My Review After 7,500+ hours

Casterial

Hello everyone,

(please move if needed)

Edit: Did not expect this to blow up a little, thanks for reading!

I have been playing Elder Scrolls Online since August 2013, I hopped into every beta, every test, and have been a loyal subscriber since.

Here is my review as a player who loves the game.

I give the game a solid 7/10, however, with the lag and issues the game currently has (been for a while) its in my book falling down to a 3/10 despite how much I love the game, I cannot play it.


Firstly, lets talk about world building, story, and PVE content

World Building

World building is fantastic in Elder Scrolls Online, you really feel immersed and feel like you can seemingly get lost in the story, the quest, and just how beautiful the world is overall. The world building is one of the main factors of selling for this game in my own opinion

Story

Story is the number 1 selling point for ESO, its a narrative driven game. The game is very well done, some Chapters stories are shorter than DLC (Graymoor for example, which is sad) But, none the less every story is very well done. Even just the small quest in the zone. They're so amazing, no matter what you always want to continue. I think I found myself lost in them more than once.

PVE Content

For an MMORPG it feels lacking in this department, yes they have Trials, yes they have dungeons. But almost everything takes no thought or skill. If you're a WoW veteran you wont find a real challenge in this game. Yes, you can say "Vet HM!" Well, that just adds one or two mechanics to the entire thing and increases damage. The mechanics are already lacking. For example, they got "Tank Swapping" about a year ago and to the playerbase this was "revolutionary".

For PVE I never found myself truly challenge, even doing quest or story I would just plow through everything, decimating everything like I was a god.
For Dungeons, often if not Vet you can solo them, while in Vet you can just take 2-3 DPS friends and run through it quickly..... DLC Is a little different some require group play, but its still pretty thoughtless going through it.

I'm a tank main on every game I play, for this game I found tanking to be a joke I would just AFK block, move around and debuff the boss. I didn't have to worry about my group so much because healing is so powerful in this game, I rarely also had to worry about positioning. 

Champion System

They have a Champion System which grants additional passives. It is not hard to gain points in this, but getting rank 1 to 50 is a false ending and you have 810 more levels to go. It feels awful for a new player. However, you can get to 810 pretty quick (5 months maybe). These passives are very strong and the 810 levels are account wide, while 1-50 is character wide.  The Champion System is also one of the main concerns with the players and development and has been put on hold and hasn't increased for nearly 2 years. 

Casterial

Secondly, lets talk about the PVP Content
Cyrodiil:

Cyrodiil is where I spent a good ~5000-6000 hours of my game time. I loved it, however since the last year it has been entirely unplayable. Cyrodiil is a fantastic Alliance vs Alliance open world PVP zone. However, its riddled with glitches and lag. 

It takes you about ~4-5 seconds for skills to pop off:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff5XzF0hogM

It also takes about ~5-6 seconds for skills to catch up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCUfljXGomw

You also seemingly get loading screens every few seconds. Last night, I got ~5 loading screens within 30 seconds.


Cyrodiil gives you a real challenge and a feeling of success, however with the latest lags, class changes, and iterations the skill floor has dropped tremendously in favor of new players and the gameplay is becoming a state of "Turn based" combat so, its best if you avoid Cyrodiil.

Battlegrounds:

Battlegrounds are great, however there is a "Champion System" in Elder Scrolls Online which is the true end-game "leveling" however, battlegrounds don't care for this rank and they have it disabled. (So you lose all your passives and your build is 100% different than what it is before the queue)

Also, you cannot queue with friends at all.

Queue times are anywhere from 5-10 minutes after winning 3 battlegrounds.

Battlegrounds are very fun to play, a great experience, but since they implemented solo only it feels deserted and not as many play it.

Casterial

Thirdly, development

Combat Changes

You get use to the combat changes in ESO, they change your class, your build, and the meta so frequently that its almost impossible to keep up lately. They also nerfed some abilities to the ground which has made this Tank meta prominent for 2 years now. 

The constantly changes come from developers who really seem to not play their game at all and it hinders not only PVP, but PVE players and guilds often disband over these because they can't keep up.

While combat changes are often fine in an MMORPG, they do it so much that it feels like you're grinding to keep up (Keep in mind the grind on ESO is minimal) But, with their changes it feels like another day of prepping and grinding for the new class changes.

