I'm currently playing ESO, love the game, can't say enough good things about it, my reason for posting is this, I almost feel as if someone is paying people to write up bad reviews about TESO, or the net trolls are waiting with their torches and pitchforks to roast the next MMO asap!
But let me point a few things out that I've seen massive complaints about and share my thoughts.
"the dungeons are quick and in a big circle" -While leveling up I do not care to spend a long time in a dungeon or getting lost in a dungeon (wailing caverns) that I will only return to when leveling a new char. I do hope they focus on the end game more than the 1-10, 11-20, 21-30... dungeons that are only taking 5 minutes to complete!
"the voice acting is monotonous" -I think it's rather good acting, some are even excellent! Be happy games are evolving with all the current bashing that goes on, I'm almost certain Blizzard is paying people to write up negativity about EVERY.SINGLE.GAME that opposes it.
"gold farmers/bots" -Ask the MMO population nicely to stop buying gold from farmers and we might be rid of them!! It's absolutely impossible to find and ban every single gold seller 24/7.
"zerging in pvp" -For those who are unfortunate to not know how to work some pvp magic on a map such as Cyrodill, I'm truly sorry. Thank God someone has heard the prayers and captured the tears of DAoC gamers everywhere!! Thank you ZOS! Gank group here I come!
"combat/quests" -Fighting feels like the norm to me.. quests, same old same old in every mmo as of yet, except this one has voice acting all the way through!!
"artwork/scenery" -If this game looks crappy to you, maybe you need to update your monitor, gfx card or get some glasses, it's beautiful and non cartoony. For once an mmo for adults??!
"dark anchor is easy and pointless" -I think these are well done and thought out, later on after the masses have leveled their chars and someone new comes along to play, they reach these anchors they will still be able to complete it, after all, we won't be chilling in the lowbie zones forever.
This message was brought to you by someone who wasn't paid to post positive/negative things about any game!
/Gameon
This is big business. Billions made and lost every month. OF COURSE they are paying people to write bad reviews and shill. Are all of them no, no way. Are a lot of them? Hell yes.
In WoW terminology those are micro dungeons. They aren't any different from any other area in the world where there are mobs, except they are underground, inside a ship, etc. There are many of those areas, some very small, some quite large, but few, if any, of them contain group content. Most of the group content was and is in World Dungeons, or the instanced dungeons scattered throughout the world.
Semantics aside, WoW's "micro dungeons" weren't copy and pasted to ad nauseam like the game in discussion either. Lazy design no matter what you call it.
Here's the thing about comparing ESO to WoW, how old is WoW? Almost 10 years now, a really poor choice and it simply makes ESO look even worse. Come on, ESO had a decades worth of experience to build on and they blew it. But it gets better, I can remember those early dungeons (WoW) and the experiences I shared there will last a lifetime, and you know why? For THAT time and THAT point in gaming history WoW nailed it. I doubt anyone will remember these copy and paste dungeons (ESO) a month from now. Two vastly different gaming experiences, sorry but ESO is not the special game it could have been no matter how much you want it to be.
Maybe you misunderstood my comment? I wasn't praising ESO in the slightest and was only mentioning WoW because I was responding to the person I quoted.
This is about the most biased review i have ever read.
From the very first line you can tell the entire review is basically written by a whiney little bitch who wants his $59 back.
Is the game perfect? no far from it. But if you are going to write reviews about it at least be non biased.
People generally write reviews after they try a product (at least that is how it is supposed to work). So when the writer started the review they likely could not contain that they thought it was a smoking pile of garbage.
Here's my review:
I played in beta, it was buggy. Did not see what I considered game breaking bugs fixed in months leading to launch. Did not enjoy playing the beta. Launch was not able to part me of a ludicrous $59 even though I have bored out of my tree for months.
Here's my recommendation:
Don't buy this game. If you have, cancel your subscription and get a refund.
@preposters: if you dont even know the difference between a delve and a dungeon, i suggest you go back to the games you like, and let those of us who enjoy playing ESO play their game. seems fair? right. since it is.
ps: @mr "joe pishgar, community and social media professional, political advocate" go back to your politics and don't do reviews for gamers. ty ^^
my avatar is mainly for people like him....
