Elder Scrolls Online is Zenimax and Bethesda’s entry to the MMO genre and instalment of the Elder Scrolls series, and was probably one of the most discussed MMOs until its launch.  Post-release it was met with a lot of strong opinions both positive and negative so I went in with as much of an open mind as I could as I didn’t play beta. Obviously, your experience will differ vastly depending on the kinds of people that you bump into and group with.

Character creation in Elder Scrolls games is pretty detailed and ESO doesn’t stray off that path, though I didn’t spend my usual hours of sitting in character creation and trying to make everything as perfect as I wanted to. There are nine races altogether should you have the Standard Edition or ten if you bought the Imperial Edition of the game. Each race is tied to one of three factions (except the Imperial Edition owners who can pick whichever faction they wish) which will then determine your starting areas and questing lines. Once you have picked your race and faction, you get to pick one of four classes which each in turn have three talent trees relating to the classes, but you can equip and wield all weapons. After all those choices, the fun part of character customisation begins and once you have decided on what your character looks like you’re ready to enter the game. I rolled a Templar so I could use the Restoring Light talent tree as I always play MMOs as a healer.

As is standard in Elder Scrolls games, you begin as a prisoner with no real background of why you are imprisoned or what even got you there in the first place.  Each faction begins in the same place, Coldharbor, a place in Oblivion associated with the Daedric Prince Molag Bal that acts as the tutorial zone for new characters, eventually being sent back to your body in Tamriel. Your starting zone will obviously differ depending on which faction you chose, I played as a Breton in the Daggerfall Covenant so began my journey of reclaiming my soul in Daggerfall, High Rock. Upon creating a second character, you have the option to skip the tutorial zone and go straight into the game, though if you do skip the zone you will miss out on some Skyshards which are what you need to get more talent points.

The world of Tamriel in ESO is very open and you can explore all zones without much of a limit, though you’ll probably get killed a bunch if you run into areas that you’re under levelled for which takes out a bit of the fun of the exploration known in Elder Scrolls games. Regardless, there is plenty to do with each marker on your map pretty much guaranteeing you a quest, though in general the quests don’t differ too much to break the monotony of levelling in the same zone. Some of the quests have the usual “go here and kill x amount of this mob” format, while some of the others end up having a specific “boss” that you need to kill and some sort of meaning behind the quests. Combat is basically identical to Skyrim, with the option of playing in First Person or Third Person, yet playing in Third Person makes it a bit awkward as your character is off to the side of the screen and not centred. You are able to equip 5 skills on your bar and then an extra Ultimate Ability to use.

This makes combat situations very tedious and monotonous once you find your bread and butter skill set.  A lot of the time I found that if I didn’t kill some of the mobs before they were able to touch me or out-heal the damage, then combat was over pretty quickly and I was resurrecting before I knew it. One of the quests I remember vividly is uncovering some hidden groups of mobs (3 to be exact) and just dying immediately over and over again because I couldn’t kill them quick enough nor mitigate the damage from three mobs at once. You also cannot interrupt a spell once it has begun casting which is completely infuriating should you miss-click or even start a healing spell that you no longer need.  I tend to gravitate towards magical classes should I not heal, so I ended up using a magic staff each with its own element which provide different attacks.

Although I used a damage stave, I found that on occasion that I didn’t have enough damage to defeat some mobs –usually mini-bosses for quests – while the same time I didn’t have enough healing power to counteract the damage being received. You can also respect your points further on in the game at the cost of 100g per point. This led to me having to enlist the aid of people on the same quest as me to help me defeat certain mobs. The “same quest” portion of that statement is pretty important, considering I jumped into the game with the idea of eventually playing with a friend that was already playing the game.

The phasing in the game makes it difficult to be able to play together with others as if you are ahead (or behind) them on a quest chain, chances are they will be phased out of your instance of the zone and unable to see you. If you do end up questing with someone, it feels to be no more than doing it by yourself with additional aid to kill mobs as every person in your party must complete each requirement of the quest individually. Should you complete part of a quest it will not complete it for your party members, which seems to make it even more pointless questing with people past needing them to kill mobs faster.

