The Elder Scrolls Online

[Brunhildha]

Having played the Beta over this last weekend, I jotted down some quick notes to record my own impressions, and these have somehow become a “review”. The NDA still applies to individuals (but not to the press) so I must leave out the details, but for anyone interested here are my impressions.

The scenery.

Gorgeous. Not just highly detailed and beautifully rendered, but they have right balance between 'Perfect World' style eye candy, and gritty reality. The landscapes, townscapes and everything in them are clearly the result of loving attention, and the results are somehow both stunning and plausible.

I liked that they avoided the repetition that made Oblivion and Skyrim a little disappointing after Morrowind. Every region has its own ecology, architecture, culture and politics, and there is enough variation in building blocks not to notice that each cave is presumably made from the same tiles as the last one. The world is vast, and any explorers out there will have a great time.

The Community.

It was a highly advertised Beta weekend and the were apparently aiming at half a million online. The area chat was mostly goodnatured and often sensible. I got the feeling that there were TES fans, and MMO players, and that the former were generally happier than the latter.

Lag and Bugs

It took ages to log on, which is not surprising given the volume. In about ten hours of play I found and reported four or five different bugs, which seems fair for a Beta. Is it going to be clean when released on 4th April? Who knows but it seems pretty robust to me.

The Story.

Very familiar if you have played any TES game, and in complete contrast to WoW style “collect ten pigskins”. The Elder Scrolls lore is at least as deep as that in DDO, and in ESO was somehow more difficult to ignore than here. As usual, there are many side plots, but they all fitted in naturally to the progression, or so it felt to me. I deliberately avoided the main line after a bit, to explore sideways and to leave stuff for later.

I am sure that just exploring the vast virtual world and the many story lines has dozens hours of play in it. There even appears to be some re-play value, as a number of quest lines have turning points that your choices change, presumably for different outcomes.
Which brings me to the first problems.

It is very story driven, the voice acting is great, and I have no problem listening to NCPs then getting carried from pillar to post to sort out their problems. If you like running around carrying the plots of half a dozen side quests in your head at once, you will love this. But I doubt this will appeal to as many MMO players. Even for me, there were times when I felt like shouting “I just want to go and hit some goblins!” (not that I saw any goblins)

Secondly, how do you do this in a group? At least the NCPs support talking to many people at once, and you get used to each important NCP having a small crowd standing around them. Oddly, for a game so firmly targeted at immersion and role playing, homemade role playing in a group is going to be more difficult just because the game does it all for you.

The Mechanics.

You can always see every other player in sight, but the game handles the need for different players to be in different stages of a quest by hiding or changing the NCPs and interactive objects. In other words, you can see everyone else, but they might be looking at different things from you. It sounds messy but works surprisingly well. (It must have driven the devs nuts though!)

The main world works like a DDO special event, such as Mabar or Cove. You get used to seeing other players running in the same direction as you and in my play I joined and separated from informal groups on the fly. At our low level, co-ordination was limited but effective enough to take down any mob we found.

I don’t know how the “shards” work, but it is kept in the background. You are supposed to be automatically with your friends, and do not get to choose which instance to be in. The density of players in any area seemed very similar to say the Cove on a busy day. Phasing between areas is seamless and the use of gates, doors and bridges to demark them is skilful enough to be unnoticeable.

Instanced dungeons come later on, and presumably need more thought in the makeup of parties. The max party size is only four, which I can live with. I only tried one dungeon, in a duo, and crashed early on so I can’t say much except it felt exactly like an Aleid dungeon in Oblivion.

The menu systems are slick enough and better than in Skyrim. However, I detected the compromises needed to keep it compatible with consoles, which always slows things down.

The Characters

There are nine races, three in each of three nations, and there are ways to get round being the wrong race in a given nation. The differences are frankly, mostly cosmetic, although the cosmetics are great. Classes are more important, although, as with DDO, the devs make a big thing of “be anything, do anything”.

