Elder Scrolls Online

[MindBlender]

[Absolute]

Ignore the cash shop and you've pretty much got what CoH was at release. Buy the box, pay monthly.

Anyone remember when CoH and CoV required separate $15/month payments to play both games? Now that was pretty killer.

I'd really suggest buying 1 box first, trying it out, then buying a second one if you'd like. I've actually bought 2 box games at once and regretted it.

[FatherXmas]

Anyone remember when CoH and CoV required separate $15/month payments to play both games? Now that was pretty killer.

Never happened unless you created a brand new account for CoV rather than add it to your existing account like I did.

[Samurai Cowgirl]

Warcraft was sold like there here too. Possibly even Ever quest (always saw the expansions on the shelf, not sure if they had time cards)
Buy a box for CD's, get a game time card in the box. Time cards could have been 2 or 3 months though, never really paid attention back then.

Everything old is new I guess. Though they aren't doing them selves any favors for what is now a $45 dollar download.
In the end either they'll live up to the "premier" class of MMO, or they'll end up ground beef with the rest of the FTP options.

[silvers1]

Think I'll hold off on this one, see if they either drop the $60 box cost, or go to free to play.

[Stone Daemon]

Anyone remember when CoH and CoV required separate $15/month payments to play both games? Now that was pretty killer.

As FatherXmas said, no, that was not a thing that happened. From the very beginning they made it clear that, while you would have to buy CoV to unlock it on your account, the two games would be covered by the same subscription.

As for Elder Scrolls...I'm going to sit and wait. I bought into SWTOR, and almost immediately regretted it. It was a decent game, but it was a single player game pretending to be an MMO. I don't enjoy paying monthly for a single player game. Elder Scrolls has always been a single player game, and I just don't see myself teaming on it. So, maybe if it goes free to play I'll jump on.

[Thunder Glove]

I've only played about... a third of Morrowind, and that's it for me and the Elder Scrolls series.

I may be interested in ESO, but I'd have to see some gameplay mechanics first, not just pretty pictures.

[Stone Daemon]

I've only played about... a third of Morrowind, and that's it for me and the Elder Scrolls series.

I may be interested in ESO, but I'd have to see some gameplay mechanics first, not just pretty pictures.

To be fair...

Morrowind has not aged well at all. Even for it's time, it was kind of...well it was one of those games you either liked enough to accept its flaws, or you didn't. I personally only played a couple hours of it. I probably would have played more if it wasn't a rental, but after returning it I never felt the urge to actually buy it to finish it. It had a terribad quest/navigation system and I was lost and confused the entire time after leaving the first town. (Granted, this was back in the day, when I was but a wee lad.)

If you ever feel like giving The Elder Scrolls a fair shake, pick up Oblivion or Skyrim. They fixed all of the issues I had with Morrowind. The tradeoff, sadly, was that they had removed flight from the game. LE SIGH.

[Thunder Glove]

I did like Morrowind, but I just sort of drifted away from it and haven't gotten back to it.  I liked the story a lot (particularly the part about becoming The Chosen One by sheer chutzpah), as well as the character customizability (in terms of skills, not so much appearance), and especially the ability to craft your own spells, but I hated all the traveling.

I'm actually less interested in Skyrim because they simplified the mechanics so much that it doesn't sound interesting anymore.  (I particularly don't like that you can only have one summon at a time, or two if you specialize in it; in Morrowind, I had ARMIES) Plus, I'm not entirely sure I'll be able to get it to run in the first place.  It ran slowly and fitfully on my wife's laptop, and her computer is more powerful than mine.

[Stone Daemon]

Ah, ok then. One day I'll have to go back and try to complete the game. It's just hard to work up the urge, given how old it is, heh.

I realized earlier I inadvertently lied. I did buy Morrowind a couple years after I rented it on Xbox, but for my PC. It was too hard to get into it, I barely did anything in the first town before stopping. I'm just not a person that can play first person games on PC. 

Maybe I'll find it in a discount bin for xbox somewhere. I think it's one of the ones that is backwards compatible for 360?

[Blondeshell]

I think it's one of the ones that is backwards compatible for 360?

Yep.

