The Elder Scrolls Online

 PC
User Score
5.7

Mixed or average reviews- based on 2703 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,210 out of 2703
  2. Mixed: 447 out of 2703
  3. Negative: 1,046 out of 2703
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  1. marc5477
    Jul 31, 2018
    4
    Tried it back in beta, and I didnt think much of it at the time. 4 years later, I finally got a copy of game with the Morrowind expansion for $15. The game is just as I remember it, a boring casual experience with no character. A generic grind which is sad, because they clearly put a lot of work into it and it does look decent. But the gameplay is just down right coma inducing.

    1st    Tried it back in beta, and I didnt think much of it at the time. 4 years later, I finally got a copy of game with the Morrowind expansion for $15. The game is just as I remember it, a boring casual experience with no character. A generic grind which is sad, because they clearly put a lot of work into it and it does look decent. But the gameplay is just down right coma inducing.

    1st problem right off the bat. There are only 5 classes to choose from? Yep, thats right, just 5. Okay, but there must be a lot of differences between them right? Nope. Its true they each have a class tree, but all the classes have access to about 20 trees and as it turns out, most builds end up using very few skills from the class trees and most will come from the other ones. Which means that you can literally make a character with any class, use common trees, and they will play exactly the same... think about that for a minute. That said, some classes give advantages to roles they play, like the Dragonknight who has some unique tank skills but even with these distinctions, there is very little to choose from and each class can be boiled down to 2 builds. Either its a magic build, or a stamina build. Rarely, someone will make a Dragonknight tank with just health instead but thats the only exception. To summarize, all the people running around are carbon copies of each other with little to no variation. Mind you, we are in 2018. I expect this back in the late 90s, and maybe early 2000's, but not in a modern game.

    Next, they did nothing to push the front on questing, or combat. Quests are fairly well written and voice acted but they are still the generic quests you see in every RPG since the dawn of time. The real weakness here is that questing is trivially easy. Its so easy in fact, that I would say that this is the most casual MMO I have ever played, much more so than WoW and even more than GW2. One possible reason is that the entire game is level scaled to the player. This means you can go anywhere and enemies will be within your level. And despite looking different, most enemies are the same and are trivially easy to dispatch which makes running around very boring. GW2 handled this much better by only scaling down rather than scaling up which takes away any feeling of progression in the game. This was the big problem with Oblivion and to a lesser extent, Skyrim as well. Level scaling is a big problem and should be used very sparsely in an MMO. As for combat itself, well the skills are what you expect from any MMO. Block, roll, fast attack and heavy attack. Nothing new or exciting in this game. There is a cloaking class and a pet class with, laughably, no pet controls making it somewhat tedious to play. Dont expect to see anything unique, there is nothing of the sort.

    Other features are also lacking. Crafting is a minor step up from the normal select a recipe and click combine, now you can use more resources to increase quality to a defined limit. Still nothing like older games such as EQ2 or SWG. If you are looking to make cool stuff, this is not the game for you. Its entirely too easy with the only limit being the grind to collect materials since there is no easy auction house to buy them. I actually like the fact that there is no auction house in this game, but they players found ways around it by creating trading guilds. The game allows you to join 5 guilds so you can always join several. Unfortunately, the guild shops dont seem to work. At least when I tried them they never seemed to have inventory. Perhaps I had to be in the guild to see their items which is actually very silly. If someone sets up a shop, it should be available to everyone. EQ1 had this feature and it would have been awesome if they didnt also add a search feature to take the immersion out of it.

    Overall, its a very average MMO. It lacks any character and has no defining features. The one big plus is that it went F2P recently so you can pick it up cheap and play without ever subscribing. Unfortunately, without a subscription, you lose some very important features such as bigger bank and more space for trade supplies. As it turns out, this game is insanely loot heavy and you will run out of bank space in the 1st hour and this is how they hook you to subscribe. You can manage it with some alts if you want so its still manageable but it is a chore. There is another review that covers this problem below.

    Give it a shot if you are itching for an MMO but dont invest too much into it. GW2 is superior since it has some unique features and WoW is still viable to this day. Even EQ2 is leagues better in some ways, especially crafting.

