Recently I've felt every mmo that releases now-a-days caters too much to casual players and dumbs down their content/difficulty. For example, just look at WoW(everything in WoW lol) and almost every other mmo's amazingly short grind to the level cap. While being an mmo player and an ES rpg player I expected to enjoy this game for at the least several months and longer if more things were done right. After having participated in over 10 beta weekends I know that Cyrodiil alone if done well enough could keep me occupied for quite some time as a hardcore pvper whose been unable to find a rvr game that held me like Daoc did. If this system is improved and added on to one can only hope it becomes a home for us hardcore rvr pvpers for many years to come.
The leveling progression speed is another one of my favorite things about the game. I feel it's done just right, where it doesn't have that Asian mmo feel where you'll be grinding mobs to the level cap for months or opposite where it's way too short. The amount of experience you get per kill of a mob is so insignificant in ESO that it aims players towards the story (quests), exploration, world events, etc. which is what an ES should be about (imo).
While there's tons of other features in the game I liked and disliked those were the two really positive features I took from the game. The main negative one I've taken from ESO is how much of a themepark it is. I understand making content for 3 factions is hard enough as a themepark so a sandpark world may have seemed out of the question. Yet, I was hoping for a mix in between both that may have included zones with more than one faction in it. Which leads to another disappointment of mine, that the pvp is restricted to Cyrodiil only. This removes a lot of the immersion in my opinion as a pvp'er who finds questing and doing pve so much more enjoyable when your on your toes and watching for enemies at the same time. This would upset a lot of pve'rs of course and Zenimax elected to appeal to them so from a business point of view I can understand, just saddened they couldn't make a combination of pvp and pve instances of the same zones.
Haxus Council Member 21 year MMO veteran PvP Raid Leader Lover of The Witcher & CD Projekt Red
When this game was announced, no kidding, I completely ignored it. I was just coming out of my disappointment with SWTOR, and I had sworn off MMO's for good. SWTOR was my last bastion of hope that anyone was going to do anything different with MMO's. And honestly, I didn't have 100% faith that it was going to do things differently in the first place. Though to be fair, even though it wasn't anything new - I still enjoyed it for about a month until the first wave of nerfs hit. And then I quit. It was apparent to me that the Live dev team had absolutely zero intention of actually doing things right.
At any rate, ESO wasn't even on my radar. Don't get me wrong - I absolutely love the ES series. I love it almost as much as I love Star Wars. Well..... that's a lie, but you get my point. As far as games go - they set the standard, currently. But I simply had zero faith in the prospect that ESO would be anything even remotely different than the norm. Plus, frankly, the original screen shots looked pretty weak. It already looked dated and old - like Dark Fall, dated and old. This was not good.
However, I bought GW2 when it first launched, played it for about 10 hours, and uninstalled. It was garbage. But, one night about 3 months ago or so, I reinstalled it because I was bored, and figured I'd try to give the game an honest go. I mean, I spent good money on it, so I might as well try to enjoy it. So I did, and I went about two weeks pretty solid with it, even buying some neat things on the cash shop, since those things were conveniently the most interesting things in the game. And then I realized... I just wasn't having fun. I engaged in all the stuff I could to try and experience as much of the game as possible, and the further I went, the more it became apparent that I was slowly walking up to a wall that would force me to either spend a lot more money in the cash shop, or do some serious grinding in stuff that wasn't all that exhilerating to begin with. I started to look for other options. So naturally, I came here to get some information about MMO's I might know nothing about.
WIldstar was first up. I of course knew a little about this game. My RL friends can't shut up about it, but frankly... they aren't experienced MMO players. They don't realize I've been playing MMO's since 2003. I've seen it all, and I've seen what has happened to this industry. And Wildstar, after I did some more research on it here, had all the Hallmarks of everything I hated about MMO's in the first place. So I kept looking.
EverQuest Next looks interesting. But it's so far out of the picture, I'm not going to hold my breath for another 2 years. Plus, it's SOE. I tread carefully by default with them.
And then ESO. I just knew it was going to suck. But I looked into it some more. I still wasn't impressed, but I figured I'd sign up for the Beta anyway since it was the only option I really had. And so I did. A few weeks went by, and I got my invite. I installed the game, and when that Friday afternoon came - I logged in.
