Hi all, and welcome to another forum rant.

I'm just going to go ahead and say it; the state of the game is very concerning, given we've only got just under three weeks until launch. At this point, I would ask flamers and elitists to take a back seat while I express my concern (and I'm sure the concerns of many others) and disappointment at where the game currently is. I do love the game and I have spent many hours playing it, however I find myself extremely disenchanted over the following issues.

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A LOT of the early game (1-18) content is bugged to an almost game-breaking point

Yep. Three weeks to go and most of the quests in my log are sitting incomplete due to one bug or another. Whether it be a mob that won't spawn, an event that won't trigger, or something completely different altogether, there's an absolutely abysmal number of quests that are still broken. The most distressing part is that some of them are even the main storyline quests. I got to a point last night where I just gave up and closed the game, because the majority of these bugs have been known about, complained about, and have had nothing done about since the very first Beta. Copious numbers of players have griped about them and reported them, yet they're still not fixed. You would have thought that the idea of running a Beta and asking for feedback from your players would be so that you can actually fix parts of the game that are broken. If this isn't the focus then I don't know what is, and it certainly isn't marketing a free demo because very few of the people who aren't so easily impressed would be sold on this game as it currently stands.

Yay! We're in Tamriel! I'm... uh... where am I and where the hell do I go?

This encompassed the first hour of my time when I arrived in Daggerfall after having completed the intro sequence. There was no guidance, no information made available to me, and I basically ran around in circles going "WTF" for a good hour or so, picking up a random broken quest here and a random broken quest there, until I finally found the NPC to take me to Stros M'kai. I accept that this is a fairly new thing and that it has only been implemented since the last Beta, but you could have at least got it working before you asked people to test it...

Character animations are still very choppy and very poorly designed

Do you ever feel like playing a caveman simulator? No? How about a another Stick RPG? Yes? Then play ESO and rejoice! For an avatar that players will be spending every single hour of game play looking at, I can't believe how little effort was put into the animations. I just don't have the words to describe how poor they are. Did you, like almost every other game developer has since the '90s, happen to even take a look at how a human being runs or holds an item? Why do we hold a staff almost horizontal to our bodies, and slumped over as if we have a chronic back problem? Why do we hold a sword and shield like we're some kind of primitive human, again, with a chronic back problem? When a person thinks of a mage/wizard archetype, they think of characters from popular fiction such as Gandalf, Saruman, Merlin, Jafar, etcetera. Which of those, or which of any, stand slumped over with a staff held almost perpendicular to their bodies? Their staves are used as giant walking sticks, and, at the very most, they are held off the ground for limited periods of time during movement. Don't even get me started on the running animations, because I'd be here all day. The point is, none of the animations or stances seem to have been given the slightest bit of thought. They almost seem like placeholder animations... but they can't be, right? Because we've only got three weeks to go. Did I also neglect to mention that every time a mob dies and my character is mid-swing, the avatar gets stuck in that mid-swing position and then dances around like a half-paralyzed frog? Another blindingly obvious bug that should have easily been resolved after the very first Beta. Why it hasn't, I honestly can't say. I'm not going to pretend to understand the complexities of development, and I can't even begin to imagine how stretched and overworked the development team are, but, again, why do I feel like I'm playing a game where the animations were made back in the '90s? Of all of my gripes, the poor animations really are at the top of the list.

I still find myself using /reloadui constantly

Do I even need to explain this one? When you see on zone chat, amongst the trolls and haters, the phrase "Type /reloadui" being constantly thrown about, it again begs the question as to whether the game is anywhere near ready. Characters getting stuck mid-action or getting stuck on the crafting screen or vendor screen, ESC not bringing up the game menu and disappearing horses; it's all stuff that really shouldn't be prevalent in the game three weeks prior to launch. This stuff should have been squashed a long time ago. If they're in the game now, they'll be in the game in three weeks time, and I know whose customer support system will be- oh wait, customer support!

