The Elder Scrolls Online

[Signe]

Oh, that's a better one, I think.  You can also get a mod that puts them on your in-game map and maybe the mini-map.  I don't remember what it's named, though.  If you guys start a guild, I'll join it but I'll probably mostly just use you for your bank.  And the odd group if someone, anyone, plays the same time as I do... which rarely happens.

[Falconeer]

A million things can and could be said about the content in TESO, but here's just a very tiny thing that just happened to me.

I am riding my horse on a road, trying to get to a wayshrine I can see in the distance. A couple of NPCs at the side of the ride don't catch my eye, but while I am speeding past them I can overhear a bit of their conversation. It only lasts a couple of seconds, as my horse passes them, but curious about it I decide to stop and hear whatver sound bit has been recorded for them. Turns out these two traveling women are quarreling because one of them was in charge of the fire and apparently she is not good at it, and now their campfire is out and they are in trouble. You can't really talk to them, so this is not an actual quest. But what you can do is click on the campfire, lit it for them, get thanked while they finally sit down and stop quarrelling, and get a decent chunk of XP for the inconvenience. The whole thing had no signs, no blinking yellow marks, nothing. It's just a little roadside picnic you happen to help with.

I am still playing the game 99% solo (I only group for PvP), and it works perfectly that way. I'm only level 18 after 46 hours of /played and I haven't felt the grind or any need to speed it up yet.

[satael]

There's alot of little things in the game that you can miss out if you play it like a usual mmo (or maybe other games have them too but I've always managed to skip them). For example alot of the npcs have more dialogue to say once you've completed the quest and you've gotten the reward but I'm sure 90+% of people never hear it since there's no reward (usually) to be gained from listening to it.

[Signe]

I'm even slower than you, Drew, I've only just turned 15.  Some of the NPC conversations I've heard have been really funny.  Some suggest things to you.  I'm trying to be careful not to miss much.  I've only just ventured into Deshaan from Stonefalls but still have two outstanding quests to finish there.  The combat isn't so bad sometimes.  Some of the bosses present challenges and require a fair bit of strategy if you're running solo.  I have one level 15 quest that I'll either have to wait or get a group (the goblin chief).  I can't seem to pull them one at a time.  Actually, I've gone places and killed mobs that are probably meant for groups, but using a little strategy and extended chains (which I'll eventually swap out for the other one maybe) has been very good to me.  I really like the game and I'll probably stick around for a couple of months and see where it goes.  I only allow myself one sub at a time so this will be it for a while unless the NextBigThing happens.

[Bhazrak]

Poor megaserver took another megashit. Down for maintenance now, but lost all items from my bank, got all my ingame pre-order mails again, so decided to logout and see how it was in an hour or so. Get back on,' hey my bank is back!', but 40 of its expansion slots are gone, and the items that were in those slots are now in my character's inventory, well, what little room he had available, so 'lost' 30ish things. Maybe that'll get fixed too?

I like the game when it works still though. But yeah. Ramble bamble.

[Njal]

Is there a way to hide your helm? A lot of them are just fugly.

[satael]

Is there a way to hide your helm? A lot of them are just fugly.

It's an option under the gameplay tab (press esc)

[Njal]

Thanks, missed it cuz it looked greyed out and I'm blind.

[Senses]

A million things can and could be said about the content in TESO, but here's just a very tiny thing that just happened to me.

I am riding my horse on a road, trying to get to a wayshrine I can see in the distance. A couple of NPCs at the side of the ride don't catch my eye, but while I am speeding past them I can overhear a bit of their conversation. It only lasts a couple of seconds, as my horse passes them, but curious about it I decide to stop and hear whatver sound bit has been recorded for them. Turns out these two traveling women are quarreling because one of them was in charge of the fire and apparently she is not good at it, and now their campfire is out and they are in trouble. You can't really talk to them, so this is not an actual quest. But what you can do is click on the campfire, lit it for them, get thanked while they finally sit down and stop quarrelling, and get a decent chunk of XP for the inconvenience. The whole thing had no signs, no blinking yellow marks, nothing. It's just a little roadside picnic you happen to help with.

I am still playing the game 99% solo (I only group for PvP), and it works perfectly that way. I'm only level 18 after 46 hours of /played and I haven't felt the grind or any need to speed it up yet.

