Silentstalker vs Elder Scrolls Online

Disclaimer: Obviously, this post is not about tanks, feel free to ignore it, if you aren’t interested in this sorta thing

Hello everyone,

as you have probably heard, Elder Scrolls Online (furthermore referred to as ESO) is a new MMO, based on the massive Elder Scrolls world, which is one of the most developed and largest fantasy franchises out there, with very deep lore and rich content. The best known part of the Elder Scrolls series is the legendary game Skyrim, widely considered to be one of the best games ever made.

As I wrote several times, I am a World of Warcraft veteran and am familiar with the MMORPG concepts (phasing, aggro etc. – more on that later) – I am saying this so you understand, how I approached this game, because most people seem to approach it wrong. I didn’t specifically follow the game development and only got interested after the game was released and Rita started streaming it once or twice. That caught my attention, so I bought it and installed it.

elder-scrolls

Considering today’s game prices, the game doesn’t come cheap: 50 Euro (70 for special edition) and then you have to pay subscription (cca 10 Euro per month). That is a mixed blessing – of course, you have to pay, the game is not F2P. But on the other hand, this system acts as a “natural barrier” to keep the worst pubbies, noobs and idiots out and prevents the infestation of stupidity, so present in World of Tanks. I actually prefer it this way and the players I met in the game proved me right.

After smooth purchase of the game online and a 20GB download (not as bad as I thought), I installed it and ran it. Well… this is the part where I need to say something a lot of people writing reviews on this game seem not to understand.

ESO is NOT Skyrim

I think that I don’t have to tell anyone that single-player and multi-player requirements are (still) on a completely different level. For one, ESO is missing most of the really pretty physics, that made Skyrim great – no archery physics for example. In fact, mechanics and gameplay-wise, ESO is actually closer to World of Warcraft than Skyrim and it uses a LOT of WoW mechanics. WoW players will feel quite at home after a while, although there are definitely some improvements as well.

Installation and Settings

Either way, back to the game. Installation was pretty smooth and so was the login. The game takes account security seriously: if you log in with different IP than you did the first time for example, the game will kick you out immediately and you have to authorize the IP via e-mail, otherwise the account gets locked.

Setting up the game properly however is a bit more difficult. For one, the keyboard settings are a bit weird, took me a while to set it properly. Second, graphic autosetting is completely wrong. I am glad the game flatters my computer by telling me I can run everything on max, but… no, I can’t. Unless you have a quite good computer, you will have to experiment with the settings a bit. I recommend turning viewrange and shadows down, they have HUGE impact on FPS (viewrange specifically influences not only drawing distance, but also LOD distance). Other things however, you can run at full even on weaker machines, including for example texture quality. A tip: when setting up the game, get to the first “really big room” in tutorial (the one with eyes and elementals) – if it runs smoothly, so will the rest of the game, it’s a good testbed. As I said, you have to experiment a bit – turning some things off doesn’t increase your FPS, but it makes the game look like complete shit. In the end, I settled for a mix of medium and high details (with all extra effects on full) and 60 percent viewrange. What a difference compared to World of Tanks, that barely runs on medium now.

A word of warning though: currently, there is a very nasty bug, that basically makes the game freeze for 2 seconds every 30 seconds or so. It’s incredibly annoying and it can kill you in combat. There is a fix – follow the instructions in this thread (regarding that file edit), it works.

Setting up a Character

Let me get back to the character part first. Basically, you have three factions. One is the Daggerfall Covenant, with two types of humans and orcs, Aldmeri Dominion, which has two elves and the big cat Khajiits and Ebonheart Pact or something like that, which has Nords (Skyrim!), Dark Elves and the lizard guys, Argonians. Each faction has its own zones and then there are some battlefields or whatnot, not very important. The important part is that it is NOT like World of Warcraft, where enemy faction can (for example) raid player starting zones and make a mess there. Here, these zones are exclusive – in other words, you won’t encounter enemy factions unless you want to, kinda reminds me of The Old Republic SW MMO.

