Hi there,

during the end of the last two beta weekends I wrote a summary of what I experienced in both beta events.

Now that the NDA is lifted I wanted to take chance and share my summaries with you.

As I did not see any other thread similar to that one I'm going to post, please delete this thread IF I accidentally broke other rules stated by Zenimax Online. With the NDA lifted I think I'm allowed to post my thread but I might be wrong.

The following text is copied from my thread in the dedicated Elder Scrolls Online beta forums that went down after the beta events.

Summary from first beta weekend I participated in ( From Friday, January 10th until Sunday, January 12th)

>>> A friend and I spent most of the Beta Test this weekend together. Sitting in the same room and being able to see each other’s screen.

Later on when reading our advice, complaints and praise, please keep in mind that we are both neither from the USA nor from any native English speaking country. Quest-Syntax or Information could differ in our language, causing problems, misunderstandings etc.

We both played quite a big variety of Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games' endgame content and one could say we're (highly) experienced in questing, doing dungeons, raiding and PvP.

We started The Elder Scrolls Online intentionally without any previous knowledge of the game, just as we did in our very first MMO.

At first we made full use of the time, that copying the game files to an external hard drive and finally to my laptops SSD lasted and created a first character to set the settings, learn the controls, explore the user’s interface and get a first glimpse of the game.

We were both positively surprised by the looks of this game, even though the starting zone isn’t that “pretty”, I think you know what I mean. The engine seems well balanced but could use a bit more antialiasing. Comparing the brightness between laptop and computer I would say this game needs a better brightness setting. Sometimes my friend could not see things as well as I could because of a darker screen, the laptops brightness was at its maximum and it was plugged in to avoid energy conservation settings, though.

The character creation felt mostly intuitive, but we stumbled upon minor discrepancies;

• Male: the slider at “ADORNMENT” (which translates to our countries language with “decoration” or “ornament”) should be split up to “ADORNMENT” (keep this description if you want to) and “BEARDS”
• Also we need more beards.
  Beards with the appearance of Viking beards or medieval ones for example
• Female: I think we need a bit more hair styles with long and/or slightly curly hair
• Female/Male nose tweaking could be improved
• Female: ALL females of the Elf races look WAY to old, even with the respective slider to its minimum. Please improve
• Game crashing after creating a character or freezing after creation without logging in properly. nvde character on frozen selection screen, we experienced this while the servers were extremely busy
• General: Give us both “MARKINGS” and “SCARS” as separately usable sliders
• Khajiit: Both male and female “SOFT” faces look tearful and puny instead of… well “soft”

Female hair feels “strange”

• Not at all an issue with character creation but the hair physics need tweaking

After character creation we went through the tutorial area several times until we chose our class.

Once I got stuck in the first cell without some Argonian unlocking me, but logging out and in again solved the issue.

A first glimpse at the character classes while and shortly after exploring the tutorial area and finally leaving to and later exploring Tamriel brought us to a lot of exited discussions about the game which led to following conclusions, ideas, and complaints;

• Nightblade (I played this class to level 7 without said friend nearby):

Bows are too WAY weak, there is no skill tree that favours bows within the class but only dual wielding swords, maces, axes and daggers is favoured. After watching the first cinematic trailer I was absolutely hyped to play a ranger-ish class with a bow and daggers as secondary weapons. I wanted to be able to take out enemies from distance but defend myself if getting in close quarters. The use of a bow without using class skills was not satisfying at all but using the mostly melee dependant skills was neither. Later on I used mostly range spells and some fully charged shots. I never felt like a good archer. We want to play a respectively play with a physical damage ranged class!

• Templar (I played this class to level 4 without said friend nearby):

I absolutely HATE equipping a weapon just to NOT see it 50% of the time because the characters abilities are designed around other weapon styles or some kind of magical skills. Here I’m especially speaking of “AEDRIC SPEAR” and “PUNCTURING STRIKES”.
I do not know if I’m allowed to talk about other games here, so let me tell you of a game that is a well-known, a relatively old MMO with paladins that drove me to insanity with holstering my two-handed weapon or shield and mace when healing or casting. This was (it must still be) even triggered from instant spells.
I demand well designed spells clutched to the weapon that is currently wielded. Although I must admit, this could be very, very hard to change. Adding melee combat staffs or pole arms to the game to be preferably used with the Templar class would be neat

• Sorcerer (I played this class to level 5 without said friend nearby, my friend chose this class to be his in our gaming session and played it to level 12):

The “UNSTABLE FAMILIAR” seems to be useless until it is morphed.

