Elder Scrolls Online release date 4-4-14

[Markbnj]

I have a number of problems with it. To get the good out of the way: the game world looks stunning and sounds great. The ambiance is very well-executed. Unfortunately that may be extent of my "good" list. Most of the rest isn't terrible, but it just has so many little aggravations and design flaws that it rapidly sucks the fun away.

Let's start with the start: TES has a tradition of starting the PC out as a convict/refugee with a murky past. That's fine for kicking the story off in a single player game. To try and mimic this ESO has you start out in jail. You follow a story quest to work your way out of jail, then follow the story quest to get off the tiny starter island, then follow the story quest around the second, somewhat larger island until you get to a level where you can start playing campaigns in Cyrodil, or visiting the two or three other zones.

The problem with this is it's not very exciting. It's sort of worth a play-through once, but the thought of creating character number 2 and going through it all over again is a major buzzkill. One of the things that gave classic MMORPGs replay value was the endless choices that arise from just getting dumped into a vibrant world and having to make your way. I think this heavily scripted and linear start-up sequence is a huge mistake.

Once you do get "outside" the zones you find yourself in are almost anti-TES in their theme park compactness. You see no broad vistas, most areas are walled off by hills or cliffs that prevent you from coming at them by other than the designed routes. It feels like a series of set-pieces, not a world. Very pretty set-pieces, but still.

Moving around the world is pretty painless, due to fast travel wayshrines all over. But moving in and out of buildings and dungeons is painful. Like Skyrim, every enter-able building with a door is a zone, and every dungeon is a zone, and moving between them last night was taking in many cases 30-40 seconds. I know they can improve this, but I would really like to think that here in 2014 we can build a seamless game world. Zoning in and out of everything is immersion killing for me.

The interface. It's just awful. I really tried to like it, and get used to it, but I can't. It combines the worst of Skyrim's console-ized interface with the worst of everything else and then takes it down a notch. It's like the consciously decided to do everything differently.

I found some of the quests to be mildly entertaining, but as Hardhat said in the end it really doesn't work very well. People are doing things in different order and seeing different versions of the world, and there is literally not even a little bit of mental effort or even searching around involved in any of them. Run from marker to marker. The only uncertainty was introduced by broken quests, and it doesn't bode well that there are still so many of those.

I don't mind slow leveling, but I do want to feel like there are interesting things to do while I am leveling. The very pretty ESO world is nearly devoid of stuff to fight except in specific, crowded locations. Everything else is deer, birds, and butterflies. What mobs there are give little exp and drop mostly trash. Quests give pretty low rewards, and literally 3/4 of the quests I did resulted in a reward that my class couldn't use. Again, I am not looking to have stuff handed to me, but I ended up feeling that in eleven levels on this toon I had very few choices of armor and weapons.

I do not get the economy at all. Maybe they are going to adjust it. What is the point of horses that cost "17000 gold?" Maybe call them coppers, or something? But then one look at the interface and you know immersion wasn't the most important design goal here. Most of the merchants seem to sell very little of interest. In eleven levels I didn't buy anything I needed from a merchant, or even see anything I wanted.

Last night I finally got to sample just a little taste of the pvp zone. I'll probably check it out some more tonight. Getting there involved a really complicated "campaign" system that I don't understand at all yet. I had to choose from one of like thirty campaigns, set the campaign as my "home" or "guest" campaign, and then choose to enter the campaign, after which I was eventually teleported to Cyrodil. What I saw there didn't give me a lot of hope, but I didn't have time to really dig into it. Suffice it to say that an interlocking system of keeps, connected by portals, with rules for locking and unlocking them, is not what I was anticipating.

 

[Dahak]

For the quests, yes they where pretty much go to map point to map point, but is that not the same for all mmos? I do remember doing one or two that did have a puzzle to them.

