First a quick background on me. I'm 33 and have been playing MMOs pretty much non stop since I was 18, starting with UO. I've played every main stream MMO that's ever been released for at least a few days, and I'm most currently the leader of a very successful progression raiding guild on the Begeren Colony server of SWTOR. The overwhelming majority of my guild plans to move to ESO upon release, so I got myself a key and tried it out during these last 2 beta weekends. I do not believe any of the above makes me any more or less qualified to judge an MMO than anyone, just wanted to give some perspective on who I am.

Things I liked -

1. The Combat: Seeing as how every MMO that releases is just a WoW clone with different dressing, I was absolutly enthralled by what I saw from combat. Having to actively dodge and block was thrilling. Not having stupid "cooldowns" on my skills, but rather just resource pools to manage was awesome. Even more exciting than the combat I actually experienced, was the thought of the potential that lies within. In the current standard MMO, making a boss "harder" was almost exclusively done by adding mechanics. Oh, you want that boss to be harder for HM? Well let's add two more mechanics! It's a really artificial way to make something more difficult. Whereas with ESO, they can make the boss move faster (thus making him harder to target), make him use interrupts and actively dodge and block, essentially give him better AI. There is room for mechanics in this type of combat as well, but you don't have to be married to them to increase difficulty. Being mainly a PvE guild, we spent a lot of time in TS these past 2 weekends discussing the possibilities.

2. The Crafting: Again, absolutely invigorating. I was ever so slightly put off by the time it takes to research things, but I understand why they had to do that. But the possibilities and options are limitless. You can truly min/max a character and get him/her exactly where you want them with this crafting system. It was easy to understand, easy to get into, and potentially very powerful in the right hands.

3. The Shared Bank: I know there have been other MMOs to do this before, but it still blows my mind that this hasn't been an MMO staple going all the way back to UO. It's just makes way too much sense. I'm gonna be really frustrated when I go back to SWTOR tomorrow and my Jedi can't access what's in my Troopers bank!

4. The Exploration: I got a real kick out of following that splash screen tip of just picking a direction and running, and seeing what trouble I could get into. I found mobs much higher level than me, skyshards, quests, chests, a mob I had no earthly business being able to kill but somehow managed to anyway, a couple of new friends, beautiful vistas and a lot more. This is another area where I see a ton of potential, most MMOs open up after the first few areas, so the potential for exploration could increase several times over.

5. The Skill System: Been wanting some variation of this in MMOs for a very long time. Don't hold my hand, let me make choices about how I want to play and amend those choices over time to better suit my style. My character started out quite derpy from some early bad choices, grew into a solid fighter by late Monday night last beta, and was an absolute beast by tonight. Not from "leveling" but from seeing what I could use more of and spending skill points to steer myself in that direction. I've gotta believe this is exactly what the devs intended with this system.

6. The Limited Skill Bar: I don't even wanna tell you guys how many hours I've spend on esohead using the skill calculator trying to find perfect combinations of skills that have synergy with one another (real synergy, not the in game synergies) and could lead to a good build for this or that.

7 Most of the PvP: I didn't have a ton of time for the PvP, but I did spend a few hours there and mostly had fun. The scale was impressive, and of course being a hardcoe veteran of DAoC, the nostalgia was really strong. I had a good time taking keeps and trying to defend them as well. Tanks have a couple of abilities that actually make them useful in keep taking/defense, which is a major improvement over DAoC. I could see many hours being spent out in Cyrodil fighting the good fight.

Things I didn't like -

1. Nameplates: I'm completely and totally baffled by this one. The devs at literally EVERY. SINGLE. OPPURTUNITY. have gone out of thier way to talk about how communities drive MMOs, and guilds drive communities. So guilds are very important, etc. Well, I have news for those devs, nameplates drive guilds, especially in regards to community. I've joined a guild because I was standing just outside of a dungeon and huge group of people poured out of the entrance and they were all wearing the same guild tag. At that time, I was so impressed by an entire raid group comprised of a single guild. On my SWTOR server, there is an imp side guild (Grim Determination) that is absolutely feared in PvP. When you queue up for a match, and first come face to face with the enemy team, and you see that guild tag, you are immediately disheartened. You'll start seeing the chat spam "Awww man, Grim D, hopefully we can win our next match". What about the RP guilds that hang out in the inns and stuff? How do they build an identity? Also on my SWTOR server, there are several guilds (REIGN, Colonial Marines, By Grabthar's Hammer to name a few standouts) that I know as soon as I see the guild tag that there is a 80+% chance that they are either a complete moron, or a total jerk. All of that interaction which becaomes a part of your daily in game life, is driven by nameplates. In ESO, you don't have the foggiest clue what guild a person is in....hell, unless you are an incredible observant person, you don't even the names of people around you. How many times in an MMO have you been questing all day and keep seeing the same name because someone happens to be along the same path as you and leveling at pretty much the same speed? How many times have the two of you grouped up real quick to finish a particularly tough quest? How many MMO friendships over the history of the genre have been formed from that exact scenario? Entire guilds have been started that led to massive alliances that led to world changing events/server first completions/total PvP dominance, etc. All started from something as innocuos as two people leveling alongside each other for a few hours, then deciding to team up. Something not very likely at all without nameplates. This one single thing will be the thing that keeps me from subbing this game, I'm totally baffled how this decision could be made. DISCLAIMER: I've seen multiple reports that nameplates existed in previous betas and the devs took it out because of lag but plan to put them back in for launch, and I've seen multiple people saying that the devs have said there will never be nameplates so get over it. When pressed for a link regarding the latter, they've never been able to produce one. So I have no clue which one is true.