There are only three attributes, not six, and they act as reservoirs of resources that get used up, not as multipliers. All classes use all three (yes, magic types need stamina, and hitty types need magica).

In contrast to DDO there is one unified skill system which covers everything - spells, special attacks, defense, weapon use and even crafting. It is as if DDO Skill lines, Enhancements, Canith crafting skill and E.D.s were all rolled into one. And of course ESO does not benefit/suffer (depending on your view!) from the PnP D20 inheritance that both enriches and handicaps DDO.

Is this a dumbing down? On balance, I felt it is more streamlined than dumber. The skill tree is intuitive to use, and yet appears to have possibilities for clever character design later on. But the numbers are hidden, as with the combat (see below).

The Combat

Here is my second pause for thought. There is a scale of say Tera and DDO at one end, where targeting and movement are part of the joy of the game, and WoW (small shudder) at the other, where tab, hotkeys and cooldowns rule. This game clearly aims to be up at the DDO end of the scale, and has a similar combat mechanism. Indeed, I was able to map keys to reproduce exactly my DDO actions. BUT the animations don’t quite support the same twitch skills. Combat is a little slower paced, with tiny but critical delays to each action that make it feel quite different.

It has its own interesting features, (NDA excusing - block, dodge, power blow etc) and it felt more natural the longer I played. Still if, like me, you run DDO in 3rd person in mouselook, with characters that would die in seconds if they stood still in a battle, it will take you some time to get used to the different pace.

And you cannot change weapons in combat. (Well, at higher levels you get a second set, “Big deal!”) What? My DDO tempest ranger has half dozen pairs of swords, a devotion set and three bows hot-barred all the time. The unfortunate reason, as far as I can tell, is that you don't need to. Complexities of mob DR and vulnerabilities just don’t appear. In fact combat as a whole feels simpler, although this might change at higher levels. Whether you call this streamlining or dumbing down may be personal taste.

What is interesting is that it is all much less transparent than DDO. The mechanics are hidden, which adds to immersion but takes away from the intellectual challenge of improving your performance.

It is not helped by the clumsy animations generally. The graphics for the characters, both meshes and textures, leave DDO in the dust. But the animations just reminded me how good DDO feels to play. For an eight year old game, the natural and responsive movement of DDO characters is still a joy, and it sets the bar at a height that ESO does not clear.

Overall

The declared aim is to attract both the Elder Scrolls fans and every loose MMO player out there. This is almost too much of a stretch but they nearly pull it off, and I am comfortable that the result is much closer to Skyrim than to WoW.

My main doubt is a comment actually made in general chat several times over the weekend. “This feels like a great single person RPG but with you lot running around in it as well”. Whether this a good or a bad thing will be different for different people, and if you are not sure whether to stump up the cash to find out, that is the question you must decide for yourself.

[Rhaphael]

Interesting read. Thanks!

I haven't tried out the beta so it's nice to hear people's experiences. I remember hearing about it when they first announced it and most people I knew then were like "it's probably gonna be a generic MMO but just with Elder Scrolls lore". Did it feel like that to you too?

The part about "an MMO that plays as a single player RPG" is exactly how SWTOR felt to me as well. I played that for a year after release before I grew bored and came here. And that was mostly because I was in a great guild with a fixed raid group to help keep me occupied.

In fact have you played a lot of other MMO's? Because you compare every aspect to DDO, which of course makes sense because this is the DDO forum, but having played a lot of different MMO's myself in the past I would automatically compare it to all of those. But that's a personal thing.

AFAIK it has only the 4 basic classes every new MMO starts out with these days. How did these feel like to you? Was there still enough room for customization and uniqueness?

I'll keep my eye on ESO to see how it evolves.

[Impaqt]

You forgot one thing....

Subscription ONLY. and an Expensive one at that.