For the PVP that I was able to do, once you get past the into quest that is in cyrodiil there are a few bounty board quests, like kill 20 enemy players, capture X keep. and some other minor quests sprinkled in(I had found 1)
But essentially you just follow the largest group to capture a keep or castle, with the ultimate goal is holding as much as you can.
There are farms/mines/woodwork near keeps which helps with repair and upgrading the keep/castles which helps upgrade them which makes them stronger

As for the Home/Guest I'm a bit confused as well and not really sure what the difference is as well
One time when I played it we where defending one of the keeps and once we got it defended it was fun pushing back the other alliance back to their keep and keep the pressure on and took it. then we went further to try to get the next one but we were defeated and pushed back

 

[Markbnj]

I've been spending some time out in Cyrodil tonight, and all of the negatives notwithstanding I can see the _potential_ for some fun fights centered on the keeps. Right now it's completely unplayable due to performance issues, and the battles that are bringing the server to its knees aren't really that large population-wise, compared to DAoC for example.

 

[HumblePie]

Well this build is the same that was used for the last beta weekend so a lot of those bugs would still be there as this was more for stressing the system again.
And apparently there is a build or two newer that is on the PTS that supposedly has lot of fixes

Yah, I had found out about this build being the same one. So my character that couldn't progress in the rest of his quests was still stuck where he was from the previous beta weekend. So I made a new guy, played for a few hours, and didn't mess around much after that. I rather not burn out on the game with a bunch of lowbie chars. Nor get too frustrated over a buggy beta build state that isn't even the current form of the game that I can't even try out properly yet.

 

[HumblePie]

You think highly of yourself, just like every other internet tough guy wannabe. Your "arguments" were just mindless rambling that had nothing to do with what you were responding to and I called you out on it.

Asheron's Call not only had 10000x the size of the wow clones, but it had monthly content added every month. You could explore the world and there were tons upon tons of things to do, and meaningful and skill based pvp.

Pointing out that wow clones are all that come out nowadays is a valid argument. YOU may not like it... but then again, you think that you are superior to everyone on the internet... so I will just leave you with your delusions of grandeur.

If you need to tout your supposed "intelligence" and your superiority on the internet... maybe, JUST maybe, you have major, major issues that you need to have dealt with and maybe you aren't as intelligent and superior to others as you may like to think. Arguments get infinitely weaker the more you need to repeat how amazing YOU think you are... Seriously, take a look at how desperate it makes you look. Smart people don't need to keep repeating how smart they think they are. Only those with self esteem issues and poor arguments do.

I'm an "internet" tough guy for pointing out the fallacies of your statements? Since I was not directly insulting you, I think that stretches your claim there.

Asheron's call was a good game. It had plenty of "land mass" and areas to "explore" if you will. But it was bland, all the areas were mostly the same or empty. That has nothing to do with the game mechanics or story of the game. All of which is derivative from something else. Or a clone of something else. The point of the argument is saying something sucks because it is a WoW clone and then to say that Asheron's call did not suck is an asinine statement. As I pointed out, AC was a WoW clone too. They ALL are. WoW is a WoW clone. There is nothing new or original about it or anything before or after it.

 

[MeldarthX]

Ummm.......how is AC a WoW clone? it was released before it; possibly if you'd stated its become more wow like......but a wow clone no; as there are things from AC that are in WoW.....

Sorry if you're going to make statements like that at least make them correct

 

[Markbnj]

As for the Home/Guest I'm a bit confused as well and not really sure what the difference is as well
One time when I played it we where defending one of the keeps and once we got it defended it was fun pushing back the other alliance back to their keep and keep the pressure on and took it. then we went further to try to get the next one but we were defeated and pushed back

The whole campaign mechanism is just horribly over-complicated and obtuse. Way too many options, no clarity on how any of them affect anything that you're trying to do. It's just so damn immersion-killing to have all this overlayed mechanical crap to dig through. Firor should recall from DAoC the reaction to New Frontiers and all the clockwork rules and BS they introduced. And if that lesson wasn't clear enough there was ToA, and Jacobs' spectacular failure with very similar mechanics in Warhammer Online. So what do they do? They do it again! It's almost hubris. It's so obviously an awesome idea that the fact that three previous generations of it failed miserably must just mean we need more tweaking!

I hope they just scrap it somehow. I can see a glimmer of awesome RVR in this game. The siege weapons are cool, the keep designs are solid, the addition of external resources (farms, mines, basically the equivalent of the towers in New Frontiers) is a nice dimension, the areas are large and well laid out. Just get rid of the whole stupid campaign system and find some other way to tie the assets together.

