I was fortunate enough to get a sneak peak of the Elder Scrolls Online through this beta weekend. After playing it for most of my weekend, I thought I'd share my thoughts in hopes that it may help Bethesda improve their game and help potential buyers make an informed decision. I describe what I did and did not like about the game and weather or not I will be purchasing it upon release.

Positives:

First of all, I love the series. I have been playing Elder Scrolls since the good old days of Morrowind (which I racked up over 2000 hours on over the years). I loved Oblivion, and still avidly play Skyrim. I have found no other series that can match the depth and immersion that these games create. Elder Scrolls Online first and foremost was a way for me to return to Tamriel. Bethesda really hit the nail on the head with making ESO look like an Elder Scrolls game. The textures and culture of every area were spot on. When I was in Skyrim and Morrowind, it really brought me back to each game, exactly as I had left it. The architecture of each area felt exactly as it had did in previous games. Morrowind especially was beautiful. It was truly a beautiful game, ranking only behind Skyrim in graphics.

Aside from aesthetics, I felt they stayed true to the lore I have come to love. The nords acted like nords, and the argonians acted like argonians. From my previous experience with the series, I was able to jump right in to the game. I knew what race I liked and the playstyle I wanted for that race. The game mechanics of ESO were exceptional at making this feel like the next chapter in the same series. ESO really did look like returning to Tamriel.

As for the community of players, I couldnt be happier. My general experience with MMOs has been that the other players really took no interest in you. I did not find this to be true in ESO. Immediately after completing the tutorial, I jumped in and requested the first person I found to join my group. We then stuck together for 3 hours following. This was not a one case scenario either, as I found many of the other players would jump in and save me when I was in trouble and were very helpful when I had questions or needed to trade something.

I was also very pleased with the crafting system. It was realistic enough to feel like you were actually making something, yet simple enough to figure out in a few minutes. There was almost no learning curve for me when it came time for crafting, and as I have come to love in Skyrim, it actually felt like I was making something.

Combat in ESO was by far the best system ive seen in any MMO. No turn based fights here! I was able to sneak up on enemies and stab them in the back when I felt like it, hit them with spells from a good distance, or blast in and swing my sword and several NPC's at once. Definately the best MMO combat out there.

Negatives:

Now, this game has a lot of improvements to make. My first disappointment was the atmosphere. While ESO definitely LOOKED like an Elder Scrolls Game, it just didnt feel like one. I always loved being sent on a quest that woulld take me across the province. I never used fast travel in any Elder Scrolls game, as I liked the adventure of traveling across the map. I would find unique locations, bandit traps, side quests, and all sorts of hidden treasures while I journeyed from Riften to Solitude. This is the main thing that made the series come alive to me. My character was always faced with the dilema of being on a big quest, but seeing someone in need on the road. Completely unrelated to my mission, I would get to decide if I had time to help. This was not the case in ESO. I had expected to be able to walk from Blackmarsh to Skyrim as I would in a single player Elder Scrolls. I dont mind a loading screen in between the two, but this freedom was not available in ESO. I had to complete quests that would unlock the next location, which was leveled to my character. This quest would then lead me to every other quest available in that region. Very disappointing. I felt like Bethesda was holding my hand through the game, and there was never any need for exploration beyond where they guided me. I could just run through the main quest and complete every side quest along the way.

The quests were also unoriginal at best. I remember one Dark Brotherhood quest from Oblivion called "Who done it?" My task was to assassinate the entire guest list in a locked house. I wanted to take it to the next level and not get caught by the other guests in the process. I found that while running in and slaughtering everyone was a definite possibility, I had the option to be creative. I could leave poison apples on the tables, wait for people to go to sleep and kill them then, follow someone around until they were alone, or even talk them into killing eachother! Single player elder scrolls quests really gave you every option to be creative and develop your character how you wanted. ESO was nothing like this. Your mission was to go and kill 8 bandits, fight through a cave and reach a guy trapped at the end, or find 7 people that were turned into skeevers. Not only that, but there was no chance for you to be creative with it. No traps to lure them into, no way to trick them into fighting eachother, no stratagizing your buffs and weapons before your attack, nothing. It was simply hit them with as many spells as possible til they died. Not very original.