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
The way the did dungeons really reflects the outside dungeon world too...quest, quest, and quest. I miss grinding camps.
Shows that developers don't play their own games. Who on god's earth would want to do that many quests for such piss poor xp? Mob grinding is the only way to go anyway - if you can tap each other's mobs or get someone to join you. Veteran ranks are super slow and you are better off going back to level 1 to do your quests for veteran xp....sad state.
The way the did dungeons really reflects the outside dungeon world too...quest, quest, and quest. I miss grinding camps.
Shows that developers don't play their own games. Who on god's earth would want to do that many quests for such piss poor xp? Mob grinding is the only way to go anyway - if you can tap each other's mobs or get someone to join you. Veteran ranks are super slow and you are better off going back to level 1 to do your quests for veteran xp....sad state.
They just don't get it.
sorry to tell ya, but it's YOU who doesn't get it. you wanna grind mobs? well, go play WoW ^^
veteran lvls ONLY grow on doing QUESTS.... [mod edit]
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
Well wasn't expecting them to write a review... though I must say it really is quite well written and explained. Quite harsh at times but at the same time I do see why it might be so.
The author has some points and the game has issues, but...
* this is for me not a review or game test
---> The so called "review" from Tom´s Hardware reads like an opinion from a single player which you could read in a forum like on mmorpg.com. A reviewer may give a low rating for a game, but the author writes in a style and uses wording to only pick apart ESO. For a good review to one sided.
For a true quality review and game test this is too amateurish.
The following statement by the reviewer invalidates his entire review for me:
"There are free-to-play games out right now with orders of magnitude better gameplay and more content: Dungeons & Dragons Online, Star Trek Online, and of course World of Warcraft."
I've played D&D online (when it came out) and Star Trek Online. They blow compared to what ESO currently is. Star Trek Online? roflmao are you f'n kidding me?
And WOW isn't free to play, why does the reviewer make that statement?
I said it before, I'll say it again...ESO is a pretty good game overall, with some issues that are annoying, but at V1 myself, I've encountered nothing gamebreaking during my journey so far. The "Dungeons" the reviewer refers to are mineshafts and caves. The actual dungeons are much more involved, albeit not as involved as I would like, but the reviewer is trying so hard to make something look as bad as they possibly can that it's painfully obvious he's been reading and following the hate train like a good soldier.
Is this the next big mmo? No, it's a niche themepark mmo, but it isn't a bad game.
I've read enough reviews of enough different games on this site over the years to know it's best to try a game for yourself than go by what you read here. If someone solely decided what games to play based on much of what people post here, they wouldn't be playing any games at all!
Maybe ESO will have a free trial sometime soon so people can get a chance to check it out with no obligations. Might be a smart idea for them once they roll out another couple of good patches.
ESO is flopping so hard it should knock some sense into the suits in this business. Unfortunately, it has happened many times before, and they dont seem to learn. It is probably because the people with the money have no clue about their product.
That's because the current trend seems to be: Launch. Rape & pillage as much $ in box & subs as possible. Convert to F2P and nickle and dime as much $ as possible whilst taking a massive dump on subscribers.
@preposters: if you dont even know the difference between a delve and a dungeon, i suggest you go back to the games you like, and let those of us who enjoy playing ESO play their game. seems fair? right. since it is.
ps: @mr "joe pishgar, community and social media professional, political advocate" go back to your politics and don't do reviews for gamers. ty ^^
my avatar is mainly for people like him....
Last time I checked (about 2 hours ago) the tutorial tip when entering one of these "delves" was "you are entering a public dungeon" just a thought. If the developers call it a dungeon and peoples opinions are that they are rehash copy and pastes then I am unsure why you feel the need to belittle people by saying we don't know the difference. Attaching your own interpretation and terminology doesn't change the fact that they are copy and pasted. I personally liked the group oriented instanced dungeons thus far, but there really is no excuse for this level of laziness in design, delve or not. If I already know exactly what is inside before I step foot in a location for the first time then we have a problem.