I dont see how an MMO will survive this day and age without a Free to play option. and I certainly dont feel anything I've seen from ESO so far to be worth a $80 initial investment PLUS $15 a Month.


I loves the early ES games. Have not gotten into the latest, but I was very excited to learn of ESO.. but the expense turned me completely off.
So funny that a few $$ can completely change your perspective on a game......

[Memnir]

I was probably a victim of my own high expectations - but I feel EOS was a bit of a let down. I'm no longer considering a pre-order, if I pick it up at all.

[stoopid_cowboy]

I was probably a victim of my own high expectations - but I feel EOS was a bit of a let down.

Agreed!

I did find that the scenery and artwork are probably better than ANY game ANYWHERE! Absolutely amazing!!!
But the combat felt, well, WoW'ish. To me, the combat felt like Rifte. Semi real time with constant clickies. I also hated the whole stamina concept! Nothing worse than sprinting up to a bad guy and basically having to wait for your stamina to regen enough to be able to fight.
Speaking of regen, I have never been a fan of stats always regenerating. Kind of rules out the need for a balanced party. "You're hurt? Go hide for a minute while I beat on this guy."

Story lines were great and very in depth. But who plays games for the story?

[murf201]

Agreed!

I did find that the scenery and artwork are probably better than ANY game ANYWHERE! Absolutely amazing!!!
But the combat felt, well, WoW'ish. To me, the combat felt like Rifte. Semi real time with constant clickies. I also hated the whole stamina concept! Nothing worse than sprinting up to a bad guy and basically having to wait for your stamina to regen enough to be able to fight.
Speaking of regen, I have never been a fan of stats always regenerating. Kind of rules out the need for a balanced party. "You're hurt? Go hide for a minute while I beat on this guy."

Story lines were great and very in depth. But who plays games for the story?

Yeah my char was beasting on mobs in beta , The more levels the higher your stamina gets if you don't fail to put points in it !!

There is gear as well btw !

Is there not clickies in most other games ? in the aspect of ddo aren't we waiting for cooldowns and blitz charges and such ?

[Rhaphael]

You forgot one thing....

Subscription ONLY. and an Expensive one at that.

I dont see how an MMO will survive this day and age without a Free to play option. and I certainly dont feel anything I've seen from ESO so far to be worth a $80 initial investment PLUS $15 a Month.


I loves the early ES games. Have not gotten into the latest, but I was very excited to learn of ESO.. but the expense turned me completely off.
So funny that a few $$ can completely change your perspective on a game......

SWTOR changed to F2P within a year, so there is still hope .

I agree though, nowadays MMO's should at least have the option of F2P.

[jalont]

You forgot one thing....

Subscription ONLY. and an Expensive one at that.

I dont see how an MMO will survive this day and age without a Free to play option. and I certainly dont feel anything I've seen from ESO so far to be worth a $80 initial investment PLUS $15 a Month.


I loves the early ES games. Have not gotten into the latest, but I was very excited to learn of ESO.. but the expense turned me completely off.
So funny that a few $$ can completely change your perspective on a game......

I thought the subscription model was in doubt now after the initial beta bomb? Either way, this seems to be the new model. Stay subscription for a few months and get the money from early adopters and then go f2p. Unless your name is final fantasy.

[Ungood]

I thought the subscription model was in doubt now after the initial beta bomb? Either way, this seems to be the new model. Stay subscription for a few months and get the money from early adopters and then go f2p. Unless your name is final fantasy.

If they drop the sub, I'll check it out.

I kinda like the Up-front cost for some products that have proven themselves, like GWII, which I read a dozen reviews before I invested my money, and I was really glad I bought the game, it was a great investment. But, I am also glad I waited, I treated like something I was looking froward to playing and thus I think I put in more effort to play then if it was F2P and since learning the controls of the game took some effort, and if it had been F2P I would have given up much sooner, and had not experienced such a great game.

I think a F2P model like DDO is better for a MMO trying to prove itself, and need to get people in to show them what a great product they have, where DDO is just fun walking in the door, it feels like a DnD game.

