MincMincMinc wrote: »

Funny enough PvP is a great answer to the mmo content problem. The trifaction war let players essentially write their own story and the zos investment was next to nothing. A good chunk of the eso population buys every dlc and plus subscription because they designed a very basic pvp gamemode 14 years ago. Now a days it isn't working as well because of neglect and that ESO is far to complicated for the casual player to just learn on their own without outside help causing a population decline.

I am fine with procedurally generated content provided some improvements or a human's finishing touch. I understand with Skyrim it was fairly new territory for them but it began to feel stale for me. The elements brought in by it were too recognizable, too same-like, too copy/paste for my taste. It felt less adventurous, more pointless. I agree with you entirely though in that AI will play a big role in future releases, especially the bigger and badder games will have to be. Something that Elder Scrolls really has going for it that I don't think any other game really has is it's lore and the way they bridge all of their games together in some way. They don't have to begin from nothing so there is a big advantage that comes with that. The adventure, story, and quests are important to me.

Aliniel wrote: »

You're not missing anything. I've been playing ESO for a long time and the community has always been pretty much like this. All you see in zone chats is guild adverts or some poor guy asking for help. Some guilds have more activity; some are purely trade oriented with pretty much dead silence for hours.

A pretty depressive example of how dead the community is: during an event where 20+ people camp a boss and literally have nothing else to do, I often write something to those people - and most times get zero replies. They just keep jumping around doing nothing.

And some of us are simply shy folk, online too. I was quite intimidated by interaction when I first started, and trying to learn mechanics from ground up too, lol. I learned how to group, quest, ungroup, etc. Some of my most fond memories come from just general zone chat while waiting at a dolmen. Then came the U35 drop off and there were no guildies, no buddies, no new groups to join and in my case, chat became a mine field of attention seeking/trollish behavior and constant guild adverts that added nothing to my game experience. So I chose to simply turn it off as best I could.

I never realized the insidious change in chat since I started playing until I really thought about the OP's post. It wasn't always like this. But the life has gone out of it, for several reasons I suppose. I think a lot of us have forgotten that games are supposed to be fun. Whenever money becomes a central point, the whimsy seems to take a backseat, lol.