Elder Scrolls Online released a month ago and while the game is stunningly beautiful, did it live up to my expectations of perfection once I started playing the game on a daily basis? Complicated question with a short answer, not really.
Don’t misunderstand, I love the game. I love the depth of character immersion and questing. I love that I can get lost and uncover quests I would have otherwise missed and that not every NPC is young, fit, and wrinkle free.
What I’m not loving is the inventory management nightmare and the horribly unbalanced gains in crafting. It makes no sense that provisioning (cooking) can be leveled to the maximum before a player reaches level fifteen but any other skill you are lucky if you make it to level ten. Enchanting is the worst of all the skills with the least available raw materials out in the world. It levels slower than a glacier moves and deconstructing every glyph you craft for a slightly larger miniscule gain is frustrating and irrational.
Inventory management is a mini-game all it’s own. I don’t mind the high costs associated with increasing bag and bank space. I would prefer it if I got more space for my gold however. What truly irritates me to no end is that each and every time I open my bank it is sorted automatically from Z to A and not A to Z. This one thing makes me grind my teeth every time I open the bank. I love that there is shared storage, what I don’t love is that there is no individual storage. Having to create characters just to hold crafting goods, maps, pets, etc. is poor game design.
The director’s letter just released did not give me hope. There is no mention of housing, not one. Housing is an integral part of every Elder Scrolls game since Morrowind. Housing had the potential to solve inventory issues for a lot of players. Instead, they are working on horse racing? Really? Horse racing is a quality of life improvement? I could care less that other players will now have the ability to kill guards and NPC’s. All that is going to lead to is an unplayable world where quest givers can be killed by the bored to irritate others.
So now the question becomes, do we renew our subscriptions and give Zenimax and Bethesda the benefit of the doubt? Or, do we rationally cut our losses now and wait for the bots and gold spam to lessen while the game loses players at an incredible rate? I’m on the fence. Part of me desperately wants to play ESO and love it and lose myself in the world but the other part of me is extremely tired of reporting gold farmers, dealing with botters, shuffling inventory, and crafting skills.
I do know that right now, as the game stands it is beautiful, immersive, and frustrating. I can’t imagine it will be that much better on the consoles either. Speaking of consoles, not a word of a beta is mentioned in the producer’s letter and not a hint of if they will hit their target release date of June. My guess is that it will be pushed back. And honestly, the game is either going to be much better on the console or so frustrating controllers will be flung across rooms globally.
I’ll confess, I haven’t logged into ESO in almost a week. We have been playing SWTOR and enjoy ourselves. I will log into ESO this week but probably more out of guilt than a desire to report gold farmers, botters, and to juggle inventory. I love the beauty and questing but that experience is marred by the negatives for me at the moment.
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