Weekend Beta Impressions of an TES/DAOC Fan

EDIT: After http://tamrielfoundry.com/2014/02/eso-isariis-comprehensive-review/ my puny preview feels like nothing, but I still want to post it as someone who participated in 4 weekend betas up to lvl 17, in hope that it might cover certain things that were not covered there. Please reply with thoughts/questions and corrections. Numbers next to chapter titles are given in a way to represent how my feeling of a particular aspect compares against another, so are done in a relative manner.

The Elder Scrolls Online – Weekend Beta Impressions of an TES/DAOC Fan

1.       Introduction

2.       Character Progression

a.       Skills

b.      Stats

c.       Weapons

d.      Armor

e.      Classes

f.        Races

3.       PvE

4.       PvP

5.       Crafting

6.       Combat

7.       Questing

8.       Graphics

9.       Sound

10.   Immersion

11.   Conclusion

1.  Introduction:

More than a decade ago, my online gaming life started off with DaoC and continued with Shadowbane, two games which shaped my tastes and expectations in online mmorpg’s ever since. After the release of WoW and what it did to this genre, I have been drifting as a lost soul from one game to another, just trying to understand what went wrong. I have also been a fan of TES series since Morrowind and hold dear the lore of Tamriel. This preview is based on my past experiences in the Elder Scrolls games and countless mmorpgs, as well as the TESO beta and the official info from Bethesda. Take everything said with a grain of salt, since we are technically still in beta and I only saw the first two zones per faction.

2.  Character Progression:

As a player who is more interested in the role playing part of the equation that makes MMORPG’s, I can say I am very satisfied with the way TESO character progression is designed. They have taken their experience with the single player systems, molded it into something that would suit an MMO, and as with any new Elder Scrolls game, introduced new elements to keep it fresh and interesting.

a) Skills: (9/10)

Perhaps the most important element here is the skills. Unlike the linear or semi-linear path offered in other games that force and mold your character into a predetermined role, TESO honors the open-endedness when it comes to picking your skills and defining your character. Rift’s system of mix n match was a great break when it was released from the traditional but compared to the flexibility TESO provides, it is so “limiting”.

Through skills gained by allocating points in the potential lines other than your class, you break free of the limitations or traditional expectations that a class might come with. You can spend your skill points in weapons, armor, race, guilds, crafting and even pvp lines (ala DaoC realm abilities) to mix and match the play. I tried a traditional sorcerer with destruction, a nightblade with bow a templar with healing staff and in each experience I was able to tweak my skillset to suit my needs.

Morphing is a way to further enhance this feeling of variety and standing out in the crowd – some of the morphed abilities will affect more targets, others will have longer durations, yet others will have a special effect. Considering the limited availability of active abilities (5) at a given time, expect to do a lot of morphing with those skill points. You will love the difficult position these morphing decisions put you into – you always sacrifice something to get another. Some builds will be aoe dmg focused, others will be cc and yet again others will be resource management – morphing will do all these possible.

I have to say that certain classes and weapons have a strong synergy, while others seemed a little off to me. The passive bonuses of the healing line of templar worked with the abilities of the resto staff for example, while a bow using nightblade will find most of his class skills are oriented towards melee. The game surely claims you can play any race, any class, any weapon and any armor, but this is true only to an extend – you cannot play a race which gives melee passive bonuses, wearing heavy armor, using a destructive staff as a dragon knight for example. In theory you could, but you would gimp your character in terms of stats and efficiency, while a race with a mana passive bonus, wearing light armor, using a destructive staff as a sorc will be much more “efficient.” This example was a comparison of the best and worst case scenarios, and I am sure players will always end up somewhere in the gray zone in between.

You obtain the skill points through leveling, skyshards and as rewards from certain quest/instance completion.

It is important to note that Bethesda confirmed respecs will be available, however since it will be possible to switch weapons in combat after lvl 15, many currently think you won’t need one and will actually have enough skill points to spec two weps (and potentially two different roles).

Surely each game comes with FOTM specs and there will be tons of min and maxing, but the sky is the limit when it comes to how you want to play your character. I really have a strong feeling this time that the way I spec my templar with healing staff won’t be the same as the way every other templar with healing staff specs.

