The Elder Scrolls Online

[Bubbles]

Collective Skyrim worship has come to bite them in the ass.

 

[Excidium]

Man, you know something went REALLY wrong when even the AAA "game journalism" doesn't like your game.

... i'm kinda starting to feel sorry for these guys. I mean, their theme park mmorpg doesn't seem to do anything different from the other theme parks mmorpg (see shit like the recent ARR), but none of them get the same shit.

I don't know, this one seems p. different from your average MMO. Even SWTOR put the player in the action right away, all gameplay I've seen of this mostly consists of walking around and talking to npcs, and then fighting 2 or 3 monsters with 6 other players.

 

[Bubbles]

They're just showing off the best parts of the game. Dungeons are lousy with mobs, respawn timers are about 20-25 seconds, you can kill shit 24/7 if you want to.

By the way, I played one of the public group dungeons yesterday, it consisted of a shitload of trash mobs, a couple of questgivers and "collect x of y" sidequests, and a choice between two final bosses, neither of whom did anything noteworthy in combat. Quest reward was cash.

 

[Mortmal]

Thats all nice guys, but will loverslab mod it ? Now thats an important question...

 

[Mortmal]

'k who will start Codex guild?

Another important question, how codexers are going to use their rings of mara ? With who/ what ? thats something i cant wait to behold.

 

[balmorar]

Actually the elsweyr starting island is pretty good and there are quests with multiple choices. The daggerfall and skyrim islands looked boring though.

 

[7/10]

Another important question, how codexers are going to use their rings of mara ? With who/ what ?

Your mom

 

[dibens]

Wait, what? There's a paywall content in a 60+15/month game? Fuck them in the ass!

 

[Bubbles]

It's only perks like getting +15% to fire damage or 20% faster magicka regen in every faction, instead of only in the default faction those races are assigned to. And whatever bonuses Imperials get, those are indeed paywall content.

But Imperials will probably be available in the cash shop even after launch, so you can decide if they may not be worth a bit of extra money after all.

If you prefer, you can see the 110 Euros for the Imperial Edition as the real price of the game, and the 60 Euros for the standard edition as a discount for the light version.

 

[Gerrard]

This ship was built underwater.

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

The new of mmorpgs. This shit makes WoW look good... I never thought I'd say that.

 

[Avellion]

It is a shame to see how this game turned out. An Elder Scrolls MMO has a lot of potential, too bad they left all the strengths of the series out of this game. What they should have done with this game is to create some kind of Ultima Online Lite, instead they created GW2 meets DAoC while pretending to be a TES game with its presentation.

 

[IDtenT]

To give credit, a lot of the powerful, leader characters are women

FFS John Walker.

 

[IDtenT]

The dungeon recycling is worse than in Oblivion or ME1, but I guess that was to be expected.

But is it worse than DA2?

 

[Bubbles]

No. I'd say there are three main components to the smaller dungeons/solo areas (long-ass corridor leading to main room, main room, optional shortcut from main room to exit). I've seen three different corridor shapes, five different main rooms, and two different shortcuts. Different themes (like cave or Ayleid ruin) provide further permutations. That's quite a bit of variety, eh?

 

[Whiran]

Wait, what? There's a paywall content in a 60+15/month game? Fuck them in the ass!

No, there is no paywall in the game.

The comment was a suspicion that one might, one day, appear in the game. It's as if the game designers are resigned to the likelihood that the game will go free to play so have already put in the framework to support that should it ever happen.

Having run around as a kitty for a bit (up to level 12 or so) I think the game is okay. Probably better than the latest Final Fantasy MMO but that isn't really setting the bar too high.

At around level 10 I started hitting quests (okay, two quests) that were better off grouping up for... but, oh my, their grouping mechanism is.. uhh.. simplistic.

I'm done with it so I won't be experiencing the PvP which, given the comments on the ESO forums is pretty much par for the course for PvP in that all sides feel that the other sides are OP and that PvP is "unfair." On second maybe PvP is going to be interesting since that tends to imply some sort of mystical balance but, then again, the max level in the beta isn't very high.

Overall, I think it's a solid MMO and probably worth the price of admission if you are an Elder Scrolls fan.

As an aside, I did notice that some random NPCs reacted to some of my quest choices (there are a few, very few, quests where you get to pick between two outcomes) in the villages. They were rather upset with my character 'cause I had been picking all of the "evil" options. So that was kinda neat.

 

[Tribal Sarah]

I kind of like it, which is weird because I didn't think much of Skyrim. I wandered around, killed some stuff with my magic staff thingy. It was ok. I would maybe pay an upfront fee, but definitely wouldn't sub

 

[Bubbles]

As an aside, I did notice that some random NPCs reacted to some of my quest choices (there are a few, very few, quests where you get to pick between two outcomes) in the villages. They were rather upset with my character 'cause I had been picking all of the "evil" options. So that was kinda neat.

Since you played as a kitty, you got the faction that has 90% of the "C&C" in the early game. It's really weird how the other factions almost completely dump that mechanic; maybe there was a directive to make one of the newbie areas especially presentable for release footage.

 

[balmorar]

I gave up. This game is boring. The graphics are outdated and dull, the colours are desaturated. The combat is like in morrowind but in a worse way. Horses costs a fortune and there's only this wayshrine travel system.

