The Elder Scrolls Online Review: Epic Adventure Or Epic Fail?

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Fair enough. If you guys want to dump on a game, so be it. But there are plenty of places I could go for that. I was hoping for a perceptive, nuanced, insight of the game. It didn't have to line up with my view of the game, better yet, I actually like hearing an opposing viewpoint that's constructively framed. This review, frankly, was not. These reader responses are the same whines I can find in any corner of the net. You're better than this Tom's.
 
This article pretty much sums it up for me.

Lack of emphasis on group content, even to the point where grouping is actively blocked at every turn by their stupid phasing system. The bland quests. Lack of reward for doing just about anything. Mediocre combat system. Another "Me Too" WoWish quest hub chasing Massive Single Player Online RPG.

The PVP could have been it's saving grace for those who like the DAoC / GW2 style zergling siege pvp... but that's even made horrible by the fact that you NEED to trudge through all the super boring PVE content just so you can be on near-even footing of high level enemy players in PVP, combined with the blatant imbalance issues like vampires who can spam their ultimate ability over and over again, wiping whole groups as a solo vampire while they're basically invulnerable.

How $200 million dollars resulted in a game that's this bland and this un-revolutionary is beyond me. I can look past the bugs, but the game itself is so horribly average that it's sad and an insult to the TES name.

Everquest Next can't come soon enough. I should have known better when EQN won Best in Show at PAX, over ESO, when EQN wasn't even officially in show. lol. fail.
 


I think it was constructively framed. ESO should serve as a fair warning to any other company who is thinking of doing another "Me too" WoW cash grab.

Players are sick of these solo-oriented, quest hub chasing, ultra linear boring MMOs where devs shove unwanted and bland "story" content down your throat.

The industry, and the fans, have already made it clear that these sort of "Me Too" MMOs are not welcome. We want sandbox / openworld experiences, where we can free roam, play with our guild mates and friends freely, and make our own stories in a living world where your actions matter.

Everyone is sick of these WoW / EQ clone cash grabs. Revolutionize or gtfo! This isn't 1999 anymore and games like ESO are so cliche and tired even when they're done right (which ESO is clearly not done right at all) that they're just not viable, especially not at a $200 million dollar development pricetag and a P2P barrier to entry.
 
i played enough mmos to know you can't judge them day one, or even year one...

all we know right now is its not worth our time unless they pull at least a guild wars buy it and its free, apporach... granted i wont be in to it till they go full ftp, but thats just me.
 
All I can do is laugh at this review. There was so much misinformation or straight up lying about the game it was almost unbelievable.

8 min Group dungeons? 2 gold from delve bosses? gear that's incompatible and you don't wear? 3 of the many straight up lies right there.
It's like you didn't even play the game but instead made assumptions on based on what others where telling you.

Obviously it's subjective, but It's kind of unbelievable that you think the quests dialog is rote and bland.
There were literally quests where I had true "oh shit", or "that's f'ed up" or "Lol" moments throughout the conversations.

In terms of bugs there's a lot to be fixed and like 10 pages of bug fixes on the current PTS patch coming to live next week with the first expansion, so they are fixing them extremely quickly. The same goes for things like adding publicly accessible auction houses, guild features, etc...

Overall, people tend to love the game or hate it and it seems that you fall in to the later camp...which would be fine if a large part of your article didn't contain misinformation.
 
Funny how ALOT (not all) of people saying things along the lines of "this game is utter shit" have not even played the game/ played such a minimal amount in the beta you can barely say they have played it at all, most they just regurgitate other opinions.

From a person who has played this game to Level 40, some of the only real problems and not the bullshit regurgitated ones some people say are:
1. Multiplayer limitations, e.g not being able to join a friend in a CERTAIN quests because you have already completed them
2. Bots and Dupes - these are basically already fixed by now
3. Clunkyness - slight lag times on interations/actions
4. Gold spammers occasionally - just annoying now


and whats with every single positive opinion being pummeled in the ground by everyone else, being completely honest the game is good, i personally enjoyed it better than gw2, although no where near the glory of Skyrim. Maybe it is because its so expensive or people expected it to be more like skyrim/a traditional mmo but it's simply a hybrid mix of its own style...
 
Wow this is a crap review. I can't believe you cliam you did a review you made it to level 20 ... At 50 you have completed only 1/3 of the game. Level 20 is like level 5 in most games.... You sir did not play the game... You did not even begin to understand the story line at 20... Your review of PVP is way off... first you said all the keeps are the same... lol no they are not....You were mentioned DoAC yes a great pvp game.. However when that game was released it was not even finished ... We were level 50 and had no armer over 30... You have to play to 50 and then pvp to appreciate this game... Im sorry this was not a good experience for you.. However did you play with friends? Did you play just 1 class? Did you play just one area to 20? Im sorry I cant respect your review if you review a game and you do not play it... By the way I prefer subscriptions keeps a ton of kids out of a mature title...
 