Customer support system can't even handle Beta

With this many bugs, good luck operating your in-game customer support system at launch. I couldn't submit a single ticket last night and nor could anyone else, because it looked as though your customer support module had conveniently crashed. I logged out and logged back in again. An hour later, it still wasn't back up. Surely it would have been a priority to get that back online... but obviously not. Another example of a massive failure to act. I have no idea if it's working now because I haven't even bothered to load the game this morning; that's how disenchanted I am over this game now.

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This really doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what needs to be resolved before launch. During the last couple of Betas I accepted all of these bugs as things that would be fixed and kept telling myself, "It's only Beta. Calm yourself." Three weeks prior to launch and two weeks after the previous Beta, not a single one of these blindingly obvious bugs had been resolved and there were even a whole heap more bugs this time. I really struggle to see how these are going to be resolved in time. I would also really hate to see how bugged the level 18+ content is, given that all of the Beta tests have, to date, been limited to the 1-18 content.

On another note, however, from the many hours that I have spent playing over the last couple of Betas, I am pleased to see how true to the Elder Scrolls lore the game has kept and how it actually feels like an Elder Scrolls game. If the game (and animations especially) were actually fixed and in a working state then I can honestly say it would be everything I would have expected of ESO. I love the crafting system, I love the way the questing system is designed, and I love being given the opportunity to explore and find interesting things to do along the way. The level design is also amazing and the art team have done a brilliant job.

Please, just listen to your players and fix damn game!

/rantoff

Your not playing the version with current fixes, your only here to stress the server not report bugs. The bug reports come from Private Test Server.

You have not seen the state of the game. You have seen the state of the open beta which is intended to test the servers and not much more then that.

The PTS is honestly not that far ahead.

PTS is at .183 , This weekend is .181

The horse bug is not on the PTS though, so that's nice.

That maybe true, but its a broken system, customers are seeing this as a final product and walking away because of it.

This.

Anyone viewing this as a final product needs to move along anyway, ESO it better off without them.

What build was the PTS on? The last patch notes I saw from there were 1.81, which are the same patch notes posted on the weekend beta forums. I think our build number might be higher than theirs, actually.

That said, all the bugs I encountered in AD quests during prior betas have been fixed. However, I just did Stros M'kai for the first time, and there were a few quests where I had to relog before I could interact with something.

I think your concerns about animations are justified. They just don't feel/look quite right.

.183..

I said that like 3 posts earlier

This weekend is .181

It's a long way from being a final product, and anyone who plays a Beta should know this. However, anyone who plays a Beta three weeks prior to launch knows that the current state of the game will very closely reflect the game on launch day. If they haven't fixed the majority of these bugs over the last few months, they certainly aren't going to fix them all over the next three weeks. Anyone who has played a Beta before would almost definitely have experienced that.

Ahh, that wasn't in your post when I started typing.

The weekend beta is 1.94. Though I'm not sure how much of that beyond 1.81 is just the pre-order and imp edition features added in.

Well that just blew me away. Is the weekend beta on a further patch than us on the PTS?

The patch notes for the test don't go past .18

and the bugs that are generated because of said stress, they should just go un-reported? People with this attitude are the problem with beta tests, they assume someone else will report things for them.

That's what everyone said last Beta weekend. Oh you're running .7x, we're running .81 on the PTS and it's great! Now we are at the same version (looks to be even higher) that the PTS folks said should be great and it's not.

One the positives is that some of the bugs appear to be stress related. Most of the early 1-19 quest that I couldn't complete during prime time I was able to go back and get done during what seems to be slower times. There seems to be a slew of little annoying bugs, that I'm not sure is stress related or not (like the esc key stops working).

I might use the wife to do the launch day testing, if all the bugs appear to still be there, I'm fine with waiting until May to start. Hopefully after the first month all the early zones will be cleared out enough not to have any quest stopping bugs.

