• You can go anywhere at any time, much like Skyrim. 
• Everyone appears on your map all the time. 
• The world feels more populated. 
• You can easily assist players of different levels. 

• It has slowed levelling down horribly. If you are at high CP (which operate even at <level 50) then you are forced to fight mobs of the same level. These mobs are too easy for anyone of high CP... previously you would be rushing via fighting mobs at +4 levels. 
• It has made levels 1-50 and CP 1-160 largely redundant. They are all the same... literally... exactly... the... same. No pretence of differentiation between levels. At level 48 or CP 150 you can be fighting beside a level 10 and you would not notice the difference. 
• Poor scaling, I should not be out-damaged by a level 10 (with 160+ CP) when I am level 50 (with 160+ CP with full epics), I should have a discernible improvement over the aforementioned player. 
• LAG... obviously increased players in an area = increased lag, although this has been a minor issue. 
• Competition for items, bosses, loot etc... an issue but relatively minor since ESO has largely designed this out of the game, via quick respawns and kill sharing. 
• Difficulty adjustments... I assume this is a work in progress, but some of the difficulty adjustments assume a certain CP that is very PUG unfriendly. 

Why ESO?

• Why ESO was announced last year, I had no interest this game especially with the monthly subscription. 
• When the monthly subscription was dropped, this caught my interest.  
• I love playing Elder Scrolls Oblivion and Skyrim with its open world and the ability to wear and carry any gear you wish.
• I am getting tried of the shallow material found in F2P.  It is always go “kill/gather x creature” in F2P quests. I am hoping a paid game offered better content.
• I had considered Final Fantasy XIV, but they had a monthly subscription.
• I had considered Guild Wars 2, but the game is not on Steam due to a business decision from the developers.
• ESO have implemented the right business model by having the consumer pay the game outright without a monthly subscription fee.  The game does cost more than other retail games ($99 for the Imperial Edition), but I hope this would ensure quality content compared to other F2P games.

I will update my post once I have downloaded the game and played it.

Words of warning, if you downloaded the game through Steam, do not verify integrity of game cache.  Steam will delete the entire 48 GB content and re-download the game again.  I learn that the hard way, as I am reloading the game the second time.   The ESO game client has its own repair option.

I was wrong and I will even ignore the fact I can't get my PC characters or imperial bonuses don't transfer. This game is unbelievably bad. In fact it's even worse than the PC version - which is an achievement in itself. The controls, the 3rd person camera the performance the open mics, the in your face item store, the ham fisted way they handle the plot... well... just everything! It's actually staggering how bad it is. There are controller mods for the PC version of ESO that play better than this.
I mean seriously... how could the get it so wrong?

The Beta testing phase, game launch.

I found these issues on the beta:

1. Phasing issues -> It feel that in every corner was a phasing issue.  Watch any launch video.
2. Questing -> On early zones rewards are locked, independent of class.
3. Gearing -> Need more than quest rewards to gear.
4. Crafting -> The way to get stat and race mats.

The tutorial had a table with a couple of weapons to choose from, later was replaced with only a 2H sword.   Non melee players are forced to get it by loot around or post tutorial.

Pants... who needs pants.  A hero/ine can go and fight mobs with their underwear.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l9snxIQ2dk. Only available by crafting.

At release I'm flexible about crashes, or lack of content, because honestly... all games have those.

April Invitational Event Review 

A Year Later

A. Starting Area

Tutorial had slight changes.  Only the 2H sword is given.  Of the 4 chars made, one came empty because everything was looted.

B. Quest and Rewards

Questing was the same as I remember it, but lip animation looked better.  Still the closeups from SWTOR have a more natural look.

Quest rewards is the weak part of the quests.  Given the flexibility the game offers with the classes, having a fixed gear reward system is a letdown.  Certain quest due to lore should give fixed gear like the Mage guild.  But they should be an exception.

Grouping is still affected in this game because some missions are Solo and require group breaking, and... 

C. Phasing

Phasing issues still there.  My Redguard Templar had an issue with the quest Like Moths to a Candle.  The person to be rescued wasn't there.  After 4 minutes, I log out, then log in and Shazam!, she was there. An incredible world where npcs spawn out of thin air.  Had a similar issue with each char, but less frequent than beta.

For group phasing issues, Zenimax implemented two features to help go around it:

1. Conversations that lead to phasing are marked.  
2. Option to join group member in their phase.

I found the 1st one tricky.  Because members need to agree on conversation to choose.  This will not be a problem with consoles and it's build in Voice Chat, for PC players it will.

D. Dye System

Is nice. Looks like dyes are unlocked by completing content.  Notice in Davon’s Watch the dye table is missing at all, but other small towns have it.  That town lack of Dye Table was reported in August 2014 and still missing.