The magic system was also somewhat disappointing. It wasnt bad, and there was a lot of customization. I was able to think about what my character would be good at and upgrade accordingly. However, I found that I was really limited as a mage. Once I upgraded my summon, i couldnt go back. If I needed a flame atronoch, yet upgraded to frost, too bad. Nope no strategy here. There were so few spells in ESO, it felt even dumber than Skyrims magic system. There was no point in thinking about your opponent because you only had 8 spells to chose from.

Combat, although good for an MMO, was sub par to previous titles. I remember many epic battles in Skyrim where Id be sword fighting in a fort with bandits while archers from a neighboring hill would defend their comrades from my raid. I would have to lure the swordsmen away and then deal with the archers seperately, pulling off legendary longshots and picking them off like a sniper. Not in ESO. My enemies ran right up to me, be it archer or fighter. Not only that, but I had to be within 10 feet to even start an attack. No long range battles and strategies here.

Overall, I was pretty disappointed with ESO. It felt to me like an MMO game with a slightly better combat and crafting system with very good visuals that reminded me of games that I love. It did not however really feel like a continuation of my favorite series. It was missing the strategy, the freedom, and the exploration. It was missing epic battles that I had to approach with caution. Most of all, it was missing the Elder Scrolls Atmosphere I have come to love. Will I play the next beta weekend? Absolutely. Its like a child on meth. You are very disappointed in him, but you cant stop giving him another chance. Will I buy the game upon release? No. Unless the next beta brings the game to life, Im afraid I will be sticking to Skyrim, and hoping that Bethesda doesnt give up on their single player masterpieces. Sorry methboy, Ill give you another chance but Im not paying for your college.

Oh my, that's a long read. The House of Death in oblivion is easily my most favorite quest in any game ever.

I wanted to be thorough and tell them why I dont like their game. I am very disappointed and needed to vent. I had such high hopes that I would be playing Skyrim on a WoW engine. Instead I found myself playing WoW with an Elder Scrolls texture pack.

Great post and I agree with lots of your points, very nice read! I just want to tell you (and reassure you) that Bethesda isn't making ESO, Zenimax Online is. So Bethesda will certainly not give up on their singleplayer games, me thinking I know them well enough. Again great post.

Thank you! And I am very glad to hear that! If they made this exact same game a single player one, it would be a whole different ballpark. Potentially the best Elder Scrolls yet!

I'll add my personal opinions of ESO here, instead of making a new thread:

Positives

- Love the atmosphere. I felt Elder Scrolls from the very first moment. Similar graphics, lighting. Even those same clunky animations felt like Elder Scrolls.

- Lore, everywhere. Read a book. Listen to quest dialogue. It's everywhere. Tied with the environment, your really building a good start.

- Crafting is a real gem. First time I've ever gotten into crafting in any game and just really enjoyed it. The depth of blacksmithing, woodworking and clothing is very detailed.

- Teamwork is really supported. I can join in fighting any enemy, without worrying about whether the other player will think I'm stealing his loot, his xp, or his mission reward.

- Armor and weapons for everybody? No class restrictions? Absolutely wonderful! About time that somebody realizes that a wizard strong enough to wear armor should be able to wear armor.

- Guild management. Simple, easy, without a ton of weird restrictions. And we can hold property? Loving it.

- Five guilds? Um, since when did someone realize that people have more than one social circle? I want to hug that person.

- Guilds and tells use account names? That saves so much effort remembering 100 long, often idiotic character names.

- Focus on crafting goods instead of loot drops. I hate gear-driven MMO's, on a primal level. I love how a crafter has value.

- No auction house. Makes individual markets so much stronger.

- Loot can be refined down. Ahh, so beatiful.

Negatives

- No 'breathing' AI. NPC's don't go home. They don't wander. They don't get lost. They sit still and stand around ... just like every other MMO.

- Animations are goofy. Fighting feels like it doesn't hurt. Running and jumping makes me think my character weighs 90 lbs dripping wet, instead of a 250 lbs warrior in a suit of iron armor.

- How come Alchemy and Enchanting feels so weak on the crafting meter? Both feel like they don't have any depth.

- Quest phasing svcks for teammates. Running with a buddy, he phases out and I'm looking like an idiot. Can't we 'share' a mission or something to bring our friends along?

- See that pretty town? Don't get used to it. It'll be war-torn by the time your railroad is passing to the next station. Isn't there even a few areas of peace and quiet left?