    If you are going to buy this, make sure you get the retail box copy! The box copies come with a lot of features included without extra cost and they are cheaper. For example, the digital version of Morrowind costs more than the box copy and does not include the Warden class. You have to buy that separately...    … Expand
  2. snickets
    Jun 3, 2014
    4
    I feel betrayed by Zenimax. 2 Months after launch and Nightblades are still trash, combat is terrible, support is nonexistant. I really wanted to love this game, made a fansite myself, got all my friends to play it with me, but Zenimax decided to push out more content instead of fixing the stuff that was out already. The only decent part of this game is the questing and the music, which isI feel betrayed by Zenimax. 2 Months after launch and Nightblades are still trash, combat is terrible, support is nonexistant. I really wanted to love this game, made a fansite myself, got all my friends to play it with me, but Zenimax decided to push out more content instead of fixing the stuff that was out already. The only decent part of this game is the questing and the music, which is all that kept me leveling until Veteran rank 3, that and the hope that they would fix these issues. So many broken promises. Do yourself a favor and try wildstar, or even WoW. Developers shouldn't be rewarded for putting terrible, unfinished games like this to market.… Expand
  3. Chidawg66
    Jun 4, 2014
    4
    I really tried to love this game. I came in with an open mind and played it slowly through the storyline which everyone said the AD is the best story. The story was okay. The combat system was okay. But after you finish with the story line, it gets really boring. I don't know really what else to do. The endgame is non existent. There really isn't too much to do in this game forI really tried to love this game. I came in with an open mind and played it slowly through the storyline which everyone said the AD is the best story. The story was okay. The combat system was okay. But after you finish with the story line, it gets really boring. I don't know really what else to do. The endgame is non existent. There really isn't too much to do in this game for endgame. After you play through the story, which most of my friends couldn't even finish, there isn't much to do. We all decided that this game is just too boring. Not enough content and it is BUGGY. They fixed a lot of the buggy issues, but it is still buggy.

    The whole phasing idea was a neat idea but it is stupid. I played the game when everyone else was leveling with me. How annoying is it when you are trying to get into the game and follow the plot and after doing all the story correct, you enter in a zone where people have already started the boss fight by the time you hit the boss once, you've completed the quest. I didn't even get to see the opening scene of the fight.

    Dungeons are SUPER boring. OMG. Every solo dungeon pretty much looks like every other solo dungeon. Group dungeons are pretty easy and basically doesn't require much skill. This game really doesn't require much skill. There is also no really great gear. Everything is crafted, and the loot isn't all that great.

    I really had low standards for this game, and enjoyed it somewhat during the lvling from 1 - VR1, but was it worth the $100 I spent on a 3 month subscription and game? Probably not.    … Expand
  4. TinEater
    Jun 8, 2014
    4
    This is really a fantastic game. That game is called Skyrim. Except Skyrim doesn't charge a subscription, and doesn't have gold spam bots swarming all over the dungeons and resource nodes. The game goes out of it's way to separate players from one another, one upping WoW: Cataclysm's baffling decision to "phase" all it's players into isolated bubble version of the game world. ZenimaxThis is really a fantastic game. That game is called Skyrim. Except Skyrim doesn't charge a subscription, and doesn't have gold spam bots swarming all over the dungeons and resource nodes. The game goes out of it's way to separate players from one another, one upping WoW: Cataclysm's baffling decision to "phase" all it's players into isolated bubble version of the game world. Zenimax was trying to make each player the hero of the story, but all they succeeded in doing is creating a strange feeling of isolation. The question is, why is that worth paying $15 a month? You'll get the same experience playing a single-player game with a Twitter window open.… Expand
  5. forrealzzzz
    Jun 13, 2014
    4
    Elder Scrolls Online online is really hard. I died against Edward Norton multiples times while the queen of elves did nothing to save me. She and her Clan of Pusays wouldn't even walk down a dark flight of stairs to help me. Something about shin splints. Elder Scrolls online is like Crimson Skies. But not fun.
  6. FluffyPaws
    Jun 16, 2014
    4
    I have played this game from launch till now, and I must say my interest in this game is fading. I do try to log in once a day as I have met some of the best people I have ever come across in many MMOs I have played, but sadly, the game has become so boring that I struggle to stay online.