“CRYSTAL SHARD” immediately followed by a “MAGE’S FURY” results often in two-hitting enemy NSC. The class feels a bit too strong compared to the other three.

Every time my friend morphed one of his abilities he chose the bottom one because it was an absolute no-brainer to decide against the upper one. At least that is what I recognized.

We discussed a lot and I think the upper abilities are placeholders. I looked at his screen two times while he decided what to morph and it seemed that the bottom ability was the improved version of the upper one both times.
A simple example I just made up: [skillNotMorphed] does 5 damage, [skillMorphedUpper] does 7 damage, [skillMorphedBottom] does 7 damage, puts a DOT on your enemy and stuns them for 5 seconds. You see, choosing [skillMorphedBottom] is a no-brainer.

A pet bar or commands for your summoned minion would be nice. Just add “attack my target”, “come back and/or do not attack” and “stay were you are” to F1 to F3.

We think it would be great if “shooting” at friendly targets (add green highlighting) with restoration staffs would heal them.

While levelling crowd control spells felt unnecessary.

Magicka cost should be reduced a little.

• Dragon Knight (I played this class to level 12 in our gaming session and finally to level 15 after my friend was gone):

I played this class wielding a two-handed weapon to level ten, after that I swapped them for a one-handed weapon and a shield.

While resembling a fierce hard-hitting Knight I did not quite feel like the class did enough damage at first. Between level 5 and 10 this feeling was gone.

While both using a two-handed weapon or a shield and a one-handed weapon I was often out of stamina, which I skilled seven points into.

Generally stamina cost should be reconsidered. I felt not being able to react to enemies to stun or interrupt them or dodge their attacks in time.

“UPPERCUT” a melee skill with cast time? This does not feel fluid, maybe it is due to the animation which is a bit clunky.

As previously mentioned I changed my playstyle from dealing damage to tanking at level 10. This added a lot of new skills and quite a challenge to my game.

While being a damage dealer resulted in measuring which skill is the highest dealing one, tanking took another path. I had to use an ability to taunt the enemies, this would be a no-brainer but then it became unpleasant, I wanted to keep certain abilities most of all my ultimate ability.

“Should I still use this ability or would another one work out better?”

Additional to quite demanding tanking I had to rethink my skills, strategy and playstile.

I LOVE IT, KEEP IT THIS WAY!

At all the Dragon Knight suited me the most and I am going to play this class at first once TESO is released.

• Interface:

We want to see how long a BUFF or DEBUFF lasts both while cast on our character or enemy.

The indicator concerning your group partner sometimes disappeared leading to baffled questions like “Where the hell did you disappear to?” – funny enough, this did only occur on my laptop.

Integrate the option to hide helmets into the left side of the inventory tab C. How about a checkbox added nearby the helmets slot?

Change the quick slot icon on the inventory tab! More than 10 hours we thought this was a “return” or “exit” button. (/facepalm)

Character tab shows maximum health, magicka and stamina. It also shows weapon damage and armour. While playing to level 15 on my own later that day I discovered a stat called “resistance to critical”, we need to see that stat there, too! We also need to know how big the damage reduction via armour really is.

Skills and Journal tab seem to be just fine. I like how the automatically let collapse the dropdown menu after I clicked another one.

Missing quest markers, it’s a beta, in which this is absolutely normal.

Add translations to the map key at the map tab.

We experienced some bugs with the group tab, especially after someone logged out resulting in the others being unable to leave or disband the group.

Contact tab seems to work fine.

• Combat:

We struggled because of the limited action bar. At least being (theoretically) able to use TWO skills of every skill tree and ONE weapon skill would be a better solution, adding two more slots on the action bar.

I know that you could use up to ten skills and two ultimate skills if you swapped to your secondary weapon but I am concerned that you have to get every really good weapon (and shield) later in the endgame TWICE to use both weapon slots as a tank for example.