I have been ultra super suspicious of what they have done with the 5 skill limitation to make it playable on consoles, but I think 10 hotkeys after lvl 15 is a good compromise between a dumbed down console game and WoW’s 30+ hotkeys. Note that if you do not have a hotkey active on your screen, you will not get the bonuses associated with having it (toggles, passives, summoned pets etc). So you cannot summon a pet, then hit switch weapon to get into that hotbar full of DD spells. That pet skill has to remain there, if you want the pet.

b) Stats: (7/10)

We were all sad when Bethesda decided to “dumb down” the stats mechanics after Morrowind. Fans of Skyrim will find themselves in familiar territory here, as you will gain 1 point per level to spend in your respective stats.

Each stat, according to Bethesda, has some “visible” benefits that you can access in your character window, as well as some hidden ones in the background. It is also confirmed that you will gain diminishing returns for stacking a single stat beyond a certain soft cap per level, urging players to spread the statjuice a little.

The items you find in the world will contribute to stats either by increasing the core stats of health, magicka and stamina, or simply by giving a specialized stat such as weapon critical. Health will be a stat that everyone will want to watch, because certain boss mechanics in dungeons will require you to survive big hits (certain boss moves are dodge-able but others are locked).

I would very much like to see a more specialized system here rather than a choice of three (well in most specialized characters two) stats to level, but you gotta please the console market to make money -_-

c) Weapons: (8/10)

Any race and any class can use any weapon. You get better with a weapon by using it. The more you use it, the more you gain experience with it, which increases potency of your abilities with it, as well as unlocking new abilities to purchase and morphs for already existing abilities with skill points.

After lvl 15 we will be able to swap weapons in combat. This is of tremendous importance, because it will open new possibilities for rotation and roles in groups. An example again would be the bow and resto staff specced templar.

The templar would use his bow to begin the fight, using up stamina for special attacks with the bow and doing a good amount of dps. When his stamina is depleted, he would switch to the resto staff, and now use up his mana reserves to aid his allies (and maybe toss in a few damage spells). This as you can see can create nearly infinite dual specs in the real meaning of the word.

To my personal taste, I found the ability lines of the staves to be more interesting than those of melee weapons and bows. I especially thing a bit more creativity could be used when it comes to 2handed weps, but similar to GW2, not much innovation there.

d) Armor: (8/10)

Ahh the revered battlemage that everyone wants to play. Full shining plate armor sending bolts of lightning and fireballs to the battlefield. Is it possible? Yes, it is possible. However is it efficient? It is not the most efficient.

Each armor line will come with certain passive bonuses that increase the more you wear that type of armor. Certain bonuses or active ulti abilities, will require you to wear that specific armor type throughout your body. To generalize, heavy armor will be built around damage mitigation, medium armor around stamina efficiency and damage output with weps and light armor will be based on mana and spell efficiency.

Going back to the example of the battlemage – you can still choose a Breton, get their passive mana/spell bonuses with skill points, enchant your armor with mana and spell related bonuses and STILL end up with something of a battlemage. However, if your battlemage in shiny plate armor has 500 mana and 50 mp5 and that dude who chose light armor with same choices will have 800 mana and 100 mp5. Is it worth having the damage mitigation of that heavy armor rather than those spell related bonuses? That will be up to the player to decide.

The armor skill line will be an important consideration in itself (compared to other games where only the stats and bonus enchantments that come on the armor matter the most) in character progression. I actually should put it this way: the bonuses you will get from your armor choices (as in skill point spent) will be probably one of the most significant aspects of how your character’s role will progress.

e) Classes: (7/10)

It might look like 4 classes at launch might be too few. From the MMORPG player’s perspective, traditionally this may be a disappointing number. However from the TES player’s perspective, it actually is not a big deal – classes in the traditional TES sense is a limitation of the variety and open-endedness of character progression. Bethesda’s official statement in this regard, where classes are only there to help the players to initially have an idea where they are going, but definitely not limiting where they end up, pretty much sums up the class system.

As I explained above in the Skills section, some class skills feel more in tune with the weapon abilities and the respective passives have good synergy, while others feel a little disconnected. Still, it is an excellent system of allowing a person to follow their heart’s content in terms of character progression.