Oh jeez, another one who just created an ID and had his first post....

So, let me get this... Is this really the value proposition, this is how you sell the game?

"You won't really get the game, and in fact, it will probably really suck until Level 50, but you just need to stick with it, because trust us, it'll be worth it by then."

Please.....

 
Well let me say this you could argue that this would be normal in a world like this cuz man often copies what others do and does the same thing over and over again building structures so really what is bad about these races doing this in this game? Would they not copy other races and make things similar if they worked for others? I do not like that there are that many that are the same but I can understand it to a point.

In the article it mentions the piling up of dead version of the same boss over and over again and I hate that in any game. I also hate how quickly bosses die in any game even if they are minor bosses. I have asked for mmorpgs with better questing and better mini bosses but it seems the player base doesn't care and for the people complaining about things below and calling this game crap you would be the same people crapping on my ideas which would make the game better so you just never will be happy with any mmorpg so don't play them.

Tom's Hardware mentions how group questing is not encourage and is a joke and yet for some reason the majority of mmorpg players don't care despite these being games we are supposed to play with other people and need help from other people to get things done in games. Seriously mmorpg community WTH?

What is needed is a new generation of players to come along and think like me and a few others and ask for a real game and challenge and more fun and for the current communities/player base playing mmorpgs to die off. Seriously you don't know what a good mmorpg would be if it hit you in the face.
 
Well let me say this you could argue that this would be normal in a world like this cuz man often copies what others do and does the same thing over and over again building structures so really what is bad about these races doing this in this game? Would they not copy other races and make things similar if they worked for others? I do not like that there are that many that are the same but I can understand it to a point.

In the article it mentions the piling up of dead version of the same boss over and over again and I hate that in any game. I also hate how quickly bosses die in any game even if they are minor bosses. I have asked for mmorpgs with better questing and better mini bosses but it seems the player base doesn't care and for the people complaining about things below and calling this game crap you would be the same people crapping on my ideas which would make the game better so you just never will be happy with any mmorpg so don't play them.

Tom's Hardware mentions how group questing is not encouraged and is a joke and yet for some reason the majority of mmorpg players don't care despite these being games we are supposed to play with other people and need help from other people to get things done in games. Seriously mmorpg community WTH?

What is needed is a new generation of players to come along and think like me and a few others and ask for a real game and challenge and more fun and for the current communities/player base playing mmorpgs to die off. Seriously you don't know what a good mmorpg would be if it hit you in the face.
Click to expand...


I meant to say group questing is not ENCOURAGED.
 
I could not agree more. It's a nice world but it's a grind. Nobody seems to want to group which maybe justifies the way the game forces isolation upon you in portal/dream sequences consecutively and it's difficult to interact with other players at all because they move about so erratically that you can't get the retical to change fast enough into the selection-wheel to select the chat function. My own characters struggle through the world, the mobs tether and self-heal all too often making it tedious work. I don't personally like the action-combat, it is too open to latency issues and I hope it's not the way MMOs go. I personally just like to slug it out with a mob toe-to-toe since excessive movement just draws other mobs. I also hate the rolling, I disabled it in Guild Wars 2 after falling off one-too-many ledges doing jump puzzles and here it's annoying as well, you want to avoid rolling into another pack and you often snag on furniture or something else in the environment, but the area of effects of the mobs aren't accurate, if you run out of their range, their attacks still count against you, so you are forced to use roll. It's very tedious indeed. In fact, all the combat is for me. I don't like blocking much, it usually "misses" and I'd prefer a game where I just lay on damage or something. I know people say it's dumb mechanics but I play MMOs in order to experience the qualities that the players themselves bring to the world, I don't mind the chore that they have to be for people to mull around doing the same stuff in one another's company. The focus needs to be on grouping and not on story-driven episodes which force isolation on the player. But it's a beautiful world that is worth roaming around in for a couple of months but that's all I've bought into. The more they charge, the more I concentrate my play so I can exhaust the content. There are too many quality products coming to market to make pay-to-play viable. I'll play this then Wildstar and then Warlords of Draenor and whatever follows.
 
Joe has the right of it. The game sucks. I got to level 48, and I felt my character was actually getting weaker with every improvement I made. Well, I stuck it out as long as I could. Time to move on.
 
