[Megathread] Elder Scrolls Online

[Deleted]

The graphics and the server technology are certainly not "unique". If you go by that measure, ofc everything each game does is "unique". But the graphics are up to personal taste, the server technology (megarealm) not an innovation of TESO. They don't set it apart.

The combat system is certainly different to most others, whether it's executed well is a matter of opinion. The skill system is certainly unique and a strength of the game, it is very deep but easily accessible and fun to play with.

Thank you for correcting me on the megaserver.
With graphics I wasnt actually judging the beauty of it, I just find it unique. Swtor's graphics, for example I didn't find unique.

[Edge-]

Francis played to level 12. He doesn't have the right to make a review or even a opinion on the game in my opinion.

"Francis" is a character that Boogey plays. Not sure if you were talking about Boogey or Francis here. But regardless, any amount of time playing a game is enough to have an opinion. You don't need to play to max level and see all the content within a game to have an opinion. I played WildStar for about a week or so, got to level 10-15, found that I wasn't much of a fan of it. Reasonably fun, but nothing that stood out for me.

Is my opinion somehow invalid because I didn't do high level content?

[Therec]

One thing I want to see when Craglorn comes out is how the difficulty will affect the depth of the skill sets. How many "unique and cool" builds will be useless in Craglorn b/c of the difficulty. I've seen it in other MMOs that tout all these creative builds, then they don't work when you hit endgame content. With the push in difficulty I just don't want to be shoehorned into something I don't want to play just to experience endgame.

[Kelimbror]

On the subject of storytelling, I have to say I agree with those who enjoy this game's story even more than Skyrim's. I've always loved Bethesda's series, been playing since Morrowind, and the ES series has always known how to spin a good tale, imo. But at the same time, the open-ended nature of those games meant that sometimes you might start a questline, go off somewhere else and find another, and another...and at the end of the day, sometimes you'd lose the overall narrative

I think that is a large part of what makes this enjoyable and different to me. The structure actually allows the story to take center place as a pause to gameplay, which helps you center on why you are doing what you are doing. In something like Skyrim, the quests really serve as a hiccup towards even more open and vast exploration. Sometimes you pick up so many that it's overwhelming to even pay them any attention. Then there are dragons that constantly interrupt whatever you are doing. It's great for a somewhat living world, but not great at keeping you engaged in a story.

ESO excels at keeping you in the story with a combination of pacing and in the field delivery. Instead of picking up 10 quests at a hub, running out to do them, then coming back with your grocery list complete, you pick up a few quests and then everything unfolds as you are doing it and exploring. It gives you enough time to digest exactly what is happening while still giving twists and propelling you forward.

[miffy23]

"Francis" is a character that Boogey plays. Not sure if you were talking about Boogey or Francis here. But regardless, any amount of time playing a game is enough to have an opinion. You don't need to play to max level and see all the content within a game to have an opinion. I played WildStar for about a week or so, got to level 10-15, found that I wasn't much of a fan of it. Reasonably fun, but nothing that stood out for me.

Is my opinion somehow invalid because I didn't do high level content?

If anything, it is the starting experience of an MMO that really defines it's success. Look at any popular or successful MMO out there right now - the game will not suddenly change dramatically after the first 20 levels or so, gameplay will stay the same, and new zones and challenges build on the established rules.

You don't need to play to V10 and have played through all dungeons to know if you like or dislike the game.

As for Francis, I think people don't understand it'S a comedy. I was talking about Boogey's opinion, not the Francis rant, if that clears up some confusion.

[Valeron]

I enjoy the story telling in ESO. Not sure if I can agree that it is better than in Skyrim. Some of the quests in Skyrim I enjoyed a lot more. But I do think ESO has more quality quest chains even if I prefer the "top end" quests of Skyrim. Also, not a biggie, but I enjoyed the conversation delivery system of Skyrim a bit more, thought it was more immersive (don't think they would be able to do the same way in an mmo though, so it's understandable it's not the same).

