I like this post

agreed. good post for those new to the mmo. seems almost too negative though. these games are really fun. if you follow the suggestions like knowing your role and letting the tank do his job (will be far less important i think though) then you can have a ton of fun. there are helpful people out there so just ask. remember though asking for advice is good begging for items/money is not

I would always recommend joining a guild, as a guild can teach you a lot about combat roles and how to handle them.

i dont know if this has been said already but just my 2c.

GROUP UP!!! as soon as you can. Making friends early will let you learn secrets and level up a lot faster, it will be more fun and it will open up end game content. Doing the whole long "do you want to team up for this _______ quest" is not necessary if you just got to a zone as a lvl 5 and you see someone else just entered it, odds are they are doing the same quest as you are so just add them, yeap just like that no message needed! most will accept some will reject, if they reject dont pester them just move on.

fighting together and dying together is a good way to start an MMO friendship, not to mention that with the ESO system you will be killing monsters 2x faster which means more xp and more loot. You can add more than one person to your group and getting a couple on an early quest gives you a leg up on everyone else when it is time to form groups for dungeons.

Join a guild but stay away from any guild that "blind invites" you!

also you dont have to save the game it saves automatically

^This^. Choosing which guild to join is something you should think about carefully. A random guild invitation just appearing on your UI is generally indicative of a guild that puts very little stock in the quality of it's members. A good guild will almost always talk to you a little first in order to get a basic idea about your interests and personality.

If you are interested in a guild, there will be an official forum about launch time that will have guild descriptions and applications. Otherwise there are many ways in-game to browse and decide. You could make a few new friends for example during your questing. You may decide that those friends have similar interests as you, so you may be inclined to ask them about their guild. They will likely be able to tell you how their guild goes about recruiting, or put you in touch with an officer that can, A simple but polite method is just to whisper someone that is a member of the guild you are interested in and ask them if they could connect you with the guild leader or an officer. They will almost always be interested in chatting with you a bit just to make sure that you have similar goals. This ensures (for the most part) that it will be a good fit for both of you. Generally you can tell within a few sentences if you speaking to the type of personality you are looking for.

So random guild invites are almost always bad news. There is no way for you to guage what type of guild it will be. And most likely it will be a terrible guild with big numbers, lots of drama, and no chemistry.

This is the type of person who will make you fill out a lengthy form and make sure you're they're inferior present to follow their orders before sending you an invite.

The tank/healer/DPS pull point is particularly disconnected from any useful advice about this game at all. Good advice for ESO would be:

All players should be capable of offense and defense. Don't rely on someone else entirely in any regard.

It will never work.

This thread is here to offer helpful advice. If you do not have anything constructive to add, then please move on. Also I would like to add that I made it very clear in the tips that ESO may or may not have a holy trinity. Nobody knows this outside of the NDA. It is a basic guide to MMOs, not a guide to ESO based on facts. We are very light on facts as of now, and will be until the NDA is lifted.

I second that this should be stickied and linked everywhere. Great post!

Wait, for guilds are you talking about Mages/Fighters Guilds? Or is this the initial group you join for the PvP?

No, player run guilds.

+1 for the thread! I say sticky!!!

So, we have to join these guilds? I just read that we can be in more than one. What would be the benefit of joining a guild/certain guilds? Should I try to find one now, or just look while in the game?

Cool beans. I appreciate this. This will be my first MMO so it's nice to know some stuff.

Mage/Fighter/Thief guilds in ESO will be run by NPCs. We are speaking of player run guilds. You do not have to join one, It is purely your choice. If you choose to join a player run guild, you will have a special chat channel just for that guild so that members can communicate privately. There are usually perks like guild banks for storage, guild buffs etc. What type of guild you want to join is up to you. Some will be for dungeons, some for PvP, some will be for RP (Role Playing), and some for just leveling up. Others are designed for very casual players just looking for a group of like-minded players to hang out with. Many times guilds will specialize in more than one of those options. For example, this is a typical guild recruitment slogan you may see in global chat - "The Queen's Profits are recruiting! We are a casual guild looking for friendly mature members looking to level together and have fun. We run Dungeons, are very active in Cyrodiil, and RP on occasion. Whisper me if interested!"