They change the comabt every 2-3 months.

Also, they recently removed animation cancelling in some form (its still there) but with the removal the game has actually become slower, clunkier, and less responsive. Since removing it, the videos above show what combat is like now.

Content Changes

New Content is amazing, however it quickly becomes dated. Zenimax Online Studios does not go back and reiterate old content at all, so you see the poorly optimized old zones slowly fall apart. For instance, in most zones I sit at around ~125-150 fps, however in the oldest zones I sit at ~50.

New Content also feels slightly disconnected, it doesn't feel like the stories fully interconnect. I guess this is a way for new players to hop in on the new expansion and thats it.

Feedback, forums, and information from development
Feedback

Often times, you can post bugs, repro steps, issues and other information to Zenimax and usually get no response and these issues just slip into live. Most of the time, game breaking. For instance, a couple of friends and myself found a game breaking bug (infinitely increase stats) and we told ZOS how to do, gave them videos, gave them repro steps, told them everything we knew. 2 months later.... This bug released to live.

Often times, your feedback goes unheard. Only recently did ZOS actually listen to players feedback about a MAJOR combat change, which they said they'll hold off on for now due to the feedback. However, this was one of the very few cases.

Forums

Avoid their forums, its become pretty crazy. They have rule books on top of rule books and have been banning and muting several people a day and hiring new moderators a day. There are several post on the forums that are frustrated over the current lag (which affects all zones) but, due to this the new mods, and the amount of post it feels like you're being silenced on anything you have to say.

Information from development 

Its almost non-existent. You get maybe a saying here or there, but often ZOS does not give you any information. The only information usually on forums is a copy/paste response "We have edited and removed several post..." Its usually the same thing. Very rarely do you hear anything from the development team.

Other Fun Common Things:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5SaK9EQQDE


Overall, Elder Scrolls Online is a fantastic game, but with the latest issues, gameplay glitches and poor communication from the developers I could not recommend this game. I have been a loyal player for ages, one of the few left from the early days. But, I see now why several people are quitting. In the last Month I have had 2 guilds (300 people) disband over the lag. 

The lag has sickened the game not only in PVP, but PVE. People also feel disconnects while doing trials, run into trial-stopping game breaking bugs and just cannot do anything together as a group.

About a year ago I could still recommend this game, but currently, I cannot. 

If you're looking for a game you can pay ~$12 for and sink hundreds of hours into the story, look no more. This is the game. However, if you're looking for a game to challenge yourself in PVE, this most likely isn't the game. While there are difficulty modes, some are still easy, but aside from that half the time they're broken. If you're looking for a game to PVP on, this is NOT the game. While I would love to see the PVP population increase, it has decreased over the years and barely can sustain ~500 players out of the ~150,000+ online. Note, PVP cannot even pop lock which less than 500.

In conclusion, after countless hours and time I give this game ~3-4/10.

baphamet

I just came back to the game after being gone more than a year and the lag is a serious problem.

 I assumed it was just because they released the new story but if this has been going on for a while and will continue to do so?

 I might have to come back in another year lol

gervaise1

Good summary. 

Iselin

baphamet said:

 I might have to come back in another year lol

It'll be worse. ESO is the only MMO I have ever played where the performance decreased over time consistently.

The best performance in Cyrodiil was in 2014-2015 and they had bigger population caps for the alliances back then.

I don't think their back end and code foundation is robust enough to handle all the additions to the game that have happened over the past few years properly.

New  zones, housing, materials for housing and new crafts and the ever growing cash shop inventory with animated  previews of everything have bloated the game into the mess it is today.

Quizzical

Spending 7500 hours on a game that you rate a 3/10 is doing it wrong.  Even for a 7/10, spending that much time on a game that you don't think is all that good is doing it wrong.  Even idle games where you barely do anything don't justify that much play time if it's not very good.

maskedweasel

Quizzical said:

Spending 7500 hours on a game that you rate a 3/10 is doing it wrong.  Even for a 7/10, spending that much time on a game that you don't think is all that good is doing it wrong.  Even idle games where you barely do anything don't justify that much play time if it's not very good.

This. Even playing a game for 1K hours and then turning around and saying it's not good is basically the sign of someone who became jaded and had decided to ragequit. 