I started playing, and after a few hours, I was interested. And then a few more, it just clicked with me. I was playing an honest to goodness ES game, with a few minor tweaks to compensate the MMO environment. I simply couldn't have been happier. I won't bore you with further exposition, but... all I can say is this is simply the game for me in almost every respect.
This is why ESO strongly exceeded my expectations.
Originally posted by rodingo Help us Todd Howard, your our only hope.
That is a scary thought...
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
Teso Failed hard and i mean really hard.. it has a extreamly boring touch and feel to it. and the questing overall is really wierd and almost to linear and it's just not any good.
The gameplay
i think the gameplay is kinda lame aswell the combat system is really weak and feels like it's going to break anytime.
the story
not much to say here did not expect a great story and it's not really a good story.
Is this a singleplayer game?
yes its a singleplayer game very much.. u can solo everything nothing is hard, nothing is even diffcult... it just seems like they missed the action and multiplayer aspect.
Pay to play and still extra fees?
really that is the must lame thing ever.. expecting people to pay 200-400$ for a stupid game? to play a race we heard nothing about before close to release? not a good choice and forcing us to buy a 200-400$ collectors edition is just even more fail.
this game will fail within 3-6months because of no content, boredom, waste of time is also a concern. if you just look at the community and negativity all over all websites,forum,reviews, their own forum infact also you can tell and see how much failur this game is
Crafting - one of the best systems in a themepark MMO in like forever.
Art and Graphics - cranked up to ultra, I can only compare it to Conan...it's beautiful.
Character development - Lots of advancement between levels... many choices in where to put skill points...including crafting
Cyrodiil - bigger than I expected and lots more to do than just run with the pack... it's like an open world PVP server all by itself...outstanding!
Mounts - horses that level along different paths...and can sprint using their own stamina bar!
Met:
Questing: Well done and fully voice acted with variety and interesting stories.
Gear: good variety in stats and looks.
Trinity dungeon play: a cross between WOW and GW2. Very active but roles matter.
Missed:
Open world dungeons - yes, they're fun and nice to have again in MMOs but much, much smaller than I was expecting.
Dark Anchors - locations not random enough, scaling up not large enough and no particular loot of any real value.
Exploration in PVE - better than most themeparks... yes there are out of the way quests and places to discover as well as Sky Shards, but zones are not big enough to really let you wander off. Ironically, Cyrodiil, the PVP zone lets you do this in spades... much more than any of the PVE zones do.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
I have a better "ES" experience playing Skyrim. That is the biggest miss.
As an MMO, it is solidly "average", in mechanics and gameplay, but not worthy of a top box price plus sub fee.
I expected the game to fall short, both as an ES game, and an MMORPG, and it has, sadly.
Edit: And now that I think about it, the whole point of TESO was being able to play an ES game "with your friends". Except you don't really need other people for anything, and "questing as a group" is still problematic, as people still get split up into their own "reality" most of the time. So if the entire point of TESO is to have a "good multiplayer ES experience", I do not think it delivers on that.
Strongly missed - It was however largely my own fault for overhyping it in my head.
I was expecting to just love the graphics, but I really didn't, not sure why I certainly -thought- I was tired of cartoony graphics but I didn't really care for ESO's graphics. The quest were underwhelming as well, the amazing voice actors couldn't carry the poorly written dialog that was by in large not as good as SWTOR's.
Teso Failed hard and i mean really hard.. it has a extreamly boring touch and feel to it. and the questing overall is really wierd and almost to linear and it's just not any good.
It's so much different if you actual played the game before you write a review ...but I agree with you I wouldn't pay $400 for the collectors edition
I really enjoyed the MMO engine of ESO. Overall the engine experience reminded me of Darkfall and in a good way. It was basically on par with exceptions but the jury is still out till it is further metabolized.
really that is the must lame thing ever.. expecting people to pay 200-400$ for a stupid game? to play a race we heard nothing about before close to release? not a good choice and forcing us to buy a 200-400$ collectors edition is just even more fail.
this game will fail within 3-6months because of no content, boredom, waste of time is also a concern. if you just look at the community and negativity all over all websites,forum,reviews, their own forum infact also you can tell and see how much failur this game is
Where they really failed is ignoring lessons learned from other MMOs.