The point of a review is to inform. The point of propaganda is to deceive. The delves are a minor sideshow in the game - the real dungeon features would be the group dungeons (unique layout, one per zone), or the overland areas (large, unique), or the unique areas for the main story line quests (six long themes). The author is making believe that players need to spend a lot of time in copy-paste areas. This is flat-out deception. They give you six of the 15 skyshard per zone, or about 2 skill points if you do all of them. They take little time and usually don't even have quests associated with them. This is no more a crime than the similar treatment of bandit lairs in Skyrim.
Great... some site that specializes in hardware, run the game's map files through some "find map similarities" kind of stress test and wrapped the results into a review...
So what's next, MMORPG.COM doing CPUs, Mobo and GPUs reviews?
They did a better written, more frank and honest review than this site did.
+1 Yes absoluely.
I bought ESO and just can't face logging in. While Tom's Hardware review goes for the throat it's all true. It;s a very souless experience that isn't fun, which is kind of the point. Please don't hate me I am a MMO lover but $200 million to make this, sad for us all.
THE SECRET WORLD - PAY ONCE PLAY FOREVER - Give it a go!
The review is spot on. ESO is one of the worst MMORPGs I have ever played, its just one big failure in game design. The one thing I respect and feel they did good on, which is refreshing, is to not litter every bit of empty space with randomly roaming enemies... instead there are pockets of enemies.
This game doesnt have a future outside of a f2p business model. Give it a couple of years and chances are high Zenimax will shut it down to cut cost.
The name of the author of this "review" is - JoE Pishgar -
Is this the same person ?
Joe "GreyPawn" Pishgar Community Manager, Star Wars Galaxies Sony Online Entertainment
Apparently he was, according to his linkedin page, but is no longer. He currently works for Purch, formerly known as Techmedia, operator of various sites, including Tom's Hardware.
Everything in gaming is an illusion. It's all pixels.
ESO's world is no less static than any other MMO. There are better and there are worse.
I found, for example, LOTRO's game world (especially in SOA days) far more dynamic and lively than ESO.
Okay.
I was talking about Swtor...still. That's okay. I'll just agree with you to keep things simple. Yes, nothing in ESO moves or changes in any way. There is no day/night cycle, there are no weather effects, the NPC look like they are just pasted into the backgrounds, the zones are entirely flat and have only one single way to go through their linear quest lines. ESO is officially an Swtor clone and a bad Swtor clone at that. It will now and forever be known as the ESOtanic.
In ESO you don't have to crawl every Inch of each map to do every single possible quest possible to be able to rake in enough XP to Level up far enough to continue into the next zone? Especially after they did the blanket XP nerf in all Dungeons! /Facepalm
So how is that different? When I make another character in the same faction, I will end up doing the exact same quests and zones again!
At least in SW:TOR each class has a unique storyline all the way to max Level!
And yes. In ESO you can click every single NPC's and in SW:TOR you cannot. Tho the result is the same. Most don't react and talk back to you!
EverQuest 2 and LOTRO did that much better, with a much more responsive dynamic world at launch.
And now you just trolling, as I never called ESO a SW:TOR clone. /shrug
It’s pretty in parts, but there’s not a whole lot there. The Elder Scrolls Online is the empty, dull train ride that everyone feared it would be, and the millions spent on a fancy new MMO-capable engine and scant A-list voice acting peppered through the too-rare prime fiction, leave the player wanting. Trying desperately to find the fun, and failing. This really isn’t a true blue sequel to the Elder Scrolls series in any sense of the thing. These many sins could be easier to swallow if it weren’t for the gargantuan price tag associated with the game, not just vanilla, but the all-but-required Imperial Edition. There are free-to-play games out right now with orders of magnitude better gameplay and more content: Dungeons & Dragons Online, Star Trek Online, and of course World of Warcraft. WildStar is another up-and-comer that looks immensely promising, with player housing and a refreshing sense of humor.