I've seen it. Hell, I've done it. I have games with thousands of hours that I finally hit a "last straw" on and wouldn't recommend it, but even after all that time, I can't in good conscience give a game I've played that long a poor score unless the game itself has fundamentally changed.

ESO has only pretty much changed for the better over the years. I know One Tamriel kinda threw some people off, but it's been pretty good for the population overall.

Utinni

Any game I personally put 7,500 hours into is a 10/10 for me.

kitarad

Flabbergasted you wasted so much time on a game you rated 3/10.

Iselin

kitarad said:

Flabbergasted you wasted so much time on a game you rated 3/10.

He didn't. It only became 3/10 for him when he burnt out.

I too spent 5 years playing this but I wouldn't be so silly as to try to retroactively put ratings numbers on it.`

I enjoyed it a lot for years and then it started to annoy me... so I left.

I think I was always pretty objective on what it does well (character building skill system, great writing, Cyrodiil AvA PvP...when it works, etc.) and what it does poorly (performance, bugs, cash shop gone wild, etc.) but a lot of people have a tendency to love their chosen game to pieces and ignore all flaws or hate it with a passion and ignore the good bits.

This OP made the mistake of mentioning total hours played which sounds like an outrageous number but 1,200 hours per year if you don't play much of anything else isn't that outrageous... that averages out to 4 hours per day. I'm sure many here spend that much time gaming whether on one or several games. I know I do.

If I had to guess I probably played it for 5K hours or thereabouts in my five years.

I f you get past his ratings and numbers and actually read what he wrote he was pretty fair with his assessment.

kitarad

Iselin said:

kitarad said:

Flabbergasted you wasted so much time on a game you rated 3/10.

He didn't. It only became 3/10 for him when he burnt out.

I too spent 5 years playing this but I wouldn't be so silly as to try to retroactively put ratings numbers on it.`

I enjoyed it a lot for years and then it started to annoy me... so I left.

I think I was always pretty objective on what it does well (character building skill system, great writing, etc.) and what it does poorly (performance, bugs, cash shop gone wild, etc.) but a lot of people have a tendency to love their chosen game to pieces and ignore all flaws or hate it with a passion and ignore the good bits.

This OP made the mistake of mentioning total hours played which sounds like an outrageous number but 1,200 hours per year if you don't play much of anything else isn't that outrageous... that averages out to 4 hours per day. I'm sure many here spend that much time gaming whether on one or several games. I know I do.

If I had to guess I probably played it for 5K hours or thereabouts in my five years.

I f you get past his ratings and numbers and actually read what he wrote he was pretty fair with his assessment.

Fair enough but  what it does poorly (performance, bugs, cash shop gone wild, etc.) was obvious quite early right. Why stay and waste your time?

If he stayed then it is not fair to rate the game so poorly right ? It was obvious that the good parts outweighed the bad.

Iselin

kitarad said:

Iselin said:

kitarad said:

Flabbergasted you wasted so much time on a game you rated 3/10.

He didn't. It only became 3/10 for him when he burnt out.

I too spent 5 years playing this but I wouldn't be so silly as to try to retroactively put ratings numbers on it.`

I enjoyed it a lot for years and then it started to annoy me... so I left.

I think I was always pretty objective on what it does well (character building skill system, great writing, etc.) and what it does poorly (performance, bugs, cash shop gone wild, etc.) but a lot of people have a tendency to love their chosen game to pieces and ignore all flaws or hate it with a passion and ignore the good bits.

This OP made the mistake of mentioning total hours played which sounds like an outrageous number but 1,200 hours per year if you don't play much of anything else isn't that outrageous... that averages out to 4 hours per day. I'm sure many here spend that much time gaming whether on one or several games. I know I do.

If I had to guess I probably played it for 5K hours or thereabouts in my five years.

I f you get past his ratings and numbers and actually read what he wrote he was pretty fair with his assessment.

Fair enough but  what it does poorly (performance, bugs, cash shop gone wild, etc.) was obvious quite early right. Why stay and waste your time?

If he stayed then it is not fair to rate the game so poorly right ? It was obvious that the good parts outweighed the bad.

Not really except for the Bethesda trademark bugs. Performance has seriously deteriorated over the years, especially in Cyrodiil AvA - it handled larger numbers PvPing for the first 2 or 3 years quite well considering. The cash shop started out benign enough until they started adding loot boxes, mass producing cash shop items and adding deliberate inconveniences to new game play elements (e.g. housing furnishings crafting) to drive cash shop sales. It was gradual and just kept getting worse.

