Poll: Elder Scrolls Online, a few weeks after release.

[sanquin]

EDIT:
So the poll options won't work properly for some reason. The 3 and 4 get cut off.
3 = I didn't buy it, but plan on buying it later.
4 = I didn't and won't buy it.



So, ESO has been out for a few weeks now. And Angry Joe did his Review of it yesterday. His verdict? 4/10 for PvE, 7/10 for PvP.


His problems with the game?
-Grouping is totally pointless. It feels like you're playing a singleplayer game, but not enough so that you can play it as one.
-Linear questing. You're basically just following a narrow line through the quest area's.
-Can't help friends. Once you've complete a quest you can't help a friend do it any more for instance.
-Tons of glitches and bugs, some of them highly noticeable and even game breaking.
-Enemies drop barely any gold even at max level, let alone gear. (2g and nothing else from a mini boss for a quest, while normal mobs give 1g? All while a good horse costs 41k gold.)
-Imperial behind 20 dollar paywall, good mounts almost impossible to grind for, urging you to pay real money to get them, etc.
-Floaty first person combat, and overall the combat doesn't have as much impact as he'd like.
-Graphics are 'passable', not even 'good'.
-PvE has a lot of pointlessness and underwhelming 'bosses' for normal quests. Level design is apparently pretty poor later on. A sense of discovery and wonder is only rarely found.
-Game constantly breaks immersion, mostly because it's an mmorpg. Though it could have been fixed with all the phasing they're already doing in the game.

His positive points?
-PvP is great. (though you can get just as good elsewhere, and without sub.)
-Voice acting and sound. Some voices are poorly chosen, but overall the sound and voice acting is great.
-Freedom to pick whatever weapon and armor you want to wear, with whatever class.
-Crafting appears to be pretty good.
-He had a ton of fun in the faction vs faction vs faction pvp raids.


Well, that's everything I picked up from watching the review at least. And I for one am glad that I didn't buy this game in the first week of launch. I did think about it. I was excited for an Elder Scrolls mmo, but got this constant feeling of 'you'll regret buying this game in a month if you do so', and apparently that feeling was right. I wouldn't be surprised if it'll just be another mmo that goes F2P within half a year, and moves to the background together with DCUO, SW:TOR, DDO, LOTRO, and others. Maybe I'll play it for a while once it's F2P though.

So, did you buy the game? And do you enjoy it?

 

[Requia]

Everything I need to know about ESO:

It has a subscription fee *and* a cash store.

 

[Johnny Impact]

I've never been big on multiplayer.

For me multiplayer is about people, meaning a select group of about ten friends, relatives, and friends-of-friends who are worth playing with. Depending on the game, random folks can be anything from single-serving friends to game-destroying asshats. That's not a die I like to roll.

For me a large part of the appeal of Elder Scrolls has been playing alone. On one hand, the world is big enough to make you wonder how much difference any one person can make. On the other, there's a tremendous sense of agency, the feeling that you and nobody else are going to delve these corners and solve these problems.

Also, my take on MMOs is they're designed for fanatical, five-hours-a-night, this-game-and-no-others-forever types. Certainly they can be played by others but that's who they're catering to. I don't game that way.

Everything I need to know about ESO:

It has a subscription fee *and* a cash store.

Also this. I'm already not playing my copy of Guild Wars 2. I certainly don't need to pay a monthly fee to not play ESO or any other MMO. Did that with EVE for a while, skill points ticking over while I did other things for two months. Eventually realized I had no further interest.

 

[Zhukov]

People do seem to have gone awfully quiet about ESO.

It was one of those games that people were hailing as the next big thing. "It'll be just like Skyrim, but with friends! Soooo epiiiiiic!!"

Then it releases and... nothing.

I don't know if it's because it's so awesome that they can't tear themselves away long enough to sing its praises or because it's so dull and average that nobody can muster up the energy to complain about it.

 

[Magix]

Well, I personally stopped paying attention to it when I realized that they're triple dipping with an initial fee, monthly payments and THEN a cash shop.. Not sure but it probably has some preorder crap as well just to milk some extra money out of the consumers.

I ignored videos and discussions on it because I knew I wasn't gonna get it (and I say get because "buy" doesn't even begin to include all the levels of payment you have to make to enjoy this bloody thing). Looks like I didn't miss much.

 

[Ender910_v1legacy]

People do seem to have gone awfully quiet about ESO.