[Deleted]

"Francis" is a character that Boogey plays. Not sure if you were talking about Boogey or Francis here. But regardless, any amount of time playing a game is enough to have an opinion. You don't need to play to max level and see all the content within a game to have an opinion. I played WildStar for about a week or so, got to level 10-15, found that I wasn't much of a fan of it. Reasonably fun, but nothing that stood out for me.

Is my opinion somehow invalid because I didn't do high level content?

Whatever he calls himself ... I adressed both his videos.

You don't shout out your opinion out to thousands of youtube-viewers. If you want to make a review or impression video of a game you should at least take the time to engage in every aspect the game has to offer. Level 12 isn' even high enough to do the first dungeon ... you get up to level 12 within one or two evenings ...
It just isn't a proper-informed "review" or whatever he calls it - in my opinion, and therefor worthless as a source of information, in my opinion.

People will be done with the leveling process eventually and will focus on the endgame the MMORPG has to offer... that's where most of the time is spent (eventually, for a large fraction of the players) and I expect that a proper reviewer at least get's to max-level and enganges in the endgame activities.

[mercutiouk]

Francis's point (and one I agree with and the main reason why I was let down by ESO) is that the game doesn't innovate or improve on anything that the quality benchmark (WoW and comparable established games) offer. As such, why bother? Unless one is a really diehard TES fan and not put off by the differences compared to "real" TES games. There's nothing in the game that other franchises don't do better right now, mostly without the bugs and issues.

As for what WoW means - yes, it has had many years. But so did most companies have many, many years to learn and chuck out new games that don't make the same mistakes. The point is that the kind of bugs that are still in at release, and the phasing/exploit issues are issues that - especially in an MMO - should be caught in the many months of beta. We're aware that this is due to the publisher pushing it out the door on schedule, then again that is something that Blizzard has perfected over the years - don't push something out the door in such a state.

"One of the smoothest launches in history" - maybe in terms of server stability. That is pretty much the bare minimum one can ask for from an AAA MMO.

Overall, as you pointed out yourself - what elevates ESO from the anonymous masses of similar generic fantasy MMOs? The level of quality? A specific feature? The license? Every aspect has it's faults, and overall some people, like mentioned reviews and myself, arrive at the "meh" impression. It's not a fail - but it failed to impress.

The basic launch set covers the bases, it's got a fairly solid slug of content. What will set it apart is what is coming. The whole idea of a raid zone with it's own town, npc's and the whole zone being tuned for what basically sits as multiplayer co-op play is what will set it apart. Regardless, I'm hardly half-way to max level (had a holiday, couldn't play much the last 10 days) and still having a ball. Craglorn should land and have bugs sorted by the time I get there, depending how soon content comes after I'll be finishing up Craglorn as they start to talk about the next zone/whatever it is they do.

[miffy23]

snip

Did you seriously just imply the WoW engine is the Warcraft 3 engine originally? Oh boy.

But let's not talk about WoW.

Every single one of your points can be turned around easily. "It can't take risks, it's an evolution, not a revolution" - some of the most successful games, and especially on the MMO market, dared to take a big risk and try something new, instead of simply improving a popular concept used by competitors. You can make a fine MMO without redefining the genre, but expect it to be remarked upon if the game doesn't exactly bring anything fresh to the table.

As for the engine: most engines are "completely new, millions of fresh lines of code" etc...even when they're based on existing ones. Also, there's nothing wrong with the graphics of ESO - whether one likes the style or not is up to each person individually.

Phasing technology is nothing new at this point, it's been in the business for quite a few years now. The phasing issues mentioned should optimally not be in an MMO on release. It's one of the main criticisms it has to deal with so far - many people encountering obstacles to actually playing with their friends and grouping.