I thought it will be good to visit all the provinces but you must reach a certain level for each area and complete fucktons of boring quests. It's not worth it. But even if you get there it will be a disappointment because of the ugly graphics.

Unfortunately i don't think it will fail or go f2p anytime soon because there are lots of content in this game. Boring content but it was designed to be addictive like in WoW.

 

[Whiran]

Since you played as a kitty, you got the faction that has 90% of the "C&C" in the early game. It's really weird how the other factions almost completely dump that mechanic; maybe there was a directive to make one of the newbie areas especially presentable for release footage.

In an earlier event I made a breton (they are so much better looking than the other races) and ran into a few pick the outcome quests. I think I did four? five? by the time I was level eight.. I think eight. Maybe seven. I got bored of that character.

I did find that which class and weapon style I went with made a huge impact on the enjoyment of the game.

My kitty nightblade with a two-hander was far more enjoyable than my breton templar / healer.

 

[dibens]

No, there is no paywall in the game.

Locking away a whole race to collectors edition sounds pretty paywall-y to me.

 

[Angthoron]

So I actually decided that what the fuck, why not, and gave it a try.

Impressions taken from chats to various people:

Spoiler

[15:18:12] Angthoron -: Graffx are kinda nice though
[15:38:19] Angthoron -: Err
[15:38:20] Angthoron -: I take that back
[15:39:06] Angthoron -: The graffx are kinda eh
[15:39:58] X: How's the combat? As dull as it looks like?
[15:40:29] Angthoron -: Yes
[15:40:32] Angthoron -: It's dull
[15:40:37] Angthoron -: Dull dull dull my god it's dull
[15:40:44] Angthoron -: It's dull like an accountant's job
[15:40:45] Angthoron -: DULL
[15:41:10] Angthoron -: And the UI sucks more dicks than anything or anyone should be legally permitted to
16:07 - Angthoron: Also
16:07 - Angthoron: Boss vs circle strafe
16:08 - Angthoron: Circle strafe wins
[16:08:58] Angthoron -: Also
[16:09:14] Angthoron -: Many chests with little shit vs one chest with lots of shit, which is better design and why
[16:10:51] X: That of course depends on the context
[16:11:14] Angthoron -: Well I'm looting 35 containers in a fucking giant room here where the whole place looks identical
[16:11:30] Angthoron -: Each chest contains like 1g or some kittenpiss bottle or whatever.
[16:11:34] Angthoron -: Fucking awesome.
[16:12:58] Angthoron -: Oh and turning on autoloot disables notes on what I actually found because you know, immersion. So now I'll have to actually check inventory and find out how many bottles of kittenpiss I've acquired.
[16:16:01] Angthoron -:Okay, like the idea with Skyshards
[16:16:12] Angthoron -: Apparently there's skyshards in the world, for each 3 you find, you get a char point
[16:16:14] Angthoron -: That's nice
[16:19:31] Angthoron -: One of the dudes here has a grievous injury
[16:19:41] Angthoron -: His pillow has eaten half his head
[16:19:49] Angthoron -: Collision physics, if you can't do them, don't do them.

Generally, this is basically a relatively competently done "I want to be a Skyrims" type of an MMO. Dull combat, decent-ish visuals (I guess? After the fucking jail the world outside looked like a fucking masterpiece for a moment), NPCs seem to be less shit than normally but who gives a fuck it's a goddamned MMO. Combat so far was piss-easy, not a single risk taken, not a single fuck given. I had more danger in early levels of vanilla WoW and certainly died a ton more at GW2 launch. This? Ha ha, plush animals are trying to tickle me, oh my, oh no. Writing seems less derp than usual, at least so far, but hey, this is Bethesda I'm comparing it to, so just about anything would be more competent. Graphic design? All over the place. Prison looked like shit, outside, not too bad I guess. Containers are shit as per usual in the post-MW series. UI is atrocious beyond words, wtf, a console UI in an MMO that will get most of its base from PC? Fuck you, ZeniMax, seriously. Also, cinematics at client launch. Good one. Don't like the "oil on everything" that Hero Engine seems to be doing.

Overall though? It's not quite as bad as I expected it to be, I mean, it's competent if bland, and not quite the amazing insta-uninstall trainwreck that it could be. Certainly seems better than TOR at least from the standpoint of not being a full WoW clone. If I'm left utterly without an MMO to play in the summer and find it cheaply, might even play the base 1 month that comes with the box, it might provide the hiking experience laughs with a few friends.

Besides that? Pretty much as expected.

 

[Caim]

They could have just copied made a multiplayer mod for Skyrim, make it 20 bucks and they'd sell millions of the damn thing.

 

[Angthoron]

What, with their aborted Gamebryo version?

 

[Apexeon]

Tried it,TOR was way better mainly because they copied real game design.This is abomination ,it shows that they were told by the suits "Make it like Skyrim" and they added first person,looting urns,sneaking and shit,coz you know they were in it.I don't even give it time to fail ,it will be in failure state on launch.

Combat is horrible in this game, we've established that already.

He means it feels so empty,like it's in alpha and they are yet to put the mobs in.

No the great unwashed will buy it.