Ok, so I couldn't think of a good title for this so I went simple and hope I can draw people in here to read this. A bit of a warning, this post will be long and quite rambly (I just made that word up). I would like to go over a few things I have been thinking about for a long time as well as thoughts about the subscription model changes coming down the road. First though, a bit of history to help you understand my views better.
I am 33 now, a nuclear engineer, and a family man. I have been gaming since my parents first bought my brothers and I a Tandy 1000 back in the late 80's. As for MMO type games, I first started on MuDs and my first real MMORPG was Asherons Call briefly. The addiction really started with a brief introduction to EQ, but I switched a few months later to Dark Age of Camelot. DAOC still has a very special place in my heart as my "first" MMO experience. I still believe that the PvP in that game is the best out there and has set the benchmark for truly epic and great PvP. I frequently ran 8 man groups on there and roamed the battlefields looking for other groups to kill. I was quite successful and got hours of enjoyment out of this. I took an MMO break for a bit when I left DAOC and came back with EQ2 and then to Warhammer online. WAR was actually my first introduction to Gaiscioch, but I did not join the family then. Much like DAOC, I mostly ran with a small tight knit group and focused heavily on RvR and scenarios. Again I took a break and bounced around between MMOs some more. I went back to EQ2 for a good while, then tried Rift (this is when I joined the Gaiscioch family). I played GW2 for awhile, not with Gaiscioch but with my old Warhammer buddies, and I eagerly anticipated ESO. I though ESO had the best chance out there of recreating that epic PvP experience from DAOC. They had mile gates, relics... I mean scrolls, 3 faction fights, open field battles, etc... Anyways, what I am trying to convey is that I have played many MMOs, not all were mentioned here, and most often what keeps me playing is good PvP. Lately I think this is starting to shift a bit as I really do enjoy some of the more challenging PvE. Anyways, on to ESO, its expectations, launch, and issues surrounding it.
ESO, as most new MMOs, was touted as being the latest and greatest MMO with all the cool new shiny next gen features. You could play as you want, it had the legendary Elder Scrolls name and lore behind it, it had great PvP, it had this, it had that, it had everything everyone wanted. This is what ZoS and their marketing people were telling us. That's their job. This did an outstanding job at hyping up the game. The were secretive enough to keep you intrigued, but kept feeding enough that you didn't wander off. I am not sure any other company releasing and MMO has done a better job in hyping up the game. This hype, was part of the problem though. The expectations for this game were exceptionally high. Elder Scrolls fans expected it to fully live up to the franchise name and deliver deep lore and fantastic solo PvE. MMO fans were expecting the greatest MMO of the decade. PvP fans were enticed with epic AvA battles and glory for their realm. Hardcore players were expecting riveting new and challenging content. Casual players loved that you could play how you wanted and still accomplish everything. In the end, ESO was another MMO. Its a good game, I really do enjoy it and I plan on playing it for quite awhile still. But it didn't live up to the hype. In actuality, no game out there could. The game was placed on a grand pedestal of awesomeness before it ever went live.
As with most MMOs, the launch was a bit shaky. In reality, ESO did a pretty decent job. Server up time was pretty good, bugs were tracked down and prioritized, and generally ZoS did a pretty decent job at launch. Sure, there were quest bugs and the infamous dupe bug, and gold farmers and bots. These things are pretty standard for MMO releases. Should they be? I don't know, but there was no reason NOT to expect these things at launch. Bugs aside, there were some big issues that drove lots of people away early on. I would like to go over a few of these.
Grouping and Questing - ESO ran with the infamous phasing system. Certain quests had you save town, and when you accomplished this task the town would be a normal town. Pretty cool idea, but if you completed this quest, then wanted to help your buddy do it later that night, you were unable to do this. To me, this boils down to the struggle between trying to draw single player ESO fans and MMO fans together. There are only a handful of quests in each zone that have this mechanic, but you DON'T know which quests are like this until its over and you try to help your buddy. Personally, when I leveled all my characters I pretty much played this as a single player game. But I can see how this would be frustrating for people that play with friends or significant others. I know ZoS has addressed this and tried to fo some changes. Again, as I don't experience it I am not sure how well it works. What I can say though, there are TONS of quest and content out there where this phasing problem does not exist.
