If you are pushing gladiator or doing HC raids, wow is not easy like some people claim it is. I like ESO from what I saw in beta, nobody rly knows what the end game will be like, so save the final verdicts for when the game launches.

QFT

I kinda agree with PCgamer. But I don't think it's a problem.

This reminds me of movie critics being way off the mark. How many times have you read a bad movie review then thought to yourself "those guys are crazy, this movie is great". Thats the way I feel here. Too many "critcs" expecting the perfect game. ESO is going to be a smashing success and all of the critics are going to look like fools. The only thing that will prove this will be number of subscriptions, So time will tell.

I guess that's purely a matter of opinion then. I don't find the starting areas nearly as bad as these reviewers. You're supposed to learn the basics and get started on the main quest.

It would have been better if they took a Skyrim approach to the beginning of the game but how do you do that in an MMO? You can't have a massive, hectic and exciting battle like with the dragon in the beginning of Skryim because how do you deal with people constantly showing up, missing the beginning, missing the end etc.? Do you phase them or instance them so they experience the full thing? Then it's not an MMO but a single player game. MMOs can't do what single player games can.

Anyway, most of their concerns about the game opening up I can assure you are false, like not being sure about seeing a sewer grate and wanting to explore it. They only reached level 5, they experienced nothing but the mechanics of the game.

Movie is 2 hours of your time.. That's a terrible comparison

I can't remember the last movie I paid 15 bucks a month for and 80 initially and figured out a few months later I didn't like the movie lol

Then another MMO is a great comparison.

Play 5 hours of any MMO and give me an accurate impression of the game. Better yet, tell me that you actually understand all the mechanics of the game by that time (from watching the video, these reviewers sure didn't).

if you want a good review, this is the one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szyV_raXB24

Personally I enjoy the game

Having been playing mmorpg since 1996 (ultima online beta) I've seen both ends and I can tell you alot of good and bad has happend in that time frame. I'm a big fan of scenes that grab you and sandbox.. My personal hope for this game is a type of player housing. You want to get players vested in a game ? Let them own a peice of the world (it makes things personal)

I've never cared about graphics nor flawless gameplay, I can just tell when someone isn't really familiar is the series when all they seem to mention is Skyrim this, Skyrim that, "Skyrim was flawless!".

I've always played TES for it's lore and so far I'm pretty convinced TESO is butchering it to please the new kids.We've always known he was the king of graqes and corruption, but the new kids? They'd flip if they ever saw that in their game! So let's sugarcoat it!

He's just a prince of mindless zambies now. "Oh, going to turn everyone into purple zombie followers, how naughty I am!". I had high hopes that he'd be the twisted, creepy, vile demon that he always was, but now they've retconned that and turned him into some cliche evil overlord from the usual MMOs out there. I guess I was expecting too much out of Zenimax if I thought they'd have the balls to stick with the original concept and give a villain that hardly any other developer had the balls to present before.


The way they turned Molag Bal, one of the vilest of the princes, into some silly evil conqueror was the first bad thing I noticed.
I should have known it would be like that when they first changed Coldharbour from a hellish,obscene, disturbing version of Tamriel full of death and despair into another purple Soul Cairn void.

Dude. Again with the Molag Bal complaints?

Surely you have something more substantive to offer.

This is unfortunately true. If you approach it as a typical ftp then your expectations will be off. I think it is in the management and shaping of early expectations that player impressions can help in the marketing. I know from my own Kinship in another MMO that experienced players looking for a new MMO were put off by the early levels and the real problems with grouping. The high buy-in price and sub means people are going to think long and hard before purchasing. Hopefully there will be a trail version somewhere down the line.

It probably took me until the second beta and a new character to really click into the early levels. It did all seem a bit linear and easy. But then I started playing with non-standard builds, getting to grips with crafting and then running into stuff that was killing me and that was all great.

Actually, in City of Heroes, some enemies like ones in Archictect Entertainment missions didn't have a set level, everyone could be effective in a fight against them, but of course higher leveled people had more powers to use against them and those powers were stronger with more and better enhancements.

It -is- possible to do though, but it would take a lot of work to change this late in the game.

I wish thwy would write their review AFTER getting out of starter island.
They just wanted to write the first review which resulted in their review being completely wrong.