It was one of those games that people were hailing as the next big thing. "It'll be just like Skyrim, but with friends! Soooo epiiiiiic!!"

Then it releases and... nothing.

I don't know if it's because it's so awesome that they can't tear themselves away long enough to sing its praises or because it's so dull and average that nobody can muster up the energy to complain about it.

More-so the latter, and because I don't like trying to argue with your typical mmo players.

Let's take a look at that list and see what's wrong/innaccurate with this review:

-Grouping is totally pointless. It feels like you're playing a singleplayer game, but not enough so that you can play it as one.

Bullshit. I've been grouping with my friends in PVE REGULARLY. We'll run through some dungeons together, go exploring, or travel together in the pvp zone. However, one nice thing in this game is that you CAN play it like a singleplayer game on occasion. That's something I've rarely seen in an mmorpg, or at least done properly.

-Linear questing. You're basically just following a narrow line through the quest area's.

...Yes and no. It very much depends on the quest. Some quests are kind of like following a bunch of dotted lines, but others do require a fair bit of involvement. I think this is an area that could use a little improvement, but at least the quests are very varied, and oftentimes interesting.

-Can't help friends. Once you've complete a quest you can't help a friend do it any more for instance.

Patently false. You can usually travel to a friend and help them out with a quest or a dungeon, regardless of your level. The only exceptions are most of the quests that take place in Cold Harbor, and some of the Mage's/Fighter's Guild quests.

-Tons of glitches and bugs, some of them highly noticeable and even game breaking.

This is somewhat true, but few games release without some bugs, so this isn't something you really should factor in unless the game remains this buggy for another month or two.

-Enemies drop barely any gold even at max level, let alone gear. (2g and nothing else from a mini boss for a quest, while normal mobs give 1g? All while a good horse costs 41k gold.)

This is just a poor understanding of the economic system in Elder Scrolls. If you want to make gold, you don't just kill and loot gold. You sell off weapons that you loot, or crafting materials you gather up, or you make money by selling crafted items to other players. Also, quests offer a decent amount of gold too. And.... aside from bank upgrades, repairs, and horses, you don't usually spend gold on much else. It's very much a player driven economy. There are some things that could probably be improved though admittedly.

-Floaty first person combat, and overall the combat doesn't have as much impact as he'd like.

I can understand this, although one does have to understand that the game does a superb job for a game of its type. It's the only mmorpg I've been able to play without wanting to gauge out my eyes because of mediocre hotbar combat.

-Graphics are 'passable', not even 'good'

Now he's just getting petty. The graphics are beautiful, and the artistic style is excellent. If he's going to ***** about graphics in an open world MMORPG, on a brand new engine, then I don't think there's any pleasing him.

-PvE has a lot of pointlessness and underwhelming 'bosses' for normal quests. Level design is apparently pretty poor later on. A sense of discovery and wonder is only rarely found.

I haven't played enough to get to this point in the game yet (still maybe... 1/3 through one faction so far?) but there is some degree of lackluster dungeon design I'll agree. Something that they did okay on, but could do better (and many other games have done far far worse).

-Game constantly breaks immersion, mostly because it's an mmorpg. Though it could have been fixed with all the phasing they're already doing in the game.

Yeah... that's kind of a given, and it annoys me with some quests, most definitely. I think they should try and offer some private instance options or something, once they've optimized the servers and netcode a bit more.

-PvP is great. (though you can get just as good elsewhere, and without sub.

Surprisingly, I'm not a huge fan of the pvp. Which is why I'm confused as to why most reviewers seem to emphasize this so much. I mean it's not poorly designed, but I don't find it anywhere near as satisfying in that regard as Planetside 2.

Everything I need to know about ESO:

It has a subscription fee *and* a cash store.

Um.... no, that's not really what I'd call a cash store. You can't even access it from in-game. It's just some of the bonus content from the Imperial Edition that you can order separately on their site. That's it. If you just want the horse, then you can get the horse without paying for the whole Imperial edition. And it's an unlockable for ALL characters on your account. You want to look at a bloated cash store? Look at every other MMO out there. In Star Trek Online you can pay twenty bucks for a ship. In DDO, you have to pay for almost every kind of content if you don't want to grind repeatedly. In World of Tanks you once had premium gold shells that were one time USE.

I'm not sure why there's a certain lack of attention for Elder Scrolls Online. Probably because Zenimax/Bethesda doesn't really spend a whole lot of money and effort on hyping up their games to market them?