    Pros: Community. Personally I feel the player base is decent and after playing for a few months I    I have played this game from launch till now, and I must say my interest in this game is fading. I do try to log in once a day as I have met some of the best people I have ever come across in many MMOs I have played, but sadly, the game has become so boring that I struggle to stay online.

    Pros:
    Community. Personally I feel the player base is decent and after playing for a few months I have yet to come across a really annoying player. Zone chat can go a bit viral but it is nothing like other MMOs.

    Less elitism. Most players look the same and their gears look pretty much the same. No fancy exclusive mounts or rainbow coloured weapons (yet) mean you can kind of relax. Noone is standing behind you trying to inspect you either.

    No UI overload and more immersive gameplay. They really tried to keep the UI minimalistic. It took me a while to get used to, but I do feel it helped me become immersed in the game environment.

    Cons:
    You can't actually play whatever the way you like, as classes are very unbalanced and some skills have little or no synergy. There are some cookie-cutter skills that are clearly superior to others in most situations, and this has discouraged me from trying out different play style.

    Having only 5 skills on the action bar and having to weapon swap feel so limiting and not fun at all.

    Dungeons lack charms or characteristics, and most boss fights are simply tedious while others will just one shot you. There is nothing in between. Non veteran dungeons are not rewarding at all and players are not seeing enough intensives to actually repeat a run, which resulted in lack of people wanting to do a pick up group run.

    Cyrodill (PVP area) is so sparse and empty, you will really need to be patient to actually get to the action. You will most likely spend a lot of time running around trying to get from A to B.

    The bugs. They are simply never ending. I cannot believe that after all the maintenance they had, there are still some crippling bugs that really affect the game play. For example, when you form a group, the game will randomly select you as a group leader, or worse, it will get rid of the leader right from everyone. The result is having to disband the group and trying to reform, hoping that it will work again. There are also numerous bugs within the dungeons that are so infuriating.

    Trading system. It is simply not working. As the guild shop is close to being useless (it is extremely buggy and slow, and you can't even search a specific item), players are forced to use the zone chat to trade.

    Questing is repetitive and predictable. While they managed to avoid the typical fetch or kill type quests, they are still extremely boring. Most of the time you will have to run around to talk to NPCs to find out that there was a betrayal or murder of some sort, then you will be sent to kill the bad guy in the crypt or somewhere similar. Or you will be running around activating some ward or shards to enter a portal. It was interesting in the beginning, but it quickly became old.

    Overall, this was a major disappointment for me and I could only hope that they will either add a good amount of new contents or attempt an overhaul (unlikely).    … Expand
  7. JoshLuck1995
    Jun 9, 2015
    4
    Got this through today, the update took about 40 minutes, it all depends on your internet service, thats nothing to do with the dev.

    But for the game it self, it is poor, i really love the elder scrolls series and i think thats what the problem is, i just doesnt feel like a elder scrolls game therefore producing a feeling of dissapointment, so i tried to look past that and see it for    Got this through today, the update took about 40 minutes, it all depends on your internet service, thats nothing to do with the dev.

    But for the game it self, it is poor, i really love the elder scrolls series and i think thats what the problem is, i just doesnt feel like a elder scrolls game therefore producing a feeling of dissapointment, so i tried to look past that and see it for what it is but it still feels like a let down, the story so far is pretty pants, the gameplay is boring, and it comes across as complete chaos when it comes to interaction with real world players, its just complete chaos, people running about like headless chickens, trying to tea bag you, starting fights with guards who then start on you.

    I now have an issue where i am in Daggerfall and a real world player started a fight with a guard and the guard then attacked me and it placed a bounty on my head as it thought i was the criminal, this was early into the game. it just all feels so chaotic. No structure or enjoyment so far what so ever.    … Expand
  8. XYLUM
    Jul 20, 2014
    4
    I will start out by saying that I think the immersion and "feel" of Oblivion is far more engaging then ESO.

    I know ESO is an MMO , but my experience in ESO was like a single player MMO , where you use the group tool to find a few people to run through the dungeons with every so often because you're completely bored of running around for hours doing handfuls of mostly bland and boring    I will start out by saying that I think the immersion and "feel" of Oblivion is far more engaging then ESO.