Ebon-Hearth-Pact

Each faction has obviously its own history, background and storyline, that is independent on what class you pick. Races also have noticeable racial advantages (for example, Wood Elves have a good archery bonus, Bretons have magic bonus etc.) – you can work any race/class combo work, but some work better (whereas in WoW it wasn’t really that important, whether the priest is human or undead). A propos, classes, that’s also a mess. Each race in the game has access to all 4 classes in the game and each class is “customizable” (all classes can use all weapons, items and armor, as far as I can tell). You have:

- Dragon Knight, that can function either as a plate DPS, a tank or even a ranged DPS, but he sucks at that
- Sorcerer is a classic mage and is alway range DPS, he can specialize in pet DPS or alpha, such stuff
- Templar is extremely universal – an equivalent of a paladin, he can spec into a tank (plate + shield), DPS (2 hander), ranged DPS (something like a holy version of mage, quite effective) or healer
- Nightblade – basically a rogue with some magic elements, always a DPS, either an archer or melee

The classes use the same mechanics of WoW. There are tanks (players, who attract enemies and can stand a lot of punishment, hard to kill but don’t kill enemies fast either), DPS (fragile, but does tons of damage) and healers. There however is one extremely important thing to consider. Two things in fact.

First, multiclasses don’t work. If you want to be a two-handed-sword-wielding holy knight in plate armor who also heals, you will suck at both roles. Other idiotic stuff includes plate armor mages and such stuff. I will get to that later.

Second, respeccing is slow and doesn’t come fast (around lvl 16+ or so) and there are very few skill points to distribute, so right from the start, you HAVE to decided what EXACTLY you are going to do, because if you change your “spec” in the middle… well… see point 1, you will suck. So, when you create a character, you for example have to decide “he’s a holy knight, who will smite enemies with a huge two-handed hammer, slightly supported by battle magic” – and that’s it.

Levelling your Character

Levelling is a mix between Skyrim and World of Warcraft. Yes, you improve your skills by doing what you do, but you level up by getting XP and XP you get for killing mobs, for exploring and for doing quests. As far as I can tell, anyone can kill any mob and still get XP, but the level requirements rise very fast, so staying in one area and killing mobs is not a good way. Each level up, you get a point (like in Skyrim), that you distribute between stamina, magic and health (again, specialization is the key) and then you get a skill point, that you assign to the skills you want to use. As I wrote before – it’s very important to specialize – skills without extra points suck and there are not enough points to go around to level everything. You can improve your weapon skills, armor skills, magic skills and tons of other things, you really have to pick.

ESO_SKILL(1)

Oh, almost forgot. You have to pick also “reasonable” configurations. For example, warrior in clothes (light armor, leathers are medium armor) and a 2 hander won’t work. Light armor as a whole adds bonuses to magic regeneration, more mana etc., so you can theoretically have a plate armor mage, but he will run out of mana very, very fast.

Storyline, Exploring

Equipped with this knowledge, you set off to explore the beautiful world (the interface is very similiar to Skyrim, with multiplayer elements of course), that is based on Elder Scrolls franchise. Unlike other franchises, there are no serious “revamps” here, if you are an Elder Scrolls fan, everything will feel familiar. The story is awesome by the way, I really, really, REALLY like it so far. If you liked the Skyrim storyline, you will like this as well. I chose the Aldmeri Dominion pact by the way – I usually don’t play elves, but the story is cool. The music is amazing by the way, amazing.

Every character is voiced (much like in The Old Republic), you will most likely recognize some of the voice actors from Skyrim, but the main characters/faction leaders are voiced by famous actors (for example, the Elven queen by Kate Beckinsale). Very nice! You talk to the characters in a simplified “Skyrim-like” interface:

Screenshot_20140421_223646

Together, it fits beautifully. The storyline progresses as you fulfill the quests. There aren’t as many quests as in World of Warcraft and the quest design is a lot like Skyrim (no “get to XY and bring me 10 wolf pelts”) – there is always a backstory and a some quests are so good they will make you shiver and in some cases, you will genuinely feel sorry for some characters. It’s not as big as immersion as it was in Skyrim, but certainly far from the usual “NPC I don’t give a crap about promised me XY to kill Z mobs”.

