The Elder Scrolls Online is the most anticipated and largest scale MMORPG since Star Wars: The Old Republic was released in 2011. With the worlds of Skyrim, Morrowind, and Daggerfall already available in a single player format with varying forms of technical achievement, The Elder Scrolls Online seeks to make all of Tamriel available to players–from Hammerfell to the Black Marshes. It is a devilishly ambitious undertaking, and developer Zenimax Online–not Bethesda Game Studios, who have been responsible for all previous Elder Scroll outings– provided its first taste last weekend of a mixed product that both exceeds expectations while failing to scratch that same itch the Elder Scrolls games have long been known for.
The Elder Scrolls Online attempts to bridge the gap between previous games set in Tamriel and the gameplay style of an MMO. In many ways Zenimax is successful, delivering a gorgeous and impressively well crafted world, but certain issues keep The Elder Scrolls Online painfully tied to the idea of being, “just another MMO”, as the game fails to aggressively assert itself as something unique and different. That’s not to say this is a World of Warcraft clone, Elder Scrolls Online has plenty of things that are all its own, but when it gets down to brass tax, the game focuses more around grinding out levels, quests, and upgrades than it fosters the exploration that has always been the signature joy of the Bethesda Game Studio classics. While the game may fail to channel the spirit of Skyrim or Morrowind, The Elder Scrolls Online succeeds in creating an experience that sucks you in and blissfully passes in the time in a mad flash as you see your character strive toward powerful improvements. The pacing of the game is fantastic and addictive in its own right.
Character creation is very similar to Skyrim in terms of cosmetic construction. Players can use sliders to determine everything from eye width to forehead slope. It is a faithful touch to the game, but not overtly necessary; I like being able to customize colors and hair styles, but I couldn’t seem myself spending a lot of time agonizing of the width of a character’s jaw. Nonetheless, the options are there for those who want them. The biggest departure from previous Elder Scroll ventures is the selection of class and alignment. While choosing races players align themselves with either the Daggerfall Covenant, the Ebonheart Pact, or the Aldmeri Dominion. This determines what your starting zones will be and what territory you will explore. It is difficult to say that one character can wander through the entire map, at least it unclear how to take your characters from one faction of Tamriel to another, we will have to see how deep the rabbit hole really goes.
Selecting an alignment is not the only difference in The Elder Scrolls Online, players will also have to select a character class. My options were Templar, Dragonknight, Sorcerer, and Nightblade. This selection will determine your available skill progressions. The classes are pretty self explanatory. I played as a Templar and was happy with my selection. Health potions are hard to come by in the game and playing as a Templar gave me the ability to heal myself while still being able to deal a decent amount of damage. This was important as health potions were hard to come by and were relatively ineffective in battle. Thus, I had to rely on my healing magics to save me when I started running low on health. I did not get a chance to play as the other classes, but a few other players in the chat expressed frustration while playing with the Sorcerer who seems best suited as a support character and difficult to progress without a party.
The starting zone sets the table for the Elder Scrolls Online’s story, after being executed, you awake in Coldharbour, a dimension in between Oblivion and the mortal realm. In this world of the undead, a powerful mage named The Prophet contacts you and guides you to your escape. Upon coming arriving in Tamriel there are two zones which players must explore, most likely on their own, to start the game. These early solo quests feel very much like the same old Elder Scrolls, journeying through beautifully detailed worlds, taking in the gorgeous vistas. Visually The Elder Scrolls Online looks as good–if not better–than Skyrim. The art is absolutely stunning and when you aren’t battling the dozens of baddies the world has to offer, stopping to smell the roses is rewarded with incredibly beautiful views. This game is every bit a pretty as advertised, even with its massive expanse.
For as big as the world is and a beautiful as it may be, the Elder Scrolls Online lacks variety. The first starting zone for the Daggerfall Covenant was a desert island, which is a fantastic change of pace for the traditional fantasy world of the series, but after the initial starting zone things started to look painfully similar. Journeying through Hammerfell yielded occasional changes in landscape, like hills and swamps, but while playing to level 20 everything looked fairly similar. I am sure that once you get further into Redguard territory and the Alik’r Desert, the settings would look distinctly different, but in previous games each city felt like it had a distinctive influence and culture, I have yet to get that sense from The Elder Scrolls Online.