[AlphaFerret]

My problem with Elder Scrolls Online is the fact that my RL friends all plan on playing the PS version.  I typically do not enjoy rpgs on a console.  Even more distressing--I have a 360 and not a PS--and the droobs are all talking about upgrading to the PS4.  So I will have to make a very expensive investment if I wanna play with my pals.

Dang

[Stone Daemon]

Yep.

Thank you, Blondeshell. I'll have to look for it and pick it up next time I'm in a Bookmans or something. 

[Absolute]

As FatherXmas said, no, that was not a thing that happened. From the very beginning they made it clear that, while you would have to buy CoV to unlock it on your account, the two games would be covered by the same subscription.

Really? I must have already had multiple accounts by that time then. I always thought when CoV came out, it was a separate game entirely, and only after a set amount of time you could put both under 1 subscription.

Edit: I also remember access to bases were limited to only those with CoV, and I could go into them, so I must have had it on the same account.

[eabrace]

Really? I must have already had multiple accounts by that time then. I always thought when CoV came out, it was a separate game entirely, and only after a set amount of time you could put both under 1 subscription.

CoV was a separate game in the sense that it granted you access to things that CoH did not (e.g. bases), while CoH granted you access to things CoV did not (e.g. Kheldians).  Mechanically, however, it really just bought you a code to add to your existing account to grant you access to those extra amenities and add a month of play time to your account - or to create a new account if that was what you wanted.

[silvers1]

Anyone else been playing the beta?    ( the last email I received stated the NDA was over, so I guess I can make a few comments )

My impressions so far:

Combat:
The combat to me is a bit clunky and boring.  As you level up, you gain more combat abilities that you can choose from to place
in combat slots.  And like most modern games, you can only slot a few powers at a time to be active, which I strongly dislike.

Graphics:
I was expecting graphics somewhere on the order of what you see in Skyrim.  Not even close.  The graphics are dull
and what I would consider "muddy".  I guess they were trying for a gritty look and feel, but I think they went overboard.
Character avatars are decent, but to play in 3rd person mode you have to zoom way back to get your character to center on the screen. 
Very odd.  To me, the game world felt lifeless and static.

The one thing that is done very well are water effects.

Questing:
I dont like the fact that mini-dungeons are not instanced.  In most cases I would go into one and 90% of the mobs were cleared by other players.
It kind of takes away the feeling of accomplishment when there's little to do in these areas.
Quests are typical fare: go and kill something, collect stuff, etc.  Nothing revolutionary there.
Mob difficulty varied significantly.  Some were fairly easy, some chewed me up in just a few seconds.  They really need to be more consistent.
Voice acting for NPCs that give quests is pretty decent.

NPCs/MOBs:
It is somewhat difficult to distinguish between NPCs and other players.  Most games display either a circle at the base of NPCs are at least text over the head with different colors to show the difference between friend, foe, and friendly NPC.   The only indication you get in this game is when you target the character, you get a faint red outline effect to indicate "foe".  Not very user friendly.

Crafting:
Never did get into it much.   The ones I did try almost always required components that I didnt have.  So cant really comment.

Chat system:
Pretty standard fare.  It was decent, although I still have to say CoH's chat system is far better than anything i've seen since.

Grouping:
There was very little grouping in beta.  Most quests are soloable, and I couldnt find any lowbie dungeons to necessitate joining a group.

Leveling:
Sloooow.  They need to speed it up a bit.  I've been through 3 beta weekends and still am at level 8.

Individuality:
Hard to say at my low level how much variability there will be in looks.  But like most games,  equipment dictates appearance.
I really miss my CoH character creater.

There are still many annoying bugs with the game in terms of gameplay and interface.  I'm somewhat surprised they intend to go live soon.
The game is in pretty rough shape.

Overall, i think it will be a decent game, but not great.  I was really hoping for something heads and shoulders over everyting else, but I guess it wasnt meant to be.  There's no way I'm paying $60 for the box, then $15 a month.  I'll wait a while and see if it goes F2P.

[Drauger9]

I've already bought it, my RL friend wants to play it. So I went ahead and bought a copy. We've been gaming together for about 8 years on and off? We've been RL friends for more than 20 years I think? We started gaming together with City of Heroes, moved on to WOW after that but we both lose interest in WOW at different times. It's funny cause I just re-subbed to WOW last week and the day I logged on he also just returned after months of being offline.