With “Interrupt” being said while explaining my view of the Dragon Knight, this is my next concern; we do not see the enemies cast time, so it is a strong guess when to interrupt. Does interrupt only stop one cast or does it keep the enemy from casting another one some seconds after the interrupt happened?

Another point to mention; I do not know what to expect from MEGASERVERS, let’s hope there are server for every country. I do not want to play with people I cannot communicate with! Please do not put up a single megaserver for entire Europe!

Speaking of servers, please keep in mind that a server start at American time is NOT FAIR for Europeans. We lost time to play and trial this game due to the servers not going live till 12 pm (6 pm in the USA). Players with regulated daily routine had lost the entire Friday because of the servers being online only just around midnight.

This is still not everything we experienced but I think it is enough for this weekend’s Beta Test to be told to you.

At the end I would like to mention that there were absolutely no performance problems on either my computer or laptop. Both of them have Windows 8.1 as operating system with all drivers being up to date. <<<

Summary from second beta weekend I participated in ( From Friday, February 7th until Thuesday, February 11th )

>>> This time we could not start from scratch, we knew quite a lot about classes, skill lines and the game itself.

We chose to start new characters immediately after being able to play.

My friend wanted to try how healing would turn out and picked a Templar. I wanted to get a glimpse of the Sorcerer’s play style as I was disappointed with Nightblade not being able to perform well with a bow which was my desired play style for this class.

With upcoming rote we created our characters, went through the tutorial area and finally went to explore the first area “outsides”.

I thought about giving you an opinion easier to read and more detailed complaints or improvement proposals therefore I remade my “draft”.

This is what it looks like now. Let’s start with…

>>> Starting the game, logging in and server stability

• Starting the game via the Launcher could hardly be more comfortable. Automatic updates, news and patch notes, access to support, first settings - All in one. Great
• After hitting “Play” the game loads fast on both my laptop and desktop pc. The intro logo scenes are interruptible. Great
• Access to settings ON the login screen. Great
• Being able to check “remember account name” accelerates the login procedure. We/You might think about adding an authenticator, just to keep bad things from happening to your account/game/community.
• Queues after logging in. Not good, like “really not good!”, but this could be a “beta only” phenomenon. We might need to know more about those meta-servers.
• Servers down for maintenance or login issues. No reason to complain, it’s a Beta.
• After all, the Elder Scrolls Online servers are the most stable servers I have ever played on in every single Beta I participated in. Some players complained in the zone channel that the server stability had its issues but I never felt about complaining, too. Again this is a Beta Event. This one was even meant to be a Stress Test. What do you expect?!
• I also want to mention that the servers went online at or just before 18 pm at our local time. In the past Beta event we had to wait until 24 pm local time to log in. Zenimax Online listened to us! This was really, really appreciated! Great!

>>> Performance, client stability, common bugs and glitches

• Oddly enough my laptop that could handle the game at “medium” settings in the previous Beta event had performance loss during this one. We had to reset the settings to “low” every now and again (with switching back to “medium”) to fix the frame rate and lag. The latter could be due to the higher server population but only occurred when the client was forced to illustrate a lot of lighting, spell effects and shadows. My friend’s worst issue was while fighting Doshia for a Fighter’s Guild quest. He died at least five times due to lag. I finished Doshia quite fast and was able to observe his efforts but beating this MOB was extremely hard for him as the client lagged and the frame rate dropped drastically.
• In the German version of this client the skill line “Dawn’s Wrath” is completely missing. Changing language settings to English solved the issue. Are there difficulties regarding localisation? Needs to be fixed as soon as possible.
• Being trapped in dialogue with a quest relevant npc or vendor without any dialogue interface. Solved by entering “/reloadui”.
• With only two large groups of enemies left before heading to “The Whisperer” in Spindleclutch we got stuck in a dungeon wall after a knockback. Solved by entering “/stuck”.
• Game crashing after creating a character or freezing after creation without logging in properly. nvde character on frozen selection screen. Experienced this with every character creation after the first one this weekend.
• Foulwing.
• My girlfriend took a look at the game and got quite infuriated with female hair (and probably the male ones, too) clipping through armor, weapons and even the character itself.
  She also mentioned that iron armor or any other armor that is designed to be sturdy does not move when the bearer breathes.