Screenshot_20140421_223731

The zones you go to are either islands, or somewhat “closed” zones. They are relatively big – you don’t have the “let’s set off and explore” feeling though as you do in Skyrim, it’s simply a MMO. On the other hand, it doesn’t separate areas within zones as violently as World of Warcraft (“field with mobs X” – ten meters from it “area with mobs Y”), everything looks very natural. The game is very new, so newbie zones are flooded with players, so that sometimes breaks immersion (“go to this thieves’ super secret hideout” – ooops, there are 50 people running around this allegedly secret hideout), but you can still explore, particularily around the coast, you often find secluded areas where noone goes, you can just sit and feel alone, like in Skyrim. You get XP for discovering new zones and places – some are very well hidden, so I don’t think average player will get maximum XP from exploring.

Levelling up is quite slow – I play for more than a week and I am barely at level 16. Rita on the other hand is level 39 or something (maximum is 50). You can progress fast, but then you don’t read much of the story, you miss the exploring… nah, better to take it slow. The islands have all kinds of interesting stuff going on – changing weather, various events (Daedra invasion, elite mobs with better loot spawning) and such, it feels quite alive (not like The Old Republic, that felt like a single player game occasionally). People also chat a lot, EU server is packed with various languages – but the best part is, this game is not very cheap – so you can avoid hordes of total morons, that plague WoT and other F2P games. I really hope this game won’t go F2P. Pretty much everyone seems quite mature and polite, I have a very good feeling of the game community.

Combat

Anyway, yea, combat. The bread and butter of any MMORPG. Well… let me tell it like this. It LOOKS like Skyrim combat, but mechanics wise, it’s closer to World of Warcraft. Basically, there are “rounds” (some call them “tics”) and you have to decide what to do each round. Rounds are dictated by mobs. It’s a bit hard to describe.

For example:

Round 1 – mob swings a weapon, you block: result – mob gets blocked
Round 2 – mob reels from successful block, you swing: result – mob gets hit hard

BUT it can happen like this as well:

Round 1 – mob swings, you press block late and even though your shield is in “blocking” position before the blade physically falls, you still get hurt by the swing, because you pressed too late and the block gets “saved” for round 2, if you keep the guard up.

If you recognize the patterns, you can do very well (much better than in WoW, where a mob will simply get you whatever you do), here you can for example run away from mobs, mostly they won’t catch you. You have to get a feel for it – it works, but it’s not as intuitive as in Skyrim. Archery is reduced to “press a button in roughly enemy direction and the shot will work”, very boring. Same goes for any ranged magic.

Difficulty

One more element I would like to write about is the difficulty. This game is not VERY easy. It’s more difficult than World of Warcraft, especially when it comes to dungeons. Killing normal mobs is okay, but the very first dungeon (at least for the elves), you encounter at level 12-15 and it suddenly requires you to know not only the basics of combat, but also some quite advanced parts. You absolutely HAVE to understand:

- the concept of tanking and aggro (eg. drawing mob attention) and how it works (DPS overaggro = wipe)
- the concept of healing, the fact there have to be dedicated healers (no, a random guy in plate armor with two stock spells won’t work)
- advanced boss tactics: the stuff you encounter second or third day into playing is on the same difficulty level as stuff you encounter in WoW at like lvl 40+. First dungeon boss channels damage (needs to be interrupted), second creates copies of himself that need to be DPS’d down, if you don’t kill them quickly, he will kill the tank. Third boss needs to be kited, because he spams adds and aoe areas and fourth boss spams adds that need to be killed before they reach him, otherwise he heals himself and you lose the DPS race. That’s WoW level 60 stuff.