I am not sure exactly what the guild perks will be in ESO other than you can join up to 5 guilds, and you will have access to each guild's individual guild store.

Remember, we're all in the same boat when the game is released, we're all going to be relatively low levels, nobody is going to have an advantage over someone else, except maybe the beta testers with regards to knowledge, so treat it as you would any other new release and just learn your character. Pay no attention to the guy teabagging your corpse.

Finally, the golden rule of any MMO; Do Not Feed The Trolls.

I think everyone reading this thread already understands that only so much is known about the actual game at this point, and anyone with actual first-hand knowledge of whatever state the game was in at the time is under an obligation to not talk about it at this point. So yeah, understandably a lot of this has the caveat that various specifics may differ with the actual release of ESO; but by saying that, again, I'm not saying anything that people likely can't already assume as a given.

So the thread can stay for the moment. As an MMO there's likely to be certain common factors and useful advice that could be gleaned from experience in other MMOs of various sorts. A gestalt approach, of sorts. And I think there could be some useful merit in that for those players who may not have had extensive experience in previous MMOs and are looking to get their feet wet with this one.

So long as there's an understanding that none of the advice given here is going to necessarily be empirical or comprehensive, I don't see a problem. Don't flame other members, don't troll. If you don't like the thread, then find one you do - we tend to frown on posts that serve no purpose but to let people know your disdain. Don't break any NDAs obviously; but I don't see any immediate harm in allowing a thread for giving people possible general advice for entering into an MMO.

My piece of general advice would be to never sign up for any multi-player group ("clan") that requires you to fill out a form or jump through hoops. Those groups are led by egotistical, controlling, and in most cases immature people. Surprise: most video game clans take this form. Surprise: the people in power are usually the ones who abuse it. In a proper video game clan there is no owner giving orders, and leadership is whoever takes the lead each day.

Even on our CS servers where someone has to pay for the actual hardware and bandwidth, ultimately nobody is a dictator.

All you should have to do to join a player group is join their communications channel and stay.

Additionally: don't give other players advice.

Don't assume to know everything about the game, nitpicking someone's setup if it's working, that's just condescending.

Last of all, never underestimate your enemy. They are also in a group, and you aren't special for being in a group.

If they're "recruiting" you might not want to join them.

It's been my experience that guilds recruit when they want more members. Please explain why in your opinion recruiting is a bad thing. How else would you suggest that a guild grow and add people without recruiting?

My advice: adventure alone for a while, until at least you get a hang of it. Otherwise if you join a guild really early, you will feel indebted to them and some people there might boss you about/take advantage. It will spoil your game, trust me.

In EQ2 I befriended someone who really creeped me out. He was normal to begin with and we paired up, having similar hours etc. So one day he logs on with his alt, which is exactly THE SAME in appearance to his main. He had another 3 alts, all exactly the same as his main...in every detail, clothing, hair, appearance, colour of everything..you name it. I couldn't tell one apart from the other. Then turns out he had a guild for all his "clones" and a website dedicated to his guild of clones. The part that really freaked me out was when he gave me his Facebook page. In real life, he looked exactly the same as his online char..... Last I spoke to him he was trying to convince me to make a char which looked exactly like him and was going to give me detailed instructions on how to do it and in return he would give me loads of gold etc. I never logged on since...

I think I will adventure alone from now on.

Communication, Communication, communication!!

Be polite and constructive with the above /\

If your time constrained, let your group know beforehand. It maybe they are not the right group that time. Its not nice leaving your group in the lurch and will win you few freinds.

Find a guild(s) with the right focus. If your a PvPer find PvP guilds. This can't be stated enough because if the focus of the guild isn't your focus then you will not be happy.

Make sure your on the right chat ***embarressed myself on this in many, many games; WoW, SWTOR, PoBS, EVE, etc. Yes you can give way too much information***

And has been said before: Don't troll - This is TES, we hunt trolls for their fat