Shallow, generic, bland, meh, flavorless, vapid, uninspiring, monotonous, ho hum, pedestrian, plodding, mundane, trite, empty, devoid. I’m terribly reminded of the seminal 80s flick “The Neverending Story”, where hero Bastian fights to save Fantasia from “The Nothing”, an elemental force of the absence of content that ate through pages of interesting story and engaging plot. The Elder Scrolls Online is the game you’d get if The Nothing had won and decided to release an MMO based on a best-selling gaming franchise.
Can The Elder Scrolls Online recover from this? This reviewer can’t say. Final Fantasy XIV had a disastrous launch along similar content-absence problems, went back to the drawing board and returned a year later to re-launch with a more fleshed-out experience, and a mea culpa by Square Enix. The Elder Scrolls Online could foreseeably do something similar and populate its vast world with content worthy of the license, but first impressions tend to be everything in the crowded arena of online gaming, especially where subscriptions are involved.
We’ll see.
I knew the game had issues but ouch lol. One more reason to wait for it to go f2p I guess.
Comments
So you're saying anyone who doesn't like the game is biased?
This is big business. Billions made and lost every month. OF COURSE they are paying people to write bad reviews and shill. Are all of them no, no way. Are a lot of them? Hell yes.
Wouldn't you?
Maybe you misunderstood my comment? I wasn't praising ESO in the slightest and was only mentioning WoW because I was responding to the person I quoted.
RIP Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan and Paul Gray.
Wow - shame that obviously paid for by the competition review was from Toms Hardware.
I used their site a good bit over the years to research PC parts... have not frequented the site much in the last few however.
Something is rotten in Denmark.
"Youre in our world now!"
People generally write reviews after they try a product (at least that is how it is supposed to work). So when the writer started the review they likely could not contain that they thought it was a smoking pile of garbage.
Here's my review:
I played in beta, it was buggy. Did not see what I considered game breaking bugs fixed in months leading to launch. Did not enjoy playing the beta. Launch was not able to part me of a ludicrous $59 even though I have bored out of my tree for months.
Here's my recommendation:
Don't buy this game. If you have, cancel your subscription and get a refund.
@preposters: if you dont even know the difference between a delve and a dungeon, i suggest you go back to the games you like, and let those of us who enjoy playing ESO play their game. seems fair? right. since it is.
ps: @mr "joe pishgar, community and social media professional, political advocate" go back to your politics and don't do reviews for gamers. ty ^^
my avatar is mainly for people like him....
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
Everything said in the conclusion of that review can be said for TSW, FFXIV ARR, WoW, and many other MMOs I have played.
"The Elder Scrolls Online is the empty, dull train ride that everyone feared it would be"
"Shallow, generic, bland, meh, flavorless, vapid, uninspiring, monotonous, ho hum, pedestrian, plodding, mundane, trite, empty, devoid."
Shows that developers don't play their own games. Who on god's earth would want to do that many quests for such piss poor xp? Mob grinding is the only way to go anyway - if you can tap each other's mobs or get someone to join you. Veteran ranks are super slow and you are better off going back to level 1 to do your quests for veteran xp....sad state.
They just don't get it.
sorry to tell ya, but it's YOU who doesn't get it. you wanna grind mobs? well, go play WoW ^^
veteran lvls ONLY grow on doing QUESTS.... [mod edit]
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
The author has some points and the game has issues, but...
* this is for me not a review or game test
---> The so called "review" from Tom´s Hardware reads like an opinion from a single player which you could read in a forum like on mmorpg.com. A reviewer may give a low rating for a game, but the author writes in a style and uses wording to only pick apart ESO. For a good review to one sided.
For a true quality review and game test this is too amateurish.
The following statement by the reviewer invalidates his entire review for me:
"There are free-to-play games out right now with orders of magnitude better gameplay and more content: Dungeons & Dragons Online, Star Trek Online, and of course World of Warcraft."
I've played D&D online (when it came out) and Star Trek Online. They blow compared to what ESO currently is. Star Trek Online? roflmao are you f'n kidding me?
And WOW isn't free to play, why does the reviewer make that statement?