It will be hard for the MMORPG player to get used to the idea that the trinity can be achieved in ways that is not traditional. You can have a warlock themed nightblade tank, you can have a ranger with pet type sorcerer with bow, or you can have a templar in plate burning enemies with ranged spells. You can even have mixes and matches of these on one character. Do not let the names of the classes fool you into thinking in the traditional sense. This is what TESO’s character progression is truly different about.

For longevity and even further specializations, it would be nice to have maybe one or two more classes in the first year after launch.

f) Races: (9/10)

Probably not so much important for the average MMORPG fan, but definitely a huge deal for the loyal Elder Scrolls fans, with the announcement of the Imperials, the race lineup is complete.

The skill tree of each race is loyal to the lore and background of races, which is awesome.

You will be lying to yourself if you think the racial bonuses don’t matter – until the time that they are nerfed (I am not saying if they are nerfed, I am saying until the time, just watch the bitching and moaning on the forums which will lead them to make it cosmetic bonuses), your race choice will have a profound effect on your characters prowess and the ease of leveling/endgame role.

Some of us will stick to the race we love no matter what the bonuses, others will choose it to min/max their char, yet again others will use it to balance that decision that will make their class/wep/armor combo out of the ordinary.

Before the pre-order bonus was announced, your race was also going to determine a significant aspect of your first 50 levels in the game – your faction would have been pre-determined with the race of your choice, meaning not being able to visit other two factions pve zones until you reached 50. However now with the pre-order bonus you will be able to create your character with any race in any faction, where your char will be leveling until 50. This is a change of tremendous importance, unfortunately lost in the very loud fight about whether imperials should be behind a paygate or not. I will talk more about it in the quests and immersion sections.

3. PvE: (7/10)

The PvE aspect of the game will be your main source of leveling up. The time you spend in Cyrodiil with PvP will be improving other aspects of your characters development, but in order to get them skill points, you have no choice but to play along with the PvE.

Unfortunately, in order to cater the easy pleasey crowd, PvE is too easy. You could easily hit lvl 12 and not have a single death in the entire time, only to die for the first time to a dungeon run.

The gameplay in PvE will be a mixture of kill 10 rats quests, epic quests, dungeons, exploration and dynamic events. Unlike some other games (Aion comes to mind) where you would run out of quests and things to do to advance at your level, which forced you to camp mobs for 6 hours to get to next level, the 1-15 experience was smooth, with plenty of options (as long as quests worked:P). I might even say I was a little ahead of the content level wise in some of the factions.

I am extremely, extremely sad to see the addition of the Mara rings, which will result in the contents locusts racing to 50 in 4 days and then demanding more dungeons.

The three dungeons that were available at beta had insta teleport from anywhere in the world (one for each faction), which I was extremely sad to discover. Unlike the other teleport stones that you need to manually find yourself first before you can teleport for first time, you are able to teleport to a dungeon without first finding it in the real world ;( but note that you need to finish your own factions dungeon before you can teleport to others. I guess this is a necessity since you cannot walk to the other factions, but anything insta and anything easy is against my taste.

Each dungeon came with a quest associated with, and the dungeons are tied to a specific “Guild” similar to the Mages and Fighters, complete with their skill lines! This is an EXCELLENT addition and even a person like me that hated the WoW dungeon grind loved the fresh breath of air in this aspect. If you do all 3 dungeons, you get 1 blue light 1 blue medium and 1 blue heavy armor piece as reward.

The dungeons were definitely not a walk in the park, and the bosses have mechanics of difficulty similar to a lvl 40 WoW vanilla dungeon – there are bosses that pull you and do pbaoe’s etc. There were a lot of deaths, but after learning the mechanics they can be done with a fairly good group easily. Repeated runs of the dungeons did not provide more loot unfortunately, since the main loot reward came from the quest associated with the boss in the dungeon, not the boss itself. I said unfortunately because of my greed, but part of me loves this because it will force people OUT OF THE INSTANCES and enjoy the wild, beautiful world of Tamriel and Cyrodiil.

However, if you are a crafter, dungeon runs provide an abysmal amount of raw materials for crafting, and there are 10+ chests in each dungeon run. You also get filled soul gems and potions from mobs in dungeons, which is not that plenty outside.

