THE ELDER SCROLLS ONLINE FIRST MONTH
First a big thanks to those who joined us for our first month under the Ebonheart banner. We have some news on recent developments regarding our alliance with old friends, Cyrodil server choice and our in-game accomplishments.
It has been a whirlwind few weeks with so many new discoveries and already more content on the way. We look forward to sharing those experiences with you in coming posts.
Another unfortunate story of a game launched 6 months before it was ready...
I keep reading that PC is beta for their console version.
Tas, have you played the game since launch? (And don't say beta) I'm going to assume no, and your just forming an opinion on what most of the knuckleheads out there are saying.
Bugs, Launch Experience
The game got a lot of bad reviews sure, but just a little bit of effort shows that a large portion of those opinions are based on beta builds, and most of the after-launch reviews aren't very credible. For example, one of the largest naysayers to the game is Angryjoe on youtube. The dude never got very far past level 10, and only put a few hours into the game after launch, yet in his video reviews, he made it seem like he put alot of hours into it. The dude's own in game guild (his fans) were calling him out on reddit and his website.
As far as bugs go- as someone who almost has 100% completion- they are far and few between. At launch, there were a few duping bugs, your bank disappearing, and a few dozen bugged quests. 90% of these were fixed by the end of week two. Alot of the dupers were banned or had the duped items removed, and alot of the other problems were fixed by a simple relog or by contacting customer support (Who has been remarkably quick in responding.)The only major bug that persisted for a while was a phasing bug while in a group, sometimes you couldn't see your party members, but that just required a relog or two to fix.
There were alot of botters for a few weeks, but the gms have been running around banning them. That said though, you never saw a bot past level 20-30ish anyways- so they really dont affect your gameplay that much. The only other issues at this time is some random loadscreen freezing in cyrodiil and some optimization issues, which they have been improving on.
This was by far one the smoothest launches I have ever seen. It wasn't perfect, but what launch ever is. I'm very impressed with ZOS. The customer support has been friendly, and quick. For what little trouble most of us had, they gave us 5 free days of play time to make up for problems we did have, there aren't many companies that would do that these days. They are already adding alot of content with this upcoming patch, with the intent to keep steady content coming.
My Review
All that said, the game is definetly not for everyone. The PVE is action based, but the questing is slowed down a lot, while it's fully voice acted- its meant for you to read the actual story and put some thought into. If you just run from point A to point B, your gonna miss out on a lot of stuff. I think thats probably a big turnoff for alot of people who just want to rush through. The game is very similiar to a single player Elder Scroll game. If you like those, you'll like the questing in this game. The world is very large, and there's alot of thing to explore, collect, and find. Even if you don't like the MMO feel of the game, its worth it to buy for the first month, just to play through the story once.
The game has a really simple to use, yet deep crafting system that allows for you to customize your armor alot. The skills and abilites system for the game is what I really think makes the PVP aspect part of the game shine. There is a tremendous amount of freedom in picking your skills, and how you play. You won't be locked in any one role. From a PVP perspective, small scale PVP plays alot like Starcraft- as in Rock, Paper, Scissors. Pretty much every build has a counter build, and builds its strong against. But you can quickly swap skills out to change your build.
PVP has been awesome so far, the most fun I've had since DAOC (Aside from early Darkfall days.....maybe). The map is gigantic, and while you need to find a server with a good population, once you do- theres stuff happening everywhere. The server we play on is always a 3 way tug of war with hundreds of people on screen alot of the times at the sieges for most of the evening.
Currently we are allied/merged with COTP and TAO ingame. We have 240 people in guild- always 30-40 people on with 60-70 at primetime, half of which plays Ebonheart with us. When the weekends roll around, alot of us have been grouping up for PVP- usually we roll about 20 deep. We recently just transfered to wabbajack, and in under a week we helped take the points lead from daggerfall (Who had about twice our score at the time). Daggerfall on our server is largely composed of LoD, Sinister, UDL, and alot of other older darkfall guilds (Kill Cult, Blood, 420, Lost Minions). So its been a blast pushing in the shit of our classic nemesis'.
TLDR: The internet doesn't always tell the truth, the game is alot better than the reviews put out, but it IS NOT for everyone. If you like elder scrolls, or like RVR pvp- you will like this game. Also when you join up with us- your gonna have a pretty good crowd to play with.
Glad you guys are having fun. Sounds awesome
Glad it's fun for those who are playing.
Have fun in the game you like to play, dont let anyone tell you differently.