I didn’t have a scheduled power hour review this week, but I thought this time I’d talk about my experiences with the Elder Scrolls Online beta this past weekend. At first I hated it, then it grew on me, and now I’m even dreaming about it. I can’t wait until it’s official launch April 4th. Read on to learn more – and let me know in the comments below if you tried the game and/or are looking forward to the full game release.
Okay, so at first I didn’t like Elder Scrolls Online at all. At. All. I thought it was tedious and unintuitive and lacked direction. The controls were difficult to pick up, the lore and narrative didn’t do a lot for my imagination, and most importantly, I had a little voice in the back of my head that was challenging the game to want me to buy it once it launches, despite its steep price tag ($59.99-$79.99 for the game; $14.99/mo). After all, I’ve been playing a bunch of Rift lately, so I already have an MMO I enjoy that doesn’t cost me any more time and money than I want to put into it.
But then, I tried it a second time. I logged in the next day, and suddenly I was hooked. Everything that frustrated me the first time around seemed instead like a fresh and new approach to MMO gaming. The crosshair-almost-FPS-styled fighting mechanics (rather than the 1 through = button mashing I was so accustomed to), the relatively free-style talent, skill, and class customization system (rather than the more linear talent trees), the free-for-all crafting and farming (instead of the typical: choose three and that’s it)… it all resonated with me in a way that an MMO hasn’t in quite some time. And who knows why it took me a second time to discover all of this. Maybe I was in a better mood, maybe I needed a fresh perspective… maybe it was the huge glass of Cabernet I was drinking…
But, anyway.
Y’all will want to take away my gamer card for admitting this, but I should say that I never got into Skyrim. I got frustrated with the map (and spent a lot of time lost because of it), I thought the dialogue went too far and became boring and too complex, and I never could really get in to the lore. It just didn’t capture my imagination – and that’s a huge factor for me as to whether or not a game’s a success. But for some reason ESO managed to pull me away from my own navel-gazing and into the open world of the game. Maybe it was the other players around me that made me feel more a part of something, maybe it was just the fact that I tried to have more of an open mind this time around; who knows. But I do know that the instructional design of ESO is much stronger than Skyrim, which helped with my own learning curve and cut back on any frustration I was having.
ESO’s map system is still, in my opinion, terribly confusing. If you’re the type of person who can easily navigate in a city with north, south, east, and west directions, then it probably won’t bother you at all. But if you’re like me and need to see a visual of where you’re going (and much prefer the left, right, forward types of commands), then it may be a bit of a challenge at first to pick up how to navigate around the game. This is because ESO tries to do something very cool: the minimalist UI is designed for you to become more immersed in the game not elements such as mini-maps and action bars, and so unless you keep opening up the big in-game map (which, by the way, doesn’t allow you to keep moving while it’s open, so it goes like this: open map, check direction, close map, move toon slightly left or right, open map again and check that you picked the right way, close map again, move toon again, open map again…) the only other navigation you have is a slick little compass bar at the top of the screen. And people: I can’t freakin’ figure out a compass for the life of me.
Aside from that, though, the UI of ESO is so slick that I wonder why more games haven’t thought of it. The chat window only comes up when someone is talking, and then it fades away until it’s not there at all, therefore not getting in the way of your gameplay. The same goes for the action bar, which is surprisingly minimalist, with only seven commands in total (at least as far as I can tell, this early in the game), and only appears when you’re in combat and you need it. Active quests are listed one at a time, and you can choose what to focus on and when – but it doesn’t crowd your screen with a long, text-heavy list of everything you can possibly do at the time. Tutorials come up as an alert on your screen that easily brings your attention to it but doesn’t distract or take away from your gameplay (so you can choose to ignore it if you want to).
As for the character customization (and y’all probably know by now that customization is a terribly important feature to me), ESO does a nice job giving you plenty of options (from body shape to facial features, skin color to breast size) without overwhelming you with minute details that ultimately wouldn’t matter in the game. ESO has an interesting approach from other MMOs (see: WoW, Rift) in that you have three faction to choose from, three races in each. Therefore, you start off the game with a sense that you do have control over your character’s race and alliances, look and feel, class, and even personality as you start off and then progress through the game.
And, of course, the game play itself. The mechanics are smooth and fluid, and the relatively open-based play world is a treat to explore. In terms of combat, I did think that the warrior classes were too cumbersome and slow for my own style. I had too difficult of a time trying to aim and the weapons at the beginning were agonizingly slow. An example: when you click to shoot at an enemy, the first thing your character does is draw her weapon, taking at least an extra second off of the top of your combat. When I switched to a mage class, though, I had no trouble taking out enemies left and right with my staff and magic – and once I invested my skill points toward my mana pool, I had little trouble keeping that full as well.
Yet speaking of skills, ESO does a fantastic job allowing you to customize your own path, whether it’s investing points in weapon skills (much like early WoW, you level up your particular type of weapon or playing style), specialized class options, racial attributes, armor/gear (such as: put extra points in light armor in order to get more of a mana boost, or extra points in heavy armor to increase stamina), and even crafting, such as improving your skills in alchemy or blacksmithing – or investing in a minion that will go out and gather materials for your tradecrafts. Further, in addition to the traditional level up and earn a skill point rules we often see in MMOs, in ESO you can also collect skyshards throughout the game to earn more skill points (find three and get yourself an extra skill point).
What’s cool about that is that the game naturally encourages discovery; the game wants you to explore new areas and find new things.
I won’t give away any of the story, but I will tell you that it’s interesting (although nothing incredibly revelatory, at least not yet) and will interest fantasy gamers, especially those familiar with the Elder Scrolls storylines. There are some holes to the story that bother me here and there (for instance, I don’t like the tired set-up that you’re the sole hero, out to save the world… and then look around in an MMO and see thousands of other gamers who are also the “chosen one.” MMO developers: think about that next time, will ya? We can’t all be the Neo in your version of The Matrix), but all in all, the narrative and overall story seemed engaging enough to make me want to continue.
In the end, I’m glad that I gave ESO a second chance (even though my wallet will likely beg to differ later on). I thought ESO was a blast, despite several (expected) glitches throughout the beta experience. Now I just have to save up to purchase it when it goes live next month. For those interested, ESO is on pre-sale for $59.99 ($79.99 if you want some extra in-game bonuses, including a special playable class only available to those who purchase the digital upgrade) and includes 30 days of game time. After that, be prepared to shell out $14.99 a month. The game is currently set to go live April 4th; pre-order gamers get to start five days early.