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/124240/dye-station-locations

F. Gear

• Pants are alive, and back to the loot tables in addition to crafted ones. 
• Still require more than quests to gear

 G. Justice System (1st part)

New mechanic that relies on ownership and basically all world items have an owner.  In short:

• When you loot items that belong to someone else those items are marked as stolen, with a red symbol.
• You can sell stolen goods, and clear stolen flag from gear items at Underground Vendors.
• If you hit a citizen, or get caught stealing or killing stock like chicken you get flagged.
• Guards stop flagged players, take their stolen goods (even gear).
• Guards and those vendors can clear bounty for a fee.
• System is optional, can be turned Off in the Options Screen.

Didn't test the Off option. No idea if you can still loot the items without any consequence or you are locked out of looting them

While I understand this feature gives the world more life, because things have an owner.  The only shortcoming I found on the Justice System is that for a game that is already competitive and oriented in looting everything, reducing what you may loot can be a bad thing.    

H. Performance

Game ran smooth, still animations not up to WOW standards, but good.   The Havok engine manages more complex, and better looking scenery, and with more than 32 kittens lagging in Yavin IV like currently Swtor and is old Hero Engine.  But I could notice some lag lockdown, where the whole screen stopped for a second.  Was not constant,  like once every hour, and happened both in early towns and while questing.

Summary

In short after expending a weekend on it, I found that the issues I had with the game on beta are still there:

1. Phasing issues ->Less, but there, and you can bypass most of the issues between groups members.
2. Questing -> Same bad rewards
3. Gearing -> Still rely heavily on items by vendors, loot, or crafting due to bad rewards.
4. Crafting -> Still depends on the lucky factor of looting items with stats you need.

Bugs or weird issues I encountered

1. Nightblade teleporting through floor.  After 4 seconds reappeared @ original location without dying.    

2. Second phasing issue with Templar.  Had to Log Out, and while Login in say Shazam! for them to reappear.

3.  Grouping.  Is so well done that there are missions you have to break group to do them... like the main story.

4. Solo instance with chests already looted???   The dice decided I wasn't worthy of the loot.

Tips

I suggest leveling simultaneous characters in the 3 different zones, and trade items between them to compensate for the lack of quest rewards.

Or as suggested by a reader is to sell the drops you get, and buy gear from vendors. 

Conclusion and Rating

Whenever you are doing solo or group leveling depends on how much you will enjoy the game.

Rating:  

• Solo  8/10
• Group 6/10 (PC),  8/10 (Consoles)

Readers point me that at End Game there is no phasing issue.  My answer is:  Of course, after release the mess the phasing made, the logical choice was to not use it anymore.  But you have to deal with it on the rest of the game.  

Fuckin quest after quest after quest. Lord how I hate quests. Run here, get that, do this, do that etc. Why can't I just play? Why do I have to do quests?

I'm not sure if I can level efficiently not doing quests.

I tried Shroud of the Avatar, damn I can't wait till it gets out of alpha. There is quests in it but you don't have to do them, and there are very few of them. You can pick any road you want to follow in that game and progress without doing linear quests.

While over 80% of MMOs have quests, I hope that in the future there will be games where you don't have to quest at all to progress.

Goddam questing bullshit. Now I really learned my lesson with themepark MMOs and it cost me 12$. I was hoping ESO would have stayed in its sandbox roots. I hope I don't make the same mistake of buying another themepark MMO.

I just don't get any sense of being in a world, I feel like I'm on a linear path, like I'm on a ride and I just go from quest hub to quest hub. When WoW came out it didn't feel like what it does today, it didn't feel like going from hub to hub, the quests felt naturally placed in the world and I could believe it. I loved exploring that world, but now Blizzard have since ruined it and killed off the world. 

The whole "world" feels fake, like it is there for my amusement and I just cannot buy it. I loved Skyrim's world, it felt so rich, it felt open and like I could go anywhere and do anything. TESO however just feels like I have my hand held throughout a single linear path. 

The quests are so boring as well, just typical "go here and kill 10 of these" or "inspect 4 of these" or "talk to this person" etc etc. I just don't get how we had Skyrim and Oblivion and Morrowind, games that felt like the MMO I wanted, some how they stripped all that out and put the crap stuff of MMOs in. The combat sucks as well, TES games never had great combat, but this just feels weird and unresponsive. Everything feels cheap the engine just feels like second rate crap, you can tell it was made by the B team.

No idea why you'd play this over Skyrim, you end up playing TESO solo and tbh Skyrim is a better solo MMO than this.

