Elder Scrolls Online - Is this any good now?

HiddenX

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Technewstoday checked out The Elder Scrolls Online:

The Elder Scrolls Online Review - Is this any good now?

The multiplayer Tamriel experience has improved so much since its debut

The Elder Scrolls Online is a challenging game to review. It's the reason why The Elder Scrolls VI still doesn't exist, even if Bethesda is building a new graphical engine for the game. Even if it exists within the fantasy world of Tamriel, the Online RPG doesn't feel like a part of the franchise it entails.

Many years after its launch, though, the game is indeed playable. The best thing about this persistent MMORPG world is how it doesn't require monthly fees or additional payments. Check-in once, and your wallet will be safe to play the rest of the content.

If you want to play the next chapters, though, you'd have to pay for the DLC, albeit most of them carry plenty of extra content.

[...]

Final Say

Ultimately, everything we discussed makes for a great MMORPG game. Yet, it's not the exact recipe for a great The Elder Scrolls entry.

TESO is a successful game on its rights, but it just falls flat against Skyrim, Oblivion, or Morrowing. The difference lies in its plot, storytelling, characters, and overall writing. The single-player experience has the level of...well, an MMORPG title.

Still, roaming across Tamriel with a squad of friends is a rewarding experience. Even if the combat is not very thrilling, the number of things to craft and create and the multitude of skills to explore make for an immersive experience.

Overall, I say The Elder Scrolls Online as a 7/10 game. It's worth a try, don't expect this to be an excellent single-player RPG. It is what it is. TESO is an online, ongoing experience with a broad crafting system plus an okay skill system.

I have to close by saying Bethesda is planning to create an Xbox Series X/S version and a PlayStation 5 version. However, because Microsoft bought Bethesda recently, we don't know if the title will stay on the PlayStation storefront for long.

Lastly, TESO is commonly on discount on the Steam store, selling for under $10. The standard game includes all of the content except for Greymoor. For that kind of money, TESO is worth it!

More information.
 
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What is this "Morrowing" you speak of?
 
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I believe TESO is an abomination that should have never seen the light of day, just like the article that is just about five years late. If this was written in 2016, some people may have wondered if TESO was worth playing then. In 2021 the answer is just obvious: don't touch it with a ten-meter pole, you'll only regret it and lose respect for a great franchise. :heart:
 
Right now, I think TESO is the best MMO on the market. It may not be your single-player Skyrim but as an MMO it does so much correctly. The entire world scales with your level, you can play with anyone from noob to complete veteran, the microtransactions are completely skippable, you can play most of the game without a subscription, and the benefits to a subscription service makes complete sense (craft bag, free older DLC content, etc).

Again, it may not be to the liking of someone who is a hardcore fan of the single player games, however, what it is, is an MMO done correctly.

I have played both single player games since Arena and TESO. I understand the differences and I still love TESO.

Lue.
 
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You can get certainly some fun out of TESO - I played it for one year very intensively (>2000 hours), but then I had seen every mechanic/dungeon and was way too rich and could craft the most exclusive weapons myself. The challenge was gone.
 
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I hope you got your money's worth, HiddenX. That's a years worth of working hours. If it cost less than your yearly salary, it was a steal :D

P.S. I'm one of the big SP TES fans and I found ESO to be pretty fun too. Mostly just following the High Elven campaign. I need to go back and play it again. It is to date one of the only MMO games I've tried.
 
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ESO always rode the edge of just fun enough to play while I was logged on. I never felt a strong pull to log back in. For me, I'm not sure it's quite good enough to justify the hundreds of hours that MMOs ask for but hard to knock anybody else for enjoying it. It's definitely a strong alternative to the usual WoW theme park.

If you go in wanting a full MMO or a full single player Elder Scrolls game, either way will disappoint. If you think some kind of hybrid can be fun (with level scaling), then you're in for a treat.
 
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I played ESO for about half a year, but stopped because of two things:
1. There are so many materials (and constantly more being added with each DLC) that you soon ran out of space in your inventory. You then had two option, spend your valuable free time playing inventory management instead of the game or pay the subscription and get the craft bag. But I always felt that is it a bad design which is fixed via a patch than you only get if you pay for it monthly.
2. The other problem is animation cancelling. If you do it correctly you can get +50% dps. The problem is that it is not an intended feature but an exploit that they decided not to fix. But if you have a high ping, it is impossible to get the timing right, so you do a lot less damage than other players even if you have better gear. I live in a different continent than the servers so I always have a high ping.
 
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I played ESO for about half a year, but stopped because of two things:
1. There are so many materials (and constantly more being added with each DLC) that you soon ran out of space in your inventory. You then had two option, spend your valuable free time playing inventory management instead of the game or pay the subscription and get the craft bag. But I always felt that is it a bad design which is fixed via a patch than you only get if you pay for it monthly.
2. The other problem is animation cancelling. If you do it correctly you can get +50% dps. The problem is that it is not an intended feature but an exploit that they decided not to fix. But if you have a high ping, it is impossible to get the timing right, so you do a lot less damage than other players even if you have better gear. I live in a different continent than the servers so I always have a high ping.