Name Plates and Guilds - This is a big big deal, especially for guilds like ours. Again this came down to the melding of a single player game into an MMO. ZoS stated from the onset that they wanted the look and feel of this game to be like every other Elder Scrolls game. This is abundantly obvious in the UI. This causes a huge problem for social interaction, a huge part of MMOs. This aspect combined with the fact that the leveling experience can pretty much be accomplished solo, really takes away from the MULTIPLAYER aspect of this game. I really do believe that ZoS should implement an option to turn on nameplates. Make it very customizable, perhaps only show name plates for friends, or guildies, or everyone if you wish. Each player should also be able to toggle which guild they want associated with their nameplate, similar to GW2 representing system. Hopefully ZoS addresses this in the future, but I don't think this will be added as it is very against the "Elder Scrolls feel" that they want. Even with this drawback, people can still be social. How? you might ask. Well, just be social. Use the guild chat. Talk to people. Invite people to your group if thats what you want to do. Now I understand that this is a hard thing to do. Like many MMOs, you can achieve max level without the help of anyone else. The "end-game" content is where you need your friends, whether this is Cyrodiil and PvP or group dungeons or trials with PvE. To sit there and say the game is not social while you adventure alone and don't go into any of the group content areas is hypocritical. I am just as guilty at this as many of you out there. When I go to Cyrodiil, I usually roam around solo. Some nights I get good enjoyable fights, other times I just get constantly rolled over and get frustrated. What I should be doing is calling out in guild chat that I am going to Cyrodiil and looking for a small group of people to roam with. The simple fact is, ZoS did a poor job of making the social aspect of this game inviting. BUT, as a community we can work through this and excel! We just have to put in a little more effort. Recently I have started to run a weekly Vet Dungeon event, Verve has daily dungeon runs, Pyre hosts frequent events, and others out there are leading them. We have the people willing and trying to do these social things, we just need to be more social in support of them.
PvP - PvP in ESO was probably the main selling point for me. I envisioned, as previously stated, a PvP system reminiscent of DAOC. The fault here is partially mine. DAOC was my first MMO and first PvP type game. Nothing will ever live up to the memories I have there. In reality, those faint memories are likely over exaggerated and inflated as to what it actually was like. ESO did let down though. There were, and in some respect still are, some glaring issues. Certain builds in PvP are just stupid powerful. PvP seems less on skill and build type, think rock beats scissors but please nerf paper, and more on resource management. If you can stay alive and keep your stamina and magicka in supply longer than your enemy chances are you will win. CC is pretty good in PvP, with the exception of roots, dark talons anyone. AoE is, as usual, an issue. This is especially apparent with the impulse/batswarm groups. I've been farmed and watched groups get farmed by far inferior numbers. Its annoying. It defies logic. It is horribly frustrating. When you think about it though, this almost always happens in PvP driven MMOs. Spiritmasters/Bainshees in DAOC would form bomb groups. 50 plus people would nearly instantly wipe to a well placed mez and some AoE from a group of 8 or so. Bright Wizards in WAR could decimate swathes of foes before going down. In ESO, anyone with a staff and a vampire bite can run around in silly looking peasant rags and wipe out groups nearly single handily. All I can offer is condolences and advice. The people that do these things will always find a way to "game" the system and do these things. They are always looking for the "Flavor of the Month (FoTM)" build. They do this do feel superior than you. The relish in their supper skillz to totally pwn n00bs. Just avoid them. If they kill you or your group because of some cheesy mechanics, don't go fight them again. They will likely be in the same area, so just avoid it. Let others know about it, and they will get bored and move on. Now, if you get in a good legitimate fight with a group, they might even have a few people that use impulse or bat swarm, and your group dies to a good hard fought battle. By all means regroup and try again. See if you can outwith them, out maneuver them, out fox them and get the upper hand. But don't get all childish and moan about a stupid broken mechanic. One long standing fact from PvP games is that there will always be some broken thing out there that people will abuse. It will get nerfed/fixed and something else will be found. Its ever evolving so just learn to cope and move on.