So why has my opinion changed so quickly? Shortly after making that post I started getting kicked from the game occasionally. I didnt really care then because I attributed to screwing up an update. During this time I was also building a new pc so I assumed whatever error I created would be resolved once I installed the game on a 100% new pc.

WRONG WRONG WRONG.

I installed the game on my new pc and ever 5mins I'm getting booted to the login screen. I've done EVERYTHING I can think of to fix this problem and got nowhere. I've spent weeks trying to get this game to work following any and every internet post I can find and nothing has solved it. I visited the ESO forums and surprise, I'm not the only one this is happening too and no answer has been found.

Ultimately, what I'm trying to say is: if you're thinking about buying this game ... dont. There's always the chance you wont have this problem but I would like to save someone the constant distress of spending $60 on something that doesnt work.

I also find the game repec unfriendly for starting players it is an all or nothing so in fact your paying to remove skills you also want to keep it got to the point where my friends quit over the repec system they really didn't like it and it sort of broke the game for them, they both bought the imperial upgrade edition.

I also got complaints from many guild members about the respec system at start of game pure stamina builds just don't work well magic builds do as i have tried many pure stamina builds at start due to the fact that block eats HUGE amounts of stamina it causes magic builds to be way more useful due to the fact your have access to 2 resource pools where pure stamina build only has one.

Combat

Initially, I very much liked the action oriented combat in the game, even if it wasn't truly like the combat in other Elder Scrolls titles, such as Oblivion or Skyrim, where you had to aim with the weapon. Elder Scrolls Online has a soft aiming system, meaning you can hit in the general direction of the target, and your attack will usually register.

Regardless, I felt this was something fresh in the industry and rather well implemented.

One thing that was not well implemented was the weight of weapon attacks. You couldn't really feel how your hits connected with the enemy, and this was a big minus in my books.

Graphics

In my opinion, the graphics in ESO are on a very good level, and the artistic direction is very pleasing as well and feels Elder Scrollsy. The game also offers decent customization options for graphics & culling.

Performance

Performance in this game varies from good to horrible, depending on what you're doing. If you are simply questing or running around in the world, the performance should be fine (slightly worse in cities).

However, once you enter Cyrodiil, the game's PvP zone, or a Trial, the game's version of typical raids, be prepared to take big FPS hits.

PvE Content

Leveling experience in this game while very engaging & fun. Gone are the typical "kill 10 bandits" quests, replaced by quests each telling a story.

Each zone has one relatively easy group dungeon, that scales up to group leader's level. These take around 20 minutes to complete.

On the downside, the leveling experience was also extremely streamlined and "on the rails", having you go from zone to zone, providing little alternatives.

Zones are separated by loading screens, and each holds enemies within a certain range. There are no spots with higher level enemies where you're supposed to return later similar to past Elder Scrolls games such as Morrowind, or quests (apart from the last one in each zone's quest arc) sending you into another zone. 

The biggest downside however is what happens after you reach the "max level" of 50.

Without spoiling too much, after a cheesy explanation you are basicly sent into the zones of the other two alliances to complete their quests (which are the exact same you'd do with an alt character in said faction)., where you once again linearly go through content.

This left me with a very sour taste in my mouth, and made me wonder whether they simply wanted to prolong the amount of content, or if they ran out of development time and couldn't create a sensible solution.

After completing the other two factions' quests, or after grinding mobs in the game's currently only "Adventure Zone" (a zone aimed for groups of 4 people), you have finally reached the end game of VR14.

At this point, you can either start doing the game's end-game content of Veteran Dungeons & Trials, finish up the remaining quests, or go do PvP.

Veteran Dungeons & Trials (12-man mini dungeons) I found interesting for the first few times I did them, but in the long run very grindy (due to the atrocious loot system in the game) & short, and not particularly challenging (except Dragonstar Arena & Sanctum Ophidia).

The game does not have raid content in the traditional sense, since all three Trials in game (Aetherian Archive, Hel Ra & Sanctum Ophidia) can all be completed in 15 minutes - one hour and run repeatedly for RNG loot.

PvP Content

PvP in Elder Scrolls Online is mostly focused in the province of Cyrodiil (which you may remember from Oblivion), with the three factions fighting over keeps (map objectives).

This might sound fun in paper, but I found it extremely repetitive, moving from the same one keep to another over & over, and fighting against same type of enemies all the time.

Character Progression

I'm not going to sugar coat this. Character Progression in ESO blows.

Sadly, Zenimax Online Studios went with the Skyrim model of simply having Health, Magicka & stamina, instead of having the traditional Elder Scrolls attributes that could've made leveling up and gearing up interesting .