 

[Markbnj]

I love this stuff from their site page on campaigns:

Elder Scrolls Online is the first game to use Megaserver technology. This allows it to house all players on one server. But, you can imagine the chaos that would arise if all players were in one PvP zone. It would be impossible to play the game.

Haha, so basically the cool thing about "Megaserver" is that we can have everyone on one server, but obviously we can't have everyone on one server because then how the hell would you play the game!

For example, there can be 30 instances of Cyrodiil and each consists of players from all 3 factions. If there are too many players in several instances the Megaserver will create one more and will place players there to alleviate overpopulation.

This is horrible. The good things aside this just kills any interest I have in playing the game for RvR.

Edit: oh and the whole home/guest thing is that you have to choose your "home" campaign, which is sort of like your RVR server. You can only change it every so often, but in the meantime you can be invited into others.

 

[zinfamous]

This is horrible. The good things aside this just kills any interest I have in playing the game for RvR.

Edit: oh and the whole home/guest thing is that you have to choose your "home" campaign, which is sort of like your RVR server. You can only change it every so often, but in the meantime you can be invited into others.

Actually, I don't think it's a bad thing. I haven't spent any time in ESO, but if it works anything like GW1, or even GW2, allowing free flow from instanced zones, while allowing one true home server could be a benefit.

It sucks transferring servers simply because the game loses population and the server dies. As long as travel between instances for parties--so that everyone can stick together--is flawless, I don't see how that's a bad thing.

Though, I'm not sure what this means for PvP options--do you battle larger factions or guilds, if the entire game consists of one real server?

 

[Daverino]

As I pointed out, AC was a WoW clone too. They ALL are. WoW is a WoW clone. There is nothing new or original about it or anything before or after it.

Asheron's Call was released in 1999
WoW was released five years later in 2004

 

[Markbnj]

Actually, I don't think it's a bad thing. I haven't spent any time in ESO, but if it works anything like GW1, or even GW2, allowing free flow from instanced zones, while allowing one true home server could be a benefit.

It sucks transferring servers simply because the game loses population and the server dies. As long as travel between instances for parties--so that everyone can stick together--is flawless, I don't see how that's a bad thing.

Though, I'm not sure what this means for PvP options--do you battle larger factions or guilds, if the entire game consists of one real server?

As far as I can tell it's just the three "realms", with each RVR campaign essentially being "the server" for faction battles for those players assigned to that campaign. I'm not sure how benefits are apportioned in the non-PVP world. Scroll possession is supposed to act similarly to relics in DAoC in conferring benefits, but presumably you'd only get them if your faction controlled the scroll in your campaign.

I'd rather just see the population broken up into servers. For one thing, if they needed to divide the RVR population to make the game manageable, what does that say about the PVE population? As far as I can see the PVE zones taken together are only a couple times larger than Cyrodil.

I think the effect of this is going to be to dilute any factional pride of accomplishment that might derive from achieving realm objectives, the way it did in DAoC. That's pretty much exactly what happened in Warhammer Online. Nobody could tell what to do to move the ball in the PVP zones, and noone could really tell what effect their actions were having on their faction.

 

[ewdotson]

It was oddly phrased, but I think it was pretty clear what he was saying. It's pretty much graphical diku muds all the way down.

(Which isn't really true. UO and Original Flavor SWG were fundamentally different sorts of games. And then you have really odd cases like A Tale in the Desert. But it's close enough to a general truth for the purposes of the discussion.)

As an aside, I disagree with the notion that the zones in WoW are all particularly small. Particularly from WotLK on, Blizzard started making some good-sized zones. I mean, the early Wrath zones weren't terribly large, but Storm Peaks and Icecrown were signs of things to come.

 

[Arsinek]

Ultima Online! or EVE if you want to be a weirdo.


But, most MMOs are not WoW clones, which is sad. =(

EVE has the exact same type of of quests, except theyre called missions.

 

[HumblePie]

Ummm.......how is AC a WoW clone? it was released before it; possibly if you'd stated its become more wow like......but a wow clone no; as there are things from AC that are in WoW.....

Sorry if you're going to make statements like that at least make them correct

I know when it was released. I was pointing out the irony of calling anything a clone of anything else in terms of games. They are all derivatives or clones of something else before it. The absurdity of calling anything a WoW clone is just as equally absurd as calling anything before it a clone. I was hoping more would pick up on that ironic satire I was trying to present.