For example: Starter areas can be used to introduce crafting, grouping, gathering and other mechanics. This one was designed to introduce questing! Questing in ESO is designed around running slowly from wall of text to wall of text in order to encourage people to buy a horse.
Now, I have seen that Zenimax is redoing the start. Great, but that just says they can react to feedback about things they should have known before they started.
PvP - exceeded on world size and more to do than zerg, fell short on offering enough objectives to impact zone. Still killing focused vs offering alternative actions to impact zone. Would have like to see NPCs that can be influenced to behave differently. Example recruitment, trick, or pay to attack or abandon post...something along those lines to have alternative ways to accomplish objectives.
PvE - exceeded on immersion, but once again is still too focused on killing things. Where is the stealing, sabotage, political, and other options to resolve content? Does it always have to be kill this or that?
Character progression - Feel this is a big miss if you are a fan of ES games. Feels linear, but guess you always get that on Race/Class structure. I do like more focus on passive than active, but feel still very limited on gaining active skills to compliment the way I like to play.
Crafting - Exceeded, they did a nice job blending together various progression needed to really become a maxed out. Almost feel they did a better job with crafting progression than player progression.
All in all I think I they exceeded my expectations. I take any launch as can they improve as they go. I think yes as the base for adding more involved content is there.
Now, I have seen that Zenimax is redoing the start. Great, but that just says they can react to feedback about things they should have known before they started.
What?
Are you trying to say, that ZOS should know what people like and don't like, before they show their game to everybody and get the feedback?
First of all clone means identical therefore used inaccurately by some gamers, with that said ESO I have just played in last weeks beta and it was just ok, nothing new or special than any other mmorpg I have played.
I was afraid the game would be very linear and handholdy. Glad it wasn't. Unless a person has such limited playstyle.
It felt more Elder Scrolls then I expected.
Starter area's already able to explore more so and more meaningfull then in most "themepark" games.
Very clean UI, makes the gameworld allot more immersive.
I feel it's a great mix of Elder Scrolls and MMORPG. Was also somewhat afraid they might have taken the SwtOR route but very glad it's nothing like it.Eso gold
Comments
Recently I've felt every mmo that releases now-a-days caters too much to casual players and dumbs down their content/difficulty. For example, just look at WoW(everything in WoW lol) and almost every other mmo's amazingly short grind to the level cap. While being an mmo player and an ES rpg player I expected to enjoy this game for at the least several months and longer if more things were done right. After having participated in over 10 beta weekends I know that Cyrodiil alone if done well enough could keep me occupied for quite some time as a hardcore pvper whose been unable to find a rvr game that held me like Daoc did. If this system is improved and added on to one can only hope it becomes a home for us hardcore rvr pvpers for many years to come.
The leveling progression speed is another one of my favorite things about the game. I feel it's done just right, where it doesn't have that Asian mmo feel where you'll be grinding mobs to the level cap for months or opposite where it's way too short. The amount of experience you get per kill of a mob is so insignificant in ESO that it aims players towards the story (quests), exploration, world events, etc. which is what an ES should be about (imo).
While there's tons of other features in the game I liked and disliked those were the two really positive features I took from the game. The main negative one I've taken from ESO is how much of a themepark it is. I understand making content for 3 factions is hard enough as a themepark so a sandpark world may have seemed out of the question. Yet, I was hoping for a mix in between both that may have included zones with more than one faction in it. Which leads to another disappointment of mine, that the pvp is restricted to Cyrodiil only. This removes a lot of the immersion in my opinion as a pvp'er who finds questing and doing pve so much more enjoyable when your on your toes and watching for enemies at the same time. This would upset a lot of pve'rs of course and Zenimax elected to appeal to them so from a business point of view I can understand, just saddened they couldn't make a combination of pvp and pve instances of the same zones.