Please fix hair physics. Don’t take this one too seriously.

>>> Character creation

• Giving a great variety of ways to customize your character is Great.
• Elf races still are too “old”. They don’t scale well with the “age” slider in my opinion. I would really like to play a “forever young” elfish woman but they currently do not appeal me. This could collide with Elder Scrolls lore (I am far from being an expert), but I think all elfish races should have their “young faces” polished.
• “Soft” Khajiit faces, both male and female, look too tearful. Like a dog that did something wrong and is being yelled at.
• Female Khajiit hair still feels odd.
• Give us both “MARKINGS” and “SCARS” as separately usable sliders.
• Female/Male nose tweaking could be improved.
• We need an extra slider for BEARDS, get them out of “ADORNMENT” and let us create unshaven warriors wearing an eye patch. Also we need more BEARD and HAIR styles. I feel the need of more long haired and slightly curly hair options. Are we going to see some kind of barber shop?

>>> Classes and skill lines

>> Skill lines in general

• [This changed!] Every time my friend morphed one of his abilities he chose the bottom one because it was an absolute no-brainer to decide against the upper one. At least that is what I recognized.
  We discussed a lot and I think the upper abilities are placeholders. I looked at his screen two times while he decided what to morph and it seemed that the bottom ability was the improved version of the upper one both times.
  A simple example I just made up: [skillNotMorphed] does 5 damage, [skillMorphedUpper] does 7 damage, [skillMorphedBottom] does 7 damage, puts a DOT on your enemy and stuns them for 5 seconds. You see, choosing [skillMorphedBottom] is a no-brainer. [This changed!]

The paragraph above is copied from my previously posted discussion.

While starting to play again we did not expect the skill lines to be different from what they used to be in the previous (I need a thesaurus for this word) Beta event but they did. Despite some decisions what to morph were very easy others took us time for consideration. The upper skill to morph to was implemented, redesigned or improved leading to tough decision making. I always loved theory crafting and good decision making in MMORPGs. With resetting skills being disabled in this Beta build we took good care of what to choose for best results in healing respectively dealing damage.

• Finally figuring out HOW to “learn more about the locations of sky shards by pressing J” we found sky shards to be a lot easier to obtain.

>> Classes in general

• Currently there are three classes that seem to be built around melee weapons and only one real ranged class. Dragonknight, Nightblade and Templar can deal damage while using a two-handed weapon respectively while dual wielding the Sorcerer uses staffs. After watching the cinematic trailers I was hoping for a ranged class that uses bows. Nightblade could fulfil my needs but I can’t stand that class as it currently is. Two skill lines built around melee combat and sneakiness and a third one built around life-syphoning spells are incompatible with the use of bows.

As far as I have seen the progression of the Dragonknight, this class seems well balanced. I can use two-handed weapon skills, I can use skills from every class specific skill line the Dragonknight has. Some skills are built around attack animations with a two-handed weapon or two one-handed weapons and blend in perfectly with the ones that are cast, because breathing fire feels right fitted for the class.

Regarding the Nightblade this feeling did not appear once.

As this is not my mother tongue I may be not able to express WHY this bothers me so much but I imagined a ranger-ish class to begin with. Shooting at enemies until they are up close, then switching to daggers and slicing their throat. Maybe using throwing weapons (as skill line skills) in between to slow them down. In my opinion the Nightblade is the greatest disappointment in this game. I imagined being able to play that cool ranger we all saw during the two cinematic trailers. Official gameplay footage showed a bow wielding playable character that did not seem to be “strangely” designed.

>> Dragonknight

• I played this class until level 16 and I must say there is not much to complain about J
• Feels well balanced. Both tanking and dealing damage are entertaining. Tanking seems to be difficult but you just have to adapt to combat style of The Elder Scrolls Online.
• Maybe adding an area effective taunt to the class would both benefit the tanks and their groups.

>> Sorcerer

• Both my friend and I played this class to level 12
• Magicka cost seems a bit too high.
• The Familiar feels like a milestone around my neck. The damage it does is barely noticeable however the Magicka decrease is a big loss.

