With the launch date now pretty close by and with several weekends of beta, I got a pretty good idea of what the game will be like and also of what the game will not be like. I can't write about every single detail here, but I will mention a few things, mostly things that I expected more of a game like ESO and that made me personally decide not to play it.
Graphics:
The landscape and scenery is really well done. Buildings and shops look pretty and overall it just looks good. No comparison to a high quality single player game, but for an MMO it's definitely nice to see.
Character models on the other hand cannot compare to the scenery. The character models are not totally ugly, but they have several flaws, that make their bodies and faces look out of proportion, armor and clothes look like cheap plastered on textures (what they mostly are) and the hairstyles are simply taken from basic stock that can be found in a multitude of other games ... and on top of that are horrible.
I'd give the game a 8 or 9/10 for graphics for the scenery and a 6/10 overall. If you are one of the players who doesn't care so much about how your character looks, this likely won't bother you so much.
Exploration:
There is simply nothing to explore. No hidden quests, no nice ressources to find, absolutely nothing. All of the quests can be found in the major hubs or in some village where you have to come through anyways, the random treasure from all kinds of containers that you can look into is for the most part totally pointless and there are only a very limited number of ressource nodes in an area, that are always at the same places, are always the exact same material in an area and give no variety at all.
Yet again even though its a 3D world with mountains and all, it feels very flat to me. The game doesn't make any use of jumping, of climbing or anything like that properly. You have some rare ladders and thats about it and for most of these its even a load into a different area altogether.
Content:
I can't say I'm impressed with the amount of content. The positive thing about the quests is that they are all voiced, which is a good thing. On the other hand, both the actual quest texts as well as the actors for the voice over are for the biggest part bad .. bad in that my 12 year old sister could probably do better than that. There are moments throughout the game when tragic scenes are taking place .. and when the NPC speaks of revenge all you can really do is burst out laughing because it's so badly voiced and they give those NPCs such horrible lines to say.
Quests are very limited and you literally have to do most of the quests, because there are no real other options in the beginning (and even later on currently) to level. If you leave a few quests and don't have a good group you will later on feel the lack of xp and equipment. It doesn't feel to me like I can pick the quests I like and leave others that I don't want to do. Quests offer no choices no decisions, and are totally railroaded whatever you say or do. As I have no choice in these quests, it doesn't feel like I play a game, it feels like I'm having to listen to monologues, as your own character doesn't say anything at all (Ummm yeah why did I pick that voice again at the character creation? For the Uhww and Aww in combat?! Seriously?!)
Crafting "seems" to be varied, but once you figure out that all it really does is add a few pre and postfixes that they call traits to your equipment it gets seriously flat. You don't need more and different materials for higher quality items, you just need more of the same. It's a rather dumb crafting system for people who enjoy having a bot running around .. I don't know. I love gathering and crafting as many of you know, but in ESO it feels tiresome. There are no cool rare materials to find, nothing special to happen during gathering. Materials are not even hidden they are open on the ground as ugly lumps of stuff.
You can't properly adapt your armor's or equipment's looks, except for pre-defined "styles" .. in the end its a hand full of different item sets to make and adapt that will look slightly different when they go to higher levels .. I can't even say that I was impressed with how they look, they all look more or less the same no matter the style.
PvP seems fun enough. It's hard to tell if the game will be balanced in the higher level regions so we can't say much about it yet, but apart from balance it seems stable enough even in bigger fights and the open world fights feel decent. If you liked GW2's WvW's then you will likely feel at home here in PvP.
It's mostly based around mobs, bigger is better and it will often come down to leadership and bigger tactical decisions than to single player strength or equipment.
Development, Bugs and Other Stuff
I was shocked by the Patch Notes. They have a long list of effective nothingness. There were 2 or 3 bugs inside that whole list that seemed important and the rest is either a lie (as in its still not fixed and still buggy) isn't in there, or is totally irrelevant to most players. It was my big hope that a big part of the important bugs would get taken out, seeing as they promised all kinds of stuff, said it wasn't a current build last time and what not .. I didn't believe it back then and it just shows that my doubts were well founded. No trade improvements, no proper quest fixes ..
- Thousands of fixes for quest issues across the entire game.
I do not like getting excuses, promises and straight up lie's because a developer, publisher or whoever is behind it, doesn't want to spend the ressources necessary to get a proper product out. I definitely don't want to be a bugtester after release and I want a mostly bugfree game after release.
Character Customization
As already mentioned, the character editor didn't impress me from the looks of the chars, clipping issues, ugly hairstyles, out of proportion bodies ..
Besides the graphical looks the options I have for my character are very very limited. We get the new era of "free choice railroading" as I would call the make believe choices we get with new RPG's nowadays. You can pick whatever armor you want (yeah!) but hey, tell you the trick, only one type of armor will give your character benefits he really needs! Robes and light armor ALWAYS give magicky boni, medium armor ALWAYS give dexterity related boni and heavy armor (woo who would have thought?!) always give tank/heavy fighter related boni. What the .. ? Why do they give me pointless choices? Why can't I train up my heavy armor to give me magical boni instead?
Oh yeah, I remember .. choices make it more expensive to code .. because you have to balance the game and can't railroad players.
The skill trees for the classes feel limiting in the same way. If you run around you will nearly always find players with nearly or even exactly the same skill choices, just because there are so few that are worthwhile to pick.
I hoped for cool hybrid combinations, instead what we got is seperate skill trees that only have synergies with the "expected" roads .. lets just say I am totally disappointed with the customization options I get.
I can't make my chars look pretty, I can't make the chars have the skill and armor combinations I want without totally crippling them .. same old MMO railroading.
Social Options
They don't really exist. There is a chat functionality .. wow .. thats about it. Alright, that might be a bit drastic to say, but there really isn't much here for teaming up or being social. Most quests are solo-single player oriented. Means you can't do them in groups or if you try to run around, you all have to basically do them on your own in the group. Advancement through quests nearly never counts for the whole group, making it tiresome to keep track of everyone's progress as you have to use chat or ask via voice chat at what point in the quest they are. Others joining in quests get no rewards for helping whatsoever so you have to always make the quests together with your group .. taking a break while the group does other stuff likely screws up your whole quest chain making it impossible to join the group for the quest till they have a totally different questchain again.
Trading is still a horror, limited and a pain in the behind. There seems to be no need to interact with other players till the higher levels at all. With the current grouping limitations it's even easier to do all the stuff in the game solo .. and then I have to ask myself why I play an MMO.
Overall this is highly critical without much positive to say about the game. It's not all that bad, but I see no reason to play a new MMO that I don't enjoy. I have chatrooms everywhere, be it the stream chat or whatever place I like, so I don't need a game for chatting. If I want a single player experience, a Modded Skyrim will beat ESO in every way possible. I could only advise people to try it if they are big on PVP and look for something similar to GW2's WvW battles. I sometimes play MMOs just to be around the community, but the character models are so ugly and so disappointing to me that I will look for other games.
I wish everyone who decides to play ESO a great time, but we will see each other in another game again. There are quite a lot ready to be released anyways.