You are a epically stupid if you think that the game is gonna have major changes 2 weeks from headstart, i have beta tested mmos for a long time, and anytime your this close to launch with this many problems,your in for a world of hurt,you should go look at the defiance forums 2-3 weeks from there launch, people were saying the same stupid things, and that game launched horribly, and most people left. Oh its just beta, oh its not the final build, then after release the stupid people say, oh the game just got released, then 3 months later oh the games only been out 3 months, then its wow tooks years to get right, then 6 months later its f2p because every one left.

Sad thing is if the starter zones are this bad, i can only imagine how the later mid to high level zones are, you think those will be magically ready for launch? I feel a epic flop in the works just like swotor.

Like i've stated in previous posts. A lot of players are TESTING this game using the beta... and a buggy beta, old version or not, will be a BAD taste.

Ahh, I didn't realize you didn't have the weekend beta client. I wasn't pulling the number out of thin air, I can post a screenie if you think I'm BSing you.

"Version: eso.live.1.0.0.941004"

Ah another whine thread, even if it released in the current state you think its in it would be better off than most other mmos that have released in the last 5 years. I think they would have been better off not doing these stress tests, to many people playing thinking its the real beta then crying about issues.

and with that you lose all credibility.

The last weekend "stress test" had a lot of bugs in it and people in here pooh-poohed this because it was a very old version. I heard one person say it was a version from late 2013. Your belief in that statement may match mine, but we were told that things were much better in the PTS (before 0.18, as I recall).

So here we are today on, in theory, 0.181, and once again we are told in here that it is an old version and that there is a newer version in PTS. (EDIT: There apparently is no newer version in PTS?)

Gimme a break. I am encountering some of the same bugs this weekend that I ran across last weekend. There may be lots of bug fixes in 0.181, but there are also lots of bugs not fixed in 0.181.

(EDIT: There apparently is no 0.183)

Server drops and lag aside, I fully expect a successful delivery of a bug-laden Elder Scrolls Online starting on March 31. Those of use who have been in the beta will likely recognize these bugs, and I will tell you that the phrase "try /reload" will be common in zone chat, as will be discussion about bugged quests. (To be fair, it does not matter whether there are bugs or not, people will claim things are "bugged" and needing "/reload" is such a habit that I have a key on my G15 keyboard dedicated to it. It is unlikely that "/reload" will be forgotten so easily.)

That is indeed the current client.

I too have played a lot of betas and a lot of MMOs. It's true that not a single one of them have worked on launch day. The major difference is though that the majority of them don't have such a vast number of game-breaking bugs in the early game content, and they have, in fact, had their issues arise from the sheer number of players crippling their servers. The servers seem to be something that ESO has done right (although we'll soon see for sure), yet, for some reason, they've failed to get the actual game up to scratch. People such as yourself are very quick to denounce "yet another whinge thread", yet it's the people who actually provide feedback and don't simply sit back and let things happen that actually help to shape a game and fix issues. If nobody reports a bug, the issue goes unfixed. In this case, however, the problem is that the bug has been reported, yet hasn't been fixed. If everyone were to sit back and let things happily slide, we get the same results repeated time and time again, launch after launch, because, for some reason, the game industry has, over the last five or so years, gotten an idea into its collective head that they aren't accountable for the quality of work they release any more and that a game is OK to launch in an alpha state. Don't take that to mean though that I believe ESO is in an alpha state, because it clearly isn't.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1491548-a-little-bit-of-concern/#entry23417223

One person insulted me and most people told me with little merit not be concerned. I had a moderator close the thread before things got ugly.

More than 5 million people subscribed to beta test this game. A fraction of that amount were actually able to play it. We know curse gave out 25,000 keys, and we know Zenimax gave us one key to give to a friend at one point. A lot of people participated in this beta, which means a lot of impressions have been made.

I think regardless of where everyone stands on the state of this game, we can all agree that It makes sense, in order to give someone your best impression of your game, that you would fully patch it. Because not everyone logs onto the beta forums, not everyone knows the weekend beta objectives and not everyone understands what it is they're "testing."

With all the push back regarding the subscription fee (let's not even go there!) why would they want another reason for people not to buy this amazing game?