 

[JayRPG]

There are so many problems with ESO I don't even know where to begin.

Basically, If you play MMORPGs for PvE content (which a majority do) then it is rubbish, not a single piece of challenging PvE content to be seen, no raids (and don't give me that BS about 12 man shit, that is not raiding), the engine is absolute shite which means they'll never be able to make decent PvE content mechanics (the same problem swtor had, graphics engine was trash), dungeons are trash, everything about the PvE side of this game, including solo and questing is simply rubbish.

Graphics are blegh, it's like playing something released early in the PS2 life cycle.

Game-breaking bugs, progression halting, duping bugs that destroyed the entire economy, less than stellar speed on bug resolution.

ESO will never be an MMO that any type of player other than a PVP player will want to play, they have hedged all their bets on PVP content which is relatively good but being held back by fairly shitty combat and gameplay.

It was launched WAY too early, it needs A LOT of work.



P.S I've been playing the Wildstar Beta for quite some time, developed by more than 20 Ex-WoW Vanilla and BC devs, they know exactly what they are doing, they have made a perfectly functional MMO, the engine works, it allows for unlimited mechanics potential, gameplay is smooth, the PvE is HARD, the first real dungeon at level 20 has difficult trash pulls, the bosses all have complex and wildly varying mechanics. It's like what WoW would be like now if it had just stuck to it's early BC design but with a lot more polish and all the advancements we have today.

It's been in development for over 4 years so it isn't being rushed out the door, I'm not going to say something stupid about it being a WoW-killer because there is no such thing but it is shaping into the MMO for the hardcore raiding community (20 and 40 man raids, as well as 2x40 [80 man!] outdoor raid bosses that require coordinated timing, attunements, trash pulls that are more than AoE etc) with a lot of prominent hardcore guilds and gaming communities prepping for launch.

P.P.S Many people look at the graphics of wildstar and say something they don't know anything about, it is the artstyle that some dislike, the graphics (and particularly the engine) are phenomenal, there is a reason that almost no other MMO released with 'way better graphics' than WoW has never been able to get even close to the raiding potential WoW has and that is because they all use engines that are designed for games that are not MMOs and MMOs require specific things from the engine to produce mechanics, WoW can still create unique mechanics today in what most people would call their crappy graphics but they aren't crappy, it's actually a tremendously powerful graphical engine for it's purpose. Wildstar's engine was built from the ground up and shares similarities with WoW's and this is a good thing.

 

[jehk]

P.S I've been playing the Wildstar Beta for quite some time, developed by more than 20 Ex-WoW Vanilla and BC devs, they know exactly what they are doing, they have made a perfectly functional MMO, the engine works, it allows for unlimited mechanics potential, gameplay is smooth, the PvE is HARD, the first real dungeon at level 20 has difficult trash pulls, the bosses all have complex and wildly varying mechanics. It's like what WoW would be like now if it had just stuck to it's early BC design but with a lot more polish and all the advancements we have today.

You have officially made me super excited for Wildstar.

OT: ESO is flawed yet still fun. I'm going to play it like most MMOs I've played since WoW. I'll get a few months of enjoyment out of it then move on. I don't really see that as a bad thing.

 

[Tanis]

'Other'.

I'm interested in the game, but I'm not sure if it's worth the monthly fee or 60USD.

Plus, EVERY MMO starts off with bug after bug after problem.
I'll wait a while till the game has been fixed, at least as fixed as any TES ever get.

 

[JayRPG]

P.S I've been playing the Wildstar Beta for quite some time, developed by more than 20 Ex-WoW Vanilla and BC devs, they know exactly what they are doing, they have made a perfectly functional MMO, the engine works, it allows for unlimited mechanics potential, gameplay is smooth, the PvE is HARD, the first real dungeon at level 20 has difficult trash pulls, the bosses all have complex and wildly varying mechanics. It's like what WoW would be like now if it had just stuck to it's early BC design but with a lot more polish and all the advancements we have today.

You have officially made me super excited for Wildstar.

There is a lot to be excited about!

I rarely, if ever, jump on any games hype train and I don't like to hype Wildstar, it just feels like the game was made for me, it is definitely geared towards the players who felt WoW lost it's way in WotLK, players who enjoyed the really challenging PvE content in Vanilla and BC.