 

[HumblePie]

Asheron's Call was released in 1999
WoW was released five years later in 2004

Why am I not surprised you are unable to use your mental capacity?

 

[CLite]

I enjoyed the open beta stress test, chain relogging fixed almost all the bugged out quests (I read they already have a build fixing these). My perspective is original EQ ('99)/Rift, with bits of WoW thrown in there.

In the beta for ESO I enjoyed just wandering around, questing and not really min-maxing time spent/exp gained. For me the quests, storyline and voice acting was enjoyable to be immersed in. Perhaps leveling was slow, but I didn't really care. I liked the skill system and the limit in number of hot buttons, rotating 20+ abilities (WoW hunter in arena PvP or some Rift builds) was never my most enjoyable moments.

I'm not sure if I'm a complete fan of the combat system, dodges and shield blocking seem OK, but I haven't done enough dungeons or PvP to get a good handle on how it will play out.

The general polish of the questing game (at least at low levels) combined with a RvR type of system I have not experienced yet (I realize it's copying other MMOs) will make it worth the initial investment for me. My only quandary will be a play history that will make me roll my eyes at dumb players, but time constraints that will keep me out of any decent guild. Hopefully RvR won't be 100% guild centric.

 

[CLite]

<double post>

 

[KMFJD]

Asheron's Call was released in 1999
WoW was released five years later in 2004

On a related note they will be releasing the AC client/server code shortly after the last major update.

 

[shadow9d9]

I have a number of problems with it. To get the good out of the way: the game world looks stunning and sounds great. The ambiance is very well-executed. Unfortunately that may be extent of my "good" list. Most of the rest isn't terrible, but it just has so many little aggravations and design flaws that it rapidly sucks the fun away.

Let's start with the start: TES has a tradition of starting the PC out as a convict/refugee with a murky past. That's fine for kicking the story off in a single player game. To try and mimic this ESO has you start out in jail. You follow a story quest to work your way out of jail, then follow the story quest to get off the tiny starter island, then follow the story quest around the second, somewhat larger island until you get to a level where you can start playing campaigns in Cyrodil, or visiting the two or three other zones.

The problem with this is it's not very exciting. It's sort of worth a play-through once, but the thought of creating character number 2 and going through it all over again is a major buzzkill. One of the things that gave classic MMORPGs replay value was the endless choices that arise from just getting dumped into a vibrant world and having to make your way. I think this heavily scripted and linear start-up sequence is a huge mistake.

Once you do get "outside" the zones you find yourself in are almost anti-TES in their theme park compactness. You see no broad vistas, most areas are walled off by hills or cliffs that prevent you from coming at them by other than the designed routes. It feels like a series of set-pieces, not a world. Very pretty set-pieces, but still.

Moving around the world is pretty painless, due to fast travel wayshrines all over. But moving in and out of buildings and dungeons is painful. Like Skyrim, every enter-able building with a door is a zone, and every dungeon is a zone, and moving between them last night was taking in many cases 30-40 seconds. I know they can improve this, but I would really like to think that here in 2014 we can build a seamless game world. Zoning in and out of everything is immersion killing for me.

The interface. It's just awful. I really tried to like it, and get used to it, but I can't. It combines the worst of Skyrim's console-ized interface with the worst of everything else and then takes it down a notch. It's like the consciously decided to do everything differently.

I found some of the quests to be mildly entertaining, but as Hardhat said in the end it really doesn't work very well. People are doing things in different order and seeing different versions of the world, and there is literally not even a little bit of mental effort or even searching around involved in any of them. Run from marker to marker. The only uncertainty was introduced by broken quests, and it doesn't bode well that there are still so many of those.

I don't mind slow leveling, but I do want to feel like there are interesting things to do while I am leveling. The very pretty ESO world is nearly devoid of stuff to fight except in specific, crowded locations. Everything else is deer, birds, and butterflies. What mobs there are give little exp and drop mostly trash. Quests give pretty low rewards, and literally 3/4 of the quests I did resulted in a reward that my class couldn't use. Again, I am not looking to have stuff handed to me, but I ended up feeling that in eleven levels on this toon I had very few choices of armor and weapons.