"Don't play an MMO on release" - honestly, we are past this point. If Blizzard released a WoW expansion with the amount of bugs some of the newer competitor releases have, there would be a forum implosion. Some of these companies "get away" with it because it's a fresh franchise, they get boatloads of interested players that want to give it a try, and the publisher races them into release. So the customer gets to betatest for 60$. That's just not really acceptable in this day and age anymore, and poor business practice.

I don't see many people saying the game "sucks". In fact, most people have more of a positive opinion in general. Quite a few people just find it disappointing for various reasons. Some find it not a real TES game, some find it to be lacking as an MMO.

[Valeron]

I haven't really followed the news for it but Craglorn is basically a raid zone right? meh, not interested

[miffy23]

Whatever he calls himself ... I adressed both his videos.

You don't shout out your opinion out to thousands of youtube-viewers. If you want to make a review or impression video of a game you should at least take the time to engage in every aspect the game has to offer. Level 12 isn' even high enough to do the first dungeon ... you get up to level 12 within one or two evenings ...
It just isn't a proper-informed "review" or whatever he calls it - in my opinion, and therefor worthless as a source of information, in my opinion.

People will be done with the leveling process eventually and will focus on the endgame the MMORPG has to offer... that's where most of the time is spent (eventually, for a large fraction of the players) and I expect that a proper reviewer at least get's to max-level and enganges in the endgame activities.

Why should a reviewer force himself to max level if he's not having fun, especially if he's not really getting paid for it?
In representing casual gamers or MMO visitors, I think it's perfectly valid if someone gives a review about how they didn't want to continue playing because they didn't enjoy it.

Again, the core of an MMO will not drastically change after the first few levels, a good starting experience should always make you familiar with the basic concepts of the game and introduce you to how the rest will progress.

[Kelimbror]

I haven't really followed the news for it but Craglorn is basically a raid zone right? meh, not interested

Yeah, but most people that will be ready for Craglorn probably have no issues doing those things. I'm very intrigued with it, but only if it can be a more organic experience than needing to get into vent and yell at people for hours. I want to go there, hop in a group, and kill some stuff/do some quests. If that's not possible, I'll wait for the next batch of updates that's more adjusted to my style. As a solo player without an infinite amount of play time I'm only level 25 at this point anyways (purchase a week or two after release)

[Biggles Worth]

ESO has most of, if not all the "tools" he mentioned.
You simply cannot expect the same state of polish and quality from a game that has been released for 3 weeks to a game that has been released almost 10 years ago. And ESO is quite a bit larger and complex than WoW was, or most other MMOs on their release.

Why bother? Why not stick with Call of Duty 1, or Half Life or even Doom? Or the better analogy why not back to Everquest, Ultima Online, Meridian 59 or Neverwinter? Why bother at all, back to Pong it is! All these games were the pinnacle of their genre at one point in history, but people move on.

People bother because new games always mean evolution, they offer something new (not necessarily better), something different - and new stuff always needs testing, polish and feedback, and a MMO, especially of the scale of ESO, needs a lot of testing, feedback and polish. Internal testing and Stress tests can only reveal a fraction of the problems that might occur when millions of people play the game, there will be thousands of different hardware confidurations that might not work with the game, someone performs some unique combination of movement during a quest that causes the server to crash, etc. etc.
There will be bugs.



I stopped playing WoW after Burning Crusade, I started again because of the people, not the game. WoW has quite a unique combination of player-retention because of the people who play it, a well-polished game and it runs on a calculator. Everyone knows someone who plays WoW or played it at some point; The game was released at a perfect moment - not all that much competition and a lot of demand for a MMO that wasn't unspeakably complicated and time-consuming and still easily accessible. WoW derived from a hugely successful brand with millions copies sold - And so on ...
WoW is to MMORPGs what Coca-Cola is to caffeinated lemonades.

