Hello,

This is a 2 part problem, that cannot be solved, but I like to come back to it from time to time. Maybe ... just maybe ... one day ...


1. I know this is a hot topic, requested many times by many.

I'm a 20 years long World of Warcraft player. In WoW, if I want to play alone (without the others bugging me with all their requests, asking me for boosts or to just play with me when I want to play alone) I simply switch to appear offline and go play on a different server with some other toon that is not in the same guild and that's it !

Same thing on Steam - I just turn off the friends list and appear offline. All good when I want to chill and play by myself.

I love ESO, but here I don't have the option to appear offline. Even worse, I cannot change server to play on another EU server without being nagged by my friends - here we have only one EU server and that's it. I can only switch to NA, but there I have absolutely nothing, so it's no fun to play naked and poor. I play ESO since the beginning so I have quite a nice account on EU.

Why this is so important ? I have some real life friends also playing ESO, some obsessed friends also working from home and also playing ESO many hours a day, every day.
Whenever I login, they already are inviting me to party and I cannot say no since we're also real life friends ... cannot ignore / unfriend them also ... lol ... imagine doing that to a real life friend.

I would just love to be able to appear offline to my friends but still be able to do my daily quests, stories, play some tribute games, etc. This is actually forcing me take long breaks from ESO, just because the game is quite unfriendly because of this always online feature.

It's nice to play online game, but it's also a pain because of this. ESO is a huge game, with many quests, and I cannot enjoy them because always one of my friends wants to join me and play together.



2. Another reason for not enjoying the ESO quests is the exclusive hero feeling. I am the hero of the game, all stories are about me helping others ... when I'm in the middle of a very important story, there are some random players jumping and running around me, ruining the entire exclusive hero feeling that I should have when completing an important part of the game.
Because of this, I cannot dive into the story - the privacy is always ruined by someone else nearby who is also the same hero of the same story ... and that's just silly.

But this is a failed design issue in my opinion. To avoid this silly issue, I just play something else, single player or a better designed MMO like World of Warcraft. Why better designed ? In WoW I actually zone out and complete the important quests alone, without being able to see anyone else, even if we're in the same party. This is giving me the feeling of being the absolute hero, solving alone the quest.


Anyway, I know you cannot do anything about these issues and it's not fair to compare to other games. I just hope that you will develop it differently in the future, taking into consideration important features missing from your game.

Thanks for reading

Have a good day
Emil