Lag is also an issue at times in Cyrodiil. While I think it has improved with the population changes, it still exists. its frustrating and ZoS needs to figure it out. Lag is often attributed to large groups of people do large area things. The changes in 1.6 will hopefully help with this, but time will only tell. If you are constantly experiencing lag at those huge epic fights, then just try to avoid them. Sure they can be fun, but get a small group and go harry the back lines. Cyrodiil is huge and usually the lag is isolated near the large standoff fights. Again, this is not a fix to the problem, but at least its a temporary solution.
Buy/Pay to Play (B2P) - I was honestly pretty shocked when I first learned that ESO was going with a monthly subscription model. Very few games use this model still, in fact I can only think of WoW that does still and really WoW is just a special MMO that really defined the genre for millions of people. I was also happy they were going this model. In my mind it meant that the players and community were more likely to be dedicated and the quality of the game and specifically future content would be vastly improved. Early on though, with ESO not living up to its impossible hype, I had guessed that B2P would eventually happen. I was praying that it didn't go Free-to-Play. A quick distinction between the two. Buy to play means you must pay money for the initial game, then you can play it forever (think GW2). Free-to-Play means you just create an account, download the game and play for "free" forever. The major differences between the two is what the "cash shop / microtransactions" can buy you. When EQ2 transitioned to Free to play, I logged back in to my account. I was naked and could not use a single skill. All my gear and skills were at the Legendary and master level so I had to pay extra to use those. I could use the less effective and weaker skills and equipment for free. Basically, if I wanted to improve my character I had to improve Sony's income first. GW2 and buy-to-play generally do not have this type of system where you can "pay to win." Sure, you can make the leveling experience much easier in GW2 by simply converting gems to gold and buying the gear you need, but it doesn't make your character any better than the player the worked hard for their gear. It DOES cheapen the experience though, so I hope there is no currency conversion in ESO. So long as the cash store items are vanity items and cosmetics, I think this will be a successful and solution for ESO. I plan on keeping my subscription for the first month or two, then I will decide if want the premium perks or just the regular stuff. IF it cheapens character progression or is a "pay to win" type system, I think it will be time for me to move on. Time will tell.
OK, so I rambled on a lot. I am really not sure what I was trying to accomplish with this post, but it is what it is. I think ESO is a fantastic game. I will continue to support it and I think more people should. I think lots of its failings are partially our fault as players and our expectations of the status quo. Elder Scrolls billed itself and breaking the mold. They have done that, but not necessarily in the areas people want the mold broken. As rational humans, we simply need to adapt to these differences to succeed. A large number of the complaints I see people have with this game are easily remedied. A general shift in how you view this game can greatly improve your adventuring experience. For me, this shift was something like this. ESO is a single player leveling experience game. I get to talk to friends and see other people running around, but it is single player. The game has longevity because once you complete the single player game, you can play with all your friends and do amazing MMO things. Maybe this wasn't a big change for me because that is how I have almost always played MMOs. 1-max level is solo. Max level or "end game" is the group content. If the game is not social enough for you, start being more social. There are people in our guild that I have literally NEVER seen talk despite them being on most days. Perhaps they are in other guilds, perhaps they are anti-social, but irregardless of how well the social systems in ESO are done or how poorly they are done, it will never work without the people also being social.
Final Thoughts - Is ESO perfect? No. Will it ever be perfect? No. Expecting perfection is absurd. ESO is a really great game though. I think lots of the issues are being worked on and resolved. Lots of the issues can be self resolved as a community. This game and the Gaiscioch presence here will either succeed or fail based on US as players and a community, not on ZoS and their actions. I hope I haven't offended anyone with my ramblings, and I hope to see and hear from more of you while I adventure in Tamriel.
Drinks-With-Two Fists