There are two sorts of dungeons in the game; you have 4 man instanced dungeons that have multiple bosses and a final dungeon boss, and then you have dungeons that are more like the dungeons you will find in Skyrim with a small boss at the end. Obviously for the 4 man dungeons you need to group with other people, but I did not have the most pleasant experience. It was my worst experience playing through a dungeon in my entire MMO life. Though I will lay a large part of the blame on the people that I ended up grouping with using the dungeon finder. My first dungeon I discovered was Spindleclutch, which I didn’t even get to finish because the rest of the party rage quit due to wiping on the final boss several times.  Healing in the dungeons is quite annoying as most of the heals I had unlocked at the time consisted of “heals you for x amount and nearby players for x amount”.

This basically entails running around after people trying to heal them before they drop dead from standing in AoE. The public dungeons are extremely flawed, with them being very overcrowded to the point that you can go through the dungeon without ever encountering a mob and once you get to the boss, they are completely surrounded by bots. Bots are a very prominent and annoying staple in these dungeons as they make it nigh on impossible to tag the boss before it dies. Multiple times I had spent 20 minutes trying to get enough attacks in on a mob to tag it, so I would be able to loot the boss, which in the end is not usually worth the hassle that it brings – potentially a piece of loot and a soul shard which you need to resurrect on the spot or enchant your gear.

Unfortunately I am an avid achievement hunter and you get achievements for completing the dungeons, so I persisted.  The layouts of the dungeons are very similar and in some cases identical to many of the other dungeons in the game, which provides no added stimulation while traversing a dungeon. You enter, walk around basically one road and leave the way you came into the dungeon, while killing no mobs and potentially waiting 20 minutes to even be able to get credit for a boss kill. There does seem to be a difference in the amount of bots in the dungeons, but I have only experienced one dungeon with a boss in that had zero bots so far.

Anchors are another thing that seems to be a more group centred event in the game, but it failed to deliver. If you have played RIFT or FFXIV: A Realm Reborn, then the Anchors are similar to Rifts and Fates, a random appearing event in which you have to kill waves of enemies. After wondering what the Anchors were, I joined a bunch of people clearing one and after all the waves and final mobs were defeated that was it. No loot, no gold, nothing special for doing them. Perhaps it’s one thing they are going to eventually work on, but for now they are nothing but a seemingly waste of time. Loot rewards seem sub-par as well; I have yet to encounter a boss that I have been satisfied to kill and received a piece of loot to better my gear.

Most of my upgrades came from the chests that you find dotted around the zones which you try and open in a half panic. If you fail at opening a chest you are locked out from it for a moment’s cool-down, in which someone else passing may open the chest instead. It took me a few attempts to actually learn how to open the chests and every single time someone else came over and opened it before I had a chance to again. Many times in the 4-man dungeons there is a frantic fight to be the first person to open the chest, followed by insults as someone successfully reaps the rewards while the rest of the party just hang about waiting to pull the next pack of mobs without dying.

Visually, the game is pretty, though it’s not without texture bugs, nor is it the best looking game if you compare it to the likes of FFXIV: A Realm Reborn. As in all of the Elder Scrolls games, the music and soundtrack is amazing and I did find myself just sitting in a zone with the music in the background enjoying it. At one point in the game, the voices of certain NPCs were in German and it was pretty annoying as the quest chain happened to lean a bit more heavily on what the NPCs were saying during your fight. They managed to get a bunch of well-known actors and voice actors to voice the main characters throughout the game with the likes of Michael Gambon, John Cleese, Kate Beckinsale, Bill Nighy and Jennifer Hale all making an appearance.

Overall, the game is pretty average and I currently wouldn’t subscribe to the game when I could be playing other MMO’s that feels a lot more immersive and worth the money. However, if you are a big Elder Scrolls V fan then it may be worth picking up as the game feels like Skyrim in a much larger world with a lot of Elder Scrolls elements. Unfortunately for me, this doesn’t warrant the base price with subscription price on top and I would just settle for waiting on Elder Scrolls VI as the MMO elements do not keep me drawn in.

Though do bear in mind that they are actively patching and updating currently and at the end of this review there was a huge patch that needed to be installed for updates. It’s always worth shopping around for the best prices, though at this time the Standard Edition of the game will cost you around £24.99/€54,99/$59.99 with a 30 day subscription fee of £8.99/€12,99/$14.99. The Imperial Edition will set you back around £49.99/€79,99/$79.99.  The Elders Scrolls Online will arrive on the PS4 and Xbox One later in the year.

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