21 year MMO veteran
PvP Raid Leader
Lover of The Witcher & CD Projekt Red
Strongly Exceeded
When this game was announced, no kidding, I completely ignored it. I was just coming out of my disappointment with SWTOR, and I had sworn off MMO's for good. SWTOR was my last bastion of hope that anyone was going to do anything different with MMO's. And honestly, I didn't have 100% faith that it was going to do things differently in the first place. Though to be fair, even though it wasn't anything new - I still enjoyed it for about a month until the first wave of nerfs hit. And then I quit. It was apparent to me that the Live dev team had absolutely zero intention of actually doing things right.
At any rate, ESO wasn't even on my radar. Don't get me wrong - I absolutely love the ES series. I love it almost as much as I love Star Wars. Well..... that's a lie, but you get my point. As far as games go - they set the standard, currently. But I simply had zero faith in the prospect that ESO would be anything even remotely different than the norm. Plus, frankly, the original screen shots looked pretty weak. It already looked dated and old - like Dark Fall, dated and old. This was not good.
However, I bought GW2 when it first launched, played it for about 10 hours, and uninstalled. It was garbage. But, one night about 3 months ago or so, I reinstalled it because I was bored, and figured I'd try to give the game an honest go. I mean, I spent good money on it, so I might as well try to enjoy it. So I did, and I went about two weeks pretty solid with it, even buying some neat things on the cash shop, since those things were conveniently the most interesting things in the game. And then I realized... I just wasn't having fun. I engaged in all the stuff I could to try and experience as much of the game as possible, and the further I went, the more it became apparent that I was slowly walking up to a wall that would force me to either spend a lot more money in the cash shop, or do some serious grinding in stuff that wasn't all that exhilerating to begin with. I started to look for other options. So naturally, I came here to get some information about MMO's I might know nothing about.
WIldstar was first up. I of course knew a little about this game. My RL friends can't shut up about it, but frankly... they aren't experienced MMO players. They don't realize I've been playing MMO's since 2003. I've seen it all, and I've seen what has happened to this industry. And Wildstar, after I did some more research on it here, had all the Hallmarks of everything I hated about MMO's in the first place. So I kept looking.
EverQuest Next looks interesting. But it's so far out of the picture, I'm not going to hold my breath for another 2 years. Plus, it's SOE. I tread carefully by default with them.
And then ESO. I just knew it was going to suck. But I looked into it some more. I still wasn't impressed, but I figured I'd sign up for the Beta anyway since it was the only option I really had. And so I did. A few weeks went by, and I got my invite. I installed the game, and when that Friday afternoon came - I logged in.
I started playing, and after a few hours, I was interested. And then a few more, it just clicked with me. I was playing an honest to goodness ES game, with a few minor tweaks to compensate the MMO environment. I simply couldn't have been happier. I won't bore you with further exposition, but... all I can say is this is simply the game for me in almost every respect.
This is why ESO strongly exceeded my expectations.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Teso Failed hard and i mean really hard.. it has a extreamly boring touch and feel to it. and the questing overall is really wierd and almost to linear and it's just not any good.
The gameplay
i think the gameplay is kinda lame aswell the combat system is really weak and feels like it's going to break anytime.
the story
not much to say here did not expect a great story and it's not really a good story.
Is this a singleplayer game?
yes its a singleplayer game very much.. u can solo everything nothing is hard, nothing is even diffcult... it just seems like they missed the action and multiplayer aspect.
Pay to play and still extra fees?
really that is the must lame thing ever.. expecting people to pay 200-400$ for a stupid game? to play a race we heard nothing about before close to release? not a good choice and forcing us to buy a 200-400$ collectors edition is just even more fail.
this game will fail within 3-6months because of no content, boredom, waste of time is also a concern. if you just look at the community and negativity all over all websites,forum,reviews, their own forum infact also you can tell and see how much failur this game is
Exceeded:
Crafting - one of the best systems in a themepark MMO in like forever.
Art and Graphics - cranked up to ultra, I can only compare it to Conan...it's beautiful.
Character development - Lots of advancement between levels... many choices in where to put skill points...including crafting
Cyrodiil - bigger than I expected and lots more to do than just run with the pack... it's like an open world PVP server all by itself...outstanding!
Mounts - horses that level along different paths...and can sprint using their own stamina bar!
Met:
Questing: Well done and fully voice acted with variety and interesting stories.