I think they would have been better off doing what Rockstar did with GTA. They started out with a single player game then added another game which basically added the multiplayer. Sure now I hear its just so-so but they will add more content which will make it better. Or like the new model that I see coming with games like Destiny, Watch Dogs, The Division (and started with Defiance) where people can do single player quests but there are also quests that when you enter them they will bring you into multiplayer. Also take away the "kill 20 things" quests and make questing more interesting. On top of that give computer generated players some personality. I see there are games out there that the NPC's are working, or doing something to make the world seem alive instead of just having a bunch of NPC's taking a couple steps or standing around in one area.

This is what I'm seeing in up and coming games and I'm sad that ESO doesn't have any of these. Single player Eldter Scrolls games had such personality, NPC's that walked around and you had to find them either at work or home or at a bar. This is what I expected out of ESO.

Defiance may not have been a popular game but it did get a lot of things right. It was the first game I played that I sometimes forgot I was playing an MMO. You'd see people working on the side of the road, quests that you'd jump into and they'd be multiplayer and no need to ask or have people asking you to join. Thats why I enjoy playing this game because it does so much right. From what I see there are some games coming out that will do the same plus add more interesting style to the MMO genre.

The good thing is MMO's have been getting better. We started out with tap target games that I hate. Now we have action games, and the ability to build a house or town is coming, now devs have to work on making NPC's and questing more interesting and I have faith that it will happen. With the new games I mentioned above I think (hope) its starting to happen.
 
you know what's most annoying about ESO? it has worse multiplayer then perhaps the previous worse multiplayer mmo release in recent memory (the old republic); throw in the fact the quest/story is ALSO worse and you have a pretty poor game. I could only stomach a month of the old republic, i couldn't even manage that with ESO.
 
This one sees the milk drinkers are missing their milk and are whining. I've been playing TES since Arena and MMOs since 2005. ESO is the best of both worlds. If you're bored, then you're not playing the game right. The reviewer wasn't smart enough to realize that every game out there has bugs. All MMOs have bots. Neither of these are the developer's fault. As long as you have the dweebs who are going to cheat and break the rules, you'll have problems no matter where you go. ESO is good and is only gonna get better. For those of you who haven't the gonads to play, then don't let the door hit you on the way out. WE DON'T NEED YOU! More of the beautiful game with the excellent soundtrack for those of us who actually game instead sit around jerking all day.
 

What is good about it? Why don't you talk some specifics about your experience? Maybe you can win someone over. How about any youtube plays that show some of the things you think are good about ESO?
 
All these comments on people being disappointed are delicious...

I can't get enough...

It's so sweet to be proven right... oh yum yum yum the tears of the disappointed.

People just must be really stupid to go out and buy crap without seeing if its any good before you buy it... Keep on beta testing for me people.. you save me loads of money...

 
I think Bethesda pull another Diablo 3 (original) here. They both misunderstood what community wants and make it into a diabolical MMO. From what I feel myself and what i know from Skyrim mod community, what we wanted was a Diablo 2 like or Torchlight 2 like or even Borderlands like co-op gaming. What we wanted was an epic Single Player game WITH the ability to finish/play it co-op via LAN and whenever we wanted to jump into the bigger community, we just go online into some server or host a game online, pretty much just like Borderlands or Torchlight or Diablo 2 before. Not some rubbish half-baked MMO who only extort us money in the long run. This is not Elder Scrolls, this is rubbish.
 


Wait, this game is free to play ?!!! 😱

BTW wow is free of you go to private servers ^_- (jk)

Anyway you get shat you pay for , wow is more than just a game.... Its epic its awesome everything, the fun, the worlds, the feeling , I never forget the first time I stepped on outland ! Anyway I'm busy ATM can't play anymore , also I'm planning to spend all summer on learning ;D and a little if tf2

 
Uh it hurts me to say it but Tom's Hardware has got it right in some many areas. Me myself have bought ESO, participated in the beta too. And right now I just feel so silly for buying it. In fact right after release after play ESO for a good 4 hours I went back to Skyrim and asked myself "What went wrong?". My initial reaction of the beta weren't bad, but I always felt out of place, the combat for one felt all wrong and the animations were just so jumpy and out of place. Now that I think about it I can begin to see why my initial reactions were so "Eh", ESO just didn't have that RPG element to it and nor did its story give any impact on me. I just felt like this was just another MMO, where everyone competes against each other for the best this and the overpowered that, while you have someone milking you of the time and money you have. Ugh, I just don't know to be honest, just don't know what to think of ESO. Bethesda, like many others have said should just go back to single player. Well I still have the next witcher game to look forward to, but I might go back to ESO some day.
 
FYI, Zenimax didn't make a new engine. They are using one of the cheepest crummiest engines available on the commercial market - the HeroEngine, which was also used by The Old Republic.
 
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