[taurean430]

DDO was the first MMO I've played. And I've been playing it now going on 6 years. So I don't have a backround consisting of trying out many other games. That said though, I actually like their sub model. And I only say this because people who are paying for access to a game for entertainment are overwhelmingly:

1. More helpful to other players.
2. Less disruptive to other players.
3. More interested in actually playing the game as opposed to exploiting it or other players.
4. Interested in making their characters viable and relevant to the content you run.

The list goes on and on. I could be wrong here, but I don't believe I am. Just watching: the quality of pugs, interactions with other gamers, laziness of other gamers joining your groups for difficult content completely unprepared, over a 6 year peroid has convinced me of this.

Throughout the beta I've encountered a very small number of players who choose to be a burden or attempt to grief. I wasn't suprised to read them trolling general chat with open complaints about the subscription model. And although I didn't have a problem with them doing it, I'd pay to not have to deal with people like that at all...

[arkonas]

Having played the Beta over this last weekend, I jotted down some quick notes to record my own impressions, and these have somehow become a “review”. The NDA still applies to individuals (but not to the press) so I must leave out the details, but for anyone interested here are my impressions.

The scenery.

Gorgeous. Not just highly detailed and beautifully rendered, but they have right balance between 'Perfect World' style eye candy, and gritty reality. The landscapes, townscapes and everything in them are clearly the result of loving attention, and the results are somehow both stunning and plausible.

I liked that they avoided the repetition that made Oblivion and Skyrim a little disappointing after Morrowind. Every region has its own ecology, architecture, culture and politics, and there is enough variation in building blocks not to notice that each cave is presumably made from the same tiles as the last one. The world is vast, and any explorers out there will have a great time.

The Community.

It was a highly advertised Beta weekend and the were apparently aiming at half a million online. The area chat was mostly goodnatured and often sensible. I got the feeling that there were TES fans, and MMO players, and that the former were generally happier than the latter.

Lag and Bugs

It took ages to log on, which is not surprising given the volume. In about ten hours of play I found and reported four or five different bugs, which seems fair for a Beta. Is it going to be clean when released on 4th April? Who knows but it seems pretty robust to me.

The Story.

Very familiar if you have played any TES game, and in complete contrast to WoW style “collect ten pigskins”. The Elder Scrolls lore is at least as deep as that in DDO, and in ESO was somehow more difficult to ignore than here. As usual, there are many side plots, but they all fitted in naturally to the progression, or so it felt to me. I deliberately avoided the main line after a bit, to explore sideways and to leave stuff for later.

I am sure that just exploring the vast virtual world and the many story lines has dozens hours of play in it. There even appears to be some re-play value, as a number of quest lines have turning points that your choices change, presumably for different outcomes.
Which brings me to the first problems.

It is very story driven, the voice acting is great, and I have no problem listening to NCPs then getting carried from pillar to post to sort out their problems. If you like running around carrying the plots of half a dozen side quests in your head at once, you will love this. But I doubt this will appeal to as many MMO players. Even for me, there were times when I felt like shouting “I just want to go and hit some goblins!” (not that I saw any goblins)

Secondly, how do you do this in a group? At least the NCPs support talking to many people at once, and you get used to each important NCP having a small crowd standing around them. Oddly, for a game so firmly targeted at immersion and role playing, homemade role playing in a group is going to be more difficult just because the game does it all for you.

The Mechanics.

You can always see every other player in sight, but the game handles the need for different players to be in different stages of a quest by hiding or changing the NCPs and interactive objects. In other words, you can see everyone else, but they might be looking at different things from you. It sounds messy but works surprisingly well. (It must have driven the devs nuts though!)

The main world works like a DDO special event, such as Mabar or Cove. You get used to seeing other players running in the same direction as you and in my play I joined and separated from informal groups on the fly. At our low level, co-ordination was limited but effective enough to take down any mob we found.