It lifted the whole MMORPG genre into gaming-mainstream, that meant a lot more games get developed and people will split up between the games - 500k to Rift, 2 mio to SWTOR, 1.5 mio to GW2, 2 mio to ESO aaand so on ... There's a lot more choice today than in 2004, there's a MMORPG for almost every taste



ESO still has one of the smoothest launches in the history of MMO launches. Despite the bugs and exploits. No unexpected server-downs, just a few unscheduled maintenances and we even got 2 more days of early access because of this. The bugs and exploits were an inconvience but most of the stuff is already fixed - after 3 weeks. There are MMORPGs out there that needed months or even years to fix major bugs, exploits, engine- or hardware-issues...

Playing as a Templar I have found myself not able to play my class 70% of the time due to after casting a spell it makes my character stick to that animation, not able to cast other spells, mount, loot, leaves me in combat for at least a minute. I logged in today and it still does it for me. So I can't play the game. They gotta fix this shit if they want me to play. I don't know how a month after launch it's still broken. If they fix this it will cost WoW another raid tier.

[Deleted]

Why should a reviewer force himself to max level if he's not having fun, especially if he's not really getting paid for it?
In representing casual gamers or MMO visitors, I think it's perfectly valid if someone gives a review about how they didn't want to continue playing because they didn't enjoy it.

Again, the core of an MMO will not drastically change after the first few levels, a good starting experience should always make you familiar with the basic concepts of the game and introduce you to how the rest will progress.

Sorry but you can't expect to spend a week on a game and learn all that here is to learn.
Stonefalls started slow on me. If I had to judge the game by level 10-12 I would have given it a poor vote.
I kept at it and experienced fun dungeons and dynamic combat mechanics and much better questing.

You don't like the game and only play a week? Don't come up with a report on it cause you wouldn't be "qualified" enough.

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Playing as a Templar I have found myself not able to play my class 70% of the time due to after casting a spell it makes my character stick to that animation, not able to cast other spells, mount, loot, leaves me in combat for at least a minute. I logged in today and it still does it for me. So I can't play the game. They gotta fix this shit if they want me to play. I don't know how a month after launch it's still broken. If they fix this it will cost WoW another raid tier.

It happened to me like 3-4 times and right button blocking usually makes it go away.
You must be -extremely- unlucky there.

[Deleted]

Did you seriously just imply the WoW engine is the Warcraft 3 engine originally? Oh boy.

The 3D graphics in World of Warcraft use elements of the proprietary graphics engine originally used in Warcraft III.

source
of course it's heavily modified ...

But let's not talk about WoW.

Every single one of your points can be turned around easily. "It can't take risks, it's an evolution, not a revolution" - some of the most successful games, and especially on the MMO market, dared to take a big risk and try something new, instead of simply improving a popular concept used by competitors. You can make a fine MMO without redefining the genre, but expect it to be remarked upon if the game doesn't exactly bring anything fresh to the table.

Yadda yadda yadda ...
World of Warcraft uses a bunch of elements from Everquest and other MMOs, every FPS derives from games like wolfenstein ...
ZOS did a lot of new things and "stole" a lot of things from competitors - basically the definition of evolution, change something and see if it can compete or even do better.
There are just certain aspects of a MMORPG that are just, well, the genre itself - like quests in one way or another, skills, abilites, character sheets and a leveling/experience system in one way or another. That and the leveled playing field I already mentioned.
Now it comes down to opinions - does ESO have to offer more/other stuff than it's competitors - for me yes, for this francis persona and you obviously not. Fine. Move on.

As for the engine: most engines are "completely new, millions of fresh lines of code" etc...even when they're based on existing ones. Also, there's nothing wrong with the graphics of ESO - whether one likes the style or not is up to each person individually.

Phasing technology is nothing new at this point, it's been in the business for quite a few years now. The phasing issues mentioned should optimally not be in an MMO on release. It's one of the main criticisms it has to deal with so far - many people encountering obstacles to actually playing with their friends and grouping.

There is a huge difference if you work with an engine that is already in use and has proven to work and building a completely new engine from scratch. I work with codes almost every day at work (nothing as complex as game engines) and we rather use copy/paste from working processes than write new stuff ... because it already works and we know what to expect. And the engine is not only graphics, there's the communication between client and server, there's the stuff that happens on the server, data-storage - well, a lot of stuff.

