TyrOd :
Not saying you don't have valid points about the reacting to this article, but to say that the reviews are overwhelmingly negative is untrue.
Critic reviews are mixed with average ratings in the %70-75 range. The trend for reviewers is that those who have played through to level 50 are overwhelmingly positive, while those who have only had a limited experience tend to dislike the game and use terms like stale, boring, repetitive.
This game isn't skyrim online, but unfortunately for most people that means it doesn't feel like a TES game, particularly if they aren't drawn in by the story.
The game isn't bad but it does get hate from all sides. The hate is NOT uniform though, and there's definitely no consensus as to WHY it is bad. In fact, people tend to go back and forth between praise and hate of the same features.
This is probably the only article that I have read that uniformly condemns pretty much all features of the game, which is what makes it that much more ridiculous in my eyes.
I men what exactly constitutes a lack of content? The game has more leveling/questing content in size and scope than all TES games and virtually all MMO's. Literally 300+ hours of just PVE questing content if you read all the dialog and 150+ if you don't.
I just can't wrap my head around the universal admonishment of all the game's features. It just makes no sense.
Appreciate your comments - they're definitely more constructive than some of the shrill attacks. Clearly this article is negative without holding any bars. It's not the worst, though, compared to this scathing bit-tech.net review (http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/pc/2014/04/22/the-elder-scrolls-online-review/1). The bit-tech.net review didn't receive all the hate that this article did, and I actually think this article did a better job of backing up the author's opinion with some actual analysis. Some of that is obviously debatable, but I think this author made an initial honest attempt to like the game, and then, in writing this review, tried to de-construct the reasons why he did not.
ESO is not a bad game, but people obviously had high expectations, and I think the hype plus the high pricing combined with the mediocre results just put people off - at least a large contingent of people, as there are clearly alot of people who love the game.
Personally, I'd like to see them do away with the entire beginning of the game, or at least allow someone to opt out. I'd like to just be plopped down into the world, having selected from a guild or trade or other starting scenario from a couple of dozen options. If they could take a page from the popular Skyrim mod "Alternate Start: Live another Life" or "Random Alternate Start", that would be a far more interesting and believable way. With the amount of investment made in this, that would not have been too hard to do. Players could still pick up the main quest-line, but in their own way and on their own schedule.
I'll admit I'm not a huge MMO fan in general. I loved Eve Online for a couple years, but most other MMOs are just too generic for my tastes. I obviously loved Skyrim, and continue to play that today with all the options the modding world has provided for that game. I'll tell you, though, of all the times I've played Skyrim, I've only played "Dragonborn" once. And I do alot of Minecraft with my kids, hosting a number of server instances with mod-packs for them and their friends.
I can certainly appreciate the vast effort going into ESO. I hope they can continue to improve, and I hope they don't just focus on providing enhanced content. They really need to go back and re-tool the beginning, to open up the options for how you chose to develop your character (not just in a battle-tactic sense, but in a true role-playing immersion sense).
Right now in Skyrim, I'm running through as a Breton thief. I carry only a dagger & crossbow and have leveled sneak and illusion spells. Using Alternate Start, I started out in the Thieve's Guild with nothing and had to negotiate my way out of the Ratway with Requiem installed (good luck with that), and built up my skills running the Thieve's Guild quest-line. With my previous play-thru, I lived off the land (Realistic Needs & Diseases plus Frostfall) as a Ranger type character, but with this play-thru, I'm living off stolen goods.
Finally leveled up a bit, last night, I spent 3+ hours poking around one of the larger bandit camps, scouting at first, then slowly sniping the outlier bandits, making my way in (from the mountain-side - not the front entrance), waiting, and eventually sneaking in a dagger kill on the leader while he was sleeping. With the boss loot and quest objective in hand, I used my Illusion spells to make my way out without having to engage anyone else. That was challenging and fun. I'd love to be able to do something like that in a group.
I really hope ESO can eventually replicate some of that immersion and role-playing capability in the MMO environment. As soon as they do, I'll be signing up.