I should have posted yesterday, but suddenly a wild thing I had to do appeared, so here's my "Wednesday" post on Thursday.
This past weekend I had the pleasure of participating in the ESO beta. I created two characters, liked one more than the other, faffed around, did quests, killed monsters, and by and large enjoyed every minute of it. Sadly, I didn't have time to explore the entirety of the ESO world, but what I did explore left me wanting more. Below some comments about my travels.
My first experience with ESO was the download. I was eager to start exploring the world as soon as possible, so as soon as Friday came around, I began the client download. I did not expect that it would be 20 gigs, nor did I expect for the download speeds to be slow, consistently less than half of my connection's speed. To be fair, I fully understand that there were possibly tens of thousands of people downloading the client simultaneously, which would explain the lessened speeds. So I left the download running in the background and was finally able to play on Saturday morning.
The first thing I did was create a character. The ESO character creator
is the most robust and user friendly character creator I have ever had
the pleasure of using. On most MMO creators, I rarely spend more than 1
minute creating a generic avatar. On most Bethesda single player games, I
usually spend 30 minutes creating a character that maybe sort of
perhaps looks like me but not quite. On ESO, I spent about 8 minutes,
half of those, seeing all the available races, and I created a character
that, while not entirely as what I would like, was "close enough". Yes,
Oblivion and Skyrim seem to offer more customization and attention to
minute details, but a lot of what they offer is, I feel, not entirely
needed.
Following some playing around, I went to the tutorial dungeon. Very much
true to the Elder Scrolls tradition, players start off their adventure
as some form of prisoner who manages to escape death. Players are spoken
to by the astral projection of a prophet who guides them to the NPC who
will aid them. After selecting a weapon, players then must traverse the
tutorial dungeon in order to rescue the prophet. The controls for
exploration are as one has come to expect in an Elder Scrolls game. WASD
are used for movement, the mouse is used for looking around, the space
bar is for jumping, and so on. The visuals, although not as impressive
as Skyrim, were really solid - certainly steps beyond your traditional
MMO.
The game very much felt like an Elder Scrolls game, with the exception of the collision. I often found myself walking through monsters, NPCs, and other players, and sometimes when trying to escape from a monster I would find myself at the receiving end of a spell that went through a wall.
The game very much felt like an Elder Scrolls game, with the exception of the collision. I often found myself walking through monsters, NPCs, and other players, and sometimes when trying to escape from a monster I would find myself at the receiving end of a spell that went through a wall.
Once I completed the tutorial dungeon, I was free to explore the world. The world provided a solid Elder Scrolls experience, but it also made me realize something: even though I had always wanted a multiplayer Elder Scrolls, it turns out that no, I didn't really want an MMO. What I wanted was the ability of exploring the world with one other companion. While playing ESO, I found myself awed with how insignificant other players were to my quests. It didn't really matter that they were there, and on occasion I found myself wishing that they were enemies to hack away at. Rather than feeling like an MMO, with vibrant chats and rich player-created cultures, the game felt more like a world where a lot of people were playing a single player game. It made me realize that I would totally pay 60$ for a single player version and double that for a collector's edition - I always do - but I wouldn't pay a monthly fee to play what is essentially a single player MMO. If the game had an initial investment cost and no monthly fees, I would buy it and treat it mainly as a single player experience, but the recurring fees are a bit of a turn off. That being said, people who ARE inclined to pay monthly fees for their games, I would venture to say that ESO is one of the only three worthwhile pay to play titles in the market right now, the others being World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14.
That being said, enjoy some more gameplay without the douchy commentary.
No comments:
Post a Comment