Why all the hype and hate?

robatzen

I am playing MMO's for quite some years now and I got the feeling that hate and beef intensities are constantly growing with each new game to be released. From what I remember it started sometime back in the days when DAOC player numbers were dropping. People started heading to WoW around 2005 and the biting begun. It became worse and worse when more games were released, in 2008 I remember terrible bitching when AoC and WAR were close to release. Somehow people started to take other players dedication to different games personal. It went on with AION release in 2009 it seemed that even before release more and more folks already knew if a game would be a success or a failure. So they started to support their “own” game and tried to convince everyone else that their game is the one and only and everything else is a fail anyway.

At the same time more and more MMO’s were released and the competition to attract and bind customers increased. So the games released became more and more convenient. For not scaring any customers away ingame penalties has been constantly removed until some point where the games became completely meaningless. Someday there were simply nothing to lose anymore! In early MMO’s you lost everything you did carry when you died, you lost your mount and you lost progress, whatever death was meaningful and one would try everything to avoid dying. Nowadays, if you read the forum you can see where this evolution of MMO’s led to, the modern generation of MMO gamers is not even willing to pay a repair fee after death, not to mention they would lose anything from their backpacks. Gaming companies adapted to this kind of gamers, they try to avoid any content that is challenging, and they try to avoid anything that slightly looks like an ingame penalty or effort. Nowadays the climax of this development is an ingame shop where you can buy items to instantly resurrect yourself and even your group. Therefore, nullifying the last little bit of death penalty, which is the walk back to your spot of death.

Modern MMO’s feel more and more like huge one-way tunnels. At level one you start in front of a guy with an exclamation mark above his head and you finish after a certain amount of levels next to a guy with an exclamation mark above his head. I already look forward to the first game where you get teleport options as soon as you start a quest: “Do you want to teleport to the quest location?” and after that: “You finished the quest, do you want to teleport back to the quest NPC?” Don’t get me wrong please I am not a fan boy and I don’t think ESO will really change this development. But I read so much stuff on the forums that is simply ridiculous. People complaining about repair costs, people complaining about soul gems which are too hard to get, people complaining about limited inventory space, people complaining about minimal downtimes, people complaining about subscription fees and people complaining about everything you could (or could not) imagine. The perpetual nagging about unimportant trivia really leaves me speechless most of the time.

Disregarding any hate as well as any hype I would briefly summarize my ESO beta experience (max level 15) like this:

• It does not look like the great change back to meaningful MMO’s, it is most likely going to be another carebear game with minimal risk and ingame penalties. If you expect some groundbreaking new MMO you will definitely be disappointed.
• The fact that the game was designed for PC and console at the same time is resulting in a very simple and straight forward interface. Although, I like the concept of a minimal interface which does not distract me, I strongly dislike these console menus and miss the freedom of an interface designed for mouse usage.
• The combat and targeting system looks promising the way it is at the moment. It feels like you are actively fighting and responding to attacks, not just simply picking a target and spamming skills while statically standing your ground. Nevertheless, I miss more skills to be used depending on prior actions, for example special after-block, after-parry or after evade-attacks which would contribute to even more dynamic fights.
• The world feels consistent most of the time, players and NPC inside the world feel like a real part of the world and not like something detached from it. The animations are not great but they fit into the world and I hardly experienced any hovering or warping of characters or NPC. Of course there still are some minor issues for example being "kicked around" by an invisible force.
• The skill system where only very few skills are class dependant allows a great freedom of how to develop your character. At the moment it is hard to predict how this will work out at max level. But I really hope that diversity will be a meaningful option, in contrast to just having two or three FOTM char builds.
• Crafting looks great at the first glance, still it’s hard to predict how this will develop at higher levels. I really hope there will be a reasonable balance between crafted and looted equipment at higher levels.
• Performance of the game looks promising at the moment. Even with all this millions of players during the last two stress test betas the game does not feel broken to me. Well there are some bugs and glitches, but the beta felt much more ready and free of bugs than most of the MMO releases I have experienced during the last ten years. If you remember for example the mess during DAOC or WAR release or the release of AoC. Compared to this the latest beta experience of ESO is far from those utterly failed releases.
• I can’t say too much about PvP yet due to my low level during beta. But at the first glance it feels pretty much like DAOC RVR which I personally find very exciting. I really hope there will be a good balance of zerg-, small scale grp- and solo-PvP, but only time will tell.  
• Due to loading screens and zoning the world feels much less open than I would personally want it to be. But that’s just personal bias and does not necessarily apply for everyone.
• Last but not least I very much hope that the game will stick to the actually planned subscription model. I strongly prefer a monthly fee model to any kind of F2P model or ingame cash shop. But again that’s just personal bias and I don’t want to claim that it has to be like that.

Even if ESO will not be the groundbreaking new MMO, I will definitely give it a chance and start playing at release. I know from prior game releases that it normally is not a good idea to start a game at release day. But I am pretty confident that it will be at least playable, of course it won’t be free of bugs but I don’t expect that anyway.

IMHO there is no need for hate and there is no need for hype at the moment!

Just give the game a try and if you like it stick to it. If you dislike it move on and look for another game that suites you better. But I would really love if people could stop constantly trying to convince everyone else that they alone are right, doesn’t matter if they are hating or hyping …