My first day was interesting.
I have never played an Elder Scrolls game before this one, and I never kept up with the hype or news for ESO until the day before the early access started. So this could aslo be considered a first impressions post. Originally, I had not intended to even play ESO. I played a tiny bit of the very first beta and was not impressed, at all, with anything about it. However I decided to pre-order and play anyway if for no other reason then to play with the guild again and the hopes for some good RVR. So you could say my expectations were very low to begin with.
So my first day of early access I woke up late, because the night before was my friends birthday party. Then had to download 7GB of patches, with DSL. So half a day later, I managed to log in and create a character. Not a great start.
My intention was to make a Wood Elf Healer, and spent the rest of that day trying different class/race combinations with no real prior knowledge of what's good and what's not. In the process there I was trying to figure out all the game's little systems. I eventually settled on a Argonian Dragon Knight. Argonian because their armor style reminds of Warhammer's Lizardman race, which I love. And Dragon Knight for survivability and versatility because I had a real hard time surviving as a Nightblade or Sorcerer, and Templar wasn't really very interesting to keep me invested. It took me a while to figure out how the item and crafting system worked and was just starting to get it by the end of the first day, crafting my first set of armor finishing the night.
Things I like:
ADDONS! OMG ADDONS! Game is absolutely atrocious and annoying without addons.
The quest were all actually interesting and entertaining, plus with voice acting!
Crafting was actually useful! Most weapons and armor I made myself was better than any quest reward or anything I found.
Things I didn't like:
NO FOV Slider! Can't play First Person Mode because it makes me feel sick.
I didn't care for the lockpicking system, but it was interesting.
I wish it had the GW2 style gathering nodes. And I miss the collection system.
Was quickly overwhelmed with many quest, many were multi-stage and took longer than needed.
Progression feels very slow.
Things I'm still not sure about:
Combat. I'm not really the biggest fast of this action style combat, I seem to die way too fast sometimes from the smallest things. Primary reason I maind DK for the extra survivability. This choice seem to have paid off because as a NB I died 4 times before I even got to the mainland, haven't died once as a DK.
Skill System. Feel's weird. Similar to GW2 but much more extensive. The oversimplified Class and combat system was the main reason GW2 got too boring too fast for me, and the opposite is why Rift took 2k hours of my life. Not sure how long ESO's will last in my book.
Cooking/Brewing. Didn't dabble in this at all. Because all the items for this were found in the random bottles and crates everywhere, and couldn't be sold for anything, I quickly stopped looting that junk because it filled my bags way to quickly and couldn't get rid of it because I didn't have any recipes.
Fishing. Feels like an extension of cooking. Just get's more ingredients that still can't be sold for anything, so I didn't dabble.
The AVA(?)/RVR system. I have no knowledge of how this works or what to expect, I just know it exist as is one of the primary reasons we (and I) are even in this game. So when I reach the necessary level to participate, I hope this holds up. This was the biggest nail in the coffin for me in GW2 and was a major disappointment.
TL:DR - I'm enjoying it. Looking forward to AVA.
» Edited on: 2014-04-01 11:28:24
» Edited on: 2014-04-01 11:31:03