Overall, other than the fact that its easy, I had a very good feeling with its PvE experience.

4. PvP: (9/10)

Now having played 3 beta tests day and night during their course, before I stepped into Cyrodiil, I felt like this was a nice game with a lot of new and old elements, but it was just another nice mmo with a very successful brand behind it.

Maya Angelou once said “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Same is true of MMO’s, and my friends, I can tell you that the feeling I got all those years ago playing DaoC, of immersion and of meaningful PvP was back to me in 2-3 hours of PvP.

I have just come to accept it over the disappointments of the last decade – no other game will give me the thrill, the feeling of importance and connection, nor the 72 hour sieges, that I experienced in Shadowbane. In that game, if you lost that siege, your 3 month work with your guild, your buildings your city, your guild ITSELF was destroyed. Talk about “meaningful pvp”. This will never, NEVER happen in the post-WoW world, so I learned that I have to compromise my expectations when it comes to PvP.

Having said that, TESO RvR truly felt something close to a DaoC experience. After the disappointment of Warhammer Online, we have something that resembles the days of glory once again.

The realm point system (in the form of pvp skill line) is here. Milegates and chance for stealthers to alter the tide of war is here. The importance of small skirmisher teams taking out resource nodes and in effect cutting off lines of teleport is here. The relics (in the form of elder scrolls) giving bonuses to your entire realm is here.

In the beta before the last one, joining Cyrodiil was nearly impossible and people had to use some backdoors to get in. However once inside, I did not want to go back out. Even with PUG groups we participated in ZERG battles, small 8v8 battles, keep defenses and keep sieges, repairing walls, upgrading doors.. I had a taste of all these in 2-3 hours, and towards the end there was even a successful stealing of an elder scrolls relic. We had already the guy that was shouting in caps (you know the types, the necessary evils!) and repeatedly giving orders in the /global channel, and the lieutenants leading the groups following him. It was engaging, meaningful PvP with the elder scrolls at stakes. In that iteration, I experienced ZERO lag or problems in Cyrodiil, the animations were smooth and even the big battles did not cause any stuttering or lockups. I have a beast of a system but that did not help in SWTOR, it was nice to see it worked here flawlessly. However in the last stress test beta, Cyrodiil was a no-no: There was so much lag, that my character walked crouched for 45 seconds before it could uncrouch and I could summon my horse. It simply was unplayable. But having witnessed that in previous beta it was good, I will conclude that this was part of the %200 capacity effort of the stress test.

My biggest complaint in PvP overall? RNG in PvP gear rewards. The RNG generator in the pvp rewards in SWTOR was the reason I quit that game. Spending 3 weeks to repeatedly get wrong bags and not completing your set, while a lucky guy spends 6 hours to get his full set, is simply not my cup of tea. It might very well be the reason (if any) that will make me ragequit this game too. I spent enough points 4 times to get a restoration staff, but the vendor only sells you “unknown magical 2-hander” and unfortunately none was a resto staff. This can be a fire staff, a lightning staff, an ice staff or a resto staff or a bow!. I cannot find words to explain how much I hate this system, where one lucky guy gets all pieces he wants with 2 hours of effort while the other has to spend 26 hours to get the same item.

5. Crafting: (9/10)

Crafting is another aspect of mmo’s that got ruined after the loot-centric approach in the post WoW market. In todays world, everything has to be infinitely repairable and best loot has to come from dungeon raids. Similar to my expectations regarding open world pvp, I have come to understand that  a compromise in this regard is needed too ;(

First off, the very fact that you need to spend very dear skill points in order to get better at your craft, is an EXCELLENT move. This means those who are truly dedicated to crafting and are ready and willing to make the necessary sacrifice, will be better at their craft than those who value combat aspect of the game above it. Spending very dear skill points at release to have a headstart will surely give some craftomaniacs a big advantage in early days of the market.

There is a combination of the shadowbane/swtor type henchman gathering some mats for you, and yourself collecting them from mobs and resource nodes in the wild. There is a salvage/disenchant mechanism as well as refining mechanism for raw mats. Finally, its possible to upgrade any loot you find in the wild too, so long as you have the skill and mats for it.

