The Elder Scrolls Online

[Paelos]

The conspiracy theory goes way deeper than just being a beta for consoles.

[Simond]

It is really hard to believe that anyone could be this incompetent or out of touch...

On the other hand: the entire history of MMO development.

[Signe]

The new Ultima is going to awesome though, right?  RIGHT??? 

[Sir T]

[Paelos]

http://gamingbolt.com/the-elder-scrolls-online-interview-business-model-is-what-the-business-model-is

That interview really reinforces my belief that the console version is never getting released.

[Numtini]

http://gamingbolt.com/the-elder-scrolls-online-interview-business-model-is-what-the-business-model-is

That interview really reinforces my belief that the console version is never getting released.

Does he know how horrible that came out? I mean, if that was my boss, I'd stop working and start emailing my resume.

[Paelos]

They have absolutely no idea how badly that looked, no. Because these people shouldn't be running a taco stand, let alone a million dollar gaming project.

[LC]

Does he know how horrible that came out? I mean, if that was my boss, I'd stop working and start emailing my resume.

That guy gets around. I think he has worked on just about every failed mmo developed in Austin.  I guess he is sowing the seeds of failure on the east coast now.

[01101010]

http://gamingbolt.com/the-elder-scrolls-online-interview-business-model-is-what-the-business-model-is

That interview really reinforces my belief that the console version is never getting released.

Does he know how horrible that came out? I mean, if that was my boss, I'd stop working and start emailing my resume.

Best part:

You know the business model is what the business model is and it allows us to deliver high level content on regular basis right now.

[Venkman]

So, you know, I couldn't tell what was more annoying. You know, whether it was the freakin' flyover pop-in ads on that stupid site, or, you know, the lack of any information at all or, you know, the valley girl style of talk. So please go try their game. You know, so maybe they'll someday consider doing, uh, the console something.

Not sure if I should blame lack of media training, or if their creative director actually does lack the clarity of vision he didn't convey in the interview.

[Miasma]

It was a terrible interview.  The guy asking the questions was even worse than the guy answering.

[rk47]

I hear the dungeon is pretty great folks.

[Tannhauser]

Oh wow, that dungeon video is a real eye-opener.  WTF is wrong with these devs?  You kick someone from your group and they stay in your instance AND you can't recruit a replacement?

[Miasma]

Back when I had people to play with their grouping system was probably the buggiest pos I've ever seen.  At least half the time it would just forget who was leader, so no one else could be invited.  It thinks people are offline who are standing right in front of you, it won't put them in the same instance so you just see a floating icon moving around where they are supposed to be.  You won't always get loot from a boss.  The better loot is bind on pickup but there is no system to trade those bop items between your group members for an hour or so like WoW, since there are so many items with so many traits this means you rarely get what you want.  Bosses drop a whopping eight or so gold, to put that in perspective it costs 250 gold to feed your horse each day.

There has been a bug since launch which they only managed to fix (or claimed to) Tuesday where if you were in a raid group and invited someone in a different zone it would crash about five random people's clients.  You would just see the new person join and then bam five people were offline (or your client froze up if you were one of the five).  Groups of more than 16 cause some sort of memory leak that will start to crash raid member's clients.

In other news, the game already has an issue with too many useless items and limited inventory space right?  So what did they decide to do for no apparent reason whatsoever?  They have put entirely worthless (sell for 0g, have terrible stats so you would never equip them) weapons in the thousands of dressers, nightstands etc.  It's just insane and baffling.  If you go through an inn opening everything you wind up with dozens of items that are literally nothing but garbage you have to destroy or 'sell' for 0g.

They also delete all add-on saved variables each major patch it seems.  So all your settings, placements and preferences go poof and you have to do it over again.  Since the default UI is garbage the add-ons are pretty important.  They also made us agree to an entirely seperate terms of service just for third party add-ons if we have any installed...

[rk47]

Leave Ordinary MMOs behind, the Alpaca says.. 

[Miasma]

So this says sponsored and it must have been done with Bethesdas' help.  So I guess you can pay the onion to make fun of your product?  I must be out of the loop, I wonder how long that's been going on.

I sorta stopped going to the onion a couple years ago after the paywall went up.

[Miasma]

They are finally going to nerf the veteran zones.  I don't know why it took them so long, it's like a mass exodus once people hit VR1.  They are going to make more changes to improve the veteran levels as well and will talk about them at QuakeCon.  Bethesda owns ID software and Quake in case your first question is "QuakeCon?".

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/117132/veteran-system-changes-preview

I will finally get to go back to questing, I've been waiting on this inevitability for weeks.

[Threash]

So this says sponsored and it must have been done with Bethesdas' help.  So I guess you can pay the onion to make fun of your product?  I must be out of the loop, I wonder how long that's been going on.

I sorta stopped going to the onion a couple years ago after the paywall went up.

The onion doesn't have a paywall, never did as far as i know.

[Miasma]

Hmm, I guess they are just experimenting on us filthy foreigners.

In August 2011, The Onion's website began testing a paywall model requiring a $2.95 monthly or $29.95 annual charge from non-U.S. visitors who want to read more than about five stories within 30 days. "We are testing a meter internationally as readers in those markets are already used to paying directly for some (other) content, particularly in the UK where we have many readers," said Onion, Inc. chief technology officer Michael Greer.

They started doing it to Canada sometime last year.

[Sir T]

Yeah, I've been seeing the paywall for a few years now. Its why I don't go to the Onion anymore, though I love their humour.

[Threash]

That's horrible, i hope they never try that here.

