Me and my two friends coming from WoW - What to expect with endgame?

TheScavenger

My friends (from real life) and I are coming from WoW. I personally prefer PvP myself, my two friends are decent at it but prefer "casual" raiding (in most cases, but they are kinda bored with that in WoW and I guess they got bored with WoW in general. They played for years and want to try new things). With that said, they said they want to take a break from raiding (hence why they are leaving WoW, since the endgame is mostly just raiding) and either just play casually or do PvP or both.

All three of us already are subbed to ESO+all of us got the morrowind expansion. These questions are for what to expect out of endgame.

Me I love PvP (not the hardcore stuff found in EVE though), and some of my favorite PvP came out of DAOC, GW2 and Warhammer Online. Especially the last one, that was the most fun I ever had in any game of any genre in all the games I've played. DAOC is second favorite, GW2 last (it was okay, I liked the huge "zone" aspect of it, but too much zergs and felt pointless (the PVE felt kinda pointless too lol). Well, later star wars battlefront came out and tied for warhammer online for me for most fun PvP I personally had.

So onto mine (and a couple of my friend's questions)

What is PvP like in ESO? Is it similar to any MMO that is out or been out? Or is it unique? Would it be good for someone who may not be the best at PvP with slow reflexes, but isn't the worst at it? For example, in Star Wars Battlefront, one of my friends gets 1 kill and (on average) gets 6-8 deaths and on bad days gets 15 or so deaths and 1 kill. Not the greatest, but he still has a ton of fun with it and loves to play it (like I do). Is PvP still a lot of fun, even if someone dies a lot?

If you aren't doing raiding or PvP (except maybe casual PvP), what is there to do? For example, one of my friends played Everquest 2 and loved decorating his house and spent so much time on it. He spent more time on his house than my entire played time of WoW lol. I don't think he did much else in EQ2 except the occasional stuff like shiny things he'd sometimes look for. In WoW, he likes completing the different achievements and collecting mounts+pets. And my other friend for example likes doing challenging solo content to get rare/very hard to get mounts that sometimes drop. He himself doesn't care about the pet stuff (at least in WoW).

Is crafting required? I myself love to craft, my friends don't give a sh! about it. They would rather find drops in the world or buy them. At the very least, my one friend will do cooking in WoW since he said its the only craft profession he can stand, that and Engineering is loved by both of them because it has a TON of fun stuff you can do (bombs and all kinds of fun gadgets and toys). If crafting is required, is there anything like engineering in ESO? I know cooking is in, but they liked cooking in WoW because you could (also like engineering) get fun stuff to craft that did cool/fun things...it wasn't much about the food, but some food could transform you or give random fun buffs and what not and had a lot of fun uses. Alchemy as well in WoW was enjoyed by both, because the potions did so much fun stuff. In MMOs without "fun" or "unique" crafting items, they couldn't care at all about them and don't bother crafting. 

Which leads to a 2nd question about crafting. If (or even if it isn't) crafting is required, is there any fun crafting professions they can do like engineering/cooking (not just food to eat which we know is in ESO, but just fun food that does random stuff like described above)) or alchemy? Or is crafting kinda the typical realistic crafting that doesn't have any of the fun gadgets attached?

And then leads to the 3rd question (and slightly similar to "is crafting required" question, and the one aimed most at leveling, but still compatible with an endgame related question)...as a small 3 person group and the occasional random person(s) we recruit if needed, are we able to find good items in the world or doing dungeons? Or are we all going to need to heavily rely on crafting to keep up on par with gear level? One thing with EQ2 (not so much WoW), EQ2 had good crafting items (in terms of weapons/armor/spells)...but you could still either buy everything on the broker, or find items out in the world doing quests and dungeons. Is ESO similar in that regard?

And that is it.

Thanks Also remember these questions are mostly aimed at endgame stuff, not so much while leveling.

gervaise1

@TheScavenger

Endgame.

The "endgame" in ESO doesn't work like it does in e.g. WoW due to the auto-scaling that ESO has introduced - check out some other threads.

There is some (very) challenging content for characters at or close to "max" but most content is available to all on day 1 (dungeons run on normal). Which is good since getting a character to "max" is a non-trivial process. (ESO is very alt friendly however).