One thing you will notice in chat when you login for first time is people bitching and moaning that they are not able to find the resources in the wild! This was especially true of cotton before the texture update, which did not have a distinctive plant look from the background flora. The people that complain 1) either did not know that they can spend a point to have the ability to locate a node from 20 feet away 2) or did not want to spend their precious combat skill point in something as useless as crafting. This is the turning point, crafters! If you opt to spend that point into crafting instead of that morph of a dps ability or that %3 mana regen skill, you WILL be the better crafter.

The racial styles makes getting into crafting a little difficult – you cannot simply craft 30 cotton helms to get all that exp. Each of those cotton helms will require a racial stone that costs to buy from a merchant. You first need to unlock racial style by finding their books in the wild (or buy them), and then you need to find the stone/material associated with that particular style.

Finding the lorebooks is not enough – you then start researching traits for each individual item so that you can make more powerful items. Researching consumes an item with that trait, and takes many RL hrs. If you research the sharpened trait for an iron sword, you cannot use it to craft an iron axe. You need to research the sharpened trait for the axe too! At this point I am not sure, if a trait you search at iron level for sword, would go for the steel sword, or if that also needs a new research. Talk about many MANY hours of research ala EVE.

The only problem I have with the crafting system is the RNG – unfortunately, there is an RNG in place for determining what exact stat bonuses your item will have, as well as the %chance of being able to upgrade the rarity of the item (think TERA). You can end up with a restoration staff which gets bonus to destruction magic.. four times in a row. Now, RNG is coming back and I hate it. But again, compromises.. compromises..

6. Combat: (6/10)

Now the biggest worry and curiosity around any Elder Scrolls game is the combat. Unfortunately, the combat here also feels like a button mash fest, with combos and synergies added here and there to help ease the pain.

The lack of CD and resource-management sure adds some strategy, but its not enough on its own.

The npc moves are telegraphed with the dreaded red cone in front of them, so you can dodge out of the way ala GW2. No such thing as an attack becoming available after a parry, a block or a dodge ala DaoC, with the only exception of block-bashing with your weapon to interrupt an enemy skill and daze them for 3 secs. You point your cursor at the enemy (you don’t have to truly aim ala TERA, you just point in general direction and it locks) and you press your attacks and the enemy dies.

Further, my melee characters felt the “disconnect” with the swings. Your hits on the opponent do not visually register in a satisfying way. I will definitely be playing a ranged character because of lack of immersion when it comes to melee.

Synergies are nice, but at earlier levels I did not see a strategy, a choice or a decision affecting their time and place. Whenever you see a message “press Z to activate ” you just press Z. The exception has been the blood funnel which takes your char out of combat to drink and heal, but I was hoping more of a EQ2 kind of synergy system involving steps and combination of skills.

As a bow user, you miss the thrill of TERA, since your arrows curve to autohit the enemy -_-

Magic on the other hand, is excellent, feels well, plays well. I enjoyed my dest staff sorc and ranged templar most.

Other than first tries at the dungeon bosses, mmo veterans will find the combat to be easy. If too many enemies, easy to run.

Combat is enjoyable, but its nothing out of the ordinary, definitely nothing revolutionary like tanking a BAM in TERA for the first time.

7. Quests: (7/10)

You will surely find the kill 10 rats quests in most of the quest hubs, but you will also partake in questlines with multiple steps and optional parts. Most of these are excellently written, with twists and surprises in storylines. Doing the optional parts will make the final part easier in some cases, and in other cases through persuasion and coercion you will find shortcuts to your target. I have played all 3 factions starting zones up to 15 and I truly enjoyed them all. You become part of the main story and you sense a feeling of belonging in that faction, with all its glory and all its troubles.

There will also be quest based instancing around you – a choice you made might cause the whole town to start burning or be under attack by rogues, which you can restore back to normal through your acts. These changes are cosmetic mostly and only visible to you. But they help with immersion.

Some will hate the disconnect in the flow of the game due to the cutscenes and the npc’s conversations, but I found it to be adding to my immersion and pleasure.

