If you're expecting something like Oblivion or Skyrim, prepare to be severely disappointed.
Elder Scrolls Online is an MMO. It's the type of game people go to in order to develop a character by, oh, making their own clothes, fashioning armour, making recipes, and enchanting items. With their friends, so as not to be lonely about it.
So if you primarily enjoyed Skyrim for the crafting skills, you might yet get something out of it. But at the price of £50 for the game and a £15/month subscription, you're probably better off just updating your Skyrim edition to make sure you have the latest mods.
Elder Scrolls Online is a big world with hardly anything in it. Very few dungeons, and even fewer you are allowed into. Quests which are utterly petty and irrelevant.
And you can't pick up equipment from anyone you kill. Because they respawn after a few seconds - so that other players in the game can kill them. And if you could pick up equipment, you could simply keep picking up the same armour, weapons, and selling them, and get rich very fast.
Which defeats the purpose of an MMO, which is to be a time sink, forcing you to keep up your monthly subscription - and be unable to achieve much anything even after a few hours of play.
The graphics are probably nice - heck, the world looks great in the promotional videos. But unless you have around 8GB of RAM + graphics chip, you'll probably need to play on a low graphics resolution that will make the game more basic-looking than Oblivion.
Because it's designed to be a time sink, you start off with little - expected to be level 5 or higher before you can even find any armour anywhere.
Levelling is also an issue. Remember how in Oblivion everything levelled up with you, but that they found more of a balance with Skyrim? Well, with Elder Scrolls Online, you simply cannot use equipment above your level.
So be prepared to invest a couple of hours completing a quest, only to find yourself awarded an item you are not allowed to use because it's just above your level.
Expect also to be severely weak from the start. Sure, you might kill a couple of Flame Atronach's in the tutorial intro. But then expect to be killed by any random monster after - and this world is full of them. Even the mud crabs can whoop your sorry beginner ass, even spiders and wolves.
The wonder is what Bethseda were thinking. Maybe someone persuaded them that a MMO was effectively Skyrim with multiplayer.
It is not.
Remember in Oblivion and Skyrim, how you crouched and snuck about, bow at hand, sword ready, flare selected in your magic inventory, reading for any attack? Remember the thrill and tension of discovery as you crept out from some forsaken underworld into the world of Tamriel and it's dungeons?
All gone. Not present.
Expect instead to wander around clueless, with the world's most unhelpful Quest system. And see dozens of other player characters stood around NPC's with their map's out, also wondering what the hell to do.
I played a beta this weekend, so there were bugs. Lots of them.
And I expect the launch version - due in just over two weeks - is never going to be able to address them all.
But it's the gameplay that really lets Elder Scrolls Online down. Or, the lack of it. The lack of atmosphere, the lack of immersion, the lack of interaction.
It may call itself the Elder Scrolls Online, but the only similarity to any other Elder Scrolls games is superficial - names and images. The rest - the part that made millions of people play and enjoy them - is gone.
Expect this game to be free2play within the year due to poor take up, so if you really want to try it, you may be advised to wait until then, instead of spending a lot of money to find yourself disappointed.
Elder Scrolls Online is an MMO. It's the type of game people go to in order to develop a character by, oh, making their own clothes, fashioning armour, making recipes, and enchanting items. With their friends, so as not to be lonely about it.
So if you primarily enjoyed Skyrim for the crafting skills, you might yet get something out of it. But at the price of £50 for the game and a £15/month subscription, you're probably better off just updating your Skyrim edition to make sure you have the latest mods.
Elder Scrolls Online is a big world with hardly anything in it. Very few dungeons, and even fewer you are allowed into. Quests which are utterly petty and irrelevant.
And you can't pick up equipment from anyone you kill. Because they respawn after a few seconds - so that other players in the game can kill them. And if you could pick up equipment, you could simply keep picking up the same armour, weapons, and selling them, and get rich very fast.
Which defeats the purpose of an MMO, which is to be a time sink, forcing you to keep up your monthly subscription - and be unable to achieve much anything even after a few hours of play.
The graphics are probably nice - heck, the world looks great in the promotional videos. But unless you have around 8GB of RAM + graphics chip, you'll probably need to play on a low graphics resolution that will make the game more basic-looking than Oblivion.
Because it's designed to be a time sink, you start off with little - expected to be level 5 or higher before you can even find any armour anywhere.
Levelling is also an issue. Remember how in Oblivion everything levelled up with you, but that they found more of a balance with Skyrim? Well, with Elder Scrolls Online, you simply cannot use equipment above your level.
So be prepared to invest a couple of hours completing a quest, only to find yourself awarded an item you are not allowed to use because it's just above your level.
Expect also to be severely weak from the start. Sure, you might kill a couple of Flame Atronach's in the tutorial intro. But then expect to be killed by any random monster after - and this world is full of them. Even the mud crabs can whoop your sorry beginner ass, even spiders and wolves.
The wonder is what Bethseda were thinking. Maybe someone persuaded them that a MMO was effectively Skyrim with multiplayer.
It is not.
Remember in Oblivion and Skyrim, how you crouched and snuck about, bow at hand, sword ready, flare selected in your magic inventory, reading for any attack? Remember the thrill and tension of discovery as you crept out from some forsaken underworld into the world of Tamriel and it's dungeons?
All gone. Not present.
Expect instead to wander around clueless, with the world's most unhelpful Quest system. And see dozens of other player characters stood around NPC's with their map's out, also wondering what the hell to do.
I played a beta this weekend, so there were bugs. Lots of them.
And I expect the launch version - due in just over two weeks - is never going to be able to address them all.
But it's the gameplay that really lets Elder Scrolls Online down. Or, the lack of it. The lack of atmosphere, the lack of immersion, the lack of interaction.
It may call itself the Elder Scrolls Online, but the only similarity to any other Elder Scrolls games is superficial - names and images. The rest - the part that made millions of people play and enjoy them - is gone.
Expect this game to be free2play within the year due to poor take up, so if you really want to try it, you may be advised to wait until then, instead of spending a lot of money to find yourself disappointed.