I do not get the economy at all. Maybe they are going to adjust it. What is the point of horses that cost "17000 gold?" Maybe call them coppers, or something? But then one look at the interface and you know immersion wasn't the most important design goal here. Most of the merchants seem to sell very little of interest. In eleven levels I didn't buy anything I needed from a merchant, or even see anything I wanted.

Last night I finally got to sample just a little taste of the pvp zone. I'll probably check it out some more tonight. Getting there involved a really complicated "campaign" system that I don't understand at all yet. I had to choose from one of like thirty campaigns, set the campaign as my "home" or "guest" campaign, and then choose to enter the campaign, after which I was eventually teleported to Cyrodil. What I saw there didn't give me a lot of hope, but I didn't have time to really dig into it. Suffice it to say that an interlocking system of keeps, connected by portals, with rules for locking and unlocking them, is not what I was anticipating.

I am shocked that it took you 40 seconds to zone. I installed the game on my 3rd drive, which is a simple 7200 rpm backup hard drive, since it is a beta. Yesterday, when I played, every single zone took less than 1 second to zone...

 

[shadow9d9]

I know when it was released. I was pointing out the irony of calling anything a clone of anything else in terms of games. They are all derivatives or clones of something else before it. The absurdity of calling anything a WoW clone is just as equally absurd as calling anything before it a clone. I was hoping more would pick up on that ironic satire I was trying to present.

Except it isn't. Sharing a ton of qualities makes most new MMOs Wow clones. Arrows above quest giver heads, quest hubs, tiny zones with artificial borders, jumping that lands you half an inch into the air, 5 minutes to hit max cap, 5 dungeons to repeat as endgame, pvp based on gear rather than skill, tiny world, no real death penalty to speak of, etc.

AC had a world 10000 the size of Wow(and plenty of things to be found all over, with new stuff constantly being added). You could run super fast as you level, and jump anywhere as you leveled jump. Exploration and monster fighting as main way to level up(at least for the first 5 years before they made catch up mechanisms). No quest hubs. Skill based PVP where you could kill 20+ above your level. Death penalties, corpse runs. An open ended classless levelling system, where you could level in any way you'd like. Researching spells. Binding to portals which linked the world. Monthly content that changed entire landscapes and added content/story. Quests rare and had no minimap instructions. You actually needed to think and explore on your own. Voluntary worldwide pvp for all(non pvp servers). All very, very different from WoW.

Not even CLOSE.

 

[shadow9d9]

Why am I not surprised you are unable to use your mental capacity?

You use insults freely all while touting your superiority. Hilarious.

 

[Subyman]

Well, seems like a lot of people are breaking down every little detail, but over all I think it was a really fun beta. I've been in a few of them now and they keep getting better. I was able to try grouping with a friend and we had a great time exploring and questing. I really like how you can craft gear that you can actually use, but there are drops out there that boost your stats. There are so many avenues of progression that I feel like I am always advancing my character be it from leveling, enchanting, getting shards, finding mats, discovering locations, happening upon events, and such. Its much better than the quest hub design.

Sure there were a few issues, but those will certainly get worked out over the next few months and none were game breaking.

 

[shadow9d9]

Well, seems like a lot of people are breaking down every little detail, but over all I think it was a really fun beta. I've been in a few of them now and they keep getting better. I was able to try grouping with a friend and we had a great time exploring and questing. I really like how you can craft gear that you can actually use, but there are drops out there that boost your stats. There are so many avenues of progression that I feel like I am always advancing my character be it from leveling, enchanting, getting shards, finding mats, discovering locations, happening upon events, and such. Its much better than the quest hub design.

Sure there were a few issues, but those will certainly get worked out over the next few months and none were game breaking.

The biggest problem is that pretty much the only way to get xp(aside from one time explorations) is quest grinding with primarily single player quests(phasing). I don't understand the fascination with these "mmos" with heavily scripted quests with voice overs. They are one time "entertainment" at best, and waste SO much money and resources... If they wanted a coop single player game, they shouldn't be charging a monthly fee. Longevity is not made by wasting buckets of money on short one time use content.

 

[NoSoup4You]

From what I've seen on Twitch over the weekend, ESO looks to be straight out of the Guild Wars 2 mold. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I've kind of gotten my fill of the GW2 model lately and I don't see ESO bringing enough new ideas to the table in order to make me want to "start all over". Or pay a sub fee, for that matter.