One thing you must note is, majority of the quests will not give you a loot option to choose. Are you a magic using sorcerer? Too bad, this 6 step questline has some exp and a Axe of Withering for you in the end. Now, that exp is excellent, and sometimes it even comes with a skill point, but most of the loot-centric generation of post WoW world will hate this. This is even true for the rewards from finishing your dungeon quest for the first time. My feelings on it are mixed, I love it because it makes crafting more important and relevant, but then again the loot whore in myself cried out a few times in protest when I did not get something I needed as a reward. Note that those items can be disenchanted for good raw/rare mats as well as exp.

One nice thing for the series fans is that exploration will reward you in the way of finding quests, which the content locusts will miss in their hurry to get to the next level and next zone. Bethesda did pay attention to this, and it is excellently rewarding. One time a quest line lead me to an area where there was this mine entrance with a door. Since chests are usually hidden at corners or these tiny holes in mountains that are not normally visible, I always try to circle around the gates to see if I find one. I immediately noticed a hidden path leading above the door. There I found a dark elf merchant, completely invisible due to the rocks from the bottom in front of the door. I talked to him and checked his wares, and there was one particular item called a “fetish figurine”. The name got me intrigued and I bought it. Then it turned out to be a quest item which involved a great storyline with several steps and a nice blue reward in the end. These kind of things, the dudes in hurry to get to 50 first, will surely miss, because there are no pointers, no hints or arrows to find them. And us patient explorers will enjoy

I truly hoped to see the dark anchors being a little more randomly placed but you just cannot reason with today’s player who dies while hunting murlocs because a portal of evil opened above him..

After all these positive notes about quests, I have to let you know the utter disappointment I felt regarding the presence of game breaking bugs in some of them. My Ebon character leveled with maybe only 1-2 cosmetic mistakes in quests, which was very nice. My altmer sorc on the other hand, was pretty much stuck at lvl 8 because 7 quests – yes 7!- were broken in such a way that blocked advancing to next steps. And these are quests which have like at least 4-5 steps and reward you with a skill point and some nice exp and loot in the end! I just had to start killing creeps for exp because I simply could not go to the next zone which needed lvl 12 at least. The current state of quest bugs is unacceptable. (On a positive note, I entered Customer Service Representative chat twice, once on a Sunday afternoon and once Monday night at 11:30 us eastern. In both cases, it took roughly 15-20 seconds for a live csr representative to join chat. This felt unbelievable, they were super fast, super kind, even though in one of the two cases they just told me “we are aware of the issue and we are working to fix it”, it felt great being able to talk to someone INSTANTLY when you felt the need to.)

Another potential worry I have is how the quest lines and main quest background will be implemented now that any race can be in any faction. As a Breton, I truly felt at home with the main questline. It got me engaged and I felt the realm pride, through the quest text and voice acting. If I play a high elf in the same faction though, how will I feel? The most important question is this: Will the Altmer-bashing Orc quest giver npc REALIZE that I am an high elf and talk to me accordingly, or will all text be the same for all races, possibly creating non-sense immersion breakers? This is something that we need to wait and see.

8. Graphics: (8/10)

Compromises, guys! This won’t be Skyrim! Just face it! Still, is it an excellent engine worthy of an AAA title? In my humble opinion it is. (Apart from the melee disconnect feel when you hit something) the animations are fluid, the lighting/water reflections are great, overall artistic design is true to the lore of the series. Graphics wise it is not setting the standard of the next gen, but for 2014 it is a confident take. No glitches or issues in this regard for me.

In my Ebon campaign, I somehow managed to get into the lvl 15+ area, which was done physically, but lacked anything interact-able on it. Walking through the area around Mournhold and entering the town itself, despite the lack of anything living or clickable, was one of the best experiences in years! It felt like someone took Morrowind (pc game), touched it with a magic wand and made it ultra-graphics and gave it to me as a gift, with all its character. I just cannot wait to visit that area again when its officially enabled!!

9. Sound: (9/10)

Ever since Morrowind, when a new Elder Scrolls game is announced, first thing I think of is how they are going to tweak the main theme and give us something nice yet familiar. The main theme, which is now available on many youtube channels, gives me goosebumps. You can literally see me pretending to ride an elephant sitting on an ottoman and banging on my imaginary drums. I am absolutely in love with what they have done with all the music in this game – totally capturing the factions in their respective themes. Similar to the feeling you get when you venture into Ashenvale in WoW for the first time, you feel.. magic. Its an improved journey in time, taking you to past places you knew in other games in the series.