It is also difficult to explore these areas as the territories are packed with easily killed enemies for mining experience. There are no quiet walks in The Elder Scrolls Online, rarely is there time to simply observe your surroundings, more often than not you are battling your way through hordes of baddies, trying to make it to the next town. Encounters happen often and it takes away from any feeling of solitude. That might be the point, this is a Massive Multiplayer game, and a party is something that feels strongly encouraged by the game’s pacing. I never felt like I was stuck or needed to mindlessly fight for experience, but when playing alone you will need every quest, side quest, and everything in between to make sure you are leveling up enough. Even with doing every quest available, I still found myself in difficult battles. I was not the only one, people were pretty consistently trying to partner up to stand a better chance against certain bosses. This should be less of a problem when more players are around, it also might be easier to level up when Zenimax Online puts the finishing touches on items to find and crafting abilities–both were not fully fleshed out in the beta.–but nonetheless The Elder Scrolls will boast a healthy challenge.
For all that challenge there will be good equipment to make it worth it. While I found myself trying to scrape together funds to upgrade my armor early on, drops coming after level 10 started to yield impressive upgrades. That being said, you will still have to scrape and save, even at level 20 I still was missing a mount, one of the more expensive items in the game. While the game is difficult, leveling up feels well paced and rewarding. My powers grew at a steady rate and I was always unlocking more abilities or making my abilities more powerful. Part of this level curve is learning of The Elder Scrolls Online is different from its predecessors. I’ve played every Tamriel game since Morrowind, and my fair share of MMOs, but figuring out the inner-working of crafting, experience, and your skill trees takes time. Unfortunately, a misstep can leave you feeling a bit lost. By the time i figured out how to mine and start smithing I was in a zone where I could not find any materials my low smithing level was capable of using, meaning I would have to backtrack to restart my mining career. Traversing the world isn’t difficult, and there is a pretty easy-to-use portal system, but because the world doesn’t feel dynamic it can grow tiring.
With such a small slice of The Elder Scrolls Online available in the beta it is impossible to tell how the final product will shake out. The stability of the game was very impressive and there were almost no interruptions due to server troubles. In the end, people who are hoping for more of the classic Elder Scrolls experience will probably be disappointed as elements from the Bethesda Game Studios classics don’t translate all that well into the MMO mechanics. Those who are anxious for a new, meaty MMO to sink their teeth into, should be able to scratch that itch. Boasting impressive voice work, drop-dead gorgeous art, and a faithful translation of a beloved video game world, The Elder Scrolls Online is an addictive wormhole that can steal away hours of your life.
Look for The Elder Scrolls Online April 4th, 2014 on PC and June 2014 on PS4 and Xbox One.
Tried it for about 20 minutes… Didn’t feel anything like Skyrim… Thanks for the free taste, Zenimax, but I won’t buy what you’re selling…
Yea, it’s a terrible game. I have no idea what this reviewer is talking about. I sunk the better part of my weekend into it to “give it a chance,” but man, what a dull, unrewarding experience.
I gave it about 4 hours. I literally felt like I could throw in different graphics and get any number of other MMO’s with the exact same real time fighting.
To be fair I will use proper points;
Customization (8/10), great, works well as any of the elder scrolls games.
Graphics (9/10), incredible, but in this day and age, who doesn’t expect fancy graphics out of an MMO?
Sound (6/10), voice acting is lacking in some places, just didn’t grab me emotionally even when I was having to make moral choices.
Gameplay [Questing] (2/10), felt like any other MMO grind, go there collect X of these, go there kill X of these, go talk to such and such tree missions with very little choice of impact on the conversation. The freedom to do or not do quests here is lacking. Most quests only come in the wake of a previous quest you may not want to do. A lot of these quests not really being well linked together. Go meet so and so X meters away before you can get quest from this guy right beside me. That is not how elder scrolls quests worked.
Gameplay [Leveling] (2/10), again grind grind grind, felt like another MMO copy, totally broke the feeling where you’re just messing around doing whatever and you ding. It’s more of the goal now rather than a side effect/bonus of playing.