2. Literally Every Single Thing About the Guild System: The guild UI/setup/ideas in this game are incredibly bad. The guild store idea? I just....I don't understand. I don't sell things to guildies...ever. If you're a guildie of mine, and I have something I'm not using that you can use, it's yours, free of charge. I'll have a coniption fit if any of my guildies try to sell things on that store. No tabards/guild emblems? Really really seems like the devs are going far out of their way to stop guilds from establishing identities. @conXion20 says.....WHAT? When I talk in guild chat it's my username? /facepalm. If I had known that, I would have made a different user name. Aside from that...WHY? Now I have to learn all my guildies usernames? What about RP guilds? How are they supposed to RP different characters and such? This is just an absolutely terrible idea. I can join 5 guilds? Why? What the hell is the purpose in that? So I can get into a "merchant guild' to offset the previous idiotic decision to not have an auction house? Again, they are trying really really hard to not allow guilds to establish identities. The guild bank being an all or nothing setup is also quite moronic. It's a simple feature that pretty much every MMO on the market has, and for good reason. There needs to be multiple valuts with indepenent access settings based on rank. That way I can let regular members and newcomers have access to stuff like potions and food, but hold back valuable stuff for officers and up, or a specific vault for crafters to trade resources etc. The entire guild system is poorly designed.

3. The "Trinity": I've been torn on this subject for many years. Devs always talk about ways to break the trinity, and it always sounds so exciting, but then you actually try and it somehows makes things more boring. I've started to realize, that regardless of how overdone the whole trinity thing is, it's there because it makes sense. That's how you would do it if you were in a real situation like that. You would have front line guys with a ton of armor/defensive skills to soak up as much damage as possible, then you'd have the heavy firepower/highly mobile harrasers/sneaky types do what they do when the enemy is distracted by the front line guys, then you'd have to healers/repairers there to clean up where it's needed. I found GW2 version of breaking the trinity (essentialy, everyone is DPS and responsible for thier own health) to be exceedingly boring. I lasted a couple weeks and moved on. ESO tries a variation on the GW2 theme, where there is a trinity, there are "roles" but it's all very loose and malleable. If you are a DPS or healer, expect to tank a lot. If you are a tank, expect to be highly frustrated that your healer is being chased by a guy that you've hit with your "taunt" 4 times and he still won't stop. There is no aoe taunt, so lose that idea now. As a person who is always the tank, I was highly confused and felt mostly useless during pretty much all of my dungeon experiences. I kept thinking, this would go faster and smoother if I was a DPS with the rest of these guys. The healer role is almost exlusively aoe healing. Requiring no real skill or decision making. You spam a couple aoe heals, wait a bit, rinse and repeat. The role that is the closest to it's traditional MMO counterpart is DPS, where you do pretty much the same thing, kill stuff as fast as possible, but have to deal with being attacked much more frequently.

4. Population Imbalance: Ebonheart is gonna be so stupidly overpopulated, they are gonna be the "Albion" of ESO. Keeping in mind that this is just beta (something only really hardcoe MMO people know a lot about), when the game actually launches and all the Skyrim fans start pouring in and playing for the first time. Oh man....poor Ebonheart, lag city. Aldmeeri might suffer a worse fate. Being the default selection, the most clueless and oblivious fans won't even realize they can change. I think they will have a very high percentage of the most clueless people. And poor poor Daggerfall (my personal choice, but the guild is voting, so I have no idea what faction we'll be at this point), while I think they'll have the highest percentage of competent players, the population will be low, and they will much lower chance of winning campaigns.

5. Couple PvP Things: As far as I could tell, I never recieved a single experience point while in Cyrodil. So you can go there at 10 but you can't level by participating? Why would I go there at 10? Ever? Best to hurry to 50 so I can participate and be at full strength. Seems like a poor design decision. Also, historicaly, attacking forces needed several times over the numbers to take a defended encampment or base. Now, I don't expect them to hold to that in an MMO, as the numbers would be really skewed if they did, but in my experience, taking a keep was waaaaay too easy. I was involved in about 40 keep battles, and not once did I attack a keep and fail to take it, and not once did I try to defend a keep and succeed. The attacking force won every time. Admittedly, it's a very small sample size, but it was something I noticed.

Conclusion: I already bought the game, if absolutely nothing else, I will play it that first free month for the story and move on. Best case scenario: They add nameplates, make some minor adjustments to the guild system, my whole guild moves here, makes this our home and we play the crap out of it for months. For the record, I've been a subscriber to some MMO or another for over 10 years consecutive, the fee doesn't bother me in the slightest. I love how different the game is. I love the combat, I love the potential. I'd really love to that potential fully realized.