The game also has the /lute /flute and /drum emotes complete with instruments and songs. It aint at the level of LOTR online, but through some experimentation (and while waiting for a broken quest mob to spawn) we did manage to sync our songs with 2 other strangers! There are 2-3 different song tracks per instrument I think.

Sounds will also be familiar to most ES players and will complete the immersion of the game.

In beta there was a lot of placeholder voices for many npcs, which was kind of amusing and robotic. %90 of these were fixed in the last beta. The voice cast is impressive, not much has to be said there.

10. Immersion: (9/10)

To me overall, being enthralled for hours, not realizing the passage of time is the greatest single important point in entertainment. If for any reason, be it interface, flaws, mechanics, system, whatever you call it, I realize that I am sitting in front of a computer and looking at shiny pixels, the magic is gone.

The Elder Scrolls world and its lore and the way Tamriel is designed, with its sounds, flora and fauna, DID manage to captivate me during beta. Cyrodiil was excellent, with an organization, a purpose and clear and fun ways of achieving it. Running along 16 trebuchets while they are continuously firing at the gate, avoiding enemy siege fires and making sure the Treb users are healed and safe from stealth teams and damage from their siege engines as a healer, was one of the best feelings I have not felt in a decade in another game.

The only time the immersion was gone was when the quests were stuck.

The sum of its parts is definitely more, as a package, TESO delivers in the immersion department!

11. Conclusion: (Overall rating: 8.0)

Compromise.

Ever since the first day I saw a reddit post with the announcement that “it is finally happening”, I knew how big a gamble this was, how much risk was being taken and the stakes at hand. Disappointment is the single word that could summarize the last decade for many of us old mmo veterans, and many of my friends still refuse to play the beta or even watch a single youtube video out of fear of getting hyped, and hurt again. I understand them.

This ambitious project of combining the open-ended, free exploration series of greatest immersion with the social elements of adding multiplayer and an online persistent world, will have its many compromises. I could write an even lengthier piece (yeah, for real) about how I would have made the game and what is wrong with today’s market, but in the end we have to face the fact that these games are made by corporations which are ruled by bodies motivated solely by profit in the end. So there will be compromises for consoles and compromises for the wow player. If you cannot accept this simple truth, you will be on the lookout for that next mmo for a long time still.

In my opinion, the Elder Scrolls Online successfully combines the RvR elements of DaoC and the single player glory of the Elder Scrolls games. Maybe you cannot climb on top of any mountain that you see as in Skyrim, maybe there aren’t as many quests or random events in the world, maybe it will not have the sense of community we once had in DaoC where we battled on the field at night and talked and taunted each other on the ign forums in the morning at work and most people knew their foes as much as their friends, but it is what it is, with all its glory and flaws.

It will be up to the people to decide on its longevity. The content locusts raid-ists, who demand 4 new dungeons every 2 months, will be disappointed and will leave early. Those who are more interested in rvr however, have a chance of creating their own content, through the rivalries and battles among alliances, which does not cost a single dime for the company. For the explorer among you, Tamriel is HUGE and full of surprise and satisfaction of deviating from the beaten path.

I have pre-ordered my imperial edition and I am urging all ex-DaoC players to give this a game a try, right from the start, if for anything but the hope it has given us that meaningful, realm impacting 3 faction, open world pvp is still possible in 2014.

The Good:

·         Polished product with excellent immersion – great combination of graphics, music and voice acting.

·         Fantastic RvR with objectives and consequences, bringing memories of glorious days of vanilla DaoC.

·         Difficult crafting system that makes crafting matter and a job for those who are up for it only.

·         Exploration is truly rewarded in the sense of hidden quests, skyshards and countless other surprises.

·         Infinite possibilities in character progression and roles.

·         Stays true to the lore and identity of Tamriel.

·         Resists the WoW formula of dungeon-loot-daily cycle as the primary way of satisfying player.

The Bad:

·         Heavy RNG generator in RvR rewards.

·         Heavy RNG generator in crafting.

·         Combat not revolutionary, melee still feels so-so, despite improvement from ES genre.

·         Dark Anchors’ locations are static.

·         Progression-breaking, immersion-killing quest bugs.