So, I'll be there launch day hopefully it'll be something we both stick with like City of Heroes.

[Exxar]

After my abysmal impressions during a previous beta event, I'm giving it one last chance this weekend.

[Eoraptor]

I wanted to play ESO, even signed up for the beta... then they said "free up an additional 30 gigabytes of space to play"

srry, my laptop has a 64 gig SSD, I don't HAVE 30 gigs to free.

plus, yeah, subscription AND full stop cash stop. doesn't make someone like me, who scrimps for every penny, feel very welcome.

[healix]

I was SOOO looking forward to ESO...I had Morrowind/expansions and loved it. I was invited to the beta and was really thrilled. Unfortunately, my old putersaurus could not handle the graphics no matter how i set it...could get the sound, but screen was black. A very nice tech tried so hard to help but to no avail, so I just uninstalled it. This was the ONLY game that I was interest in other than CoX.

[Cinnder]

Thanks for the review, silvers -- that pretty much confirms my fears.  Since I just started Skyrim recently, I'll stick with that till CoT comes out.

Question: when folks say it's sub and cash shop, is that pretty much like the model we had in CoX Freedom?  What do the subs get that free players don't?

[Exxar]

It's not like we had in CoX Freedom. It's like in WoW currently. Meaning you need a sub to play at all, and you can get extra cosmetic stuff in the shop.

[Eoraptor]

It's not like we had in CoX Freedom. It's like in WoW currently. Meaning you need a sub to play at all, and you can get extra cosmetic stuff in the shop.

This. you have to pay to access the game in the first place. And then you need to pay for many of the "popular" options if you don't want to spend two or three dozen hours grinding for them instead of enjoying the game. it's a clone of the way that Wow uses it's shop to dominate the MMO space by hoarding ALL the money and forcing users to feel too invested in the game to go elsewhere.

[Aggelakis]

Question: when folks say it's sub and cash shop, is that pretty much like the model we had in CoX Freedom?  What do the subs get that free players don't?

No. It's like pre-Freedom - sub - with the Freedom extras - cash shop. You HAVE to sub, and there is also a cash shop.

[Aggelakis]

it's a clone of the way that Wow uses it's shop to dominate the MMO space by hoarding ALL the money and forcing users to feel too invested in the game to go elsewhere.

Does not compute. WoW's cash shop is almost entirely vanity. Until recently, literally the only things they sold were vanity hats, pets, and mounts, and changing what your character looks like/faction/race. They're rolling out a "pay-for levels" just to combat the assholes selling PL services in their game.

[Taceus Jiwede]

I was under the impression that ESO is not being made by Bethesda.  I know the lore is there but different people making the game then the ones who made Morrowind, Oblivion, or Skyrim.  That had me turned away.  Although I don't mind paying $60 for a game and then a monthly fee, MMO's have been that way longer then they have been free to play/download.  Maybe ill try it out,  just for kicks.

[Exxar]

ESO is being published by Bethesda but developed by Zenimax Online, which is a different studio from the one which makes the classic TES games.

[joelsean1966]

At least one of my former characters will be making a comeback there.

[Thunder Glove]

The only Elder Scrolls game I've played is Morrowind (GOTY, with the expansions), but that game's world is so huge and expansive and filled with places to go and things to do that I could see that as an MMO nearly as-is.  Just add online functionality and go.

That's all they really would have needed to do, but it sounds instead like they're doing a by-the-book WoW clone, complete with the same "ten bear ass" quests.  That's disappointing.

[Taceus Jiwede]

The only Elder Scrolls game I've played is Morrowind (GOTY, with the expansions), but that game's world is so huge and expansive and filled with places to go and things to do that I could see that as an MMO nearly as-is.  Just add online functionality and go.

That's all they really would have needed to do, but it sounds instead like they're doing a by-the-book WoW clone, complete with the same "ten bear ass" quests.  That's disappointing.