Not to belittle your excitement but this sort of thing is in every MMO.  Just reading it made me think of GW2.   I think you are just enamored by the feels that first week MMO's give us.

[Venkman]

It is, but it's a question of density that drives the "feel". I remember stumbling on some fun side quests in GW2, and in WoW, ones that were definitely in the "above and beyond" realm of content outside of the minimum needed to grind levels without needing to grind XP.

But whereas you don't really expect it in an MMO (which makes it a nice surprise), you kinda do in an ES game, thus without it the game would feel even less like Skryim.

Doesn't probably solve any issue anyone has with the game. But it does sound like it sucks slightly less than I assumed from my few hours in

[Surlyboi]

Shit I like:

It runs well in OS X, the development doesn't seem like an afterthought or a shitty cider port. I don't have to boot into 'doze to play. (I'm looking at you, STO, even though you get points for effort.)

The explorer in me is delighted at all the shit out there.

It feels sort of organic. It's not forced at all yet.

Shit I don't like:

The combat is sub par and the animations seem to desync and the responsiveness is muddy.

That prison sequence sucks.

[Draegan]

A million things can and could be said about the content in TESO, but here's just a very tiny thing that just happened to me.

I am riding my horse on a road, trying to get to a wayshrine I can see in the distance. A couple of NPCs at the side of the ride don't catch my eye, but while I am speeding past them I can overhear a bit of their conversation. It only lasts a couple of seconds, as my horse passes them, but curious about it I decide to stop and hear whatver sound bit has been recorded for them. Turns out these two traveling women are quarreling because one of them was in charge of the fire and apparently she is not good at it, and now their campfire is out and they are in trouble. You can't really talk to them, so this is not an actual quest. But what you can do is click on the campfire, lit it for them, get thanked while they finally sit down and stop quarrelling, and get a decent chunk of XP for the inconvenience. The whole thing had no signs, no blinking yellow marks, nothing. It's just a little roadside picnic you happen to help with.

I am still playing the game 99% solo (I only group for PvP), and it works perfectly that way. I'm only level 18 after 46 hours of /played and I haven't felt the grind or any need to speed it up yet.

I found a merchant selling stuff in the middle of no where. He sold boxes that gave blue items. I then had the option of robbing him and got 1000g and some xp. Was fun.

[Draegan]

I think the lack of an AH isn't horrible in this game in the same vein an AH was terrible in Diablo3.

[Miasma]

The amount of optional dialogue and color they recorded for this game is staggering.  For every quest npc in a town that you need to interact with there are twice as many npcs who have no role whatsoever but that you can still talk to.  When you finish a quest if the npcs you worked with are still alive you can go back to them after the turn in and they will have post-quest thoughts.  It's hard to believe they went through this much effort knowing that nine out of ten people would never speak to these extra npcs.

As an example I finished a quest last night to liberate a mine full of people that the Imperials were using as forced labor, after the turn-in the mine area phases from full of aggro mobs to freed miners.  There was one orc or who had nothing to do with the quest standing with a bunch of tied up imperial prisoners.  There is no reason to talk to him but I did and find out that he's trying to stop the other miners from lynching the prisoners and get into a dialogue about what he thinks should be done with them.

I also took my first step into the last zone before the veteran ranks and was again impressed by how amazing it looked graphically.

In bad news, server stability and patching problems seem to be getting mildly worse since launch instead of better.

Edit: To be clear all of this dialogue is in actual voice acting, not text.  The only time text is used is if you are actually reading a piece of paper/diary/book.

[Falconeer]

I wanted to post the same thing Miasma, but didn't want to deal with the usual amount of "oh but it's in every game since 1979 already and you are just honeymooning". I agree, it is staggering and I love it.

Also worth mentioning the cool idea of veteran levels, an elegant design solution to have people explore all the content regardless of their faction.
For those who don't know how it works: when you reach the level cap (50) you have ten more levels that you can achieve, called Veteran Levels, that we could call 50.1, 50.2, ..., up to the actual cap of 50.10. The Veteran levels don't add any more points to your stats pool, but allow to use some equipment that you couldn't access otherwise. How do you achieve those additional levels, since you've run out of content? Simply: you go through all the zones that you've skipped because didn't belong to your faction in a phased version of them where the quests, NPCs and stories and are what you would have experienced before if you were from that faction but the mobs are all 50+. I am sure some other game did this (did they?), but regardless it's a very clever way to keep providing players with fresh content without forcing them to roll a new toon. This also helping to stifle the usual problem of people getting to 50 in a week and then complaining they have nothing left to do. The amount of content is really mindblowing.

