As much as a devoted fan as I am, I'm not going to sit here and defend it. The truth is, they fix bugs constantly, I'm seeing lots of fixes (I'm a PTS tester, have been for a long time)... but everytime they fix 5, 10 more break.

I'm not going to say I'm not worried about the impression it's making on the masses.

What I will say, is that the game is (generally) in completely playable condition. Me, and many others have hit level 50 on the PTS, and have played the game in it's fullness, and are happy.

I honestly cannot answer why the weekend beta's are so... bad. I'm playing the PTS this weekend, and honestly haven't found but one single bugged quest. Alot of the quests bugged on the weekend server, are working perfectly on the PTS... I just got an alt through Daughter of Giants a few hours ago.

i rare;y ran across bugs/glitches in any of the quests while leveling in AD and EP zones.

you can press Open Mail (default ' ) to exit screens you get stuck on instead of having to /reloadui

I noticed two weeks ago that the numbering scheme in the client bore no resemblance to the version numbers that were being bandied about in the forums.

Does anyone know how "1.0.0.94blahblah" version number matches up to the 0.18x version numbers we see elsewhere?

Its fine for people to report bugs, but coming to the forums crying doesn't help. People don't understand that this isn't the beta, this is a stress test. You don't see people in the real beta coming here complaining like this. There hasn't been a perfect release of a mmorpg to this day, they all have issues and that isn't going to change. This game will release with bugs and other issues like all the others but the real test is to see how fast devs can fix them compared to the other games.

and with that, you lose all credibility!

its true the game is ridiculously buggy. I don't think ZOS planned it correctly unfortunately

Wow, you're just a ray of sunshine, aren't you? You said it yourself, you haven't seen .183, so you can't guarantee anything at all. Maybe a lot of bugs were fixed in that time? You can't know, so stop dragging everyone down. We'll see the state of things at early launch.

If I might suggest an answer to that.... scale.

The quests are not bugged because it is just you and a few (dozen or hundred) friends playing.

This weekend, you are in a special place if there are not around 20 other players within your field of vision in any given minute. Many quests are actually trivial because every living thing that could attack you has been wiped from existence by a never ending stream of players on the same quest. For the same reason, some quests are a challenge simply because there is a bus load of people doing the exact same thing you are.

If you have ever been in a Mc Donald's when a tour bus arrives, that is what it is like in ESO quest areas on beta weekends like this. Locusts are made to feel inadequate.

Most people making excuses for bugged quests have suggested, some more forcefully than others, that they are bugged because there are too many players standing around waiting for a spawn. To a limited extent, I have confirmed this. In a rare moment, I was able to complete one of these "bugged" quests, without relogging or throwing salt over my shoulder, because I had a brief few seconds alone at the spawn location. However, over an hour or so, I observed that there were almost always at least 10-15 people just standing around within a few yards (meters, feet, etc) of that location. This is in addition to the people who were just running around the area.

You want people to report bugs BUT you also want to criticize them for their mounting frustration and need to share. seems conflicted

You say it is not a BETA but that is how ESO advertises it. That is how people interpret it. Then when they do not know where to turn to get information, they google and get this web site. OMFG, some noob jonny-come-lately tester in that other universe complained on the forums. Let me be smug and self-righteous and complain about their complaining! Constructive discourse at its best!

Welcome back to the ESO beta! You are invited to participate in our upcoming test of the newest version of the game! This is our final large-scale beta event before Early Access. Join us from Friday, March 14th at 12:00PM EDT until Sunday, March 16th at 11:59PM EDT.

The only MMORPG that came close to being very clean on release was LOTRO. Smoothest I have seen.

I can not make up my mind about you, we need to have a poll.

A. devoted fan

B. apologist

C. elitist

D. label yourself

My guess is that it probably seems to have something to do with instancing and phasing, and the servers having to make far more instances and phases in the weekend betas.

The current version seems to be a huge improvement. Every broken quest I had in my log was completable the first time. However, there were a few new quests where I needed to relog once. Generally ones that involved opening a container to finish the quest.

The ".81" etc refers to the first two digits of the last set of numbers. The version on the weekend beta servers is .94.

While I don't think all of the OP's criticisms are invalid. I will agree that this is by far the smoothest open beta I've participated in personally, besides Blizzard games (other than Vanilla WoW, which still had some issues at that point).

Yeah, I thought of that, except it is presumably 0.18x, not 0.81x

From the patch notes:

"The Elder Scrolls Online v0.18 presents new features in addition to tons of fixes and improvements to existing content based on tester feedback, and focuses on stability at high peak user load as we prep for launch day. Here’s a brief overview of what awaits you in this test:"

Could be a typographical error in the patch notes that grew legs... Maybe they meant to say "0.81"?