I'm going to respectfully disagree with this actually.  The Elder scrolls while very awesome, were very far from being an MMO.  It would be like making the new fallouts a MMO.  They are big maps, full of lore, and full of missions and lots of different stuff to see.  But they are only there once, and the game changes as the things in the game change.  So while one player may get an awesome experience in lets say a MMO version of Skyrim.  Others would not because the NPC's are gone, buildings raided, and enemies killed across the map.  ESO is just making their game more MMO friendly.  I wouldn't say its a WoW clone, because the 10 bear quest is as old as MMO's themselves.  Pre-WoW days even.  MMO's sadly need to have easy quests that can be re-done by everyone without others screwing everyone else ability to play the game.  Personally why I was upset to hear about ESO and the rumored fallout MMO.  Too much in those great games have to change in order to become a general public friendly MMO.

[healix]

There are some pretty big names providing the voices in ESO...

[Thunder Glove]

I'm going to respectfully disagree with this actually.  The Elder scrolls while very awesome, were very far from being an MMO.  It would be like making the new fallouts a MMO.  They are big maps, full of lore, and full of missions and lots of different stuff to see.  But they are only there once, and the game changes as the things in the game change.  So while one player may get an awesome experience in lets say a MMO version of Skyrim.  Others would not because the NPC's are gone, buildings raided, and enemies killed across the map.  ESO is just making their game more MMO friendly.  I wouldn't say its a WoW clone, because the 10 bear quest is as old as MMO's themselves.  Pre-WoW days even.  MMO's sadly need to have easy quests that can be re-done by everyone without others screwing everyone else ability to play the game.  Personally why I was upset to hear about ESO and the rumored fallout MMO.  Too much in those great games have to change in order to become a general public friendly MMO.

I guess I didn't explain myself very well.  Of course you'd have to instance things so one person doesn't clear the entire map of enemies and NPCs, but there's no need to make "10 Bear Ass" quests merely because that's how other MMOs do it.  Existing ES games have enough things to do without having to resort to blatant filler like that, particularly not for a starting quest.

[Eoraptor]

There are some pretty big names providing the voices in ESO...

If there's one thing I can't stand, it's voices in MMOs. The problem is not the voices themselves... it's that the content is always evolving. that means six months or a year down the road, the road-map for any contact or quest arc might change. And game companies are likely not going to pay a voice actor to come back every few months to re-record dialogue as new episodes are added or old ones are reworked. So within the first few years you begin to get this disjointed sort of experience where some stories are chatty as hell with voice acting and background music and the like... and then suddenly... your contact has gone mute and the game just doesn't feel quite right.

Just look at Champions Online and Star Trek Online as two examples. there are swatches in both those games where you hit level fifteen and contacts you had come to associate as chatterboxxers suddenly won't give you the time of day in voice. the tutorials and the opening few levels haven't changed... so plenty of VA work in those, from some good talent to. and then, bang... where did all the chatter go?

[eabrace]

If there's one thing I can't stand, it's voices in MMOs. The problem is not the voices themselves... it's that the content is always evolving. that means six months or a year down the road, the road-map for any contact or quest arc might change. And game companies are likely not going to pay a voice actor to come back every few months to re-record dialogue as new episodes are added or old ones are reworked. So within the first few years you begin to get this disjointed sort of experience where some stories are chatty as hell with voice acting and background music and the like... and then suddenly... your contact has gone mute and the game just doesn't feel quite right.

They've sort of addressed that issue with ESO.  During earlier phases of beta, it was quite apparent that much of the dialogue had not yet been recorded, and yet, the contacts were still speaking.  They're using text to speech software to provide voices where they haven't finished the recordings.

Granted, the jump between recorded voice actor and generated voice can be pretty obvious sometimes, but it's a little less jarring than having the game go mute all of a sudden.

[Felderburg]

Individuality:
Hard to say at my low level how much variability there will be in looks.  But like most games,  equipment dictates appearance.
I really miss my CoH character creater.

There's an article about an infographic that says characters have some ridiculously high number of variations: http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-elder-scrolls-online-has-5-0952187-10-58-possible-character-variations/1100-6418770/

I had issues getting a Gamespot account, so I couldn't post in the comments a question: Body variation is nice, but what about costumes? City of Heroes, for example, had a similar ridiculously high number of costume variations, and you never saw duplicates in that game.

