Summary:

Sorry but ESO is not for me. You've made another theme-park MMO with better tech. Why? I've no time or need for that, and there's already WoW. I was hoping for a more sandbox world like EVE. You can't fix that now, but please can you offer a sandbox start i.e. the option to start in town and explore at will? I'll buy it then.

In detail:

Hi folks at Bethesda/Zenimax, thank you for letting me into the beta. I appreciate. I'm sorry to say the game didn't win me over. I played the beta for maybe 8 hours, up to the second quest island with the pirate crew. That was the most I could force myself through before abandoning the game. It was not an enjoyable experience. I pressed on through the quests hoping the free-form game would open up but it didn't and eventually I gave up. I feel I don't know what the game proper might be like, but it's behind a steep wall of quests and for all I know it might be quests through and through. I've no time for that.

I'm an ex WoW player, older, and eagerly looking for a replacement. What I, or we, want at this point is not another theme park MMO. What we want from you as MMO designers is not to package experiences or "content" for us to consume. We want you to create an amazing environment for us to inhabit and we'll take care of the experiences. The point of an MMO is to meet other players and work together on things that matter. Group combat and overcoming challenges are things that matter. Gear and skills are the tools to get there, and also the rewards. It's what makes you valuable to others. Getting better, working with others, and being valued by them is what matters. Serious play with others creates genuine experiences and friendships, which are ours and which we cherish for years to come. It's what keeps us subscribed. Your packaged quest content is nowhere in that equation. It's filler, for when we're bored. Sorry!

I'm sorry to say this. I had high hopes for ESO but, for me at least, maybe you've built the wrong game. You've made another theme park MMO. Who for? Your timing is good and you may capture the ex WoW audience who still want a theme park MMO. But that market is probably shrinking. Younger people play LoL. Some of us who are older left WoW because it became too much of a theme park MMO. Early WoW was open (or maybe basic) enough that we could make it our world. Then over the years Blizzard insisted on treating it like a content outlet. It became their content, not our experience. So we left. Don't start where Blizzard ended up.

I appreciate the enormous budget and talent that went into ESO. Your interface design and systems are superb. Free-form skills are very cool and long awaited in an MMO. All of this is awesome. But aspects of your design work against you. While Skyrim environments were generated by algorithms and felt real, ESO environments appear to be modelled. I understand you did that to control and design the zones, but they feel like stage sets. I feel no urge to explore the world. Character and building models are very detailed and realistic, but as you know that works against immersion and makes the art style look weak. In my beta experience I saw a beautiful sunset, but it looked like a competent high-fidelity rendering of a sunset, not something artful and distinctively ESO. With these art assets the game runs well, but there's no CPU left to do other things with my computer while it's running. This means it's hard to make the game part of my life.

These are deep design choices and you can't fix them now. However you can do one thing. Allow us to get into the game and experience it free-from, without quests. In WoW terms, give us the option to start in Stormwind and point us at Goldshire, but let us go where we please. Don't force us to go through the worgen or DK "experiences" just because you made them and think they're cool. With all due respect, they may be cool but they're in the way of the game and we just want to speed through them. Don't lock higher level content behind quests either. Quests and starting zones are great, but they should be optional. I understand that when I join the game I'll be powerless and mostly clueless. That's par for the course. It's fine to start with novice gear and have to take on puny enemies but let us be free from day one, like EVE.

We don't want a directed experience. You don't need to put us on a content treadmill, nor do we appreciate it. Blizzard sells that. We want fantasy facebook with dragons. We want a beautiful, distinctive, immersive world in which to just be. For most of our play time, long term subscribers will just wander around and socialize, we may explore or craft something. Or just chat. Sometimes we'll stay logged on and glance at the chat, or hear the background sounds, while we do other things. That is OK. It's valid. We want to make the game part of our lives. Then, from time to time, we want to form groups and do really challenging things with our friends. We want intensive, organized experiences, in small doses. That's all. Offer that and do it well and you'll have loyal subscribers for a decade. Don't just imitate Blizzard please.

There is, your able to skip the starter island.

Each location I've been to seems to be heavily guided and on rails. Now, these are only a few locations available, but I'm definitely getting the vibe of 'war has begun, all the pretty places are being destroyed'.

I would love to see some locations, eventually or early on, that remain untouched.

you are testing a 5 month old build client they arent letting us taste the current client for some strange reason

My personal preference is pure sandbox.

I like ESO though. I can live with it.

Don't copy blizzard implying they did it first? UO, EQ, the only sand box mmo I knew is dead, eve is going but it's not massive is it?

What your describing most players would be bored faster, themparks are fun, sandboxes are just dirty.

You don't like the game that's ok, it doesn't need to change.

eve is pretty massive in scope

It is space, so was elite.


Not in players though

Sweetie, you want facebook with dragons. I don't. I really, really, really don't.

I have friends in my life. I'm not looking for virtual friends. There's nothing wrong with wanting that, don't get me wrong, but you don't have the right to speak for others.

If you want friends in game, walk up to people and talk to them, just like real life.

I've played all the "sandbox" make your own game, mindlessly killing mobs MMO. It was called Everquest, and it's still up and running today. There's also Second Life, Ultima Online and others I can't think about that offer that.