Very briefly progression is a case of:
- level from 1 to 50; you are autoscaled whilst doing this to CP160 (think buffed based on level). With each level you will gain health, stamina, magic. Mobs drop gear based on your level.
- at 50 you become a champion and start to gain champion points. A single champion point doesn't do much but hundreds make a difference. You are still buffed to CP160. Gear drops based on your CP level.
- CP160 reached! You are no longer buffed but there are still hundreds of champion points to acquire. You can also start to work towards your final gear. Gear is capped at CP160 but you will want to acquire the right set(s) and then upgrade the quality to Legendary (or acquire it).

Progression will take months. 


PvP

It will remind you of DAoC. The campaign in particular which is big enough to make "camping" pretty useless. It is casual, fun, fast moving and there is no death penalty. (Imperial City has a slight twist). Nice mechanics. Also has some PvE quests!

Is crafting required?

Since One Tamriel last November not really except for 1 thing. One Tamriel introduced set drops with sets giving bonuses depending on the number of items in the set you are wearing. Most are 5 item sets but some sets need 3 or 2 or 1! Once you get to CP160 you will be able to farm or buy some sets - to give you a start - and then you can track down the sets you think are best for you. You won't have an issue buying "purple" quality.  Purple quality is only one step below the best - Legendary - gold quality. 

Ultimately some people use sets that drop, some go with crafted, some use a mix of crafted and dropped.

Legendary gear is different. Most is "made" by upgrading purple to gold. Which is were crafting comes in. However getting Legendary gear is much harder than simply getting to max crafting level.

(Note most items: 12 person raids and there is a solo instance that play a part.)

Exception: food and drink. And to a lesser extent alchemy.

All crafts create house decorations as well these days. 

You will have no problem getting stuff as a 3 person group with a 4th when needed. The dungeon group finder has foibles but it works well enough.

YashaX

Here is my take: (1) Its a little bit like GW2 WvW (but better imo). You don't need fast reflexes,  you just need good gear, food, potions, all your passives maxed out and an understanding of group tactics and class mechanics (I advise that you play in the non-CP campaign). 

You don't need to craft. The best gear seems to be dropped and its not that difficult to get, although it is a total pain to get some items (eg. monster shoulder pieces, which you can't craft anyway). It would be good to have someone in your group who can craft though, but you need to get to top crafting level for it to be useful at end game.

(2) I think alchemy is fun, but not in the way you describe. It has an interesting way of leveling the skill, and I like the flexibility of all the various potion effects. Gear crafting is also interesting in that you have to research "traits" and you can find special crafting stations in the world that let you make powerful sets of gear.

(3) I think you can do nearly all content with a group of four; you will probably need a few more to take a keep in pvp, but grouping in pvp is really easy.

Scorchien

why not just WaaaaAAAaAAAGGGAGGGGGHhHhhhhhhhHHHHH!!!!!


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Iselin

YashaX said:

You don't need to craft. The best gear seems to be dropped and its not that difficult to get, although it is a total pain to get some items (eg. monster shoulder pieces, which you can't craft anyway). It would be good to have someone in your group who can craft though, but you need to get to top crafting level for it to be useful at end game.

They really, really... really, need to add jewelry crafting to put the usefulness of crafted sets back on par with the dropped ones as well as needing to make any 2-HD weapon count as 2 for the purpose of 5-piece set bonuses.

The name of the game at high levels is having two 5-piece set bonuses + the monster set 2-piece bonus. In order to do that at least one of your sets can't be crafted because you need to use the 3 jewelry slots to do it.

Also, all the pre-CP160 gear including crafted sets is mostly useless except for very special niche crafting for grinders who want to use the training trait for max leveling speed.

Many changes to the game have relegated gear crafting to something not nearly as useful as it once was. Consumables crafting OTOH, is still just as useful.

Subilac

I went back to WoW. Leveled a Monk Gnome to max level in like a week. Started grinding the dailies and just quit. Went to Runescape. Didn't last long since half the player base are BoTs. Went to ESO about 2 months ago and am having a blast. I just only hit level 40 and I play a few hours a day. I personally would advise checking it out. I'm not at end game content yet, but I'm very much having fun enjoying the ride.