Gameplay [Exploration] (2/10), leveled areas, starter areas linked to quest lines, need i say more? Another copy/paste typical MMO subsystem. I did not get off the starting island, after doing 5 or 6 collection quests I just lost all interest. There could be more interesting things later but given the core gameplay mechanics one is better off just signing up for one of the free action based MMOs already out. Since when did Elder Scrolls bolt everything to the surface it’s sitting on? Hell at least let me stuff around visually on the client side…. No pickpocketing? that was a core skill…
Overall (5/10), this game could have been one that redefined the genre. Instead of taking risks with the IP they chose to play it safe. They didn’t bring the Elder Scrolls lore into the MMO world. They shoved a cheaply made MMO world on top of Elder Scrolls lore and graphics. This is just like the Star Wars MMO, in a few months after release there will be few playing. You have all that money and an attractive IP, innovation in MMO gaming should have been your very first concern, otherwise you’ll just be another cookie cutter MMO with a different back story. Even voice acting and back story can’t prop an MMO up, ESO isn’t the first to try it, likely not the last. Bethesda, tell Zenimax Online to get bent and find someone more well equipped with original ideas that don’t fall in line with the standard model of MMO gaming, that color just doesn’t suit you.
Are you making this up? I only came across 1 collect X of this item quest and 0 kill X of this creature quest. I also did no grinding so far. I’m not going to say questing is perfect but its much better than your average MMO and you’re not really seeing go collect or kill X amount of this creature/item.
There’s no way you did 5 or 6 collection quest in the starting area. I have no problem with negative reviews but you’re straight up lying.
100% agreed. The beauty of Elder Scrolls is its freedom. When your task is to get past a guard, you aren’t forced to do a random fetch quest. You can sneak past the guard. You can subdue him. You can kill him and rob his corpse. In fact, you can do this to any NPC, if you want… and, whether you do it or not, the fact that you have that option makes the game more powerful. There is nothing of this nature in ESO. There are no meaningful decisions.
In order to pass said guard, for example, you’re forced to click on an arbitrary character who says something like, “The guard likes skooma”, then suddenly an arrow appears over the head of another NPC with the next “clue” about where “maybe” skooma might be, then another arrow appears over a random jacket on a hook that just happens to have some “skooma” in it… then an arrow appears above the guard. You give the skooma to the guard and he conveniently passes out. Really deep, exciting storytelling here!
Why did I have to do this lame, constrictive fetch quest? Where is the player agency? Why did I waste five minutes wandering around clicking on these bland plot points disguised as characters? I, literally, didn’t read a word of what any of the NPCs said in this scenario… I just followed the arrows. This is not Elder Scrolls.
My issue with the plethora of MMOs out there is that there seems to be this general acceptance of lacklustre gameplay just because it’s multiplayer. But, an MMO should be an extension of the sophisticated, meaningful gameplay we find in current, single-player RPGs, and then *enhanced* by the multiplayer. If this game were single-player, it wouldn’t hold a candle… even to some of the better PS2 RPGs.
We’re in an age now of deeper player agency, where choices abound and their repercussions are both impactful and vague. MMOs have not risen to the occasion, but the potential for a multiplayer game with the depth of a single-player experience is so exciting. It’s what we’re waiting for, I think, and ESO has, so far, failed.
If single-player RPGs surpassed the era of level-grinding and fetch quests ages ago, it’s time for the MMOs to stop being lazy and catch up.
I stay in India, where the bandwidth available is still measured in kbps … there are faster plans available albeit with a far higher price attached to them. Downloading the beta took me a total of 4 days … until today.
When the game started installing, it threw an error and said not enough disk space (when there was more than 60GB free). Now I am back to downloading 21 GBs of game data … meh!
Game is awful. I find most of the things people are complaining about are not what I noticed right away but the design is awful. I couldn’t stand the single player games of this franchise so maybe that is why I hate it so much, but it leaves me wondering how those single player games ever did so well.. The simplest things were annoying me like the press e to loot then press r to loot all… How fkn stupid is that… Then the actual combat lol… Brutal combat mechanics.. About the only thing the game had going for it was graphics and barely any lag.. maybe because no one was playing it lol…