But there are 2 servers. And I bet you can buy some more slots for a very decent sum from the shop.

I found the EB starter island to be very dull, And I reckon I wont do it dozens of times if the future if I'm able to skip it.

After these betas are done, There's not much new to them anyways, might as well skip 'em.

I, for one, am one of the people who did not like the starter island(s) and am eager to test skipping those zones.

I didn't dislike them because they were poorly done, or anything like that. They are not. What I did dislike is that the starter zones condition you to just follow quest chain, after quest chain, after quest chain... This is why people were saying the game was linear. The damn starting zones condition you to play the game linearly!

Bear in mind this is a BETA patch. Who's to say this will be an option (or THE option) on release? Skipping early content for beta testers makes sense if your objective is to test PVP and later (previously bugged) content.

It was a joke. And like I said, no starter islands anymore.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd7kachAfSc

Don't skip it.

Yes...but the Skyrim one felt really offputting to me, there was more hand holding to it. I never got the same feeling in the Oblivion tutorial.

How on rail? I was distracted from one quest on to the next and then another one and so on, went back with an alt then the 5-15 zone was an lag feast and did an bunch of more quests. My only complain was that the difficulty was to easy.

Again it was an question about selecting the right faction.

If it's an option to skip it, then what does it matter if it's what everyone wanted or not? If you want to play it, then you can and if you want to skip it then you can. No biggie.

Though I have noticed in LOTRO that if I skip the tutorial levels my character is behind level-wise compared to when I don't skip and I imagine ESO will be the same way. I'd imagine that if you elect to skip then your character would be at the lowest level they could be if they finished the starter island with no extra quests or skyshards and without any gear other than what you picked up in Coldharbour.

Not no starter islands.

Optional starter islands.

I hated the Oblivion one. It was boring. Skyrim was a lot more exciting. And the movie-like opening was awesome.

Ah ok, you never know on the interwebz.

So they removed them altogether at least in the beta.

An option would have been better, but this is still beta, so you never know.

It was on rails because you didn't have a choice. You had to keep doing the starter islands to get to the main game world.

Now we have choice. In MMOs and especially a TES MMO choices and options are very important.

Tutorial and starter zone should be skippable - that is actually obvious and not very big deal, just when you create alt for crafting it does not make sense to repeat all.

The islands are there. But they are no longer starter islands.

I think the problem with the starter island quest is that it is on rail which serves no purpose of starter island. It teaches you nothing at all. Just a question gated area. And then the problems adds up when you found out you have 2 starter island (except AD).

I don't mind cold harbor or the starter islands. I would like to skip the harborage speech/following/animation though

I haven't asked, but my initial experience was underwhelming and I have given my feedback about it. Starter islands just feel average, the first hours of the game are very important and I think that TES title should feel like all other TES titles.

Overwhelming, huge, jaw dropping the moment you leave the "cell"...

I still will visit starter islands, but I think that this decision was a good one if you look at the first impression the game will make on casual players.

thats why I said what people were asking for was the ability to skip coldharbour not the starting islands

The more I think about this change, the more I dislike it as it is very unintuitive and unfriendly for new players and casual gamers. Why force players to go out of their way to consume beginning level and beneficial content?

The optimal design would have been to continue to dump players on the starter islands but provide an option for players to skip the content and move directly to the level 5 zones.

This change is nothing but one big annoyance and a really stupid idea intended to pacify a group of players who did not need to be pacified on this issue.

I gave my honest opinion in beta which was that it took me about 6 days of playing to really fall in love with the game.

I can't put my finger on what was wrong, just something didn't click. To the point that when I was invited back to my 2nd beta, I had to force myself to stop playing eq2 and give ESO another try.

Once I got to about level 7 or 8 I fell in love with it and have now pre ordered.

I gave my feedback based on what I experienced, and many others said similar things on the beta forum.

The feedback I gave was that something is not quite right with the starter areas, and I explained how I felt, and explained how I can understand the negative press if they only tried the game for a few levels.

While I like the option of skipping starter islands say when I create various alts for pvp, I have zero intention of skipping them on my first few runs through.

Most of the people I saw in beta either agreeing with what I posted, or posting similar threads, like me, were not asking for the option to skip the starter areas, we were simply saying we felt very "meh" while going through them the first time, before we knew what the game really had to offer. And we were concerned many new players might give up before reaching tne point they fall in love with it.

Thing is, I'm not sure this is the answer. Had this option been there the first time I played, I would still have opted for the starter islands and I would still have felt the same.

Don't get me wrong, I'm more than pleased how zenimax appears to be listening to us, and I know this will be my mmo home for many years. I'm just not convinced that this solution will solve the problem. Hopefully I'm wrong and most people either choose not to play the starter areas, or those who do, find them much more awe inspiring than I did.

It's the first impression thing. Now I know what this game offers, I can do the starter areas with a completely different mindset, and I will have great fun, but when I initially wondered what the game was going to be like, that wasn't the case.

I think the need for coldharbor is far too great to be simply removed.

Maybe give an option after an account has completed coldharbor you an choose for subsequent characters if you want that area to be done or not.

But on the other hand they should stick to a "game plan" as well, options are great, but giving option at every corner makes the game lose too much personality, so they should tread carefully.

And @topic, most people complained about the islands, not the coldharbor part. Plenty of "short" reviews that never bothered to leave the islands said it limits exploration, and even though 95% of them turned 180o once they got past the islands, ZOS still offered the ability to skip that altogether, no harm there, as long as they don't keep making everything optional.

I didn't get the chance to play a beta yet, so I have a question about the starter islands. Can you start crafting in them or do you have to wait until you get out of them to begin crafting? If you can start collecting resources for crafting as soon as you leave Coldharbor, then wouldn't skipping the islands make you miss out on a lot of resources? And wouldn't the mobs outside the cities/quests you pick up in the cities be too difficult?

Apparently they nerfed the mobs outside the first cities.

Yes, you'd miss out on resources. And the skyshards.

Morrowind's Prisoner Start was short and sweet compared to the later games. It didn't take long for the Alternate Start mods to appear for both Oblivion and Skyrim, so while starting as a prisoner may be traditional, the prolonged tutorial complete with cringe-worthy dialog isn't universally well-received. Zenimax should have anticipated the response.

Man, I couldn't agree more. Everybody else can blow past if they want, more Lockpicks and chances at racial armor schematics for me. I'm in no hurry at all. Besides, when I make my fourth character, thereby repeating a starting island, odds are good it'll actually have been several months since I've seen the area due to leveling up the others.