[Shatter]

They are finally going to nerf the veteran zones.  I don't know why it took them so long, it's like a mass exodus once people hit VR1.  They are going to make more changes to improve the veteran levels as well and will talk about them at QuakeCon.  Bethesda owns ID software and Quake in case your first question is "QuakeCon?".

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/117132/veteran-system-changes-preview

I will finally get to go back to questing, I've been waiting on this inevitability for weeks.

Its funny to me that at some point in their dev cycle they decided forcing people to group was somehow a good idea combined with a shitty risk vs reward system....BRILLIANT!  This will keep people subbed!  Morons

[Falconeer]

Have you heard of the bug/memoy leak/videocard fuckup they introduced a few patches ago that basically brings your CPU to its knees and transforms the game into a slideshow until you quit and restart it, and it happens every 30 minutes or so? Apparently doesn't hit everyone, but there's a good 30% rate that you are in it if you don't have an nVidia card. Of my real life friends still playing the game, 4 out of 6 have been dealing with this for about a week with no actual response or solution from Zenimax.

[Miasma]

Yes it only happens in the PvP zone so PvP people are basically giving up.  I imagine the campaigns are being won by anyone with a large guild who can log off/on together as a group.  Worse yet they have twice claimed to have found out what the problem was and put in a 'fix' that either failed or only worked for a few hours.

[Miasma]

Got an email this morning saying my sub payment was successful.  Just got another one a few minutes ago saying it failed.  The successful one had links to live systems, the failed one had links to what looks like a test environment.  A few people on the forums have noticed this.  I'm guessing they tried to do a billing run from the test environment but forgot to switch off actually sending the emails.

I wonder how many people are going to get 'payment failed you can't play anymore' messages until they fix this.

[Paelos]

I love your posts on this game Miasma.

Supposedly they want to make the game "More solo friendly." I thought the problem was that it wasn't group friendly? Anyway. Polygon did a repost of an earlier point Miasma made about the forums.

http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/10/5887949/elder-scrolls-online-updates

"Our goal is to remove the feeling of 'have just hit a wall of difficulty' that many of you have commented on — you'll be able to solo much more easily," the post reads.

"One of the guiding principles of our Veteran gameplay was to encourage people (not force them) to group. We wanted people to be able to solo to max level, but still wanted you to participate in group content ... But this hasn't been well-received. Many of you love the game you played from 1-50, and the Veteran-level zones are too much of a departure from that experience."

Quakecon is in like 6 days, when supposedly they will make more PR mistakes. I'm looking forward to news.

[Tannhauser]

"We thought you would enjoy a punch in the face but have found that you, in fact, have not."

[Miasma]

Now on steam.  Half off until the end of the weekend...

[Paelos]

Now on steam.  Half off until the end of the weekend...

First post I noticed:

Thinking of buying? Don't.
Let me start by saying I pre ordered the collector's edition, and I am a huge fan of the Elder Scrolls series. I'm not just some run of the mill troll on here to bash the game. I REALLY wanted this game to succeed.

So let's begin...

Leveling 1-50 is fun...and that's about it.

- Vet ranks is a terrible quest grind that forces you to play the other factions' zones (so you'll never want to make an alt ever)

- Bugs bugs bugs (even 4+ months after release). Every time they patch the game, they add more bugs, some of which are game breaking.

- "Play how you want" is a lie, melee classes are still broken and often don't get invited to raids because of how terrible they are compared to others. Thinking about leveling strictly via PVP? Don't bother, it's not a viable way to level.

- Boring and uninspired loot

- Combat is terrible

- Grouping system is broken. Want to play with friends? You better hope they are at the exact same part of the quests as you, otherwise you're on your own. Basically a single player MMO.

- No open world PVP

- PVP Lag

- No PVP arena, no battlegrounds

- PVP zone is only fun with an organized group, otherwise you can't make any different in the battle.

- "Raids" are boring and cookie cutter.

- Lack of content. No thieves guild, no dark brotherhood, not enough end game, etc.

and last but not least, the devs are just plain terrible. (people being overcharged, taking weeks to respond to tickets, etc)

There's probably more that I'm forgetting but this should be enough for now.

The game basically feels like a beta test before it releases on consoles. If you can pick this up for cheap it might be worth it just to play through the main storyline once, but it's definitely not worth playing after your free month is over. If you want an MMO to keep you entertained for many months/years, this game is NOT for you.

I know people will reply saying "BUT THEY'RE GOING TO FIX <whatever problem>" or "BUT THEY'RE GOING TO ADD <whatever>". That is simply not good enough. They released a broken and incomplete game, end of story.

EDIT:

I forgot about bots and hacks! The game is run client side so it's extremely easy for hackers to make bots and cheats for this game. Bots can teleport, go invisible, fly and all kinds of other crazy things.

EDIT2:

If you're not from North America know that the European server isn't even in europe and you will experience more lag than usual.

[Ingmar]

If leveling 1-50 is actually fun then it's probably worth that half-off price and a month or two. Not that I'm taking the chance, I'm happy with my current MMO still.

[schild]

Just popped in to say this Steam sale is hilarious. I *think* that's a new record.

[Abelian75]

Every time I see this thread updated I'm like, "Oh man, this is gonna be good."  It never stops giving.

[Samprimary]

If you want an MMO to keep you entertained for many months/years, this game is NOT for you.

No I Am Not Entertained

[rk47]

F2P within a year or so.
Gotta milk that console subs.

[Ingmar]

Just popped in to say this Steam sale is hilarious. I *think* that's a new record.

I want to say Secret World had a big sale as soon, if not sooner.