Even little things like the gear in the 20 man raids and the 40 man raids are COMPLETELY different, it isn't just re-coloured garbage, it seems like such a small thing but it is so much more satisfying knowing that I won't look like literally every other person in the game, it puts a sense of accomplishment into the game that WoW has lost, now having that badass piece of gear actually means something because it is distinct.

Double-jumping and insane exploration freedom, not only can you double jump and pretty much scale your way anywhere, there are items, interactables and "touchables" that give you zero-gravity like buffs, super jumps and the like. The map is 100% complete, they have rendered everywhere, and there are perks to exploring crazy places like special hidden quests.

Player housing is done brilliantly, it is an amazing time sink, it isn't in the general world so it's not some cheap gimmick to say you are effecting the world, the housing plots are little floating cities in the sky, each player gets one and there are thousands of decor items you can find, buy and place there; People have made skate parks, 3D mazes and all kinds of crazy stuff on their housing plot.

Carbine are appealing to a niche market, it will not appeal to everyone, it is a grown ups MMO, it is a hardcore players MMO. It just so happens that I am well into the niche they are making the game for and I believe the niche is a rather large one that isn't being catered to effectively at the moment.

 

[Grimh]

Haven't bought it and most likely will not.
I'm just not that interested. I played during one of the beta weekends and was just bored throughout.
I guess it's just not for me.

Hmm I wonder how that Wildstar game is coming alo-

The Wildest of Stars

Oh, well, that does sound pretty good.

 

[ohnoitsabear]

'Other'.

I'm interested in the game, but I'm not sure if it's worth the monthly fee or 60USD.

Plus, EVERY MMO starts off with bug after bug after problem.
I'll wait a while till the game has been fixed, at least as fixed as any TES ever get.

That's sort of what I'm feeling. I was pretty excited for this game after playing the beta, and I don't really have a problem with the subscription fee, but the fifteen dollar a month subscription on top of the sixty dollar box price is too much for me. I was only ever planning to play for a month or two at a time, and that is just too big of an initial price for me to justify doing something like that.

Plus, I've just been hearing not great things about the game. However, pretty much all of the problems I've heard are things that can be addressed given time. I would just rather hold back until they are addressed than jump in now when all of the problems are at their worst.

 

[TaboriHK]

I bought it last week and have played it for a grand total of about two hours. There is NOTHING in it that has grabbed me so far, and quite a bit that has turned me off. It's not fun. The combat is painful. Texture pop-in problems abound. It feels like a game that is not sure what it wants to be, so it settles with nothing. Maybe it gets better at higher levels, but this game makes SWTOR look thrilling in comparison. At least with SWTOR I really got into the story, if nothing else.

It astounds me that these games don't just take more part and parcel from WoW. Whether you like WoW or not, it is a game that flows, with a combat system that works SO MUCH BETTER. This is an MMO. If melee combat is going to come across all floaty and weird, don't do it. Just steal from WoW. I can't overstate how inseparable I'd be from SWTOR if it had WoW mechanics. The same could possibly even be true of ESO. As it stands, I have not been grabbed.

 

[Kyber]

I won't buy it, even after I have promised to buy everyone of the elder scrolls games after I spent so many hours in Morrowind and Cyrodiil, but this isn't really an Elder Scrolls game, the lore is all wrong, the cost of it is absurd, and I don't think the series is fit for the MMO genre.

 

[DarkhoIlow]

I bought it and enjoyed it somewhat at first then after encountering countless bugs that will halt my progress and long loading times that enjoyment started to fade more and more.

I finally reached level 50 and to my surprise once you reach max level what do they let you do? More quests in the other two factions with scaled up enemies! Hooray! (not)

I don't think I will sub, so I'm glad that I did what I wanted to do in my first 30 days. The fact that it has no endgame is a con in it's favor as well.

The fact that it tries to be Skyrim with multiplayer doesn't help either. There is no scrolling combat text so you are forced to get addons for that and just typical MMO that you would find in everything else.

I might pick it back up once it goes free to play, but my overall score of the game is around 6/7. Didn't impress me at all.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

-Grouping is totally pointless. It feels like you're playing a singleplayer game, but not enough so that you can play it as one.

There are absolutely instances where grouping is both helpful and necessary. Most of the game, however, does not require a group. This is true of any MMO I can recall.

-Linear questing. You're basically just following a narrow line through the quest area's.

I'd say ESO is less linear than most. You can easily tackle mobs of a much higher level than you are given how relatively little power you gain each level.

