You could just not do the quests if you don't like doing quests... Nothing stopping you from wandering around and ignoring quest markers.

Well, ESO isn't Skyrim. They're trying to shape The Elder Scrolls into something that will appeal to the general MMO market and questing is a major feature in most MMOs.

I can understand your opinion but you also need to realize that if there weren't plentiful and easy to find quests, there would be a bunch of people complaining that there's nothing to do or that they can't find quests anywhere.

I think a lot people feel the way you do Elyna. I know I do. The game is very much on rails. By tying levels to area they boxed themselves (and us) in.

Honestly I don't know how else they could have done it but the feeling it gives is unmistakably not open world in the TES sense.

The sad thing is each of those areas, with all their details, is there to be experienced just once and for brief moment. There is little reason to come back or push forward into levels other than your current level.

Go to Cyrodill and wander around. Of course you will get ganked all the time but there is plenty to explore.
Also exploration becomes much more fun in VR, You are always on level so you can just go explore. For me the VR didn't spoil the other faction experience since the way I played it almost half the stuff didn't make sense. You can even play in multiple VR zones with good gear.

Elyna wrote: »

There are too many quests and the areas arnt far apart enough. Dont get me wrong, quests are all well and good, but when I cant explore a totally new area for 2 minutes without 5 new quests markers popping up, it removes that feeling of discovery. The quest thing needs to go. This doesnt feel like an Elder Scrolls game because of that, it just feels like a generic MMO in first person. IMO in removes the purpose of just wandering about.
...

Anyone else feel this way?

The game adopted the linear format made popular with games like WoW, as this reviewer bemoans.

Gone is the sense of exploration and freedom. Gone is the ability to wander to whatever corner of the world you want to tell your story. It’s bewildering to see that ZeniMax missed that mark so completely, especially given that there have been many MMOs over the years that were actually more like Skyrim or Oblivion than this one.

Why did ZeniMax draw inspiration from World of Warcraft– a game whose highly directed experience is counter to the emergent freedom of The Elder Scrolls – rather than Ultima Online, EVE Online, Meridian 59 and others that are more spiritually similar to what franchise fans know and love?

sajackson wrote: »

Is it necessarily a bad thing that you can't wander around for hours finding absolutely naff all of interest?

Unless looking for badgers to tickle is your thing....

That was pretty much a main feature of every TES release prior to ESO.

The world is far too small. One of the things I loved about Asheron's Call was the huge world and no zoning to run from one end of it to the other. 500 square miles without Dark Majesty or Throne of Destiny expansion packs.

I remember early days in EQ, when you had to take a boat for 5 minutes to get places. There were islands you passed, and if you jumped off, you could swim to them, and never knew what the heck you would find--it was weird and strange and sooo isolated and kind of surreal. Usually they were bleak, but sometimes there'd be some lone mob or something, or just some weird feature. And sometimes you wondered am I the first to ever come to this particular rock in the middle of the ocean? Stuff like that made the world feel endless and full of surprises and...

Yeah, I know just what the OP means.

My main activity in the game is exploring. I cant leave anything alone. Its to much to explore....which is good! But I always "outleavel" the zone I am in before I get to explore it all.

And I got this thing....when a quest leads to another, to another, to another, I MUST keep doing em! Dont care what the "price" is....just curious.

kaosodin wrote: »

Tamriel is a continent, like north america right? And nirn the name of the planet right, lkke earth?

That is correct.

Part of the elder scrolls experience is being able to travel anywhere and explore. There have been MMOs in the past where you could do this also, Shadowbane, SWG, UO, EVE, just to name a few. Yes they had areas where mobs might be more difficult but that did not mean you could not explore the world.

I think instead of having this linear path we had an expectation for the game to be a bit more sandbox like. Sadly it is not that at all.

@Elyna‌

Turn quest giver icons off option in settings is made for your problem, I had the same as you

I feel I can explore alot.

I actually felt the opposite. I love the I feel like I can explore (and that feeling actually gets better with Veteran levels). I like that if I follow the rails, and never go anywhere save for where quests take me.. I'm actually going to miss areas. Having quests take you everywhere is not the same (to me) as an area you're exploring having a quest available to do.

Basically, the quests, achievements, experience, chests, and skyshards I get for exploring I feel are rewards for doing so.. and they actually inspire me to go off the beat path and look for other things. In the large majority of other MMOs all I did was run from quest hub to quest hub, picking up all the quests I needed on the way without so much as a need or desire to actually strike off the path, away from my current questing area. That doesn't hold true for ESO. No, it's not as open world as Skyrim or Oblivion, but I thought it hit a good middle point for an MMO.

The solo dungeon thing I also don't mind.. but I guess that has to do with how I view them. I don't view them as dungeons at all. They're more equivalent to caves in my mind.. and those I always tend to find rather dull, and never spend much time in. The actual dungeons (public dungeons and/or group dungeons) I very much like to explore.

The solution is simple: ignore the quest markers. Only talk to the ones you want to. You have a choice - no one is holding a gun to your head forcing you to seek out every single quest-giver and speak to them. I really don't know how this makes you feel like you 'can't explore'.