There are no traditional attributes in Elder Scrolls Online.

It doesn't matter much what you do in game, your character will end up the same as everyone else.

Balance

The game has four classes, Nightblade, Templar, Dragonknight & Sorcerer, but in the end the core gameplay doesn't vary much between the classes. There are no special mechanics popular in other MMOs (Rage, Combo Points etc), every class uses Magicka for spells & stamina for blocking, dodge rolling and breaking "Crowd Control". There are also no cooldowns in the game, and you can slot only five skills on your action bar (there are two, you can get the other one at level 15).

If you were looking for a game where you can play a sneaky rogue, or a warrior in heavy armour or any type of character that is not a healer, you might be disappointed. Most of these archetypes are not supported by the game in terms of skills or mechanics, or require you to use other tropes, such as healing spells or damage shields, especially in PvP, which revolves around spamming those abilities.

While the game claims to have the "holy trinity" of DPS, Tank & Healer, in PvP you are supposed to fulfill all three roles at the same time (because there is no real downside for doing that) in order to be competitive, which might make life difficult if you wanted to play a purely DPS oriented character. 

In PvE, this is much more balanced however.

Crowd Control in this game is not really utilized for its traditional role in RPGs, but it is more of a "drain stamina" skill, since CC can be broken repeatedly as long as you have stamina.

Verdict: 5½/10

Tries hard too hard to be Skyrim Online, instead of Elder Scrolls Online. In the end, a fairly bland and dumbed down MMO. Wouldn't recommend.

• Decent combat system.
• Good graphics.
• Average performance (varies from good to horrible).
• Interesting (if somewhat on the rails) 1-50 leveling experience, but the rest is forgettable & grindy.
• No real end game content to keep people around, frustrating RNG loot system and uninteresting itemization.
• Repetitive PvP, made worse by balance issues & lack of diversity.
• Horrible Character Progression system.

Now I know what you're thinking ... who the hell wants to spend an hour in a dungeon? Definitely not me, but when I looked at the time, sure enough, an hour went by. While exploring I found said dungeon (my first one since playing) and inside I met a few nice people, one thing led to another and we're playing lutes and drums around a fire while we talk and wait for a boss to respawn. Amazing.

I want to review this game but I just bought it and I'm only level 7 so it wouldnt be fair but once I reach endgame look out for one. So far I can only sing praises about it. I just spent $85 on this game and I dont regret it. I heard a lot of bad things about ESO so I havent played since beta. Biggest mistake ever. Honestly, I dont see how this game went B2P, it's gorgeous, fun, untraditional, and has everything I love about the console versions. My only gripe is how the gear is textured to the skin, this shouldnt be a thing but the world is so immersive you hardly notice it. If the crown store begins to offer better items I will definitely pay the optional subscription.

11/10 would play again.

I've checked the crown store and the most that you can buy is mounts and the actual Imperial edition and Adventurer's Edition things that were offered before.  

Insofar, this is in-game store done right and I have no gripes with it, they haven't hidden anything behind a paygate.  They don't have a "Sword Of Undying Gratitude From Us For Spending The Most On The Cash Shop", so far it's all pretty innocent.

There are no character slot limitations, you still get the 8 you had before.  

Zenimax Online has...actually done a pretty good job converting this game.

The combat and quests are the biggest offenders, though poor coding and balance are to blame as well. The visuals, while technically appreciable, are shamelessly bland. Add in a single player experience on a MMORPG platform, walls of text that do no interest me in the least (not because I don't like lore, but because the lore in this particular game was, well, anti-climactic), one of the worst incarnations of freeform character development I've ever seen in nearly 18 years of MMORPG gaming, and the simple fact that it coding side of the game still feels incomplete, and you have a recipe for a failed game.

It is chugging along with the efforts of TES fans and some MMORPG newcomers who are too green to realize how overshadowed this game is compared to other AAA competition tittles.

I will say this though: Despite my seemingly harsh and negative review, I ALWAYS encourage people to try a game if it looks appealing to them. MMORPG's are a very fickle thing. They can be a love/hate relationship and usually are. For me this is a hate game, but you may love it, and so if you looks interesting to you I recommend you try it. Just don't jump in it expecting groundbreaking combat or an innovative gaming experience. It will provide neither of those. If you want a "safe" theme park style game that's relatively new, then maybe you should give it a whirl.

I first tasted this game in beta and made a list of the features I felt were missing. I championed maligning the game. I ignored how much I enjoyed the gameplay. 

That all changed. 

I found the game on sale for $20 on Steam and gave it a gander. Now, I find myself actually longing for it. The setting, the story, the mystery of the systems and exploration. It's exciting. Anyone else have a similar experience?