-Can't help friends. Once you've complete a quest you can't help a friend do it any more for instance.

While very mildly annoying the result is that if I go and save a town from bandits, the town is thereafter saved from the bandits. This ensures the things I do in the game actually reflect in the game.

-Tons of glitches and bugs, some of them highly noticeable and even game breaking.

I agree that these exist. My experience has been relatively pleasant on this front with just a handful of issues. One of my friends has had a less positive experience.

-Enemies drop barely any gold even at max level, let alone gear. (2g and nothing else from a mini boss for a quest, while normal mobs give 1g? All while a good horse costs 41k gold.)

In levels 1 - 14 of play I amassed more than 10k gold. A cheap horse is 14k.

-Imperial behind 20 dollar paywall, good mounts almost impossible to grind for, urging you to pay real money to get them, etc.

I got my horse by playing the game. The only things you actually need to spend gold on are your horse and your backpack and bank sizes. It required no effort to get my horse by level 16 - I just didn't buy the stupidly expensive one (which, for the record, does not start out any faster than the other options). Given that MMOs generally hide mounts behind an arbitrary level wall asking for a pile of cash instead accomplishes the same thing. Except of course that if you roll a new character when you already have a high level one you could easily just bankroll a horse.

-Floaty first person combat, and overall the combat doesn't have as much impact as he'd like.

Thus far it has my favorite action of any MMO.

-Graphics are 'passable', not even 'good'.

This statement requires tremendous qualification since I don't know if he is commenting on the graphical technology or the art design.

-PvE has a lot of pointlessness and underwhelming 'bosses' for normal quests. Level design is apparently pretty poor later on. A sense of discovery and wonder is only rarely found.

Quest design is generally better than in other games. Given that quests are strewn across the world in such a way that you have to wander around to find them, I'd argue that the latter point is utter nonsense.

-Game constantly breaks immersion, mostly because it's an mmorpg. Though it could have been fixed with all the phasing they're already doing in the game.

The game sticks to it's guns as a proper RPG closer than most MMOS. Going to town is always a stark reminder that while you might be getting told that you're the important chosen one, so are thousands of others.

-Voice acting and sound. Some voices are poorly chosen, but overall the sound and voice acting is great.

They also appear to have many of the same voice actors as previous Bethesda games. I've run into voices I recognize from skyirm/fallout pretty regularly.

-Freedom to pick whatever weapon and armor you want to wear, with whatever class.

Because now I can play what amounts to a D&D cleric. Why should healers be stuck in cloth?

-Crafting appears to be pretty good.

Some of the crafting is relatively silly. Enchanting in particular is infuriating. Still, it is pretty easy to make sure you keep your gear up to date and you can always make a weapon or piece of armor that's as good as anything you'll find lying around.

So, did you buy the game? And do you enjoy it?

Thus far, in spite of being incredibly pessimistic about it before launch, I've had a fair amount of fun with it. That isn't to say that I believe the game is in an ideal state - while it isn't remotely necessary to group up for basic questing, the game could easily make the process more interesting. As it stands, grouping actually tends to slow you down simply because each person is required to complete each step by themselves often leading to confusion and backtracking where someone forgot to finish a conversation or failed to pick up enough widgets or what have you. Additionally, while they are rare, I have certainly run into bugs including falling through the world and a quest that just gets stuck. The only solution I've found to either is to stop playing for awhile and come back to it.

 

[Auberon]

Allow me to be the token neckbeard and long after Morrowind's alien atmosphere. Although Joe played Dominion and had no footage from the Pact, Zenimax can't be trusted on these matters.

 

[Voulan]

After playing in the Beta I found myself quite enjoying the experience, most definitely after you've reached level 20 and can really branch out into a unique character build and explore different areas. The only thing stopping me getting it is the 3 different ways we're expected to pay for it. It's a decent game, but not for that amount of money you have to pour into it.

It's definitely a game that you need to invest in before it takes a hold of your interest.

 

[PPB]

I didn't buy it. I played 2 beta weekends and I did see many things that I liked, but it ultimately felt underwhelming and didn't impress me enough to warrant the steep price of admission + subscription. I know I'm probably beating a dead horse, but it seems to me like the kind of game that should have taken Guild Wars 2's approach.

I expect that I'll play it eventually, but I'm definitely waiting until there's at least a serious trial or the probable F2P switch.