And you encounter all that without ANY previous preparation. As a former WoW player, I was lucky I had such players in my group as well (it’s 4 man btw, not 5), but someone who never played WoW before will be kinda clueless. I like the loot system though – no rolling or arguing for loot, everyone loots the corpse and either you get something, or you don’t.

Issues

Well, so far, I talked about the positives (apart from the last point). Now, let’s talk about the negatives.

- the game crashes for a lot of people, quite often (practically at least once per game session)
- gold spammers: the chat spam of these assholes in the starter zone is INSANE, to the point I gave up and switched the chat off, this is something that NEEDS to be addressed
- the mobs sometimes glitch, get stuck on a stone, can’t be harmed etc. – not often, but happens
- your weapon sometimes glitches and you can’t do anything, swing it, hide it etc. – the only thing that helps is basically pressing “I” (inventory) and “I” again, that “resets it”
- some missions are bugged and require reading up on the bugs on the internet (I spent 15 minutes figuring out how to get into a portal, only to discover it’s actually a bug and after game restart, it worked fine)
- huge crowds of players at some locations (FPS drops are strangely enough not an issue, not being able to reach your NPC because of a crowd of bodies is)
- mobs are sometimes hard to see: you target someone – is it a mob? a player?

Summary

I am quite sure I forgot something I wanted to write, but anyway, apart from the abovementioned issues… the game is really great. For someone, who is looking for a WoW reboot with better graphics, it’s perfect. It’s still unpolished (the game is like 1 month old!) and there are bugs, but I am enjoying it immensely, especially the great storyline.

Verdict: 8/10

84 thoughts on “Silentstalker vs Elder Scrolls Online

  1. “legendary game Skyrim, widely considered to be one of the best games ever made.”

    I’ve never seen anyone even suggesting Skyrim being anywhere near that title. The game itself is mediocre at best and losses in many areas to it’s predecessors.

      • Skyrim is definetly a top 5 when it comes to best game ever <3
        I mean, god damn it, you have Max von Sidow and Christopher Plummer, both oscar winners, voicing two awesome characters xD

      • There are lots of haters to Skyrim. Some fans feel like they dumbed down the series.

        I’m not one of them though. Skyrim is love. Skyrim is life. FUS ROH DAH

      • “Overall Rank: 68,PC Rank: 8″

        Okay, you kinda got me there, I knew it was popular but no that it was that popular. (Also the site’s missing tons of older games.)

        I love RPG’s and the older TES titles, but Skyrim just doesn’t click on me. Maybe it’s just the ridiculously low difficulty and the fact that I absolutely love Morrowind.

        • i must agree with Nyashaa. Skyrim, although it has awesome graphics, is way too easy to play. i mean, i have the archery, sneak, and light armor maxed, and i am invisible and almost unkillable even on the hardest settings. too easy. on the other hand Morrowind – now that was some epic game, i still play it from time to time. one of the best games ever made..

      • Skyrim was good adventure. BUT nothing even close to “to be one of the best games ever made.”
        If you want RPG – KOTOR is better :)

      • Ever heard of TES3: Morrowind? Sure its old, but graphics and voice actors aren’t everything.

        • well most people who say its “tha best gaym” never heard of tes before skyrim, it babies first rpg same crap as cod.

          Lore wise its crap compared to older titles.

      • WAT?
        That list may be made by some 18yr old kid, but PC games date back more than 25 years.
        What about: Myst,Prince of Persia, System Shock 2, Deus Ex, Fallout, Baldur’s Gate 2,
        The Secret of Monkey Island,SimCity, Quake, Civilization, Counter-Strike,Command & Conquer, StarCraft, The Sims, Panzer General, UFO,Wolfenstein,Elite 2 …..

      • Someone described Skyrim as game having a width of ocean and depth of puddle.
        You love it? Great, have fun.

