Wait till you venture to VR zones, not only you get this Dejavu feeling often but the quests also are literally identical with some minor flavor change.

Part of what got me all excited for this game specifically was finally being able to see what allllll thoooosee otthhherr raccess lands looked like. I can say I have mixed feelings now. I've only done DC so far and while its nice to see, I wish it felt a little more unique. DC was pretty much 3 styles. Not sure how to describe the breton land other then sort of generic open hills and mountains with stone castles and wood houses, etc, that def started to look the same through different zones. Rivenspire was actually pretty different. They did a good job turning breton stuff into gothic vampy-like stuff. Dark tones, depressing for a chunk of it, etc. Alikir was desert as to be expected and was done well imo also. glenumbra, stormhaven were near identical. Bangkorai I was hoping would be different but it really was just a mix of stormhaven style breton on top with alikir desert on the bottom.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/the-elder-scrolls-online-review,3815-3.html

Tomshardware always been the place where I check out quality of hardware when I build computer systems, and they have for a long time been very good at it.

This review is.....was he bribed to write so much bollox and dont even explain the game more then fighting and questing. Also stating that questing in ESO is boring.....eh, its THE best Lore function Quest system in ANY up to day MMO.
NO one have succeed to intergrate their quest, npc, the world, so well in the lore as ESO.

Oh he metioned pvp as some kind of not pvp. I guess if you dont have Arenas and battleground you dont have a Pvp?

Not a word about the fixes. Nothing about future plans.

And best of all, Gives ESO a low score and praise Wildstar.......that says everything.

Hello, all! Please keep the discussion on track (the thread topic is about zone design). Thank you!

subecsanur wrote: »

Wait till you venture to VR zones, not only you get this Dejavu feeling often but the quests also are literally identical with some minor flavor change.

"My dog disappeared, and oh my husband also needs to be found."

There are quite alot of dungeons. Not sure if the ones I ran into was quest only, publics or whatever. But one example was a big maze you had to get through with trolls roaming! Hate them.

Another was a puzzle with 9 "Boxes" which you had to figure out how to solve.

I agree with @kimboh
The lore is fantasticly connected to pretty much every quest and NPC talk (some of em chat to you, you know)

I haven't seen many zones yet, but I think there is a lot of diversity.

To be honest guys, Elder Scrolls games have plenty of reused assets. Towns in Skyrim and Oblivion look pretty much alike, many structures are repeated for every ruin and dungeons look very similar. There is plenty of variety and impressive landmarks in Teso's Tamriel, but nowhere as near as there would be if the entire team had been dedicated to a single province for 5 years. A compromise had to be made, and I must say I'd rather see all of Tamriel than a single area of it.

What did not impress me was the draw distance with it's perpetual fog. Mountains and LOD meshes also looks pretty bad, unfortunately. I'm not a fan of how every building looks huge and how the cities look so sparse, with wide streets, but I understand why it was done. These are all MMO limitations and the mandatory compatibility with low-end computers for this kind of business.

I do hope we are given reasons to return to ealier areas of the of the game in the future. It seems like a waste of resources to design areas around a particular level range. This theme park trend makes the world feel so small, but because at the end, everyone is in the same areas and the rest of the map is like a wasteland.

I think the zone differences are more subtle than in some games where you go from desert sands to winter snow by just walking two footsteps in either direction. We've already got deserts, snowy landscapes, marshland, medievel-esque forests, etc. There is variety, but it's not as jarring zone-to-zone as what you may be used to in other MMOs.

Elvent wrote: »

Haven't noticed zones looking alike, they all looked different. However the public dungeons ALL look alike...there's like 3 or so different layouts and they're all exactly the same...the only difference is the mobs =\ I can see not much creativity went into dungeons but then again...there's probably more than 100 dungeons so I guess that would take too much effort so I understand the copy/paste.

With a budget of 200 million dollars? I would hope they would go all out with that kind of money. All I know is that the enemies are all look a likes with small variety. At least make the Thunderbugs have some different patterns or battle scars.