I don’t know how the “shards” work, but it is kept in the background. You are supposed to be automatically with your friends, and do not get to choose which instance to be in. The density of players in any area seemed very similar to say the Cove on a busy day. Phasing between areas is seamless and the use of gates, doors and bridges to demark them is skilful enough to be unnoticeable.

Instanced dungeons come later on, and presumably need more thought in the makeup of parties. The max party size is only four, which I can live with. I only tried one dungeon, in a duo, and crashed early on so I can’t say much except it felt exactly like an Aleid dungeon in Oblivion.

The menu systems are slick enough and better than in Skyrim. However, I detected the compromises needed to keep it compatible with consoles, which always slows things down.

The Characters

There are nine races, three in each of three nations, and there are ways to get round being the wrong race in a given nation. The differences are frankly, mostly cosmetic, although the cosmetics are great. Classes are more important, although, as with DDO, the devs make a big thing of “be anything, do anything”.

There are only three attributes, not six, and they act as reservoirs of resources that get used up, not as multipliers. All classes use all three (yes, magic types need stamina, and hitty types need magica).

In contrast to DDO there is one unified skill system which covers everything - spells, special attacks, defense, weapon use and even crafting. It is as if DDO Skill lines, Enhancements, Canith crafting skill and E.D.s were all rolled into one. And of course ESO does not benefit/suffer (depending on your view!) from the PnP D20 inheritance that both enriches and handicaps DDO.

Is this a dumbing down? On balance, I felt it is more streamlined than dumber. The skill tree is intuitive to use, and yet appears to have possibilities for clever character design later on. But the numbers are hidden, as with the combat (see below).

The Combat

Here is my second pause for thought. There is a scale of say Tera and DDO at one end, where targeting and movement are part of the joy of the game, and WoW (small shudder) at the other, where tab, hotkeys and cooldowns rule. This game clearly aims to be up at the DDO end of the scale, and has a similar combat mechanism. Indeed, I was able to map keys to reproduce exactly my DDO actions. BUT the animations don’t quite support the same twitch skills. Combat is a little slower paced, with tiny but critical delays to each action that make it feel quite different.

It has its own interesting features, (NDA excusing - block, dodge, power blow etc) and it felt more natural the longer I played. Still if, like me, you run DDO in 3rd person in mouselook, with characters that would die in seconds if they stood still in a battle, it will take you some time to get used to the different pace.

And you cannot change weapons in combat. (Well, at higher levels you get a second set, “Big deal!”) What? My DDO tempest ranger has half dozen pairs of swords, a devotion set and three bows hot-barred all the time. The unfortunate reason, as far as I can tell, is that you don't need to. Complexities of mob DR and vulnerabilities just don’t appear. In fact combat as a whole feels simpler, although this might change at higher levels. Whether you call this streamlining or dumbing down may be personal taste.

What is interesting is that it is all much less transparent than DDO. The mechanics are hidden, which adds to immersion but takes away from the intellectual challenge of improving your performance.

It is not helped by the clumsy animations generally. The graphics for the characters, both meshes and textures, leave DDO in the dust. But the animations just reminded me how good DDO feels to play. For an eight year old game, the natural and responsive movement of DDO characters is still a joy, and it sets the bar at a height that ESO does not clear.

Overall

The declared aim is to attract both the Elder Scrolls fans and every loose MMO player out there. This is almost too much of a stretch but they nearly pull it off, and I am comfortable that the result is much closer to Skyrim than to WoW.

My main doubt is a comment actually made in general chat several times over the weekend. “This feels like a great single person RPG but with you lot running around in it as well”. Whether this a good or a bad thing will be different for different people, and if you are not sure whether to stump up the cash to find out, that is the question you must decide for yourself.

while i liked what you said its still bethesda. So who knows if anything will get fixed. look at oblivion, skyrim etc. they had some major bugs. they didnt bother to fix it. Instead you had modders fixing them. that is why im not so sure about a mmo.