I spent quite a bit of time with this game, wanted to give it a fair shot, but the devs attitude towards animation cancelling(which I saw as a form of cheating/exploiting)just ruined it for me. The devs did not seem to care about it or plan to do anything to stop it, which really caused me to want to turn my back on the game and never return. If I am going to spend time in an mmorpg, I would like it to be one where the devs take a strict stance opposing cheating/exploiting and make sure that those kinds of things cannot be done, or if they are done, they are quickly fixed so they can never be repeated.
Another thing I did not like about the game was no central auction house to buy and sell stuff(which I believe was a dumb decision by the devs). You had to join a guild(and could be in as many as 5 guilds at once) to buy and sell things to other players and the guilds I came across charged weekly fees. The fees I saw ranged from 0-10,000 gold per week. I heard rumors of some guilds that charged an even higher weekly fee. From my experience, the guilds that had no weekly fee, things didn't sell very well there. The high fee guilds, things sold better. But if you did not have a lot of play time, the guild fees would suck up most or all of your profits. And if you took a break from the game, guilds would kick you out for inactivity and you might not be able to re-join a guild after being kicked out of it and have to find another one who would be willing to accept you. It was quite frustrating.
Another problem I had with the game, is they had powerful overland bosses that could take 10 minutes or more to defeat, maybe as long as 20 minutes if you were soloing it. And the loot you get was really lame and not worth the time and effort. I thought maybe there was a chance for rare drops that would make it worth the effort, but never saw any loot of any real value to me that made it worth it after fighting many of these bosses.
Another thing that bothered me was the game did not seem to have any instanced dungeons. For example, heading into a non-instanced dungeon, there could be quite a few other players down there, and if you have a quest to kill a boss down there, you would have to wait your turn to get a chance to fight it. And if you didn't pay close attention while waiting while fighting other monsters down there that keep respawning, someone else could come along and kill the boss quickly before you could act, then you'd have to wait again for the re-spawn. I felt it would have been much better to give players a choice when entering a dungeon, do you want an instanced dungeon you can enter with just yourself or your group, or do you want a non-instanced dungeon open to everyone?
If not for those aforementioned problems I had with the game, I would have found it significantly more enjoyable.
 
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My feelings about ESO are lukewarm. I think it's probably one of the best MMOs available right now if you get that craving for a big open world with lots of stuff to do. And there's tons of fun houses, the Summerset Isles expansion is fun, and there's lots of fun things to buy that improve your experience.

You're strongarmed into subbing with the "infinite materials" bag, but I was always a bigger fan of subbed MMOs anyway, so I guess I don't mind. The quality of play in this game is higher than almost anything else available right now - to say nothing of all the shoddy, cluttered MMOs that are coming out of Asia to bury us alive.

I keep thinking about going back…
 
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Allow me to share the short ESO review I wrote on Steam about four years ago.
As you will see, I did not play it much, just doing the tutorial and very early game.

Some people found the review funny, as I tell the story of my terrible experience as new player. :)

Poor early game design made me go away from this game.

++++++++ My humble review: a noob experience in ESO ++++++++++++
(November 2016)

I took advantage of the free trial and I have played ESO for a few hours. Before that, I have played all the following MMORPGs, starting in 1996(!) : Meridian 59, Ultima Online, World of Warcraft, SWTOR and FF XIV, so I have some experience with this type of game. BTW, I liked all of these games.

Of course, I have limited knowledge of ESO but what I know is that I did not experience the initial appeal I had in all other MMOs.

I find ESO very generic, without real personality. Ultimately, I stared finding ESO boring. I intended to spend the whole weekend testing (and maybe enjoying) this game but something happened that just made me stop and uninstall the game.

Indeed, in a shop I clicked by mistake on a display armor and automatically stole it! I had no intention to do it so I was somewhat upset. Stupid UI! In this game, it is easier and faster to steal a heavy armor than to collect a plant. There may be an option not to steal, but I am not aware of it. If it exists, it should be off by default, with people activating it voluntarily.

Leaving the shop; I stumbled on a guard, who spoke to me, offering three options: pay a fine, fight (which means flee or be killed) or try to convince the guard that you have the support of important people. I was intrigued by this last option and spent a few seconds trying to figure out if I could use and what would be the consequences if I failed. Big mistake! You have limited time to answer. When I realized that the counter was close to zero, I clicked on "pay fine" but it was too late, the guard wanted to kill me! I tried to flee but could not move for some reason. Anyway, I was now really upset against this game that made me do things against my will so I exited as my character was about to die. I have no idea what are of the consequences of death in this game but I do not care anymore.

I uninstalled ESO and I am glad I did it.
 
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The level scaling ruined it for me. I don't want to be able to go everywhere at lvl 1. I grew up on the Might and Magic series. So much of the fun was looking at those great maps and thinking one day I will be able to go into the desert and kill that giant scorpion that just destroyed me.

ESO does have great exploration and well-designed zones and quests.
 
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I quit in the end, because my guild "demanded" my character each day as a leader for the Alliance War in Cyrodiil. It was fun for many weeks, but felt like a mini-job later on.
It's not easy to fight against the other high ranking guilds if you don't train on a daily basis. My group was feared for a while...
 
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The level scaling ruined it for me. I don't want to be able to go everywhere at lvl 1. I grew up on the Might and Magic series. So much of the fun was looking at those great maps and thinking one day I will be able to go into the desert and kill that giant scorpion that just destroyed me.
I did not play ESO long enough to notice the level scaling but I totally agree with you about Might and Magic series. Sometimes, I was able to sneak in areas that were far too strong for me and steal some treasure. These are very good memories. I loved games like Elex for the same reason.

Level scaling completely wasted games for me; in its first version, Oblivion was a prefect example of this kind of terrible design.
 
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I've enjoyed it. It offers allot of content that can be solo'ed, as well as massive player events everyone helps out with in reward for individual loot boxes. I ended up becoming a fat Orc Merchant in five Trade Guilds. I only started playing it because I enjoy playing roles. ;)
 
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