If ESO had launched before Guild Wars 2 then I 'd probably already have pre-ordered the Imperial Edition and been prepared to play the pvp for several months at least. But with GW2 still so fresh in my memory, I see myself passing on ESO. Reading all the negative stuff about the game even at this early stage is also more than a little concerning.

 

[code65536]

I've never played a MMO before, so this weekend beta was my first taste of that world. I am, however, a fan of the Elder Scroll series, which is why I was very interested, despite my utter lack of MMO experience.

My biggest gripe:

I ignored the bugs, the frequent server issues and other technical faults because, well, it's a beta, and I was expecting such things going in (even though their frequency and severity was disconcerting for something just a month away from launch). What bothered me the most is the "single-player" story campaign. It's a very bad, very haphazard mish-mash of single-player and multi-player elements.

The story quests are clearly single-player in their conception. The Prophet talks to you (singular) and makes it clear that you are The Chosen One (singular), and when I foiled the Daggerfall assassination plot, people talked about the hero (singular) who saved the day. Etc. Yet the mechanics are mostly multi-player, which is the source of many headaches. (I think the term for this is "not instanced"? I'm a MMO newbie, so I'm not sure if that's the correct lingo.)

* There are treasure chests in the tutorial prison, but I couldn't grab any of them because they were always snatched by the countless players in front of me. I noticed that some players exited the tutorial prison with some nice-looking armor, but I was still in my prison rags.

* The above become more problematic when something is needed for a quest. I noticed that some items are instanced (unique only-one-source items), so no matter how many people are in front of me grabbing a quest item, it's there and available when I reach it. But some things are not instanced (cases where you need to collect X number of them within an area, and there is a >X number that exists in that area). In one case, I needed to disarm 5 traps to complete a quest, and running around the area, I saw lots of traps, but all have already been disarmed. Finally, after wasting way too much time, one of them respawned right in front of me, and I was able to get it. With the number of other people running around, I just gave up on waiting (and racing) for 4 others and abandoned that quest. This is also pretty immersion-breaking: The hostages can't escape because I personally haven't disarmed 5 even though every one in sight is disarmed, and I bet it'll be possible for them to escape if I did disarm 5, but every trap have subsequently respawned.

* I go kill a boss, and there are half a dozen other players off to kill that same boss. So the boss dies in seconds, which kinda takes the fun out of it all.

* This problem also works in the opposite direction, in that some quests pretty much require that there be other people around. In the final hour of the beta, I decided to start an entirely new character because I heard that the starting island for the EP was in Skyrim and I wanted to compare ESO's Skyrim visuals with TES5's. This was pretty much a solo run because I guess starting from scratch an hour before the beta's end wasn't a popular idea. I quickly got to the starting island and went on the first quest, which involved a Nordic ruin. I got to the point where I had to collect some quest items, each was guarded by an elite unit (between mob and boss in quality). My character is pretty well-equipped (nobody else to grab the treasure chests in the prison), and yet I died many times. I did everything I could--used abilities, blocking, etc. It was only when another player happened to show up that we were able to take it down together. First quest in the first post-tutorial location. This also happened once to my "main" character with a boss at a later point in the game. I happened, by pure chance of timing, to be facing that boss alone, and it did not end well at all (and then afterwards, when I beat it with the help of another player that came along, I stuck around a bit and witnessed the opposite problem as a large group of players entered and beat that boss with trivial ease).

* The relatively rapid enemy respawn rate needed to facilitate many people doing the same quests also causes problems like leaving me with no escape route if an encounter turns bad because the way I came in is once again filled with monsters. Or me stopping to take a minute to check the map or my inventory, and not realizing that I'm standing right on top a spawn point (ouch).

It's just one huge inconsistent mess. Some things are instanced, some are not. Depending on timing, a quest could be horribly hard or way too easy. The whole concept in general is just disconcerting, having things respawn so quickly and watching people running around and killing the same boss that just a minute ago, you had just put down for good. What I don't get is, why? Why not just instance this entire part of the game? The story's clearly SP, why not make the experience SP as well, and make it MP only if you invite another player along. Why not leave the MP bits for Cyrodiil? This would also make it possible to tackle the static world problem (NPCs stay in the same spot 24/7, they are as impervious as the environment, the world doesn't change, you can't interact with much of the world like, saying, sitting down, etc.) and bring some Elder Scrolls mechanics to the game.