But at any given time it's just a matter of whether you're enjoying the good more than hating the bad - totally a personal perspective - that either keeps you there or not.

And yes, rating it a 3 after he burnt out is silly.

Kyleran

Iselin said:

kitarad said:

Iselin said:

kitarad said:

Flabbergasted you wasted so much time on a game you rated 3/10.

I enjoyed it a lot for years and then it started to annoy me... so I left.

If he stayed then it is not fair to rate the game so poorly right ? It was obvious that the good parts outweighed the bad.

But at any given time it's just a matter of whether you're enjoying the good more than hating the bad - totally a personal perspective - that either keeps you there or not.

And yes, rating it a 3 after he burnt out is silly.

I played EVE for about ten years, subbing on up to six accounts, for a countless number of hours, finally leaving over three years ago due to design changes which annoyed me enough to walk away.

3/10

Kidding....it would be totally unfair to apply a ridiculously lower rating on a game I really enjoyed, for so long no matter what happened.

Actually 8/10 

OP and others complaining about poor performance impacting gameplay?

Bunch o' sissies, we who play FO76 are just made of much sterner stuff I guess, we endure such daily but still play on because.....as mentioned above, the good still currently outweighs the bad.

Reminds me of when I first went to buy FO4 about the same time Bethesda monetized mods for it.

Looked on Steam only to find people with hundreds or even thousands of hours played review bombing the snot out of it. 

Fortunately I read deeper in, discerned their hatred for this decision, discarded their opinions for being that of total idiots (same as I do for FO76 haters)  purchased FO4 which I played for over 1400 hours. 

I'm over 1500 hours on FO76 (only game I play) and still going strong, what with three new announced expansions, planned revisions of the perk card system and more, I could very well be sticking with it well on into next year. 

7/10 

Unless of course what they change annoys me...then on to the next game.
  

Sovrath

Casterial said:

Hello everyone,

I'm going to agree with Blue and Utinni (and others at this point most likely).

You love the game. You really love the game. And you are angry because technical issues are hindering you from enjoying a game you love.

Sure you have criticisms but you keep coming back. So sorry about that, must really suck.

kitarad

There are things that can make you leave a game that has nothing to do with how good the game is . I really liked Archeage but its energy system sucked beyond my enjoyment so I left the game.

I enjoyed Everquest but when I was playing the top guilds had every good spot camped at high levels and forget about doing any dragons or planes as a small guild. I gave up seeing there was no future for my small guild.

Quizzical

Iselin said:

kitarad said:

Flabbergasted you wasted so much time on a game you rated 3/10.

He didn't. It only became 3/10 for him when he burnt out.

I realize that burnout was a major portion of this rating.  But if you didn't notice that you loved a game and then got tired of it and rate it poorly just because you got tired of it, then you're bad at assigning review scores to games.

Kyleran

Sharne said:

Cyrodiil is where I spent a good ~5000-6000 hours of my game time. I loved it, however since the last year it has been entirely unplayable. Cyrodiil is a fantastic Alliance vs Alliance open world PVP zone. However, its riddled with glitches and lag. 

It takes you about ~4-5 seconds for skills to pop off:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff5XzF0hogM

It also takes about ~5-6 seconds for skills to catch up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCUfljXGomw

You also seemingly get loading screens every few seconds. Last night, I got ~5 loading screens within 30 seconds.


Cyrodiil gives you a real challenge and a feeling of success, however with the latest lags, class changes, and iterations the skill floor has dropped tremendously in favor of new players and the gameplay is becoming a state of "Turn based" combat so, its best if you avoid Cyrodiil.

I think from his perspective he is probably right, given how the changes above affect him.

If I loved a game and then they changed the part that I spent most of my time in so that I couldn't effectively play it, I would probably score the game the same. His review I assume is based on the current state of the game.

Then you aren't very good at giving review scores either.

YashaX

Iselin said:

baphamet said:

 I might have to come back in another year lol

It'll be worse. ESO is the only MMO I have ever played where the performance decreased over time consistently.

The best performance in Cyrodiil was in 2014-2015 and they had bigger population caps for the alliances back then.

I don't think their back end and code foundation is robust enough to handle all the additions to the game that have happened over the past few years properly.