I like being a part of a dynamic world interacting with npcs and doing quests. I like feeling like the hero even if 5 million other people are right beside me doing the same thing. I

The game is not for you. That's OK. But what you're asking for would make my eyes bleed so please stop speaking for me.

I didn't see that part. I don't want facebook or dragons.

Could somebody explain to me what would a sandbox mmo would be like, exactly? Never played EVE. I've had a taste of what a theme park MMO is like, of course, and it has become fairly annoying at this point.

But what is a good sandbox MMO, exactly? I don't know what things are like in EVE but somehow I get the feeling that in a sandbox where players were given too much power they'd form some sort of political force and make life hell for players who did not want to join their clan or were part of their rival clan or whatever. Sure, sounds pretty fantastic on paper in some regards but I have this hunch it will end up like world PvP in WoW or any other MMO where you get ganked repeatedly by people with too much time on their hands, wasting minutes or even hours of your time you could be having fun doing quests with your friend. Till this day I do not get how some decent people still like that aspect of the game.

A sandbox game predominantly features the ability to go anywhere at anytime, no levels yet skills, stuff like that. I should not have said I like pure sandbox, because [censored] player politics svck

Sandbox have nothing to do with player politics, its just that most sandbox MMO have lots of player plotics problem, just like themepark MMO.

A sandbox MMO / game is usually a game that let you roam free with minimal guidance. You carve your own path.

A themepark MMO is a MMO that mostly guide you through a set (or a few set) of path, you might have the illusion of 'free roam' but at the end of the day, you are still guided.

Ah, I see. So sort of like the SP TES games?

It would be pretty nice indeed if for once I could just call a friend and go on an adventure wherever we felt like going, whether it meant our untimely demise or not. Instead we are often confined to islands and zones that are 'around our level'.

Didnt' GW2 solve this issue to some degree with its dynamic 'develling' system and you could go back to old zones to help your friends out without gimping their experience gain nor wasting your own time without getting anything in return? I really liked that feature. When I played the ESO beta with a friend who outright refuses to use voice comm for whatever reason we had some trouble coordinating.

A sandbox can be many things, but I like to think of them as simply being games that aren't themeparks because a themepark MMO is a pretty specific type of game. If you're guided from place to place by quests and if the games future expansion relies on developer created story content then you're not playing a sandpark MMO.

It dosen't even haveto be that sandboxy. Guildwars 2 is a themepark mmo that feels very TES-ish to me simply beacuse it's purely exploration driven, they give you suggestions on where to go and point out where their version of quests will happen but you(or i rahter) never really feel pushed in a certain direction.

Would love for future zones to end up somewhere between GW2 and what's in game now, very open, go "do whatever you like" zone design with lots of completely optional, non quests related content aswell as some quests and storylines.

The sandbox is alive and well in Cyrodiil though, and if you haven't done it yet i strongly suggest you grab acouple friends or ask around the zone chat and go explore, go hunt after the 18 dungeons, mundus stones and bosses that litter that place.

It most deffinently feels like TES and is increadibly fun if you like exploring, some dungeons are abit bland but others are just great and running into/hiding from/running from/ganking enemy players really spices it up.

A bit late for this poll now, the game is going to be released soon enough.

To me a sandbox is having the rich and complex world but not being guided by a set story. Usually this means some amount of computer-generated content like the landscape in Skyrim, dungeons in various games, the galaxies in Elite, EvE, etc. The background of the world has to be computer-generated, which makes it a little bland but on the upside it can then be vast and more mechanics-driven.

Developer-generated content is fine, but it shouldn't be something you skip on the way to max level freedom, not should it be a treadmill. It should be an optional element, while the core of the game is the player interactions - social and mechanical. I hear in ESO levelling is just a few days of play, so maybe it'll be fine. But maybe that's just a beta adjustment.

Should really try the next Beta with the newest build. They changed the Tutorial and Start so its not so on rails. You now do a updated Coldharbour which should be a bit quicker to go through then you start in the main open world and can play from there, or you have the choice to do those Islands that where a part of the old start. This new way is MUCH more true to TES as well as past MMOs with a short tutorial then you are in the main game world with choices on what to do.

There should be a little more free-roam.

I don't see pure sandbox working with ESO, but that's just me.

I sometimes think people will only be able to fulfill their idea of "sandbox" is when they are able to create their own quests, enter their own texts, respond to said texts, ad infinitum. People brandy the word sandbox around and that word is as varied in meaning as the people who say it. I have come to the conclusion when a person comes in saying they are not happy or make a thread about how unhappy they are about the game not being sandbox they haven't been able to put a finger on what actually makes them unhappy and simply decide to use the word "sandbox."

Aeno

Even the single player titles aren't really sandbox.

but but but I am unhappy because the game is not sandbox, I need a sandbox, game = fail with no sandbox...

I need more sandbox...er cowbell.

Aeno

Eve is the only pure sandbox out there; which happens to be it's greatest strength and greatest weakness; it's uprising and will eventually be it's downfall.

People always see limitations, rails and artificial barriers as a bad thing. I see them as a means to control an otherwise out of control player base; give people enough rope and they'll hang themselves. I'm all for a bit of freedom; but we need limitations to protect us from ourselves.