[eabrace]

"Costume" is based primarily on gear equipped. I don't know if they were counting that as part of character variation.

[Eoraptor]

Hopefully they will handle it like Star Trek Online does... where gear equipped CAN alter a toon's appearance, but you have the option to turn part of all of the visuals off to let your custom crafted garb shine through. It seems a good balance between the two options.

[Aggelakis]

If gear's not completely separate from costuming like City's was, I vastly prefer the new version of gear, where you have "gear slots" where you put the ugly leveling-up stuff, and "costume slots" where you put the cool looking stuff. If you have something in a costume slot, it overrides the visuals of the gear. If you don't have anything in a costume slot, it defaults to the gear slot's look.

I also really like the concept of "gear dye" but so many games do it wrong. Too many you have to have an individual pot of dye for every single piece ever. Instead, I like Guild Wars 2's version where you find a pot of dye and use it to apply it to your pallet...and you have that available forever, to use as often (or as little) as you like.

^ more games need to do both of the above. (even better to do it like City, but that'll never happen)

[healix]

[SuckerPunch]

Any old Titan-ites playing this? It'd be fun to team up with old COH folks.

[Dollhouse]

Any old Titan-ites playing this? It'd be fun to team up with old COH folks.

A pretty good chunk of my old Pinnacle crew are all playing (myself excluded...not into high fantasy settings). They seem to like it. I don't think any of them have ever been Titan regulars, though.

[eabrace]

I enjoyed my time spent beta testing, but I just don't have enough free time to make it worth paying for the game at the moment.

[therain93]

Minor cross-post with the chat and server list thread....

The Elder Scrolls Online only has a single mega server for North America and no custom chat channels.  However, you can be a member of 5 guilds, so I have gone ahead and created a "City of Heroes Refugees" guild (affiliated with the Daggerfall Covenant).   Send an email to @therain93 and I can invite people.

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

Minor cross-post with the chat and server list thread....

The Elder Scrolls Online only has a single mega server for North America and no custom chat channels.  However, you can be a member of 5 guilds, so I have gone ahead and created a "City of Heroes Refugees" guild (affiliated with the Daggerfall Covenant).   Send an email to @therain93 and I can invite people.

Haven't picked up ESO yet, will probably wait another couple of months and maybe get it then. Some of the stuff they're adding looks fun and Zenimax is promising to restore previous, and even add some additional, guild functionality. i found some of the beta interesting, and loved the crafting despite not usually doing a lot of crafting in other games, but the last time i played it a few weeks before launch i kept running into broken quests and UI bugs.

Now while the whole starting out as a prisoner is mandatory in Elder Scrolls games i think the destined hero "you're the only hope for the whole world" trope at the very start of the game was sort of dumb. One of the things i liked most about the CoH storyline was how you start out as just another aspiring hero/villain and gradually become renowned as you progress. In my opinion ESO is a mixed bag, but if you're fond of the Elder Scrolls lore it's better than most MMOs out there.

So, anyway, if you're still playing ESO in another couple of months i'll probably see about joining that guild. 

[therain93]

I actually haven't been on in a few days because of personal life, but I've had 0 interest for it, which makes me wonder if many are playing (or saw the posting).

TESO is.....TESO...not sure I can describe it better, but I'll try.  I think you can actually ignore the whole main story line.  As you complete chapters, you level up "soul magic", but I find it relatively un-useful. Some of the other storylines in game (daggerfall covenant side) are pretty interesting, but not necessarily blow-you-away-amazing. Skill lines aren't necessarily sophisticated, but you're forced to make choices, which is fun.  Of course, there are some seemingly alpha skill lines, most notably people selling werewolf and vampire bites, which require then completing quests and those open respective skill lines.  I've actually avoided this and am consciously leveling up the fighter guild skills so I can specifically hunt those people ( ' :

Customization in the game is not all that sophisticated and theoretically you can solo crafting, i.e., build all of you own equipment.  There are "motifs" you can find that alter appearance, but when you boil it all away, it's sword and board fantasy, which doesn't compare to City of Heroes (in my humble opinion).