>> Templar

• My friend played this class to level 12
• With a Sorcerer as supporting damage dealer my friend completely focused on healing abilities and even picked a restoration staff as he got one. Healing seems to be as difficult as tanking which was a fun challenge for him. As a conclusion I can almost only report his view as a healer.
• Magicka kost seems a bit too high. A healer without Magicka, even after drinking a potion results in a dead group almost every time.
• Counter healing large damage spikes on a single target (tank) seemed to be a bit too difficult while keeping the group and the healer himself alive.
• It seemed to be that “Rite of Passage” could not be cancelled which lead into various wipes during boss fights. This Ultimate immobilizes you, you cannot move, The Whisperer in Spindleclutch pulled us together to do his area effective damage spell which could not be dodged during “Rite of Passage” resulting in a dead healer.

>> Nightblade

• Neither my friend nor I did play this for more than the first five levels.
• Erase that casting skill line and replace it with a ranger skill line.
• Every Nightblade we saw while questing was dual wielding. Mission “integrate bow” failed.
• What is wrong with stabbing an enemy with a light flushed weapon instead of sheathing your weapon and creating a weapon out of red “light” and finally stabbing the enemy? Please let me see my weapons instead of spell effects.

>>> Combat

• I think there should be a combat log at least if not even a combat text. I read somewhere that Zenimax Online encourages third party add on developers to participate in the Beta as well. They might be the ones who will deliver a decent combat text add on.
• I struggled because of the limited action bar. I feel being restricted to such a few skills is painful. At least being (theoretically) able to use TWO skills of every skill line and ONE weapon skill would be a better solution. Add two more slots on the action bar.
• What about different attack speeds with maces, swords and axes? Daggers seem to be faster. Keep that speed variety from The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim and adjust damage with the different velocities. Sword = fast/fewer damage, Axe = well balanced, Mace = slow/higher damage.
• As a tank and therefor often group leader I would like to see something similar to setting a (focus?) target for yourself by pressing TAB to be shown to me entire group.

Maybe like: hold TAB, move cursor to [Symbol], release TAB, enemy marked.

With limited time until someone pulls a group of enemies without warning (I don’t type that fast) and little to none communication during dungeons at the moment it’s hard to coordinate other players.

>>> Interface

• Despite others complaining I think the map is Great.

I do not want a fog of war while exploring. This is viable in single player games but not in a MMO! Furthermore Zenimax Online did indeed give us some kind of fog of war, we do not have a mini map. That compass should suffice.

• Please add a setting to decrease/increase the chat boxes background transparency.
• We need other markers for the map but these ones should stay in position until we want them to be removed. Only on marker that is placed by pressing F is not enough.
• Improved map key needed. List EVERYTHING.
• Buff and Debuff duration should be shown anywhere but the character screen!
• Prior to theory crafting, we need a more detailed character screen with resistances.
• Movable raid frames (large group).
• Cast time indicator, you can’t expect us to count the seconds.
• Finally figuring out HOW to “learn more about the locations of sky shards by pressing J” we found sky shards a lot easier to obtain. I suggest adding a tooltip to the journal that says where to find hints for the sky shards locations. For my share I do not like achievements, I can understand people being willing to complete them for the sole purpose of completing them, but I do not like them!

With this in mind would you expect me to open the achievement tab in the journal for longer than a glimpse? I had absolutely no clue that this achievements could help me unlocking new skill points for better character development.

>>> Forum

• Keep the Beta Forums alive. We want a place to stay. This is needless now that the NDA is lifted.

Kind Regards,

lex

Missing quest markers? Do you mean by that npc's who have quests but no marker above there head? I think (and really hope so) that its intentionally. It adds alot to the exploration aspect in my eyes

The nightblade skills are perfect, IMO.
Not to even mention this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-97mrfaqdw

I think you pasted the same text 2ce

Okay posting this video is getting a little out of hand, Okay it's good editing can we please just focus on what we actually know about the balance in the game and not use a video that's obviously been edited down out of hours of gameplay to show highlight moments, Thank you.

Yes, it's edited, but it is an actual proof that ranged combat is not underpowered.

roughly 15 years of expirience, and loving it. Realy cant wait any longer... damn it

And less i more.

Magicka and stamina costs could use a little boost, I agree. No skill spamming but also using your block, interrupt, dodge, light and heavy attacks.