    I know ESO is an MMO , but my experience in ESO was like a single player MMO , where you use the group tool to find a few people to run through the dungeons with every so often because you're completely bored of running around for hours doing handfuls of mostly bland and boring quests for NPC's that are just as bland and boring.

    Most of the quests are thinly veiled "fetch" quests where you run....and run, for a few seconds until you are out of stamina, then you walk... and walk, and walk and gather x number of goblin toes or whatever.... then you run, and walk, and walk, and walk some more to go back and "turn in" the quest and get your unimpressive rewards...

    At it's core ESO is a RPG... or at least it's supposed to be, but it doesn't do a very good job of it.... my character seemed like just some random sword swinging errand boy, that runs and runs and runs, and walks and walks, and kills whatever is between him and the goblin ears he needs to complete his current yawn inspiring quest.

    I bought ESO a couple weeks ago, before it was available on Steam, had to pay $60+ for it... and while the game looks beautiful, it feels shallow, the characters and quests feel hollow.

    Inside of 2 days I found myself skipping all the conversations, and skipping through the lore... being annoyed at the massive amount of running that seemed suspiciously like I was being compelled to break out some more cash to buy a horse... A horse that even at level 20 I am nowhere near where I would need to be in terms of gold to be able to buy with in game currency.

    The tight storage capacity, and the excessive cost of expanding it was also dubious and felt kind of like a way burn up every last little bit of gold you can scrounge up by adventuring. So that you might come to the conclusion that it would just be easier to break out your wallet, so you can actually get to the fun part.... that is, even then, elusive, I'm sure.

    I was completely turned off by the whole running out of inventory space every 40 minutes or so, then needing to travel across the continent to dismantle the unimpressive spoils of adventure that I had accumulated, into raw materials, so that I could sell some off to pay for more storage space to stockpile the rest of it, in hopes that one day I would be able to craft it into something useful.

    The game has beautiful graphics and environments.... that are full of boring, "been there, done that" quests and endless time sinks and gold traps.

    The objective of the game, from the company's perspective... is to keep you on an endless hamster wheel of chasing gold and materials.... it's meant to keep you broke...in game and out, and to burn up as much time without progress as possible, so you don't make it to "end game" territory (which there is next to none of) without paying for at least a couple months worth of subscription fees first.

    And while it is doing that, it makes life hard in terms of travel and inventory management on anyone that is not willing to break out their wallet and spend.

    It just seemed like the time I spent playing ESO was highlighted more by disappointment and regret for the purchase then it was by a good gaming experience.

    It feels like the loyal fans and followers of The Elder Scroll series are being extorted with ESO... it's a blatant, unapologetic cash grab.

    A full price premium purchase, with a monthly subscription... AND micro transactions... in a game designed to burn up time for the sake of holding you hostage until after your next months subscription is paid... No thanks. I canceled my subscription today, still have another 10 or 12 days left on my "free" month, I doubt very seriously that I will be logging in anymore though.

    I guess the rest of the gaming community is already starting to make their displeasure known as well, since ESO is on sale via steam at 50% off right now. Another insult to those that have paid full price recently.

    I imagine the announcement that they are dropping the subscription fees isn't too far off either, and when that happens maybe I'll log back in again and take another look, maybe the devs will stop focusing so hard on their customers wallets and focus on fixing the quests that were broken and impossible to complete for the entire month that I played their game, or should I say GOT played BY their game.

    I am not against companies making money, even copious amounts of it, but don't be greedy . Produce a great game and people will spend money for DLC, expansions, in game items, etc, etc...

    But if they keep demanding money from them while simultaneously letting them down and making them feel taken advantage of.... this game will be free to play before you can say dungeons and dragons online.    … Expand
  9. R3DTHR3AT
    Dec 17, 2020
    4
    Очень слабая мморпг с отсутствием мотивации как в пвп и пве. По сути не мморпг вовсе, что в итоге признали и сами разработчики.
  10. dwgr8ergolfer
    Aug 31, 2014
    4
    You can't go from Skyrim to Elder Scrolls Online.... Bethesda and Zenimax dropped the ball on this one. This game had so much potential to be great but Zenimax and Bethesda clearly did not test it nearly enough and just released a game that just doesn't feel good to play.
  11. Big_Bear
    Nov 26, 2014
    4
    A huge disappointment. DO NOT believe any of the positive 10/10 reviews, they are complete bs. You could judge this game as either an ES game, an MMO or even both, but regardless of what you decide this game is, the fact is that it is very poor.

