Recently got back into it. I’ve been enjoying it. Fun coming back and seeing my house in its eternal glory. Anyone else been playing the game, or prepping to with the Greymoor expansion?
2 Likes
It’s a really good game, but I can’t stand the combat. I try so hard to enjoy it because I love everything else about ESO, but I just can’t get past the combat.
6 Likes
Absolutely.
Can’t wait till Greymoor
A thousand times this. I WANT to like it, but UGH.
1 Like
Yeah, not sure whose idea it was to make weapon swapping the core mechanic of the game but uh…
Combat aside it is pretty good and I still wanna go back to it some day to go meet Sotha Sil if nothing else
1 Like
That is exactly where I am at. I just hate the combat systems and the lack of class identity. I am going to play Greymoor for sure but I don’t see ESO ever replacing WoW.
1 Like
I play off and on, most recently was Elsweyr launch. Had alot of fun with the Necro class concept, the main story and side quests were great! (Skooma Cat is best cat) But I just can’t invest long term because it always comes back to combat.
4 Likes
I feel that. It feels… Clunky? Is the best way I could describe it. Especially on how the ESO Devs embraced combat cancelling so you’re practically stabbing, cancelling your animation with an attack, and doing another, repeat.
1 Like
I play it off and on. Hit some burnout recently but I’m almost ready to hop back into it. I enjoy how expansive and malleable its lore is by default, compared to the baffling mess that is Warcraft (that said, my heart will always live in WoW for RP, too many years invested into it).
As others said, I tried to get into it. But it never clicked for me in the way other games did. Its a shame because I’ve seen a lot I liked, but just getting there felt…lackluster and not very fun.
Maybe sometime I’ll try it again, but I have a feeling it’ll be like revisiting my old RIFT character: more just “what happened here” than actual gameplay.
I play it though I must admit I treat it like I would any other Elder Scrolls game, and pretty much entirely play single player - mostly I just quest! I’ve recently quested through everything in chronological order as an Imperial Necromancer, Flavius Varus, who sided with the Daggerfall Covenant in the wake of Cyrodiil essentially becoming politically defunct. Particularly enjoyed the Elsweyr arc honestly - the way they had a northern zone, southern zone, and then an epilogue that brought the two stories together was actually really neat!
I was starting to do Cadwell’s Silver but I’m too much of an RPer to suddenly serve the Queen of the Aldmeri Dominion so I made a Wood Elf Warden purely to do the Dominion Quests… And I’m enjoying that too 
Planning on making a good old fashioned Nord when Greymoor comes out - I’ll do the main expansion story on Flavius and I’ll probably play the Nord through the Pact Zones, because why not! But overall I’m having a blast. I’m really only subbed to WoW for the purposes of RP atm, so ESO’s been my focus when I’m actually feeling like playing a game!
Overall I’ve got to say I REALLY love the game. The combat (particularly weapon swapping) feels a bit weird, but it’s kinda fun when you get the hang of it. It’s refreshingly different enough from other MMOs and RPGs, and as a result I’ve been having a lot of fun. In terms of content and the sheer area you can explore I think I actually prefer it to Skyrim… just a smidge!
1 Like
What I really find interesting is that the leaders of the three major political factions all actually seem like pretty decent people in their own way. Likeable, as opposed to… a lot of what WoW gave us.
2 Likes
Played the Alpha and the Beta. Bought the Collectors Edition when it came out…
Never played it after that.
:l
RIP.
I do love that honestly. I particularly like Emeric as a person - he’s got this semi-sarcastic sense of humour that makes him really quite likeable. Ayrenn is just really decent - she’s trying to make a better life for an awful lot of people, even though a lot of her own people don’t want a bar of it. I feel as though Jorunn is the one I know the least, but he’s not so bad either.
What I particularly like though is that the war isn’t the focus of the game. It’s there, it’s an excuse for PvP… yet oftentimes it’s all but irrelevant, even painted as silly - a lingering irrationality on the part of the otherwise sensible leaders.