I said it before, I'll say it again...ESO is a pretty good game overall, with some issues that are annoying, but at V1 myself, I've encountered nothing gamebreaking during my journey so far. The "Dungeons" the reviewer refers to are mineshafts and caves. The actual dungeons are much more involved, albeit not as involved as I would like, but the reviewer is trying so hard to make something look as bad as they possibly can that it's painfully obvious he's been reading and following the hate train like a good soldier.
Is this the next big mmo? No, it's a niche themepark mmo, but it isn't a bad game.
I've read enough reviews of enough different games on this site over the years to know it's best to try a game for yourself than go by what you read here. If someone solely decided what games to play based on much of what people post here, they wouldn't be playing any games at all!
Maybe ESO will have a free trial sometime soon so people can get a chance to check it out with no obligations. Might be a smart idea for them once they roll out another couple of good patches.
Ok
Citizen: Preach your filth elsewhere!
That's because the current trend seems to be:Launch.
Rape & pillage as much $ in box & subs as possible.
Convert to F2P and nickle and dime as much $ as possible whilst taking a massive dump on subscribers.
Last time I checked (about 2 hours ago) the tutorial tip when entering one of these "delves" was "you are entering a public dungeon" just a thought. If the developers call it a dungeon and peoples opinions are that they are rehash copy and pastes then I am unsure why you feel the need to belittle people by saying we don't know the difference. Attaching your own interpretation and terminology doesn't change the fact that they are copy and pasted. I personally liked the group oriented instanced dungeons thus far, but there really is no excuse for this level of laziness in design, delve or not. If I already know exactly what is inside before I step foot in a location for the first time then we have a problem.
RIP Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan and Paul Gray.
The point of a review is to inform. The point of propaganda is to deceive. The delves are a minor sideshow in the game - the real dungeon features would be the group dungeons (unique layout, one per zone), or the overland areas (large, unique), or the unique areas for the main story line quests (six long themes). The author is making believe that players need to spend a lot of time in copy-paste areas. This is flat-out deception. They give you six of the 15 skyshard per zone, or about 2 skill points if you do all of them. They take little time and usually don't even have quests associated with them. This is no more a crime than the similar treatment of bandit lairs in Skyrim.
What is it with the hatchet jobs on this game?
+1 Yes absoluely.
I bought ESO and just can't face logging in. While Tom's Hardware review goes for the throat it's all true. It;s a very souless experience that isn't fun, which is kind of the point. Please don't hate me I am a MMO lover but $200 million to make this, sad for us all.
THE SECRET WORLD - PAY ONCE PLAY FOREVER - Give it a go!
http://www.thesecretworld.com/buy/
OR PM ME FOR A BUDDY KEY (need your email address).
The review is spot on. ESO is one of the worst MMORPGs I have ever played, its just one big failure in game design. The one thing I respect and feel they did good on, which is refreshing, is to not litter every bit of empty space with randomly roaming enemies... instead there are pockets of enemies.
This game doesnt have a future outside of a f2p business model. Give it a couple of years and chances are high Zenimax will shut it down to cut cost.
By the way......
The name of the author of this "review" is - JoE Pishgar -
Is this the same person ?
Joe "GreyPawn" Pishgar
Community Manager, Star Wars Galaxies
Sony Online Entertainment
Apparently he was, according to his linkedin page, but is no longer. He currently works for Purch, formerly known as Techmedia, operator of various sites, including Tom's Hardware.
Because people keep paying for bad products without waiting for reviews first.
The Enlightened take things Lightly
In ESO you don't have to crawl every Inch of each map to do every single possible quest possible to be able to rake in enough XP to Level up far enough to continue into the next zone? Especially after they did the blanket XP nerf in all Dungeons! /Facepalm
So how is that different? When I make another character in the same faction, I will end up doing the exact same quests and zones again!
At least in SW:TOR each class has a unique storyline all the way to max Level!
And yes. In ESO you can click every single NPC's and in SW:TOR you cannot. Tho the result is the same. Most don't react and talk back to you!
EverQuest 2 and LOTRO did that much better, with a much more responsive dynamic world at launch.
And now you just trolling, as I never called ESO a SW:TOR clone. /shrug
Mines better:
b b b
Im READY ZENIMAX i worked REALLY HARD on this! b;
wow this is getting deep.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design