New  zones, housing, materials for housing and new crafts and the ever growing cash shop inventory with animated  previews of everything have bloated the game into the mess it is today.

Its sad because the pvp in ESO really is amazing - at least when the lag is relatively mild and the populations are somewhat balanced.

green13

Casterial said:

PVE Content

For an MMORPG it feels lacking in this department....

Our tastes are a bit different but I also find this lacking.

Most open world content, is, as you say, ridiculously easy. Including the public dungeons which are nominally group content. Up to and including the single supposedly ultra hard and definitely requires a group encounter per public dungeon.

That's how I tested the new necromancer class on the PTS. And with a grand total of about 10-15 minutes of having played the class, rofl-stomped through the group encounter.

"Proper" dungeons which you queue for are similarly rofl-stomp-tastic.

Except for the DLC dungeons, which for my tastes - here's where we differ strongly - are very poorly designed for trying to emulate WOW raids with their banal mechanics.

Memorizing the same steps for each dungeon and repeating ad nauseum is not my idea of a good time. And we know this is true for most players.

It's what killed Wildstar. They built their entire end-game to suit the tastes of a tiny minority of players.

Amathe

It's sort of like cleaning your plate at dinner and then saying you didn't like it.

Scorchien

Amathe said:

It's sort of like cleaning your plate at dinner and then saying you didn't like it.

Definitley have done that , more than once

green13

Amathe said:

It's sort of like cleaning your plate at dinner and then saying you didn't like it.

You don't have to enjoy the taste of something to eat it.

There's, you know, hunger. The requirement for basic sustenance. etc. etc.

I've never been completely in love with ESO. On balance, for my tastes, it's just the best of what's available. 

And ESO - like any online game - can change for worst. Drastically. With absolute disregard for the total number of hours you've played it.

Casterial

maskedweasel said:

Quizzical said:

Spending 7500 hours on a game that you rate a 3/10 is doing it wrong.  Even for a 7/10, spending that much time on a game that you don't think is all that good is doing it wrong.  Even idle games where you barely do anything don't justify that much play time if it's not very good.

This. Even playing a game for 1K hours and then turning around and saying it's not good is basically the sign of someone who became jaded and had decided to ragequit. 

I've seen it. Hell, I've done it. I have games with thousands of hours that I finally hit a "last straw" on and wouldn't recommend it, but even after all that time, I can't in good conscience give a game I've played that long a poor score unless the game itself has fundamentally changed.

ESO has only pretty much changed for the better over the years. I know One Tamriel kinda threw some people off, but it's been pretty good for the population overall.

You have to realize it was a good solid 8/10 until 2019 late year... Thats when it declined thats when my playing just suddenly dropped, guilds disband, and pvp population dwindled to not being able to cap pvp campaigns. 

They continued to not listen to the playerbase, they would get NEGATIVE feedback on PTS, then just implement it, they would be warned about lag increasing, then make it worse, not improve it.

It was great, hell if you go back to before November 2019, this game was a 7, 8 or even close to a 9/10. But now...Now its a solid 3-4 due to performance issues.

The client isn't the issue, the server is. 

Casterial

Iselin said:

kitarad said:

Flabbergasted you wasted so much time on a game you rated 3/10.

He didn't. It only became 3/10 for him when he burnt out.

Nope, not burned out. Ask my friends I continued to try and give it a chance, I started port forwarding, I upgraded all my network equipment, I put the game on a M.2 970, I re-installed the game, I disabled all my addons, I even used VPNs, worked with my ISP as well.

AFK in California I sit at 130 ping in a city, 200+ping in Cyrodiil. Its not burn out when the server declined after they tweaked with the net code to make the new "animation" system work, which broke a lot of the servers.

I went from avg 120ish fps 65-85 ping to 120 fps, 120-130 ping+.

Casterial

green13 said:

Amathe said:

It's sort of like cleaning your plate at dinner and then saying you didn't like it.

You don't have to enjoy the taste of something to eat it.

There's, you know, hunger. The requirement for basic sustenance. etc. etc.

I've never been completely in love with ESO. On balance, for my tastes, it's just the best of what's available. 

And ESO - like any online game - can change for worst. Drastically. With absolute disregard for the total number of hours you've played it.

Hammer on the head, thank you.

Was the best MMO on the market until the server bricked.