[Risha]

Just got this, and though the character him/herself can be customized a lot, I don't like the movement at all.  I really only played COH so I'm not accustomed to the WADS or whatever.  I like the arrow keys, but that is also the mouse hand and the mouse is used for combat.  If you use the mouse for movement, the camera (which isn't fixed, unless I haven't found the way to do that), goes all over everywhere, so when something attacks I was occasionally looking at the ceiling.  I died a lot.  I really hate using the keys and my character disappearing off screen or I see the side of it running left or right and not where I'm going.

So I'll be making characters for my upcoming books, and on now and again, but I currently plan on cancelling my subscription before my time runs out.

[KennonGL]

I played through Beta and for a couple of months afterwards.

Eventually gave up on ESO as I really, really, really hate the
"each guild has it's own unique store/auction house"

First off, the search routines in the store(s) were (are? no idea now)
basically worthless and/or broken.  You couldn't actually perform a
direct search.  Only "kind of" filter by type [and even that was sporadic]
and then hand scan page after page of garbage entries.

Then to make it even more fun, since you basically have to have several
guild stores, you're doing that hand search not once, but up to 5 separate times.

And if you want a cross-guild access?  Well that's in the PvP zones...

Basically it made crafting very unfun for me (and I usually enjoy having a crafter character).
Enough so that I eventually just gave up.

[Castegyre]

I'm still playing the game but I'm losing interest. My biggest problem with it is the overall design that ends in group or die. Most of the game you can solo or group as you wish. You may not be able to do certain dungeons by yourself, some require more than one person because of particular mechanics, but you aren't really forced to group to progress. There's plenty of other content to do. Then you get to about VR 10 or 11 in Craglorn and you're basically forced to group to progress at a reasonable rate. Not only that, but if you're trying to do content sometimes you have to group with people who are on the exact same stage of the same quest as you or you can't really help each other at certain points. If you want to get to VR 14 without having dedicated people to group with you have to grind. Grind is what many people choose to do instead of trying to do the content. Grinding is so prevalent that when you zone in to Craglorn grind group spam is a significant part of the zone chat you're going to see, more so than grouping for content a lot of the time. You can solo grind, but it's painfully slow when you're often getting a few k xp per pull and you need about 5 million to level. I don't mind grouping and I don't mind grinding, both have their place. What I do mind is the bait and switch of providing me a certain game experience and then changing the dynamic at the last minute.

There are several other things about the game that bother me like some of the shoddy world construction, the search function at guild merchants, and how close but totally not the world design is from traditional TES games. I can get over or around some of that stuff, though. There are also lots of things about the game that I like, like I have met many really nice people. I actually enjoy the combat. I'm not very good at PvP, but I enjoy Cyrodiil, etc. The game isn't horrible, but it does have a fatal flaw from my perspective that has me looking for an alternative.

[Lothic]

Then you get to about VR 10 or 11 in Craglorn and you're basically forced to group to progress at a reasonable rate. Not only that, but if you're trying to do content sometimes you have to group with people who are on the exact same stage of the same quest as you or you can't really help each other at certain points. If you want to get to VR 14 without having dedicated people to group with you have to grind.

Coincidentally I just got to this point with my main ESO character a few days ago.

I had fun slowly soloing through all the other VR zones (about 950 quests worth so far) and managed to get to around VR level 11.5 without any significant grinding.  Now I'm left with only Cyrodiil or Craglorn as viable content options.  As already stated grouping is hard to do in ESO in general so that makes Craglorn undesirable for me and soloable PvE content in Cyrodiil seems mostly "tacked on" as an afterthought so basically there's really only grinding or PvP as alternatives for me to hit the cap.  I'm not against grouping or PvP specifically - I'd just like a good way to get to the level cap without having to rely on those methods.

The good news is that the near-term switch from the "veteran" system to the "champion" system should make getting to the max level cap much easier without the need for required grinding.  At least that's its main selling point.  And there's supposedly another high level PvE zone already in the works that's probably intended to bridge the "solo to level cap" gap that currently exists in the game.  It's just going to be a matter of waiting for these.

[Risha]

All right, all of you must do better with the movement than I.  In any event, it's so painful for me that I'll be dropping it as soon as my free month is over, and probably a lot sooner.  I liked the idea, but I died all the time because I'm so used to moving with the mouse, and that's combat....