A Second Look - ESO: Tamriel Unlimited

[Eternal Edge]

So ESO relaunched with a new subscription model. Instead of a monthly fee it now has a one time payment to buy the game and an in game shop to buy extras for your account. Since it's been a year from the initial release I've come back to see if things have changed for the better.

- The opening cutscene is as pretty as ever, but lets be honest, that is never representative of the actual game.

- Chaacter creation looks to be the same as before. It was never bad, but it didn't do anything special either really. Pick your race, gender, and alliance and customize your character. Most of these are to expected of an Elder Scrolls game anyways.

- All the races seem selectable except for Imperial. As I remember they were a pre-order bonus or you could buy them later in game, I'm not sure. If ou want to be a Human then Breons, Nords and Redguards are always an option anyways.

- Next you choose your class, one of 4 in this menu. I'mnot gunna go through them much except that you seem to have your generic warrior, mage, rogue and paladin.

- Next is the in depth character customization, again the detail is to be expected of Elder Scrolls.

Upon logging in I'm greeted to a window that tells me everything that's been updated. This is much appreciated since I'm not sure myself to be honest.

Playing a bit into the tutorial leaves me feeling okay. Controls feel better than they did before, but it's still the clunky feeling of an Elder Scrolls game.

The tutorial, at least, is fully voice acted by the look of it. Since you start out trying to escape imprisonment you're immediately pulled into the story. Why are you in prison, what is happening to cause your break out? My only complaint that this is how Oblivion and Skyrim both also started. Let's try something new sometime Bethesda.

After a little under an hour in the first zone I made it out. We'll see how things go from her ebut for now I need to get to work. If you have any questions or comments feel free to post. I'll be updating as I continue to play through the free weekend.

[Claydoll]

Haven't touched this game since beta and i'm not too interested in playing it again, even though they send emails constantly.

From what i remember the biggest issue for me in this game was how they handled instancing and grouping making it near-pointless to group up for quests that required killing X or interacting with objects and having places like caves with quest objectives being disgustingly crowded ending in having lots of people waiting for a npc to spawn while watching 20+ of that npc's corpse laying around where it should have been instanced too make it less annoying and flow breaking.

The most positive aspect of the game was the large scale pvp in Cyrodiil since it actually ran quite smoothly with huge amounts of people and had a lot of interesting things that really made stuff like taking over forts feel cool, you could buy and use siege weaponry to attack or defend and you could break most of the structure's outer walls, you could also have nice large scale battles on the open field or smaller scale skirmishes when trying to take lesser objectives.

There was also a really big emphasis on crafting, making it so that it should be the players primary form of gearing in the game.

The start with the player being a prisoner with no past is a signature from Elder Scrolls games, Morrowind is maybe the only that is slightly different but you are still a conscript with no past there aswell from what i remember.

Edited April 16, 2015 by Claydoll

[Eternal Edge]

Yeah I agree with pretty much everything you've said here and it's the reason I didn't play the gsme long myself. But I thought since they're giving me a free weekend anywaus I may as well check if theu fixed the issues with PvE. We'll see I guess.