I have been playing Elder Scrolls online for a few weeks now and I wanted to give my impressions of the game in its current state, especially since they just released the new Summerset expansion pack, which brings many more hours of playtime. Take in mind I have only been playing for two weeks and MMOs are extremely complex beings so if I get anything wrong or I miss something please feel free to comment below. I also have not purchased the Summerset expansion, but since it is more of a content pack I will still review what I have been playing.
To start off I have to say the effort put into the story and the lore of the game is baffling. Like many of the Elder Scrolls games in the series, there are literally entire novels filled with lore encompassing the world. Most of this lore is scattered across the world or put in bookcases that can be read. I cant imagine how much time went into creating the world and the story behind it. In addtion, to make you feel like you are actually immersed in the game, all quests up to this point have been completely voice acted and sound great. Even if the quests themselves are many times just fetch quests, they usually are interesting on the story side.
Im bad when it comes to getting into the lore of a game with a massive background and a dizzying amount of reading to do in order to fully understand it, so I will say that for me I usually fall back on the combat system first them explore the lore later in time. I did this with WoW and many other MMOs that I have played in the past and it have proven to serve me well. The combat in Elder Scrolls online seems to pretty much fall into the style of many of the action MMO games that came out at the time and doesnt particularly stand out. However, that being said, the combat is polished and pretty fun. Things feel fast paced and you can tumble around avoiding enemies which makes it feel more like a fast paced experience. Unlike other games where you are just clicking buttons, you definitely feel more engaged.
Where the game falls flat is mostly on the interaction with other players which is pretty sad because it is an MMO after all. While you see players all around you, many times most wont even communicate or a guild is required to even make friends. I will say you can join five guild which is pretty awesome so that helps a lot. Selling and buying items is a huge pain in the ass though as they decided to forgo a basic auction house system for a guild vendor market type system which leaves much to be desired. For someone like me who wants to sell much of what I get, I feel like it is harder and much more of a task to do so. The nice thing however is even if I skipped all the multiplayer functionality in the game I still feel like I would have a decent single player experience.
The game is a bit focused on micro transactions but since you can technically play for free, I dont find this as too much of a problem. If you opt in to pay for the subscription, you will usually have all you need and more when it comes to content. Content is where the game shines, there is a plethora of it and even a single player experience will take you a ton of time to complete. With skill points and awesome customization of you character like in the other Elder Scrolls games, the game is definitely worth the money if you want to look at strictly price per hour played. Overall the game is fun even if functionally it might not feel like a complete MMO experience compared to other games in the genre. I will continue to play and stream the game so I am enjoying it which is a big endorsement for me since I have played almost every MMORPG that has come out in the last 15 years.
-Calaber24p