    Like most devoted ES fans, I was very excited about this game, but unfortunately, we haven't been given an ES game, only another poor generic    A huge disappointment. DO NOT believe any of the positive 10/10 reviews, they are complete bs. You could judge this game as either an ES game, an MMO or even both, but regardless of what you decide this game is, the fact is that it is very poor.

    Like most devoted ES fans, I was very excited about this game, but unfortunately, we haven't been given an ES game, only another poor generic WoW clone set in Tamriel.

    Good - Graphics are decent, the increased scale makes cities feel more like actual cities than ES games like Skyrim etc. Character creation is decent and the concept of crafting is good; the idea of crafting multiple sets of the same level gear but differing in appearance depending on faction style really should have been in every scrolls game.

    Bad - as with all MMO's, the role playing element is extremely diluted to the point that it doesn't feel like an RPG at all. The map is unremarkable and generic; ES fans should be loving the fact of seeing mainland Morrowind for the first time but it has nowhere near the impact of the offline scrolls games areas like Skyrim or Oblivion, its just meh. The combat sucks.

    Verdict - Once again an MMO developer has been too afraid to create a unique game and has tried to copy much of WoW in order to steal some of their fan base. What they should have done was appeal to ES fans instead and give us another great scrolls game instead of this mess. 4/10 at best.    … Expand
  12. Jeeves
    Dec 29, 2014
    4
    Elder Scrolls Online(ESO) represents one of the biggest disappointments of 2014 and one of the biggest wasted opportunities in gaming history. Take the expansive world of Tamriel combined with open ended game play that The Elder Scrolls usually affords and add in massively multiplayer so you can share the world with others, sounds like a winning combination yes? Prepare for utterElder Scrolls Online(ESO) represents one of the biggest disappointments of 2014 and one of the biggest wasted opportunities in gaming history. Take the expansive world of Tamriel combined with open ended game play that The Elder Scrolls usually affords and add in massively multiplayer so you can share the world with others, sounds like a winning combination yes? Prepare for utter disappointment.

    The game world is huge and at times beautiful and yet is let down by bog standard theme park mmo design. The game was in very bad shape at release and while many bugs have been squished since then, there are still MAJOR issues with lag, abilities, weapon swapping and general game performance. There are so many changes happening to the game at the moment that endgame is not worth playing and the games developers are so incompetent that any issues they fix several more are implemented. It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion.
    Current endgame players face losing several months worth of character progress as the developers scramble to change the poorly received veteran system and implement a new champion leveling system that looks to change very little of the games current imbalance and seemingly impenetrable wall of leveling.
    Zenimmax Online Studios will go down as being one of the most incompetent development studios with an extremely poor relationship with their playing customers.    … Expand
  13. magnusnet
    Jan 5, 2015
    4
    This game was suposed to be the next big thing: It wasn't.

    I've been playing the game since early beta, Fan of TES franchise since Morrowind, I've sadly seen the decline and the dumbing down of the franchise, at first in Oblivion (which was still extremely enjoyable) and afterwards in Skyrim where the game was dumbed down enough to apeal to the console crowd and thus making millions and    This game was suposed to be the next big thing: It wasn't.

    I've been playing the game since early beta, Fan of TES franchise since Morrowind, I've sadly seen the decline and the dumbing down of the franchise, at first in Oblivion (which was still extremely enjoyable) and afterwards in Skyrim where the game was dumbed down enough to apeal to the console crowd and thus making millions and putting to light a sad fact about nowadays gaming: The easier and dumber it gets, the more people will like it.

    The Elder Scrolls online takes the same path as Skyrim, taking it to a whole new level in the desperate attemmpt to make the franchise popular and as available to the maximum amount of players possible thus diminishing the quality of the game.