5 slots, +1 ultimate + block, dodge, interrupt, light and heavy attack is fine. The potionwheel could use a little adjusting though for PC and Mac.

I like the lower number of skills to keep track of, along with zero cooldowns. WoW was fun, but after a while, it became more of a mini-game of cooldown management for over a dozen abilities.

Just for me, it's not.

This video was posted all over the forums and I was surprised how well it seemed to work out!

But keep in mind even if this player seems to be owing everyone this is edited and he's killing players way beyond his level. In cyrodiil this might not seem to matter but the skills are maxed out. I do not know if you could morph a skill twice in the past beta events but IF this was possible Keslin did it increasing his damage even more. It was possible, my bad. => He was overpowered compared to other players.

Keslin or whoever this player wants to be called seems to be skilled, he overcame the boring part of the class and brought out the best of it. I want to point out that he is only using ONE Nightblade skill (plus ultimate to vanish) while wielding a bow and no Nightblade skill while using a two-handed weapon as far as I recall the icons correctly.

The first levels playing a bow-using Nightblade repelled me from playing this class as my main. This is my opinion.

Fixed. Thanks.

After unlocking the second set of skills with reaching level 15 you get to use double the skills and ultimates which seems to work out better than having "only 5 skills". While tanking I used both weapon sets to max out aggro and damage mitigation, this worked out well. I agree with adjusting the quickslot wheel.

If you do not love crafting or love pvp, at least as an MMO player, you are not going to keep playing ESO.

It really is that simple. I predict their proportional playerbase losses post-launch will be staggering even compared to SWTOR.

Personally, the other issues I had with the game are, even excluding the many serious basic interface issues (which may be mostly recoverable via addons in time) and starter zone issues,

0. Lack of a combat log (not talking about the interface)

1. Extremely floaty and bland melee combat animations and glitched melee gameplay. I struggle to think of a modern MMO that has worse melee combat. It is not worth comparing to action combat games like Vindictus, Neverwinter, and Tera. ESO is not even in the same league. When even GW2's melee combat is a lot better, that is quite worrying.

2. The complete lack of design effort into a scalable, high synergy, rewardingly complex, fun economic system. It is as if someone started with TES, then got a DaoC top designer to make the mass PvP, finally combined the two by making everything about the economy revolve around PvP. If you are going to remove a global Auction House, you better replace it with something infinitely better or have a fallback of emergent gameplay or at least some other broad appeal mini-game. THIS is not it! Maybe you should have hired some SWG or EvE designers too...

3. Grouping options and loot options in the game can be very restrictive, low incentive and, in some cases needlessly painful. This is particularly the case for treasure chests and mandatory phasing.

4. Pets/summons do not have even basic control interfaces. Compare that to most older MMORPG like WoW and Aion or a new game like Wildstar.

5. The paywalls for gameplay-affecting options on a subscription game will rub many players and media the wrong way and cause them to easily lose confidence in the game's future. Given that MMOs are games that never stop changing (until they end), this is a sacrifice that points heavily towards my original point.

I've not read everything as it is A LOT. Here are my inputs on some.

If you put your mouse on the skyshards over the skills allocation window, a tooltip will say that collecting xx skyshards will yield 1 skill points.

As a pure healer solo (except during instanced), I did level to 13 without any help except against Balreth with its healing. I lacked DPS, but it increased my survivability.

I did morph skills into the one above, but did pick the bottom one most of the time.

A combat add on is being used by this youtuber which is good IMO (the latter part of the video): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IDp--Vs0Qk

I think the restriction on skill slots is a good way to balance the game.

Also, your friend, as a healer, should have put the no target healing as gripe. Maybe he did not notice this was due to you and only him were playing.

Anyways, I could not discuss other matters since I did not read everything you've posted.

EDIT: Oh, and remember, what we are seeing now is not the current build that the press uses as shown in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szyV_raXB24&html5=1

I thought that even though they said the Jan beta was starting at what would be around midnight for those in the eu, they purposely opened it much earlier. I'm pretty sure I was playing by about 3pm GMT.

