eso?

I think it has something to do with the game's basic engine and its inability to handle vertical or elevated movement that isn't tied to the surface of something. Or maybe it's because of the anti-cheat algorithm rather than the basic engine. I think that's also why we don't have swimming underwater.

I think you are onto something.

I have noticed in Sadrith Mora that when sneaking (inside homes you have to trespass) when downstairs underneath npcs that they detect you just as if you were next to them on the same floor. Seems like detection range is using an x-y axis distance without taking into account the z-axis, the vertical one.

All my friends quit at one tamriel and morrowind, my brother and my neighbour asked about eso recently but i havent pursued that with them doesnt seem like it would be a healthy thing to do.