As has been inferred, an MMO can't alter the difficulty of enemies based upon the player, as in Skyrim. So a bit of "railed zoning" is required for purposes of leveling.

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No - but like in GW2 you can scale the character to the area. That works quite well.

People are walking into the game expecting more of the same, TESO is NOT Skyrim, NOT Morrowind, NOT Oblivion! It's a new game, the series are trying to explore different mechanics in a different market!

You can't expect something like that in an MMO. Mobs level adjusting to the level of each online player in the whole world?? sounds tragic if not funny! People are taking the "Be who you want to be" so seriously!!

Right, but even in GW2, that only works for downscaling. Lower level characters aren't scaled up in order to let them experience higher level content earlier in the game.

So you're character becomes powerful when facing powerful enemies?

That's convenient.

Everyone saying they (reviewers) didn't get past the starter island clearly followed the questline like a proper little soldier and didn't try to do anything outside of the rails. Go ahead, when you get off the starter island, try to just head out and go to a different part of the game world. Go to Skyrim. Go ANYWHERE other than the fenced-in area you find yourself. Hell, ignore the first three enemies in the game if you can. If you're arguing that the game isn't on rails, let's see it. I tried to go off the rails, and nope, it wasn't happening. The questing is completely forced (as stated by media outlets, not my NDA breaking). It's like people that say the FF13 isn't linear because it opens up when you're 25 hours into the game.

So you were in the beta, and know for a fact that this is true?

Funny.

I was in the beta. In the starting tutorial area, it was pretty much go from here to here to here and figure out how the controls work, and if your build is right for you, and just get the hang of things in general. Most tutorial areas are limited because they are tutorial areas.

Once I got out of the tutorial area, I managed to explore; ran into enemies that did, indeed, kill me since I shouldn't have been anywhere near them, but I went everywhere I wanted to go. Saw a lot of trails, but not any rails. Nothing that limits you except your abilities/skills. Which is pretty much Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim too, really. Level 3 running around outside of Whiterun; character not-so-fast, sabercat much faster and hungry. Interesting camera angle after the cat was done.

I even found two surprises, going where ever I wanted to explore; one of which had me laughing out loud, and the other one that indirectly killed me even while it amused the heck out of me. I had a blast. Now I'm hoping I get in the next one. {and that I don't have to redo my favorite character; on the plus side, I think I have the mechanics down at this point, so making another from scratch will be easier}

Everyone saying they didn't pay any attention to their quest dialogue, combat tutorials, etc. is right, and it blatantly shows in the videos. That said, if you expected a truly open-world RPG in an MMO, that was unrealistic, and it was never promised. There was no promise of being able to skip tutorial quests or immediately jump to a new island. But there were promises about being able to explore the world and benefit from that exploration. There were promises about class flexibility and a more interesting quest system than most MMOs on the market. Sadly, the PC Gamer editors didn't get to comment on whether or not the beta started to deliver on those promises, because they quit during a tutorial zone.

True. I wouldn't want upscaling. I want to earn my right to be some place. But downscaling is a nice way to let higher level guild mates go help newer players without over-powering the experience. In GW2 it was nice to be able to go back and defend the pumps every now and then as it was a fun little bit of play.

But I'm sure these issues will be addressed at some point - probably in a way we haven't thought of.

I just wish some of my kinship who like to group didn't experience the off-putting grouping issues they did in the beta as it has put them off buying for the time being.

I didn't mind the starter area. Was trying to figure out how the character work, and more importantly was looking for bugs (and reporting them).

Many of us are casual gamers, and we just want to have fun playing cooperatively, experiencing the environment. Understand that there are the "serious" gamers out there who want to hit the ground running, but really think most who will be drawn to ESO won't be like that. So it makes sense to have a "crawl, walk, run" area.

Have to be honest, if I'd have signed on, spent time building a character, and took it over the hill only to get slaughtered by some mobs, I'd have been done. Reminds me of a space-style D&D game my friend and his worthless buddy were playing back in the 80s. I spent a bunch of time constructing some character. Then my friend's worthless buddy rolled some dice, said I was dead, and they both laughed. I took their fancy dice and threw them into the highway.