Yeah in the middle of the Soulshriven plot I was like “wait you guys are all actually super chill and reasonable, why are you even at odds, its like the War of the Three Ned Flanders”
2 Likes
The faction war in ESO is a bit dumb but still 100 times better than WoW’s divide. A nonsensical justification for factional battlegrounds that has no impact on PvE content or communication is far superior to a nonsensical justification for factional battlegrounds that also leaves one faction permanently in the dust in unrelated PvE content
3 Likes
I think LOREWISE WoW’s war actually makes more sense, in that the longstanding rivalry between the Horde and Alliance is a long one with several atrocities justifying IC desire to actually fight the enemy. I also think it’d be fair to say that some people like the idea of a faction war/political plotline without necessitating PvP. I myself, for example, do like political plots and often resent them being PvP-only in mmo stories. Like, in Skyrim, I actually enjoyed the Stormcloak/Empire story.
That said, I agree with you because of one very big and important factor. The fact that, in ESO, you CAN be neutral. You CAN go anywhere.
WoW’s story feels like you don’t really have the option of being a neutral-type character who wants to help and support both sides. The beauty about ESO is that you can travel anywhere, quest for anyone, and ultimately be who you want to be.
Want to experience the story as a faction-nationalist type? Go for it - only quest in your faction areas and focus on the war story.
Want to experience the story as a daring adventurer, going wherever there’s a need and just exploring the world? Go for it, that’s totally an option.
Want to experience the story as a thief who’ll go wherever so long as there’s a good haul to be had? Awesome, sounds cool!
The way WoW’s story has been presented precludes that sort of creative freedom with our characters. There’s little to no player agency. We just have instructions and we follow them, in essence. It’s how the questlines work. But in ESO, there’s a LOT of creative freedom in terms of how you play your character and I REALLY like that.
Just goes to show that Blizzard really could stand to learn some things–maybe a lot of things–from games like ESO, and FFXIV, and even GW2. Each of them does so many things differently or the same things but better.
Combine FFXIV’s corporate culture and community management, Blizzard’s combat and class design, ESO’s questing and writing, and the PvP of… well, remove pvp, and you’d have a great MMO!
The lack of a neutral option in WoW is frustrating as so many races are explicitly written as neutral. Velen doesn’t have a warmongering bone in his body, and was a 100% neutral Khadgar-like figure in Legion. We invite the Horde PC to rescue our capital city. We gave everyone a ride to Argus on our spaceship. But you still gotta wear your Stormwind Blue if you choose to play a Draenei. And I can’t even imagine the sort of mental backflips you need to go through to justify Huojin still associating with the Horde instead of just becoming neutral adventurers.
One of my favorite things in regards to this is that the game flexes and breathes based on what you’ve already accomplished. If you’re a seasoned adventurer who’s been there, done that, and are meeting a character for the 2nd or 3rd time they remember you and will reference your exploits.
If you skipped a chunk of your zone quest either deliberately or by circumstance, people will have different dialogue. This is all voiced dialogue, mind you (to those who don’t know) so they actually just stuffed people in the recording booths to same the same thing over and over from different ways you could approach it, and this is EVERYWHERE. Unless they drop it from Greymoor I’ve still had people as recently as Elsweyr and the Greymoor lead up going “Hey good to see you again” on my main and “Welcome rookie” to my new ones.
Also, a number of us who are playing (off and on, though. I’ll be the first to admit you shouldn’t continue reading this as oh boy an immediate, robust social network of hundreds) from Wyrmrest Accord have a Discord server and a guild you can join to basically give yourself a green chat box version of General. You can join up to 5 guilds in ESO and they’re account wide so you just reap the benefits like a guild bank and people being around every so often. I know I’m not really making it sound super glamorous but I hate misrepresenting and with my brand new baby girl I don’t get on very often myself but still.
If you want the most casual of casual but with people who know the game, the Dragon’s Rest Compact (seewotididthar) is here: discord.gg/m6BHtPU
1 Like