Out of Pod Experience

Two words: Meh.
Two more words: feels like just another MMO.


edit: Yes, I was in the beta.

i expected more . ran smooth tho ,no problems for me anyway. hell of a lot people on during my time zone , don't think it would be worth the money tho imho, will do the next phase of beta testing just to see if it improves did'nt get much time to play rl and all

The feel of a TES game is lost when you've got zones and strict zone portals...

You're still pidgeonholed when choosing a class. No free skill selection.

Crafting is bland and boring, same style crafting as ever mmo ever.

They're trying to make every player the 'chosen one' in TES tradition yet they forgot that something like that doesn't work in an MMO setting. Voiceovers are great, but the story itself is crap.

Combat feels floaty and unprecise. Skyrim's vanilla combat was quite a lot better, believe it or not. There's no visual feedback from hits or anything.

The graphic design is pretty good, aside from armors. Too bad it's being hampered by a max view distance of about 2 feet.



Bottom line: As an MMO it barely passes the 'average' line. As a TES game it utterly failed. The changes Zenimax need to make would require an engine re-write and a LOT of redesign... Something that won't be happening.

I said this over a year ago and it seems i've been right about it: TESO is a DAoC wannabe painted with TES colours.

Think of the MMOs you've played with a main storyline. Do any of those storylines even acknowledge the existence of the other players ?

Because I can't think of any. All the storylines I know don't. There are always named NPCs that you have to kill off, then the story treats them as permanently dead. You are the one who killed them. As far as the storyline is concerned, other players don't exist.

I've seen MMOs that don't even acknowledge the existence of other party members. For example, one storyline mission in GW2 has you getting into a duel with an NPC. If you go into the mission with other players in your party, then all the NPCs still think this is a 1v1 dual even when the other players are assisting you.

I rolled an Argonian, now I did think they looked pretty cool, but then again I used to play an Iksar in Everquest, too.

:)

I think that ESO's biggest problem in the long term will be that it's a new MMO that will be charging a full subscription fee in the age of F2P MMOs. That is going to be a very hard sell. The developers don't just need to make a game that is better than F2P MMOs. The developers need to do something to justify the subscription fee. Either by making it a lot better, which might not be possible, or doing something different to the F2P MMOs they are competing with.

MMOData.net is a site that used to track the number of people playing MMOs. But they are closing due to problems getting data for F2P MMOs. According to MMOData, last December Eve Online was the only subscription MMO that was growing. Probably because Eve does things differently and F2P MMOs are staying away from Eve's niche.

What does ESO do differently to justify the subscription ?

This MMO is a great example of The Elder Scrolls' biggest dilemma: it's such a massive and wonderfully detailed world - which would be great for an MMO - but its single player experience is so essential to that experience's depth that any shift or modification would ultimately tarnish it.

When I was watching the extended trailer (and God was it extended - WAY too long) I felt like it was some kind of accidental love child between Star Wars: The Old Republic and World of Warcraft. It didn't have the depth or storytelling of the real series. It's just "WAR. DAEDRIC PRINCE. HEROES FIGHT, THEN DISTRACTED BY GREATER EVIL. MUST BATTLE."

Seriously, The Elder Scrolls is supposed to be deeper than your typical MMO plot, and they just dumbed it down!

So yeah, I'm with you, OP. Totally disappointed. I'll probably have a similar rant for Titanfall in the coming months, but that's a different matter.

I've been in the past three beta weekends, my experience is that it is indeed a very "meh" mmo. I'll throw down some facts and then some opinions of it.

FACTS:

1. The pvp is laggy as hell in each test. You can still move around fine, but skill usage is akin to module activation in EVE under 10% speed TIDI.

2. There are MASSIVE gamekilling bugs still ongoing and unfixed over the past 4 months. CTD's, and the ever-so-common "stuck in a menu/chat bug" that required restarting the client for the first two tests, then they added the /reloadui console command for the last test every time it happened, and it happened 80% of the time for me.

3. There are no "working" pure classes, you are forced to multi-class or be gimped into oblivion (No pun intended.) This is due to VERY low stat caps and armor caps. A pure tank for example is impossible, that guy who is half mage dps, and half tank is every bit as much a tank as you while also being a dps mage.

4. Combat is floaty and has no sense of impact/reaction on hits. (This really isn't an opinion, since 99% of beta testers, and every single critic review agree on this.)

5. Is a triple wallet dipper. Box price + sub fee + cash shop after launch.

OPINIONS:

1. Doesn't feel like a elderscrolls game at all, it's more of a WOW clone with elderscrolls artwork and lore. (Not that anyone really expected it to be anything different.)

2. First person view is tacked on laziness, game yanks you out of it and into third person for every damn thing other than fighting and opening chests/doors. (Pulls you out for... mining/gathering/crafting/swimming/animations/emotes/events/and everything else.) Maximum lazy on the part of the devs.

3. Quests were typical mmo boredom.

4. Grouping is completely pointless outside pvp and the one 4-man dungeon. In fact it's actually detrimental, as quests arn't shared and you get to wait for each person in your group to activate the whatever after it respawns, then wait for the next guy, and then the next guy, and then the... you get the idea, and respawns can take upwards of five minutes for quest npcs.

They had one job, To make Skyrim Multiplayer. apparently that was too much of a task

You had one job Zenimax, One job...

This is probably the best feature with the entire game. So much customization that many other games have failed to deliver. It is not wow where you go cookie cutter spec and do exactly the same thing as the player besides you.
The ESO class system is more like eve's char progression. Which I think is awesome.