EDIT: Speaking of patch notes... they updated after "0.18" (or whatever), did they post any patch notes in the private dark places most people do not go?

This is the build we were told by people here fixed all these bugs. The patch notes boast of thousands of fixes. So stop your hanwaving away of people's concerns. There is clearly a big problem with quest objective phasing that has persisted thoughout the whole, not just the recent beta process.

And if this game launches with them then it will lose potential customers by the hundreds of thousands, garner terrible word of mouth and generally have the kind of launxh a premium sub game cannot afford.

And as a fan of this game and someone who will be subbing I do not want people telling me to shut up on specious jam tomorrow grounds. I want not to have most every daggerfall quest become a test of my patience and reloading skills.

It is ridiculous.

Why do people think a beta = final release? It's beta people, stuff will be bugged. Considering the fact were 1 or 2 patches behind the current version, i really wouldn't get my panties in a twist until launch day comes. Your speculation is all based off of an old version of the game.

Were here to test server stability, not the actual final release itself. I feel allot of people needed this in big letters to understand easier, because nobody seems to get it.

He changed it to "epically" LMAO.

Edit: To seem on topic, I'm not going to judge anything in a beta.

This is not the finished product, so my statement about people viewing this game as finished stands. If they cannot see that then their not rational people, and as such we don't need them mucking around spewing garbage about ESO with their ESO is doomed threads. So i say good riddance to them.

Why would you listen to anyone here?

Ooh! I can answer that one.

Professional software development by a large organization has a rather well defined pattern to it and you can expect certain things 2-3 weeks prior to the "golden master" (aka, release version). It is completely reasonable to assume that 2-3 weeks prior to release a "beta" version would be almost indistinguishable from the final release version.

OP is correct and it's not just here that people are saying these things. It's on reddit, mmorpg.com, etc. I've bought the Imperial edition and definitely will play but this is concerning. It seems to have gotten worse. I've played the last 3 beta weekends and, whatever version number this is, it's the worst one so far. I had to relog 16 times on one quest just to complete it. I gave up on the others after a while. I agree with the person saying that it's probably related to the phasing and the number of players present. But that's pretty bad. Launch day will be 10 times worse and they need this feedback to fix whatever the issue is with high pop/phasing/quest completability.

You had 0 credibility to begin with due to your stupid statements and you have even less now because you can't even spell "lose" properly.

I have no expectation for them to have the quest issue fixed at launch. Not being able to finish quests is the single most important thing they need to be working on right now. It is game breaking and if it isn't fixed on launch, I WILL demand my money back. This is unacceptable! This has been an issue for months and they have been fully aware of it. They have done NOTHING to fix the problem thus far.

I am also going to point out that anybody with an opinion that this game will be better off without certain people that have a reasonable expectation of service that they don't receive, is a moron. This games success is going to be based on how many subscriptions it has. Any number of people leaving the game is a bad thing.

FIX THE OBVIOUS GAME BREAKING BUGS!

I just don't understand the complaints of not knowing where to go or what to do? Hmm have you played a TES game before or even an MMO before? You start playing the game and picking up quests to do how is that complicated? What did you do when you started playing the last TES game? The last MMO? The same thing you do in ESO.

There is no way the game will launch with these quest bugs, relax.

Last beta weekend, I would have agreed fully; however, the new change with skipping the starter islands really screwed up the "flow" of things. I just made a new character in a new faction today, and after leaving Coldharbor and being dumped in Tamriel, I didn't have any quests or direction.

a non-bugged game would be nice.

Not necessary though.

game play > annoying bugs that will be fixed (probably)

ill buy and play it bugged because its a good game, its still playable, its nothing like some other good games were on release.
It's going to be released with some of the bugs, but not all of the bugs. If that bugs you, bugger off until you start growing jealous of all those people having fun.

Thats the point.. its a TES game is it not? After talking to the Prophet when you wake up after Coldharbor he gives you all the direction you should need to get started.

Two weeks to go. A lot of fixes can be done in that time, but still, it seems like early access players will be doing some last minute beta testing at this rate. Because fixes tend to come with their own problems.

I'm wondering how many of the bugs are down to code and how many is the game simply being overloaded by the number of players? When I started on Friday I encountered no problems at the start but quests I completed early on weren't doable by later players. And now I'm stuck in a quest as well.

I'm a seasoned MMO player. I didn't participate in previous beta and so when I left Coldharbour I was completely overwhelmed. Ran around like a headless chicken trying to make sense of it and finally found a quest (Wyrd Tree chain), outside of the town, which was a few levels higher than me but which I could do. Strangely when I went back to the starter town I found a whole bunch of quests I'd somehow missed when I first arrived.