Steven Baffy :
It is pretty clear that the review has an ulterior motive, and it is no coincidence that this article slights a sub based game that is far more successful than the "free to pay" flavor of the day games that are being portrayed as better. When I look at the money grabs that happen in STO and DDO and the dated, archaic, combat and game engines, then I know that this article is not being written with any measure of objectivity.
So how do you explain the piss-poor reviews ESO has received across the board? Are all of those bad reviews of ESO misguided? If this article were just one glaringly out-of-place opinion of ESO that would be one thing. But quite frankly, the absolute shrill tone of all of you people creating first-time IDs on Tom's Hardware forums to desperately attack this article calls into question your own motives much more than you can call to question the motives of the article's author.
You think people are stupid. The consensus is out on ESO, and it's not pretty. And this article is consistent with those reviews across the board. You can survey review after review, from Metacritic to PCGamer to Bit-tech.net to this article, and the feedback is the same.
So do you think that all of this consensus is misguided? THAT attitude is the mother of all arrogance and is just going to cause more problems for ESO. Perhaps you all should step back, take a breath, and perhaps try to understand why all of these bad reviews. You might have the opportunity to make the game better, rather than just try discredit your critics.
My own opinion is that ESO is technically well executed (despite the expected glitches), nothing of the nature of failures of other large releases. So I think the people doing the work on ESO did a phenomenal job in execution. The problem stems from the top. The whole thing is just misguided, and it is simply not a worthy successor in the Elder Scrolls franchise.
The one thing that it comes down to it for me is "Immersion", in the RPG sense of the word. When I look at all of the video coverage, what strikes me the most about ESO is it looks like Disney. You "run" dungeons like you go ride a ride at Disney. The NPCs have about as much character as the life-sized puppets you see at Pirates of the Caribbean. Running a dungeon is just like running through the river going from one exhibit to the next. MOBs have absolutely no AI until you start fighting them. There is no "unfolding" of an immersive experience as you make your way though. You run up and start fighting one bunch (always in a circle, in the open, surrounding the obviously larger and more powerful boss), while another group sits idle in plain view probably 25 meters away. Tactically, it looks interesting and challenging, if you're into that sort of thing. But strategically, and from a true role-play standpoint, it is just plain dumbed-down.
Bottom line is, technically, its wonderfully done, but it's over-produced and just not interesting at a nuanced and more sophisticated and immersive level that I think people expect out of an Elder Scrolls game.
So, you can go on with your desperate attacks at this author, or you can perhaps try to listen to the feedback and work on improving the game. You can knock me for criticizing the game without buying it, but the bottom line is you've lost any chance at me buying the game for the foreseeable future. You wanted the Elder Scrolls name to sell users on $80 one-time plus $15/month. Now, you need to earn it. You're not going to earn it by cynically bashing your critics.