        “I mean, god damn it, you have Max von Sidow and Christopher Plummer, both oscar winners, voicing two awesome characters xD”
        Game is legendary because two of the characters are voiced well? Okay….

        Elder scrolls online can go to hell for all I care simply on account that Imperial is exclusive to Imperial edition.
        50 to buy + 10 to play? Okay, fine. Now give 20 more to be able to play imperial? NO.

      • “A billion flies can’t be wrong, shit tastes good!”

        Popularity =/= quality. AFAIK they’re *still* making new episodes for “The Bold And The Beautiful”, and that soap was the direst crap already when I first heard of it like twenty years ago…

    • STALKER is best game ever made.
      Skyrim is nice. I liked it. I can see why it would make other people love it. I respect that opinion.

      But SS…
      PLAY STALKER!!!

      • I said come in, don’t stand there.
        I said come in, don’t stand there.
        I said come in, don’t stand there.
        I said come in, don’t stand there…

  2. Kinda strange to see this popping out on FTR all of a sudden.. not bad, just strange

    btw, yes it’s quite good although some things really need to change like players cap in PvP for certain Alliances [ Aldmeri Dominion ] where for example one alliance could not go above certain number of players if the other two are not following it with at least 85% of the current population in that alliance

  3. Former wow player here from 2 months after release until 1 year past.Im still thinging if i must buy that game.I will wait some more opinions from you plus i will read more on forums.I will watch more utube videos and i will play from a good friend account.
    But for last i will wait to see if they will fix or how fast they will fix any bugs game may has.

  4. Actually a plate mage does work, I use mine to tank with. AoE abilities to keep aggro, shield and one hander for taunt and mitigation. Works perfectly fine.

    • Maybe I should have written “for prolonged engagements” – sure, it works on regular mobs, that are gone in 10-15 seconds. 5 minute boss fight on the other hand…

  5. SS, if you could choose ESO or a complete Skyrim experience but with a larger multiplayer add-on, which would you choose? ;)

    BTW: do you think ESO is more similar to WoW than to Guild Wars? I know I loved playing Guild Wars, also because it had such a different feel to MMORPG than, for instance WoW(no raiding or anything like that, you can do alot on your own)

    • MMO and Skyrim exclude one another. MMO is built upon player interaction, while Skyrim was built around the feelings of solitude, exploring and heroism (and not “being one of the masses”), that made it great. For a Skyrim experience to work online, the game would have to be immense (as in 1000 times bigger than current Skyrim).

      • Even a little co-op mode to play with friends would be enough.
        And ofc the removel of light that comes from nowhere… Skyrim is sometimes extremly bright, but that has nothing todo with multiplayer..

  6. lol wtf Skyrim? It sure is better than Oblivion, but one of the best games ever? No, please no. Morrowind is one of these, but Skyrim is just above average. On the plus side it looks good and runs much better than Oblivion did on the same comp :D

  7. I think I will go with AngryJoe’s review, since he’s a bit ahead of you and… well it’s his job. xD

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov3B26h12C4

    Although it’s funny because when I watched his lifestream for a few minutes he sounded a bit like you right now,
    “It’s not perfect, but it has something.’ and a few days later… well see the video. ;)
    ———————————————————————————————————–

    Tbh, mmorpgs in general are dead.
    They will return to new glory once someone does something to revolutionise the genre just
    like WoW did by making it accessable by a large audience.
    Until then no mmorpg will be capable of getting me interested for longer than a week.

      • A youtuber that focuses mostly on game reviews that are both informative and funny/silly.

        • Ah. Well… this wasn’t meant as “teh bestesterest review evah”, more like a sum of my impressions of the game, because I play it lately much more than WoT, so I thought I would share them, that’s all.

          • My apologies if it came across like “Omg this guy does reviews way better!”.
            It’s obvious that he does, since it’s his very job, that’s what he makes his money with and that’s what he has been doing for a few years now.