[cdbd3rd]

Having played the Beta over this last weekend, I jotted down some quick notes to record my own impressions, and these have somehow become a “review”. The NDA still applies to individuals (but not to the press) so I must leave out the details, but for anyone interested here are my impressions.....

/Props for the write-up, B.

[Seikojin]

Good write up and from what I have seen, I can agree with most of that. However, the cost is going to prevent me. A full priced product and a monthly sub? Is this the last decade? They need to be some level of f2p or produce such a high level of quantity and quality that the sub fees seem reasonable. And even WoW can't do that (for me).

[Grosbeak07]

I've been mucking around in that beta since last summer. The game has vastly improved from when I started the beta to today. That being said, it will end up being a lot more like DDO, in that there are only a handful of "acceptable" builds that can do everything, and anything else would be considered "flavor". Character development is also shallow and generally uninteresting.

The game looks great, combat is fluid like DDO, but it just sort of lacks... something, I can't quite put my finger on.

It's also has some rather famous voice actors, which is neat, but I"m not sure it is worth the box + sub price they want. It basically plays like every other elder scrolls game, only I can't pick it up and play from time to time, without having to pay again.

[murf201]

Yeah i spent over a grand in ddo in 3 years , So im fine spending 180 a year , Call it what you will but they can get it off asking for that !!!

What do you think it should be ?

People complain about free to play all the time !!! Get it through your head everything in life ain't free !

I'm a smoker and a drinker i think i can smoke 2 packs less a month to afford this game !!

Now im sure there will be a 30 day free trial somewhere after it's launch , If you decide it ain't worth it then don't pay it !!

[murf201]

Stop being so cheap it's communities like these that ruin games , If you can't afford it then you obviously have money problems and shouldn't be playing mmo's maybe !! Or if it ain't worth it to you follow your favorite mmo till it crashes and burns !!

[xXbikergirlXx]

Firstly massive Elder Scroll fan, loved Morrowind, Oblivion was ok, Skyrim had me hooked for months then I discovered DDO which has had my full attention since.....

Played last two ESO tests have to admit by the end of this weekend I was hooked.....

Sleep has been minimal

The cost is a major factor in all this......

High start off outlay(if you want Imperial) + monthly sub....

OUCH!!

Will it stop me.....

Probably not

For me I think DDO and ESO will make a perfect pairing, DDO is WAY, WAY more complex and atm appears to have a far better replay content but for easy to learn character and skill progression ESO will be a less mentally taxing option and the world is stunning, even on my ageing PC. Will it have replay possibilities? Not sure but it's still early days and I've only seen a tiny portion of the game.

Oh dear just not enough hours in the day

[murf201]

Firstly massive Elder Scroll fan, loved Morrowind, Oblivion was ok, Skyrim had me hooked for months then I discovered DDO which has had my full attention since.....

Played last two ESO tests have to admit by the end of this weekend I was hooked.....

Sleep has been minimal

The cost is a major factor in all this......

High start off outlay(if you want Imperial) + monthly sub....

OUCH!!

Will it stop me.....

Probably not

For me I think DDO and ESO will make a perfect pairing, DDO is WAY, WAY more complex and atm appears to have a far better replay content but for easy to learn character and skill progression ESO will be a less mentally taxing option and the world is stunning, even on my ageing PC. Will it have replay possibilities? Not sure but it's still early days and I've only seen a tiny portion of the game.

Oh dear just not enough hours in the day

Pretty much !! I don't mind being subbed to a game like eso , While buying all the ddo content one and done !!

When it's a ghost town on ddo in between updates or just in general , Ill switch over to eso and have fun at least they will have a pvp system to enjoy when im bored with quests !

[Aliss7]

Thanks for the writeup.

Got to this part...

However, I detected the compromises needed to keep it compatible with consoles

... not interested.