[Miasma]

Yes I'm looking forward to not having to roll alts I'll never play again just to see the other side's quests.  On the other hand if you actually do want an alt and want that alt to have the veteran levels it is going to be a huge amount of effort since you have to run all three factions' areas.

I'm too far along to change mains now but I sort of wish I had rolled a templar instead of a dragon knight.  I like the dragon knight but it seems as though templar is just as good but also has the only healing class abilities.  My concern is somewhat mitigated since anyone can heal with the resto staff line.

[Daeven]

I've had several quests and funky locations revealed because of 'talk to everyone'. It is very much like the Single player Elder Scrolls games in that you miss half the game if you just go to the next Quest Marker.

Biggest minus: bots camping boss spawns in public dungeons. I keep dreaming of "GM's" wandering around and banning these twits. Just Because.

[Miasma]

I haven't seen any bots in delves but that's because I think I am ahead of them on the level curve, I have heard it is a problem in the low level delves.  I really don't know what the gold spam scum are doing here since it would be hard for them to make much money.  There is no univeral auction house, everything sold to npcs goes for a pittance, if you do want to sell something you can't easily automate it as you need to join a merchant's guild etc.

That said bethesda not having anti spam tools on day one is fucking laughable.  I shouldn't have to spend five minutes waiting for a customer support ticket screen to load to report spammers in zone chat or mail.  Right click "spam" done is how it should work..

Also: Abnur Tharn is the best npc we love to hate.

[amiable]

In the course of the past 3 weeks I have lost the entire content of my bank and all additional bank spaces 3 times.  I can't quit because my wife is still playing but I am secretly hoping it happens to her, because I will know it will drive her into apoplexy and I can quit this stupid game.

[Falconeer]

I was going to say that I haven't heard of any issue like that from anybody I know, but here's a Reddit post about it. Sucks.


EDIT: Let me add an article about "The Strange Economy of Werevolves and Vampires in Elder Scrolls Online".

Vampirism and Lycanthropy have long been a part of Elder Scrolls lore, but their appearance in ZeniMax Online's MMORPG has had the perhaps unintended effect of shaking players out of the predictable routine of shuttling from one quest to the next and from one zone to the next. It makes the world feel more alive. You might experience this feeling while hunting down the NPC werewolves and vampires during the game's full moons and new moons respectively if you can't convince someone to bite you.

Fresh out of the starter zones, players who haven't even reached level 10 huddle like beggars among the crafter's stalls and banks and flood the zone chat with pleas to take pity on them and bite them for free so they can use it their entire playthrough. The massive sums of cash come from comparative veterans with 25 or more levels under their belts, who try to toss away everything they've earned so far just for the pleasure of becoming the latest shaggy dog or bloodsucker. In a game where there are no server-wide auction houses, it yields the fastest transfers of money that I've seen during my whole playthrough.

[amiable]

I was going to say that I haven't heard of any issue like that from anybody I know, but here's a Reddit post about it. Sucks.

I think it may be a by-product of the fact that I have 7 mules (it always happens as I am logging in and logging out with different characters which I end up doing a lot) because:

1.  They do not provide anywhere near enough inventory space to store crafting mats.
2.  They do not provide us with a functional market to trade these mats so I could sell excess or buy mats if I was interested in developing a crafting skill down the line, requiring me to regrind a shit-ton of mats if I do not hoard them.

I am certain I am not alone in this, the strain of having 100,000 people log in and log out constantly to switch items is probably hammering there login servers (where the bug exists).  My wife is a programmer an she is pretty sure that it is a combination of poor coding and a system that incentivizes folks to put a direct strain on the already poor coding.  The economy/crafting/inventory system in this game is just an amazing clusterfuck in all ways and is really detracting from my enjoyment of the game.

[Miasma]

My understanding is that while they do have backups of character data they have no facility to simply rollback inventory to that backup, they have to go through logs and replace things one at a time.  Please tell me they at least replaced your stuff right?  While I'm loving the actual game part of ESO if I ever lost all the stuff I have carefully sorted into my bank and mules I would probably rage quit.