            I posted his video for people (Maybe even yourself, personally I love reading/watching other people’s opinions when I have my own) that are interested in ESO and want a in-depth review, plus there is the most important rule about reviews:
            Never use a single review to judge a game, take reviews from several people and compare them.

  8. a subscription is why i never even gave this thing a second thought. quite happy paying 50$ or a 10$ monthly sub, but not both. i HATE being nickle and dimed

  9. I thought this was hosted on wot-news.com. This isn’t WoT or related to WoT, you retarded?

  10. Paying for the game and then paying to play the game… monthly? Are you fucking kidding me? Not touching this game.

    Also, Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 are the best MMORPGs… ever!

  11. So… typical MMO BS? Subscription, 3 classes, 50 levels, etc. etc.

    Thank god I skipped it completely.

  12. ” 50 Euro (70 for special edition) and then you have to pay subscription (cca 10 Euro per month)”

    This is reason, why I am not even interested with that game. Sorry but paying for game and later subscription is totally insane. Most games I play I enter just a few times a month (after first weeks, months when game is fresh for me :) ), if I come every day it is often for 15-30 minutes only. So paying monthly fee is for me totally not interesting.

    I can pay for games and I do it. But only if I know that I will have acces to it as long as the game is alive. This is why I still prefer old LOTRO in fantasy genre. I paid some money some time ago (much less then for one year of playing ESO) and play long, long time without paying anything more. The same with WoT, I bought some gold in 2011, one premium in 2012 and since then nothing and will pay nothing in the future. If WoT, LOTRO or some other games that I play demanded from me 10 euro per month I would have to spend many times more money to play them.

  13. Well, this is your blog and some off-topic post is alright.

    Honestly, not a fans of MMORPG at particular. The only thing i like from MMORPG is only character creation.

  14. “What a difference compared to World of Tanks, that barely runs on medium now.”

    Can you post a screenshot from your playable configuration in WoT (not sure whether the other screens on this site are made by you, in most cases)? The ESO seems quite low on config/details (also hides a lot from the view, if I can base my opinion on in-article screens) and I’d like to compare.

  15. Lol…the game is pretty new, has a pretty big purchasing score(50/70 dollars + subscription) and it already got gold spammers?…do they even risk a ban for just trying to fool mature people to pay for that “gold”?

  16. Skyrim was not that great at all … it was a fun sandbox game with “a story” in the background, and for an open world exploration game it was really good, but at the same time it did not react to players actions anywhere close to how You would think it should.

    After slaying a bunch of dragons in every next village You visit nobody knows anything about You unless that is a story connected location. That is NOT what I would call a great game. Yes, many reviewers gave it 9s and 10s just because there was barely any good RPG in fantasy setting out there and so in its category there was “nothing like it” with a tiny exception for The Witcher games.

    Skyrim would be a good 6 or maybe 7 out of 10 if ony this genre was not dead for last couple of years. ESO is probably gonna end up in the same category as LoTRO ended up … with “just another WoW clone” label. And I agree with that to some gereee. There is NOT enough to make it different from WoW.

  17. combat system imo sucks hard

    feels slow, non responsive aiming is weird FoV is too low you cant see shit in melee in 1st person

    overall medicore game at best going to die soon

    it has nothing in terms of game mechanic over wow or other mmos

  18. The game is called “The Elder Scrolls Online” the acronym is TESO not ESO.

    Of course TESO is an MMORPG where WoT isn’t even an MMO, review the Guinness record which states that WoT is a MOG.

  19. If you gonna talk more about ESO, can you make a new site for it? For example: ftr.eso.com. I dont really like those ESO messages when Im looking for some WoT messages

  20. Huh, a time for a change of the name of this website. Let’s call it For The WOT Record, aka FTWR or FTWOTR! This way we will lose posts like this. I play wot, I love FTR, but I just don’t want to see this type of posts here. SS you have my full respect, please do posts like this one, but on some other site, please, please, please…

    • You do realize you can just… not read it, right?
      SS wanted to share something and did so, and you can choose to read it or not…

      What harm does that do? oO

    • Do you always make this big of a deal about an out of place thing? You sound like someone who would want the canned food isle renamed to the fruit isle when you find a bananna in the isle while your shopping.