- Why doesn't zone chat use account name like guild chat? It makes it so much simpler.

- Where are our houses? Seriously. This is Elder Scrolls. How can we really identify with our characters without houses?

More to come as I think of it ...

Well, this is not and was never intended to be the next ES game. It is a MMORPG. While set in Tamriel and based on ES lore it just is what it is. These type of games are not for everyone. I have played just about every one of them over the past couple of decades but I tend to lose interest after 12-18 months. This may run the same course. I may suspend play and tackle a stand alone game here and there too. The one mistake, love it or hate it, that I don't think we want to do is to expect the MMO to be Skyrim or for Skyrim to be an MMO. At any rate I do not think that we can judge its character based on the beta. It will probably take me 3 months post launch to do that. For now I find it interesting and pleasurable enough to pre order and give it a good try.

I think it's important to compare one game in a franchise to the other, especially when it's marketed as the next installment, which this has been marketed as. If the game carries a certain name, then it is going to be compared to it, the people buying the game is going to be biased based on previous experiences with the franchise and I think that is a good thing. Having respect for artistic cohession between titles in a franchise is very, very important for the core audience, examples of this going wrong is: Tomb Raider, Hitman Absolution and the recently released Thief, they all lacked the core and soul of the franchise and that's what's giving them such a hard time by lovers of the franchise, and rightfully so. ESO is no different, it is a TES game, it should be treated as a TES game. The way I look at TESO is similar to how I view Fallout 3: It's a good game, it's just a terrible Fallout game. New Vegas was an amazing game, despite having the same mechanics as Fallout 3, the reason for this is because it kept the artstic view of the old Fallout games and it followed the artistic rules set by the franchise.

And by artistry, I don't meen the looks (people get artistry and visuals mixed up very often), I mean bascially how everything feels and how it works together. If it doesn't have the core aesthetics of TES and follow the rules of the franchise, then it's probably a very bad TES, that said, it's a great game on it's own merits. It's just not a very good TES game, in my opinion. Like I said, this is how I view it, you can disagree if you want, I won't get mad.

I would argue that, if this was the next installment, it would be The Elder Scrolls VI: Online. Or maybe The Elder Scrolls O: Online (thanks Ithril). Instead of it simply being called The Elder Scrolls Online. Other branches in the series include The Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire; The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard; and The Elder Scrolls Travels: Stormhold/Dawnstar/Shadowkey.

As far as visual and asthetic? I feel it fits just fine with the core games in the series, even if it is not a prime installment.

I don't know, ES games are chronicle. It would be ES 0

I guess that besides the point though

I'm not saying it's TES 6, what I'm actually refering to is their own PR speech which markets this game as the next installment of the series. But that's beside the main point: It's still a TES game.

Again, aesthetics is not about visuals exclusively. It's about the interplay between systems, visuals, audio, writing, interface, quests, your place in the world, what you can do, your limits, your freedom. Everything. The core of the TES series is: be who you want to be, do what you want to do, go where you want to whenever you want, and suspend your disbelief that as long as you're inside the boundaries of the world, these rules are perceived as true even if they might not be, and aestheticaly, every single TES (since Morrowind, perhaps Daggerfall), does just that, and a very good job as well. So far, this game doesn't adhere to these aesthetic rules on numerous occassions, and thus I deem it a pretty bad TES game. Not a bad game, but a bad TES game. As an MMO it's superb but it's certainly not a TES game by the philosophy of the TES franchise which have evolved over the years.

It's a very hard thing to describe because it's a matter of perception and sentiment more than mechanics and superficial visual reception, but everytime someone says it doesn't quite feel like a TES game, I instantly understand what they mean because I feel the same way. It doesn't feel like a TES game to a lot of people who love the franchise and embrace the core aesthetics. I for one hated Tomb Raider, the latest Hitman and the new Thief because they all completely strayed away from the core aesthetics of the franchise and from what makes the franchise what it is.

In the one hand, I understand the point. In the other, I disagree. Because overall, to me, it feels like an Elder Scrolls game. The independent skill system. The weapon and armor choices. The animations, motions, movements. The interplay, lore, and visuals.

Each person defines the game in different measures, and that's the simple truth of it. I would argue that for the vast majority of modern TES fans, no game will feel like an Elder Scrolls game unless it has a plethora of nvde mods and six animations designed my other players to spice things up, or free house and super weapon cheats, etc.

