The fast-paced, movement heavy combat feels more interesting and at home against other players as opposed to stiff AI-controlled enemies. While there's a lot of areas where Elder Scrolls Online fails to live up to current standards for the MMO genre, it actually handles player-versus-player combat better than many. Being thrown into a splinter version of the world where I'm the only adventurer is a pretty old MMO trick at this point, and more frequent use of it would have gone a long way towards capturing the spirit of the Bethesda's series.
With all the care that ZeniMax Online has taken to shove an Elder Scrolls-shaped peg into an MMO-shaped hole, it's puzzling that it hasn't made more use of instancing.
But it has not, to this point, been how Elder Scrolls games work. I know the tormented ghost that you forever free from its cursed existence must immediately return to this plane so the next hero can begin the cycle again. I know that you're constantly suspending disbelief as player after player extracts an identical crystal skull from the chest apparently stuffed with a limitless supply of the one-of-a-kind relics. And at this early stage, several quests are just broken, so you're often left staring at Johnny Depp's lifeless face as you wait for the ride to start back up again.īefore you MMO diehards skip to the comments to start dismantling my complaints, please understand: I get it. The effect is rather like riding Pirates of the Caribbean, watching animatronic Johnny Depp clunkily return to his hiding spot after you've passed so he can prepare to surprise the next boatload of tourists. The remainder of that drama is dispelled completely as I watch players line up to repeat the slaughter time after time in the hopes of collecting whatever loot the enemy has to offer. Climactic boss battles at the end of quest lines are robbed of more than a little drama when three other players swarm my target and kill it after I've got but a few decent hits in. Solving a puzzle where I had to activate specific columns of light might have been cool if seven other players hadn't been madly circling around me attempting to do the same. I say "almost" because that spell is usually shattered by the unavoidable side effect of playing an MMO: All the people. When I'm sucked into one of these well-constructed mini-adventures I almost forget my place and feel, for a moment, like I really am the sole hope of Tamriel all the quest text keeps insisting I am. One of my favorite recent quest tasked me with winning the approval of three demigods by solving a puzzle that activated a clockwork knight, killing said clockwork knight and then solving a murder mystery. There are, however, some excellent one-off quests that would be right at home in a traditional Elder Scrolls game Slowing down to read the text for each quest (anathema to many MMO players, I know) frequently pays off with some surprising twists and even a few laughs. There are, however, some excellent one-off quests that would be right at home in a traditional Elder Scrolls game. We adventurers have better things to do, I assure you. People of Tamriel, I'm begging you: Keep a closer eye on your guar. In my time in Tamriel, as an example, I've encountered no fewer than three quests that required me to locate, herd or retrieve guar, a domesticated pack animal in the Elder Scrolls fiction. There's a fair amount of repetition in quests as well. I'm often able to competently navigate a building I've never before entered because I recognize the layout from the three to four times I've explored that same structure before. Though there's a ton of really beautiful geographical variety, architecture is frequently reused, providing an unnerving sense of déjà vu. That scale also brings with it a fair amount of repetition.
I feel like I've seen just a fraction of this area, which itself comprises a fraction of the whole of the content. As a member of the Ebonheart Pact, I've spent nearly all my time since the official launch in Morrowind, a province in Tamriel's northeast. ZeniMax Online has certainly nailed the Elder Scrolls scale. Luckily, this opens the door for an enterprising young adventurer (and several million of his closest friends) to set things right. Not only are all of the continent's factions vying for power, but a Super Bad Dude (and Daedric Prince) named Molag Bal is attempting to fuse his slice of Oblivion, Coldharbour, with the mortal plane. At the risk of overburdening you with lore, ESO is specifically set during The Interregnum, a rocky part of Tamriel's timeline.
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