The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited (2016)
The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited
We all know the backlash this game received on release, in fact because of what I read and saw about the game at that time is why I decided not to buy into the game! Now two years later I saw this game on sale, and thought, why not? Really, why not? So I bought it, and I will tell you, I am glad I did! This game has been improved immensely from when I tried it, and they seem to have addressed most of the gripes I had when I took part in their Beta; which felt more like an alpha.
Character creation is fairly in depth, having a large amount of sliders, hairstyles, and adornment options using your typical Elder Scrolls races, with each having their own racial abilities. This makes certain races better than others for certain things, much like the older Elder Scrolls, but you aren't railroaded into playing a particular way if you wanted to play a certain race. With three factions to choose from with their own selection of races for each, you can be stuck playing a faction you wouldn't like just to play a race you like, or vice versa. This can be restricting, especially if your friends all play on a certain faction, that your favorite race is not a part of. Of course, the game is now buy to play with a cash shop. You can play any race in any faction you want, if you are willing to pay for it!
Now the class system is something I just adore. You have the ability to build almost whatever you want, with whatever class you choose! You can have a spellcaster wearing full heavy armor, using a battleaxe, if you so desire! With a very large selection of skills, and with just how easy it is to get the actual skill points you can really experiment with different builds and playstyles. However, even with the large amount of skill, and build variety you only actually have access to five skills and one ultimate ability at a time per weapon, with a total of two weapons and a custom skill bar for each. This makes it very restricting in your own character build, and you have to make a meaningful choice about what abilities you want, or need, to make a particular build work. Is that a good or bad thing? You decide.
Leveling in ESO can be quite tedious, depending on how you look at it. Most of the game you will be, questing, and questing, and yes, even more questing. Now don't get me wrong the quests in this game are all, for the most part, excellently voice acted, but the sheer amount of it can get very tiring. If you aren't interested in the lore, the story, and just want to rush to endgame, you probably won't enjoy any of it. Don't get me wrong however, unlike many other mmorpgs they can be very interesting with different, meaningful choices, and much less of a "grindy" feel. You do get the odd "go collect 9 wolf pelts" type quests, but it certainly is not the norm. The location variety is actually very good, you have the Morrowind molten ashlands, the sandy Alik'r desert, Bleak planes of Oblivion, and much more! If you are a lore junkie, you definitely will love seeing what locations ESO has to offer, with a massive amount of lore books, like all the other Elder Scrolls, to help spice up each and every location you visit. You can group with friends, or other players, but it just doesn't feel rewarding at all. There is no level sync or anything either in the regular leveling areas, but in their newer DLC content there is a level sync, and many other things promoting group content.
Crafting is very much the lifeblood of ESO. Much like Skyrim you go to specific crafting stations, gather the material needed, and hammer together your items. It is heavily recommended to craft, with the sheer amount of armor and weapon styles in the game, it is better to be able to do it yourself than have to rely on others for this. With high level crafted sets having great bonuses having these is a must at endgame, and sure you can try to rely on drops, but the amount of good or wanted drops is not enough to do so. It can get very expensive and time consuming to get to a high crafting level. Much longer than it would take to actually get to endgame in the first place. The game has you research traits such as "infused" which increases enchantment effect, and more. The more you research these traits the longer it takes. It can take you up to a month for one trait, on one piece of gear. It isn't universal. It can take upwards to six months to fully level up crafting in everything! I feel that is extremely too long, making it feel almost impossible to attain high level crafting as a new player. Many players probably won't even play the game for six months straight in the first place, and making research take this long is not something I want to play continually for six months to get.
Player versus player is not very varied. It pits the three alliances against each other in a never ending battle for control of the region of Cyrodiil. In fact you don't even have to PvP in the PvP area. With a variety of PvE areas inside Cyrodiil you can go off and do that, if you want, but you do run the risk of getting attacked by other players. My biggest issue with PvP in ESO was the severe lack of variety. You are pretty much always doing the same thing all the time. Running around with a large group of players and besieging or defending strongholds. You don't have to play like this, but it is the meat of player versus player. Another gripe I had was just the vast emptiness of Cyrodiil, the region is huge, and not varied at all. Everything looks the same. You are, for the most part, just running around empty areas of the map, just to try to get to where the action actually is. Much of the time when you actually get there the action is over, or you just get killed, and have to run all the way back! God help you if you don't have a mount, I definitely would not recommend even touching PvP otherwise.
Endgame is much like other mmorpgs consisting of daily missions, and dungeons. Once you hit max level you start getting "veteran" levels, and can do the storylines for the other factions that you may have missed. I have heard they are going to get rid of the veteran levels later this year however, and continue on with their "champion point" system where you can increase passives, and such, that count for your entire account. I very much like this system, it makes you want to continue playing your high level character(s) for the benefit of your account as a whole. The dungeons are very well done, with an extensive amount of storyline and lore surrounding them. Bosses are varied, and are a real challenge at times. You actually don't even have to be at endgame to participate in these dungeons, as they sync to the group leaders level. You can go in at level 10, if you so choose! I did feel like a lot of the locations were very claustrophobic and difficult to traverse at times. Some boss fights felt very hectic, but in a bad way. The rooms were so tiny it was very difficult to attempt to get out of abilities or away from enemies, when needed. This is not the case for all dungeons though, and may just be a personal gripe, on my part.
Since ESO's initial release they have very much refined the game in many ways, from animations, to npc lip sync. There is a crime system, where you can pickpocket npc's, steal from containers, and murder npc's. Be careful though, if you get caught you will be fined, and guards may or may not kill you on sight! They have also added two DLC's, which you can access by subscribing to the game (yes), or buying them outright from the cash shop. Orsinium, and the Imperial City. I highly enjoyed them both, you can really see where they have improved since launch through their new content. They are most definitely worth the asking price, I probably spent 3 days completing the content on just Orsinium! Orsinium was excellently done, with several world bosses, daily missions, group dungeon's, a level sync, interesting new enemies and much more. Well voice acted, and having a very interesting storyline, with likable characters and choices that matter, that really feel like they do. Imperial city is much of the same, but PvP oriented. I highly recommend both of them. I just know from the quality of their newer content, that the more of it that gets released, the better and better this game will be!
I definitely recommend ESO to anyone who is interested in mmorpgs, it has kept my interest far longer than most others, and I love a lot about it. That might be my inner Elder Scrolls fanboy talking, but not many other mmorpgs have kept me feeling this immersed, and interested in the story for a long time. With a non-intrusive (mostly cosmetic) cash shop, and excellent new content, I am just waiting in anticipation to see what all of their new content will be! If you don't feel like it is worth the asking price, or want to wait until they improve it more, or add new content, I completely understand. The more new content they add, the better, and better this game gets. This is not something you want to miss, whether it's sooner or later. 2016 will be a great year for ESO!
Images later