The effects of people like you and me having seven mules is absolutely going to be more expensive than if they just gave us 500 inventory slots directly but the variable we don't have is how many people are willing to do that instead of just selling everything.  Pulling a number directly out of my ass I would have to imagine only one in five people at most are willing to bother with mules.

A general rule that has popped up to fix client bugs, get out of falling through the world during login etc is to delete this file - Documents\Elder Scrolls Online\live\SavedVariables\ZO_Ingame.lua.

[Falconeer]

I have 7 mules too. One for each craft. And no, it is not my fault cause I never ever do this in MMOs. It is their fucking fault.

[Paelos]

Sounds more like it.

[Signe]

I don't have any mules.  Does that mean I'm safe?  Probably not.  I have, however, been suffering from buggy quest tracking.  I've turned off all my addons and I still get it.  I turn off the game quest tracker and it goes away.  Now I just use the addon and turn off the game tracker.   Movement has become somewhat jerky since the last update, too.  It doesn't affect my fps, which are awesome, just movement.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I really haven't followed this game closely. I've jumped on it for some stupid stuff I've heard but from people actually playing the release would you consider this worth $60 plus the sub fee right now? Or wait a bit til they've ironed everything out.

[Miasma]

If you like exploring and quests it's worth the price.  If you have other stuff to play right now you may as well wait until they address some of the bad designs that detract from the game though.  Could also wait to see if it goes free to play although I'm less sure that will happen within a year as I once was.

[amiable]

 Please tell me they at least replaced your stuff right?  While I'm loving the actual game part of ESO if I ever lost all the stuff I have carefully sorted into my bank and mules I would probably rage quit.

I have not had a response to any of my tickets on this issue.  None.

[Mrbloodworth]

This title is not worthy of the series in any way, and its about as "safe" a MMO game as you can make. I have already played this game, for the past 20 years now. I have been burned out by this formula for quite a while now. If your not, good. If you have never played a MMO before, you will find this to be the best game ever, I guess.

More mobs standing around to die in fields.

[Ingmar]

 Please tell me they at least replaced your stuff right?  While I'm loving the actual game part of ESO if I ever lost all the stuff I have carefully sorted into my bank and mules I would probably rage quit.

I have not had a response to any of my tickets on this issue.  None.

I want to say I read something somewhere about them not doing any individual support on it until the root cause is fixed, since it just happens again, but I am not sure where I saw that.

[Lakov_Sanite]

 Please tell me they at least replaced your stuff right?  While I'm loving the actual game part of ESO if I ever lost all the stuff I have carefully sorted into my bank and mules I would probably rage quit.

I have not had a response to any of my tickets on this issue.  None.

I want to say I read something somewhere about them not doing any individual support on it until the root cause is fixed, since it just happens again, but I am not sure where I saw that.

I would think at least a reply saying so is mandatory considering you are a paying customer.

[Modern Angel]

I really haven't followed this game closely. I've jumped on it for some stupid stuff I've heard but from people actually playing the release would you consider this worth $60 plus the sub fee right now? Or wait a bit til they've ironed everything out.

I think it's p good right now but I'm playing god awfully casually. It's not without its warts, obviously, but I think it's pretty darned good.

Of note, I think this is the game with the widest gulf between what critics are saying (IT SUCKS) and what the players are saying (ABOVE AVERAGE TO VERY GOOD) that we've seen in a really long time. There are reviews just savaging it, like in PC Gamer, and it just bears no relation to the way people seem to actually be playing it. And I'm not in a fanboy bubble. The worst I'm hearing from people is that it's merely decent.

[Logain]

Why isn't there a an ESO subforum? I mean, seriously, we've got GW2 and D3 but no ESO?

[ajax34i]

Because initially the thread started as "This will suck" and so there was no need for a subforum, because who cares about gameplay details for a game that sucks?  Discussion is still about whether it sucks or not, with very few questions asking about mods to use, tactics, skill selection/training, guilds formed, and so on.  But anyway, it's up to Schild and the other admins and moderators.

[Simond]

Why isn't there a an ESO subforum? I mean, seriously, we've got GW2 and D3 but no ESO?

Because everyone bar a lone holdout will have quit within six months.