I also distinctly remember players arguing that World of Warcraft did not feel like a Warcraft game. It wasn't my fight at the time, because I didn't play Warcraft. But almost a decade later, I'd easily argue that WoW now defines the series in ways the original Warcraft games never could.

In the end, I'll probably enjoy this game, and there's a chance you won't, each for our own opinions. I fully recognize that not everyone can be pleased, because what they might change to make it feel 'right' to one, might change what feels right to another.

That's why I stick with a simple, hard and fast rule: the game designers say what is and isn't. It's THEIR game. THEIR world. We just partake in it.

If I could, as a fan, have some say in Star Wars, for instance, I most definitely would. Han shot first. The Emperor forsaw the Vong. And the Force isn't black and white, but grey. But since I don't own the franchise, I don't have any more power than my wallet to express my disapproval. Any more emotional investment than that in something I have no direct control over is simply folly to the extreme.

I damn sure don't want critics telling me what to do with my characters in my own stories.

Short posts are for Twitter.

I won't judge the game until its actually out on sale. I believe by the time the game comes out for xbox one, the game should be good to go. I am sure this game will be fun once I actually get into it myself when it is completed.

I agree that people play games for different reasons and a franchise is to one person something different than it is to someone else. But to me a franchise has a very specific philosophy (which is independent from personal opinion) and when it's not adhere'd to then it feels off to me. For me, TESO doesn't allow me freedom, it doesn't suspend my disbelief because it's not cohessive in it's approach to the TES universe, not just lore but as a living, breathing world with all it's fundamental, superfical and even metaphysical elements; it won't let me go anywhere I want and do whatever I want within the boundaries of the given mechanics. To me, it breaks the philosophy of the TES franchise: whish is: Do what you want, whenever you want, however you want, which is sort of the tagline for the whole TES series. And this makes me doubt the whole reason why they even chose TES to begin with.

The same goes for Thief, a lot of people liked it, but just as many disliked it. It's also very clear for what reason they have their opinion, especially when it comes to Thief. The people who liked it, like it for it's mechanics and mechanics alone. The people who disliked it, disliked it because it didn't adhere to the aesthetics of the previous Thief games, and those who disliked it were also very clear that they were long time supporters of the franchise. This not some sort of ultimate claim with 100% factual statistic, but it's the common trend amongst reviewers and gamers that I've read and listened to. The same goes for Tomb Raider and Hitman. The strongest example is probably the Might and Magic series, which switched direction completely when 3DO up and died (Heroes5 >).

As for the Warcraft example, I can surely say that WoW is not what Warcraft once was, to me, it's still an imposter and not really that great of a Warcraft game, more than anything, Blizzard is trashing the project's artistic integrity more and more for every year that past. The current WoW isn't even the same WoW it was 2004, and that's the same game. There's always strong diversions when these things happen, but the new vision gains it's own fanbase and the old one remain, I'm still waiting for Warcraft 4 for example, just like I still cling to the pre-2005 Might and Magic iteration, because it was what I felt true to the franchise philosophy at the time.

This is not to say that there's a "true" or "false" kind of fandom, it's just that when taking a franchise and trying to do something personal with it (like ZoS have done), it's important to keep artistic cohession in the process, or else you get this sort of thing happening, there's a strong diversion between mechanical players and those who embrace the artistry and the core philosophy of the series. Personaly, and this might be way too strong for some to stomach but here goes: I think ZoS would've been better off choosing another franchise to do this with.

I could definitely support more freeform sandbox. This could go along with what they've already built fairly easily. In a side-by-side with Skyrim/Oblivion/Morrowind, there was always a main quest that drastically changed the environment that you played in. And you could start and stop (but not rewind) that progression as you saw fit. I spent the whole game of Skyrim avoiding the Greybeards, doing everything possible before I ever touched the main quest. By the time I got to Sovengard, I had too many options for my claim to be accepted!

In this game, that sandbox feel could be added by allowing players to travel between zones before the railroad has happened. Some zones would be more dangerous, but they all should be available. And allowing the player a ton of unrelated side missions can really extend their capabilities. What's wrong with a player being 50 before ever touching the main questline?

Whether this defines Elder Scrolls for me? Not in as much, but adding it definitely would make more of a connection with the more recent additions to the series.