ESO or ES6

redbug

So basically I am looking for a new MMO, something to be part of from the beginning so I grabbed a ESO beta key this weekend and cleared my schedule. The first thing I noticed was the story line. A solid attempt at immersing you in the game was made for sure. All quest are voice acted and there is a ton of lore pretty much everywhere in the game. The graphics are decent and character creation is above par. The skill system is very diverse and its unlikely any build will be exactly like someone else's build until people start copying other peoples build's via internet guides.

The majority of the game is solo from level's 1-10. You will be surrounded by tons of people playing the game and doing the same quest you are doing, but because these quest are designed to be solo quest and due to something called phasing its unlikely you will be hanging out with anyone between these levels. Once you reach level 10 however you will be able to select a home realm for RvRvR PvP. The PvP in this game is a semi entertaining zergfest in which  each of the three factions attempt to control castles and forts by laying siege to the opposing factions fortifications. Admittedly I didn't get to experience this as much as I wanted to due to major lag issues which made the game pretty much unplayable.

Around level 12 or 13 you can start to group with people doing dungeons. Its a trinity system of sorts and works fairly well. The same Tank/Healer issues apply to this game , never a tank or healer when you need one blah blah blah blah. Not much more to say really, it's ok I guess, grouping just felt a bit awkward to me.

Things I really liked about this game are:

-Music "Some of the best in game music I have ever heard"

-Story line "The dots all connect and the voice actors are real pros"

-Skill system "Unique and diverse, you can pretty much play whatever style you choose to play"

-Crafting "Its about time a game let you craft the nice gear early on"

-World exploration " Not by any means empty, tons of exploration points and lore to uncover"

-Wandering vendors "Nice not to have to run to a city to sell and repair"

Things that turned me off:

-Unsocial " I didn't meet or have any reason to even talk to someone in the three days I played. Not a single wave, emote, group invite.....nothing."

-Broken quest " If it was just one or two I wouldn't even mention it, but so many quest are still broken, it's gonna be a issue. They have a lot to do in 30 days"

-Lag  "Especially in PvP zones, I understand this is a beta and that's what stress test are designed to fix, but when I can't move my character and my chat is delayed for over a minute at 8am Sunday morning something is terribly wrong."

-Phasing " This is gonna piss a lot of people off who want to play the game and level together . This system forces solo play, like it or not."

-Melee combat "You don't feel like your in combat and a hit or miss can only be determined by looking at a bar on the screen:"

-No end game "I guess I am a raider at heart . They seem to have put all there chips on PvP and Dungeons which alienates a good number of people like myself"

-Pay wall " They are charging extra money to get the imperial race? Seriously? That's a seriously bad omen for those people who think this game is only going to be 15 dollars a month."

-UI "Thank you in advance for the countless hours you modders are going to have to put into this game to make it better"

To sum it up , they seem to have made a decent playable game. A lot of my turn offs still have time to be fixed and probably will be but the game feels more like a RPG than a MMO. I felt like I was playing a solo game with lots of people around me playing the same solo game as I was. They probably could have skipped the MMO aspect of this game and called it Elder Scrolls VI since, and this is my opinion of course, that's pretty much the target audience of this game. I personally don't see myself paying $80 + sub fees for this game, but I am not the intended target of the marketing division. Enjoy your game Elder Scrollers.