2897

Did they ever back down from exposing the userID automatically to anyone who friends you? Didn’t they learn from Blizz’s RealID debacle?

2898

I love the elder scrolls series and I’m really trying to enjoy this one but there is so much that irritates.
It really feels like a single player game with multiplayer awkwardly bolted on.
Keeping your quests/level in sync with your friends is such a chore. It makes me miss all the great things about GW2.
Not having to pick up/hand in quests, automatic level scaling, account wide mail etc.
I’ll persevere for a little while longer but right now I feel pretty frustrated with ESO.

2899

I started a new character in the Aldimeri Dominion (yellow faction).
Jeezus! All I’ve done for some 5 hours is talk to people. Now I don’t mind a little bit of lore but I’ve not even unsheathed my sword for some 5 hours.
Just talk, talk, talk, use mcguffin, talk, talk, talk…
Is there actually any combat in this game?

Also, does anyone actually bother reading/listening to any of this quest/story guff?

2900

Sounds like you’re on the newbie island, which you can opt out of (they’d usually an npc you can talk to to GTFO). Back in beta I bitched about it endlessly in this thread. Talk about an absolutely mind-numbing experience.

2901

Thanks for the fresh first impressions, guys. I was toying with an idea of getting this when it gets cheaper, however, reading about your experiences kinda turned me off.

2902

In newbie island, NPC A has discovered you washed ashore. When they moved you to wake up in the town past newbie island, they make NPC B claim this honor. However, when you go back to get in some (boring) leveling, none of that dialog on newbie island has changed. It’s still NPC A.

Plus they changed the Prophet’s Dumbledore voice after the intro but not in the intro so he has two different voices.

2903

Corrected.

2904

I actually enjoyed ESO far more than I had expected to (my expectations were pretty low), although I didn’t subscribe after my initial 30 days. If they can put more Elder Scrolls into Elder Scrolls Online, I’d be happy to come back. I felt there were some good things about the game, but there was also a good amount of bad and a whole lotta mundane and uninspired MMO crap.

2905

I thought it was terrific, right up until I ran out of stuff to do. Cyrodil gets old after a while, and the PvE raiding endgame holds zero interest. I’ll return if they add interesting features.

2906

You’re either exaggerating a tremendous amount, or you’re confused somehow. The AD start contains a 30 minute section where you spend a lot of time talking to people. But that’s it. There’s plenty of combat.

Also, for both you and Rei, I think this game is not for you. If you’re not listening to the quest dialog, or you find it all boring, you’re not the audience. The “quest/ story guff” is the core of the game. I thought it was very well done, almost TSW-like in parts. If you’re the sort that just clicks through quest dialog in MMO’s, though, you’ve picked the wrong one.

No offense intended, by the way. I’m well aware that many, probably most MMO players have no interest in the storylines. They just want to kill things, take their stuff and level up. TESO’s the wrong product for that playstyle.

2907

ZeniMax Online has been hit with layoffs.

The statement from Bethesda says that the job losses were concentrated in two fields, customer service and development, and that the company made cuts to drop headcount back to levels prior to the staff expansion that was necessary in order to launch the game.

“Now that we are nearly [six] months post launch, we have a thriving online community in a game that runs smoothly. We have adjusted staffing to meet the ongoing needs of the studio, which continues to operate with a large work force,” the statement continued. According to Bethesda, the company “[continues] to operate large support centers in Hunt Valley, [Maryland,] and Galway, Ireland.”

2908

Oghier, you’re wrong about me. I played 250+ hours of Skyrim due to meticulous questing and lore. I played WoW of all things for 5+ years for the lore. I cared about the lore, quests, stories and NPCs for years before Metzen fucked everything up with corrupt-faction-leader-this-and-that. This is just a BAD questing game with meaningless, repetitive, boring quests without point. I hated the open-ended “read-your-own-adventure” lore in System Shock and previous TES games (Morrowind and Oblivion) for the longest time until Skyrim, a quality single-player game made me lose myself for a whole two months.

ESO is just garbage.

Fail at a compelling-single-player questing is bad enough. Failing to have good group questing dynamics (with broken phasing) is worse.

2909

That wasn’t my experience of it at all. ESO’s only the second MMO I’ve ever played that makes a reasonable stab at delivering a compelling singleplayer questing experience, the first (and still best) being The Secret World. But a lot of TSW’s appeal is that it’s doing a setting nobody else is doing and doing it well. Tamriel is a neat fantasy setting that I enjoy, but it’s not nearly as unique. (I like questing in WoW, but it’s very good MMO questing - perhaps the best - and no more.)

2910

There are those that say its solo questing is “good enough” but even if it were (it’s not, not for me at least) it’s certainly not worth $60 + $15/month. Should have been Buy-to-Play but no way after they spent all that money on voice acting and stuff. They didn’t learn from SWTOR. It will likely be F2P before the year is out.

2911

Not with the console versions coming up - They can’t afford that. I liked the world, and a lot of the quests were really well done but the inventory management killed it for me, along with crafting. Its something I enjoy in other games, but the way they implemented the 9000 different things you need to craft leaves me cold and that’s when I unsubcribe. As for group content, I couldn’t care less. Like 85 percent of MMO players, I play mostly solo. (statistics may, like most on the internet, be completely made-up)

2912

Well, no MMO should be using the bad old subscription model anymore. But that’s nothing to do with the game’s quality and everything to do with that being a shitty business model.

2913

Going F2P is not a sign of failure, it’s a part of a business plan. SWTOR brought in over $200 mil in 2013, their revenue doubled after going F2P. ESO would be stupid not to go F2P eventually.

2914

Assuming they meant to go F2P eventually, it all depends on what the business plan had estimated as a good date for the switch. If they had thought they were going to get a few years of subs before going F2P, then they boned their projection.

2915

For TSW I followed all the spoken lines of dialogue and read everything, for TESO it was just click click click next. Hoping to finish quests before they bugged out again.

So; have they said anything about when they are going F2P?

2916

Nope. Even with the layoff news, they’re sticking to the sub plan.

“As is the norm for games of this type, we had ramped up a large workforce to develop a game of vast scale, and ramped up our customer service to handle the expected questions and community needs of The Elder Scrolls Online at launch. Now that we are nearly 6 months post launch, we have a thriving online community in a game that runs smoothly.”

“We remain strongly committed to The Elder Scrolls Online, and continue to invest heavily to develop new content for PC players, prepare the game for its console launch, and handle our planned expansion into important international territories. As for customer service, we continue to operate large support centers in Hunt Valley, MD and Galway, Ireland.”