      • Nah it looks fast bcoz those classes skills were set to fast skill macros. Friend from the Korea beta told me that even now in closed beta it got huge skill customizations. For someonewho played WoW it should be eas cake ;P

  21. I think the whole “game is not F2P so the community is great” is a load off BS. World of Tanks is completely PvP game which makes conflicts between players pretty common. It’s totally different to compare a community of an MMO with mostly players vs AI to a completely PvP game.

    WoT has all sorts of “stat padders” and the battles only take max 15 minutes. It’s all about random rages in the chat nothing personal. At least 95% of the time that is the case.

    So yeah comparing the communities is a totally impossible

    PS. And nope I have no intention to pay 50~70€ from a game and then pay a subscription every month. Besides all I ever wanted was a co-op Skyrim, not an MMO.

    • Also lol doesn’t this kinda contradict with each other?

      “- gold spammers: the chat spam of these assholes in the starter zone is INSANE, to the point I gave up and switched the chat off, this is something that NEEDS to be addressed”

      “People also chat a lot, EU server is packed with various languages – but the best part is, this game is not very cheap – so you can avoid hordes of total morons, that plague WoT and other F2P games.”

      But yeah like I said earlier the community thing is load of BS.

  22. As a WoW veteran I appreciate your review. I have actually been giving this a lot of thought. I stream music and stuff on my laptop while playing WoT and stumbled on the video cut scenes and the storyline looks interesting. TY for reviewing this.

  23. I alpha’d and beta’d ESO and it was because it didn’t look/feel/play like Skyrim or FO3/NV that I wasn’t impressed. A lot of the visuals can be done client side so there’s no excuse why the eye-candy couldn’t be there. The control interface felt a little numb to me as well.

    I dunno… maybe I’m just getting bored with mana-pools and elf vag. I was really disappointed with the shelving of a Fallout MMO – that was something I, and a lot of others were really looking forward to. ( ._.)

  24. I was in the ESO betas, good game a lot like Guild Wars to me, but as it is not Skyrim or Oblivion, I did not like it as much, as I would rather play by myself anyway. Plus I found the pricing off putting.

    To me it is a happy medium of WoW and Elder Scrolls.

  25. A game were you can’t share goal/objective completion with your party at least is a failure as a MMO nowadays. Without the social aspect there is no sense in making it online… waiting for a boss mob to spawn after you just helped to kill it but didn’t got the credit is an obsolete game design decision!
    Graphicaly its all watered down nothing to stand out of the other online games…
    I woudn’t recomend to anyone who isn’t a die hard ES fan. Go play Final Fantasy XIV or Guild Wars 2 they offer better experiences.

  26. Your points about storyline and exploration REALLY make me wanna check it out. I beat Skyrim to a bloody pulp (I completely ran out of things to do, including the DLCs), so I’d love to have another experience similar to that. The problem is, I did end up playing an instance of the beta (maybe 4 months ago?), and I did not like it. Like you say, it’s basically a standard MMO (a la the WoW model), but for the reasons you state about it NOT being a true Elder Scrolls game just bugs me terribly. Once I realized there were hot-keyed abilities, I pretty much wrote it off. It sounds petty, but it just felt antithetical to all that is Elder Scrolls.

  27. Skyrim by itself is a great game. So many possibilities what to do.
    But what makes skyrim the best game is the Nexus. The mods enhance the experience endlesly. As long as there are creative people interesting ther is and will be new content for Skyrim. Not many games have that big creative comunity. Yes not every mod is great, yes there are lots of crapy mods, yes you will need to spend some time searching, installing and de-bugging, but then the result can be very satisfactory. Sometimes you hit limits of the engine, but there are workarounds too. It’s all very fascinating.