The MMO bits:

And then there was Cyrodiil. From some of the in-game chatter, I learned that it's accessible once I reach level 10. I hit level 10, and I immediately get the quest to meet up with the Prophet, which I thought was the start of me getting to Cyrodiil (maybe he'll send me on a quest that required me to enter Cyrodiil, I thought). But nope, that wasn't what he wanted. Instead, I had to ask in the in-game chat how to do it (entering Cyrodiil also involved a rather confusing dialog window). Come on, at the very least have the King send me a letter asking for help in the faction's efforts in Cyrodiil or something like that.

But PvP's initial teething issues aside (getting there and how I didn't realize that there was a tutorial quest at first because I wandered off exploring and didn't notice a quest marker for a tutorial quest--why not add the tutorial quest automatically instead of me having to find it?), it was actually a lot of fun. Real enemies with real brains! The "campaign" that I entered was poorly balanced (one faction had more players in that session than the other two combined, and I was in what appeared to be the weakest faction), but fortunately I have a thing for desperate last stands.

The story quests were so bad that, if it wasn't for the PvP, I would've quit the beta, so I spent the rest of the beta in Cyrodiil (also did some TES4-comparison sight-seeing along the way--wow, Cloud Ruler Temple!). But as fun as that was, by the time the beta was drawing to a close, it was starting to get stale (hence my running off to create a new char). I could imagine myself extracting some gameplay hours out of PvP, but enough to justify 60 plus a monthly fee? Sorry.

Combat:

Ugh, combat. Well, bow combat at least, since that's been my weapon of choice across the series. I tried other weapons but didn't use them nearly enough to pass judgment on their mechanics. I do understand why bow combat needed to be significantly different. The old physics-based style where the movements were smooth and fluid, where you saw the arrow fly off and where it landed, etc. is not really workable when game mechanics are controlled by a central server. I get that, but doesn't change that I don't like it. The trajectory is not really traceable (it does leave a trail, but in first-person view, you are staring into the axis of that trail, so it's useless), there is no proper feedback--I usually can't tell if I hit my target or not--and the range sucks since past a (shockingly close) point, the arrow just magically ceases to exist. It's really annoying when, shooting at invaders from atop castle walls, the bow's range only lets me hit a few targets very close to the walls--the vast majority of the invaders who are standing around waiting for the walls to be breached are simply unassailable (which is a large reason why PvP staled so quickly for me--desperate last stands are less fun when gimpy game mechanics prevent me from at least making a proper attempt). The animation also isn't very smooth and it's harder for me to tell when the bow is fully drawn.

Other thoughts:

The UI is also a mess. It took me forever to figure out how to enchant an item (via the context menu of the item to enchant). Other, more obvious (at least to me) means such as trying to "use" an enchantment glyph (sorry, this item can't be used or equipped), dragging the glyph to an item or even the glyph's context menu don't work. Other things, while discoverable and somewhat intuitive, still felt clumsy (like the quickslot assignment). The no-tolerance encumbrance was also a drag. Inventory space full? Sorry, you can't complete this quest because you have no space for the quest reward. Instead, you must free up space, go through the end-quest conversation a second time, and then end the quest, even if the item you want to destroy is the quest reward because you have no need for it. Or, I want to destroy an item and get back the raw materials needed to create, but I can't because my inventory is full, even though once the destroyed item is removed, my inventory will be back to where it was. The earlier TES games were far more sensible by severely penalizing you for going over the limit instead of this binary enforcement in ESO.

There were some small nice things, like how crafting can automatically draw from what I have stored in my "bank", or how lootable bodies are highlighted.

As for graphics, I have mixed feelings. The very poor viewing distance takes away a lot of the awe-and-wonder that I've come to expect from TES. And while the textures are quite nice, things look polygon-starved compared to TES5.

And the voice acting... the main characters like the Prophet or Lyris are fine (just did some Googling and noticed that Lyris is voiced by the actress who did femshep), but a lot of the other characters' voice acting is just bad, even by TES standards.