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Elder Scrolls Online - Further Thoughts on Summerset - MMORPG.com
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Elder Scrolls Online - Further Thoughts on Summerset - MMORPG.com
ESO’s latest expansion is roaring along on the PTS, and this week I’m continuing my thoughts on the new content. As I continued to delve deeper into Summerset and all its new chapter glory, I felt overall my satisfaction peaked. I don’t mean that in a negative way, in fact I am happy at where it peaked. I’m overall happy with how Summerset came and how it was designed. With that being said, let’s go into a little more detail this time on what made the journey as fun as it has been.
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Hardly anyone streams it anymore.
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It seems to be doing ok. I recently came back and the population seems about the same as it was when I left, perhaps a bit more. Nothing like launch but I imagine some folks like me returned for the upcoming expansions and to try out the Morrowind expansion they missed.
I played on both the PS4 and the PC servers recently and the entire time I had trouble finding any area that wasn't populated with players on both servers. It was great. People everywhere. On the PC version I joined a random guild and they had 85 people online. It was nice seeing such an active community.
You think so? GW2? Ive been streaming a lot of skyforge lately, but looking to stream something new in the MMO world.
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"Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep and you weep alone."
I'm pretty sure the Usual King of All MMOs is a reference to WoW.
ESO feels more populated than GW2 right now on PC but it might just be that ESO players are more actives (aka chat/PUG more) and less segregated (GW2 level based content design, F2P vs expac content access, the areas like the Queen Terrasse, etc). My comparison is based on having played GW2 since January and only switching to ESO 2 weeks ago.
I'm sure some of you are like, this is about summerset who cares about Morrowind -- reason im bringing this up is like I stated above It'll be available in a year or so to ESO+ or crown store purchases if they continue this business model. So, to answers others questions is it worth it? For me it is not due to this factor for others if you want to go in with the crowd and explore when its new *ahem* and buggy area go ahead.
Oh another reason I'm not getting it straight away is um... I hate Altmers hehe. Go Khajiit!
A man who fears nothing is a man who loves nothing; and if you love nothing, what joy is there in your life?
As to Somerset, there is a lot of content in this expansion. I do not see any of my characters benefiting from the Psijic skill line at this point in time, but that decision probably needs more exploration.
I started my 12th character the other day, expecting to have a quiet time in the starting zone, but the place was crowded, almost as bad as day 1, which was 3 yrs ago. I'm part of 5 guilds(max) and they each have 30 - 50+ people active every night, always people to run dungeons/trials/pvp with.
As to the "king" of mmos? Worldwide certainly when it comes to subs, when it comes to concurrent players maybe. The very, very last set of financial info specific to WoW that AB put out though suggested that subs were in the low 3M mark. Given how well the film did in China vs. everywhere else for example .... a reasonable assumption that many of those were in China.
Now given that neither ESO nor GW2 have no subscription these games could have a lot of players. ESO in particular as higher sales numbers have been announced.
So in the west only ..... can we be sure that WoW is "king". (Ignoring mmo-ish games like Destiny etc. etc. of course).
no matter the numbers, which we have none, the influence of WoW on the market makes us say yes.
They've put themselves in a bit of bind because as the game currently plays before Summerset they use gold and purple jewelry drops as a way to differentiate rewards from more difficult content.
For example: if you run a dungeon in normal difficulty, you get blue drops and if you do it in vet difficulty you get purple and gold jewelry only drops from hard mode trials.
So in order to keep those rewards relevant they have decided to make upgrading jewelry quite a chore by requiring 10X the number of upgrade tempers to improve blue to purple or purple to gold.
Two problems with that approach:
What this does in fact is that it makes the one part of jewelry crafting everyone, not just the elite players, was looking forward to, crafting your own for sets that never had jewelry for them and consequently made crafted sets inherently inferior to all the dropped sets that do include jewelry, a royal grindy pain in the ass.
They are either unwittingly or by design keeping crafted sets as 2nd class sets by that one move.
In case you don't understand what that 10X thing is I'm talking about I'll try to explain it. Currently when you craft weapons or armor yourself you need to use one stone to give it one of the all important traits such as infused, nirnhoned, etc. You get these stones sometimes from harvesting nodes but mostly from refining raw materials. What they're doing with jewelry crafting is not giving you stones (except as an extremely rare RNG result.) You instead get grains that you need to combine 10 of to make one stone.
Same thing with the upgrade tempers you get by refining" you get grains that you need 10 of to make one upgrade temper.
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You've missed the part where the game didn't go F2P. Or at least I see it cost ~$35 for the base game + a hundred more $$$ for add-ons.
Thank you for your time!
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I subbed for 3 months as well planning to really get into it. It's just making me want to play other MMOs though.
As to the author's opinion, don't play pvp if you don't like change. It's a well known fact and common practice for developers to go through and make changes to balance constantly.
If it were up to me, I would eliminate PVP from every mmo or I would make pvp a completely separate game so as to make the PVE experience balanced and fun!
For $10 you can get a huge game. Many months of content. For $20 or maybe $35 an even bigger game. There are different editions just search on Amazon.
Now yes Zen will be very happy if people spend huge amounts of money on mounts, costumes, houses and so forth. Basic content though - a lot can be had for very little. New content however will have to be bought one way or another because you are correct that its not f2p its b2p.
Yeah eso isn't bad story wise but there really still isn't any point tohousing and good character customization compared to BDO.
Storyline is great, although I wish they would add things like Forsworn armor, and housing / decor based around Skyrim and stuff, and make the game feel more like a actual MMORPG with being able to do things with the housing and everything it feels like too much Solo based, not really a MMO, but I like the story of the game it's just not enough to keep me there given house spaced out it is between leveling and doing story content.
Couldn't disagree more. Yes, you need to buy DLCs and chapters but the game can be played perfectly well as a f2p title. I have played ESO since Beta and once they dropped the mandatory sub, so did I. I LOVE crafting in ESO and have no problem doing so without the crafting bag. Why would not having one make crafting a no go? It wasn't there for the entire first year and people managed just fine. Convenient? Yes. Necessary? Nope. You think so? I think it has plenty character cutomization. There are so many armor and weapon types and motifs, including costumes and dying. Or do you mean skills?