The Feb beta was mainly to stress the servers so that they could tweak and adjust them, the long loading times were deliberate as they didnt have all their various servers that make up the megaserver online, the whole point was they had just under enough so that they could see what happened when they were maxed out. If they had more than enough, everything would have been smooth for us but they would have got zero data back as to how well their current setup will handle launch week.

Hopefully the bugs you mentioned will be ironed out before release.

Been playing online games since mudz, and mmo's since the mid 90's, Played a lot of different mmo's through out the years, I am one of those Grizzled Veteran's

I know I am looking forward to ESO, as my new mmo game home for a very long time.. I have enjoyed the beta's and watching the game grow, looking forward to launch.

there will be an EU server and US server. I don't know how it goes with the mega server, but it will keep the latency of both player of each region at a minimal.

I've not made it through the whole post .. but damn! I'm impressed .. you should be a reviewer

Hahah.

Well...thats from an MMO point of view & its well done.

But the other side of it is from TES, where a UI takes from the game. You watch the opponent & react....or just blitz them & hope for the best.

I think if there was a summary from a TES gamer like this, you would probably find that ESO is hitting that middle ground, if you put them side by side.

As much as I want some elements as an MMO (dungeons/ PVP etc), I dread Eso moving any further from the TES franchise. It would probably kill the game for me.

Any elements that are "hand-holding" can go right to hell. This includes this silly thought on killing exploration & reward by giving directions to skyshards.

There is enough hand-holding in the game already IMO.

Also...any clutter added to the HUD can go to hell IMO. I like the immersion without it...its called playing the game, not watching timers.

One last thought. If a Sorc is using too much mana...increase his mana pool.

Gain spec points & improve his armor proficiency.

Also....the Bow isn't weak and has not failed, and there are skills for the bow that work well. Combined with other skill areas, the bow is a good weapon if used with some thought /planning. I played a Nighblade archer to lvl15.

Granted...there is no specific "ranger" skills as such. But then, what is there does work.....think outside the box.

... because the post was comprised of a long series of highly opinionated run-on sentences?

IMO the OP started with a lot of incorrect assumptions based on other MMOs. One example that reveals a pretty profound misunderstanding of ESO mechanics:

Any class can use any weapon. You are restricting yourself based on RPG archetypes. If you read the forums where the high level players hang out (those in the long-term beta), you'll see that some of the most successful use so-called "hybrid" classes. My most effective build in four betas has been a bow sorc.

You conclude that even without having tried ANY of the four or five modes of PvE endgame content? There is WAY more AT RELEASE than any other MMO I know of.

We have Cyrodiil PvE content, Veteran Dungeons, 50+/++ (and/or starting alts in every alliance), Adventure Zone (solo/duo surface questing), Adventure Zone (large group raiding). And new content in patches.

I'm a PvE person and I expect to be playing this for a looong time.

Omg the hair when she's riding the horse at about 08:15 hahahah, they have to do something about that
Regarding the video, I'd like to see him being attacked instead of him being the attacker.

You didn't notice how you didn't utilize the NB skills while using bows? I did. I only used Shadowcloak and Assassin's Blade, which are from two different trees. Both of those skills are really situational and not used on a regular basis. Shadowcloak to disappear only to "escape" for a while and Assassin's Blade to finish them off if they get into melee. And that's if I'm the one attacking, if I'm being attacked then Assassin's Blade is pretty much useless since the target won't be attacking with low health.
I agree with the OP that there should atleast be a skill tree for an archer. Me and the people in the guild (the ones who'd picked NB) also felt it confusing because there was just nothing appealing to a NB using bows.

Adventure zones aren't in at launch are they? That basically leaves you with Veteran Dungeons and a bunch of extra quests to do once you hit max level. I actually can't think of many big MMO releases that have had so little end-game PvE content at release.

I don't think that we actually know what it will release with. The claim is that there is roughly twice the 50+ PvE content that there is 0-50; if the former is of order 100-150 hours, the total is of order 300 - 450 hours. You could blast through that in ~ 2 - 3 months at 40 hours / week (of course some folks will do more). You could also redo the quest lines in the other areas, and there is the noodling around in random zones factor too.

This. One hundred times this!

At least someone understood my point of view, greetings kind sir!

What is that skill that fires two arrows in a high arc after she stuns the target?