Phasing as a concept might be prevalent since a few years, but it's never been that heavly used like in ESO. Everything is phased. Phasing was the main source of the problems that occured during the first few days and the main critique point of many disgrunteled players. That's all gone by now, they worked it out and almost every quest works now.

"Don't play an MMO on release" - honestly, we are past this point. If Blizzard released a WoW expansion with the amount of bugs some of the newer competitor releases have, there would be a forum implosion. Some of these companies "get away" with it because it's a fresh franchise, they get boatloads of interested players that want to give it a try, and the publisher races them into release. So the customer gets to betatest for 60$. That's just not really acceptable in this day and age anymore, and poor business practice.

I said "If you can't deal with bugs, don't play on release" ... this isn't an expansion, it's a completely new game. Like I already said - look up all the problems that occured during WoWs launch ... The issues ESO had look like an almost perfect start in comparison. That's progression.

I don't see many people saying the game "sucks". In fact, most people have more of a positive opinion in general. Quite a few people just find it disappointing for various reasons. Some find it not a real TES game, some find it to be lacking as an MMO.

For a game that's trying to be both it's doing really fine. I'm currently at a point where I'm not really motivated to move on (Veteran content, just lazy design in my opinion) and I really don't like some of their design-decisions.
I just hate all the uninformed bandwagon-replies that exploded all over the interwebs after the first negative reviews and the recent youtube-persona videos ...

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Why should a reviewer force himself to max level if he's not having fun, especially if he's not really getting paid for it?
In representing casual gamers or MMO visitors, I think it's perfectly valid if someone gives a review about how they didn't want to continue playing because they didn't enjoy it.

Again, the core of an MMO will not drastically change after the first few levels, a good starting experience should always make you familiar with the basic concepts of the game and introduce you to how the rest will progress.

I'm pretty sure Angry Joe lives of his interweb-fame ... so he's getting paid for it. He's not a real reviewer, he just shouts out his opinion about sutff he doesn't like and he's very, very biased.
It's just not a valid source of information, it's just entertainment ... I just don't like the argument "Angry Joe gave this game 5 out of 10 points so it sucks! I was right all along!"

[Edge-]

I'm pretty sure Angry Joe lives of his interweb-fame ... so he's getting paid for it. He's not a real reviewer, he just shouts out his opinion about sutff he doesn't like and he's very, very biased.
It's just not a valid source of information, it's just entertainment ... I just don't like the argument "Angry Joe gave this game 5 out of 10 points so it sucks! I was right all along!"

I agree, mindlessly agreeing with a review because it jives with your perception is stupid. But so is writing off any review that you don't like.

Remember, all reviews are subjective, we cannot escape our subjectivity. I'd much rather hear reviews from someone who embraces their subjectivity, regardless of if I agree with their review or not, than to hear a review from someone who pretends to be purely objective.

And I don't think I've seen a single person in this thread holding a singular review up as definitive proof of anything other than their like/dislike of said review, so nobody is really making that argument.

[RoninaThorstone]

I feel like this game would have been a lot better without the four starting classes.
I think those should have been things you could unlock through long quest chains or something.

You would just get a starter weapon you pick and like... maybe grab a spell book or two of your choice.

[Valeron]

like discovering the abilities such as the sorcerer line, I like that. Also think it would have been better to not have levels

[Deleted]

I feel like this game would have been a lot better without the four starting classes.
I think those should have been things you could unlock through long quest chains or something.

You would just get a starter weapon you pick and like... maybe grab a spell book or two of your choice.

I strongly believe this would have made the game perfect in terms of character development.

[Biggles Worth]

I feel like this game would have been a lot better without the four starting classes.
I think those should have been things you could unlock through long quest chains or something.

You would just get a starter weapon you pick and like... maybe grab a spell book or two of your choice.

I really like that idea.