Gear: good variety in stats and looks.
Trinity dungeon play: a cross between WOW and GW2. Very active but roles matter.
Missed:
Open world dungeons - yes, they're fun and nice to have again in MMOs but much, much smaller than I was expecting.
Dark Anchors - locations not random enough, scaling up not large enough and no particular loot of any real value.
Exploration in PVE - better than most themeparks... yes there are out of the way quests and places to discover as well as Sky Shards, but zones are not big enough to really let you wander off. Ironically, Cyrodiil, the PVP zone lets you do this in spades... much more than any of the PVE zones do.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I have a better "ES" experience playing Skyrim. That is the biggest miss.
As an MMO, it is solidly "average", in mechanics and gameplay, but not worthy of a top box price plus sub fee.
I expected the game to fall short, both as an ES game, and an MMORPG, and it has, sadly.
Edit: And now that I think about it, the whole point of TESO was being able to play an ES game "with your friends". Except you don't really need other people for anything, and "questing as a group" is still problematic, as people still get split up into their own "reality" most of the time. So if the entire point of TESO is to have a "good multiplayer ES experience", I do not think it delivers on that.
Strongly missed.
I guess I just expected an enjoyable experience and it wasn't, it was tedious and torturous.
Glad others are enjoying it, not everyone's tastes are the same.
Help support an artist and gamer who has lost his tools to create and play: http://www.gofundme.com/u63nzcgk
Strongly missed - It was however largely my own fault for overhyping it in my head.
I was expecting to just love the graphics, but I really didn't, not sure why I certainly -thought- I was tired of cartoony graphics but I didn't really care for ESO's graphics. The quest were underwhelming as well, the amazing voice actors couldn't carry the poorly written dialog that was by in large not as good as SWTOR's.
It's so much different if you actual played the game before you write a review ...but I agree with you I wouldn't pay $400 for the collectors edition
http://wyrdblogging.blogspot.com/
Are you trolling or are you just trolling?
i have chosen Met Exactly, cause its the crap i thought, a bit better than the crap to be true but still a crap xD
for my taste of course .
Way below expectations.
Where they really failed is ignoring lessons learned from other MMOs.
For example: Starter areas can be used to introduce crafting, grouping, gathering and other mechanics. This one was designed to introduce questing! Questing in ESO is designed around running slowly from wall of text to wall of text in order to encourage people to buy a horse.
Now, I have seen that Zenimax is redoing the start. Great, but that just says they can react to feedback about things they should have known before they started.
PvP - exceeded on world size and more to do than zerg, fell short on offering enough objectives to impact zone. Still killing focused vs offering alternative actions to impact zone. Would have like to see NPCs that can be influenced to behave differently. Example recruitment, trick, or pay to attack or abandon post...something along those lines to have alternative ways to accomplish objectives.
PvE - exceeded on immersion, but once again is still too focused on killing things. Where is the stealing, sabotage, political, and other options to resolve content? Does it always have to be kill this or that?
Character progression - Feel this is a big miss if you are a fan of ES games. Feels linear, but guess you always get that on Race/Class structure. I do like more focus on passive than active, but feel still very limited on gaining active skills to compliment the way I like to play.
Crafting - Exceeded, they did a nice job blending together various progression needed to really become a maxed out. Almost feel they did a better job with crafting progression than player progression.
All in all I think I they exceeded my expectations. I take any launch as can they improve as they go. I think yes as the base for adding more involved content is there.
What?
Are you trying to say, that ZOS should know what people like and don't like, before they show their game to everybody and get the feedback?
Seriously?
Seriously?
"An it harm none, do what thou wilt"
Incognito
www.incognito-gaming.us
"You're either with us or against us"
I was afraid the game would be very linear and handholdy. Glad it wasn't. Unless a person has such limited playstyle.
It felt more Elder Scrolls then I expected.
Starter area's already able to explore more so and more meaningfull then in most "themepark" games.
Very clean UI, makes the gameworld allot more immersive.
I feel it's a great mix of Elder Scrolls and MMORPG. Was also somewhat afraid they might have taken the SwtOR route but very glad it's nothing like it.Eso gold
Also a big plus is the subscription fee.