    The game itself is extremely easy to play. You can only use a maximum of 5 skills at the same time, cookie cutter builds are easy to obtain and easy to use (some people still manage to suck big time at the game though, don't worry). End game content was unexistant at launch and there are now 3 12 people raids as well as 1 4 people raid for end gamers to be "entertained". Any seasoned MMO player will have an extremely easy time playing this game and will also likely leave it quickly when he realizes that the game rewards never match the difficulty nor the effort put into the encounter.

    Zenimax Online Sutdios itself as a company is a joke. Don't get me wrong, the people working there are awesome and really feel pationnate about the game which is why I'm still playing it, but the people making the decisions must be complete **** with no sense of Public Relations and/or Custommer Relations, they keep making game changing/game breaking patches and have NEVER EVER made any gesture towards their player base in order to compensate them for all the changes they make and all the time that is lost by the players who worked towards goals that end up disapearing.

    After 8 months of running, the game is virtually rebooting, Zenimax is calling it Elder Scrolls 2.0. Imagine Final Fantasy XIV had kept milking their player base during 9 months instead of closing the game and relaunching and you'd have a better understanding of what is going on in the game. The players who where at end game where cheated by Zenimax to continue playing since the company claimed their advancement would be tracked and that the new system would reward the players accordingly so that they woudln't loose advancement, but it was a lie. The advancement was tracked but during the reboot, the company is simply planing to put all the players at the same level regardless of their advancement (and this is not the first time they do this). The worst part of it is that the implemented system actually helps players who haven't cleared late game content to advance faster than players who are at end game thus giving them an advantage over dedicated players.

    Despite all this, the new system actually looks good, it's just a shame that the company behind the game and the people making the decisions care so little about their PC players who are just beta testing the console release where they plan to make millions like they did with Skyrim. When you look at games with much bigger infrastructure issues like League Of Legends, there allways is a lot of rage towards the company when the game isn't working but Riot Games at least tries to make it up to it's players most of the time, ZOS isn't about that, they are about money.

    This game was suposed to be the next big thing, it might still be with the new update, I'm hoping it will since I'm still here, still paying, still believing in it, but the company behind it is probably one of the worst if not the worst in the MMOG industry...    … Expand
  14. Termin8ter
    May 27, 2015
    4
    This is a huge disappointment for the elder scrolls franchise. Skyrim and Oblivion were so good, but stupid Zenimax online decided to take a dump on the franchise. Elder Scrolls Online is over hyped, laggy , glitchy and just plain awful. the only good thing about this horrible game is the soundtrack. So disappointing. *sobs*
  15. drusmanbashir
    Nov 15, 2020
    4
    This game is the video game versioh of a clickbait.. the trailers will show you amazing visuals and paint a picture of an immersive adventure with danger lurking in every corner, super-powers etc.. whereas in reality this is a vast traipse through a landscape filled with monotonous battles - nothing new here from Bethesda which has never disappointed to disappoint. If you're into visualsThis game is the video game versioh of a clickbait.. the trailers will show you amazing visuals and paint a picture of an immersive adventure with danger lurking in every corner, super-powers etc.. whereas in reality this is a vast traipse through a landscape filled with monotonous battles - nothing new here from Bethesda which has never disappointed to disappoint. If you're into visuals and vistas exploring an open world, better pack your bag and go out in real-life. If you're looking for an immersive RPG with intelligent combat, play the Witcher3 or (the outdated) world of warcraft. I have been fooled by this games trailers several times and ended up buying several DLCs only to uninstall it an hour later.… Expand
  16. TobiasKen
    Oct 25, 2015
    4
    If you are looking for an MMO, sure - get this game. If you're looking for an Elder Scrolls game - you can forget about it. I'm not even going to bother giving this a normal review like I usually do. Let me just tell you that this is the worst in the Elder Scrolls Series. I know what you might be thinking - this is an MMO FIRST, then Elder Scrolls. But you can't call it Elder Scrolls whenIf you are looking for an MMO, sure - get this game. If you're looking for an Elder Scrolls game - you can forget about it. I'm not even going to bother giving this a normal review like I usually do. Let me just tell you that this is the worst in the Elder Scrolls Series. I know what you might be thinking - this is an MMO FIRST, then Elder Scrolls. But you can't call it Elder Scrolls when it simply isn't. It is lacking oh so much stuff, and wants you to buy DLC and crowns even after paying for the full game. You're even locked out of an ENTIRE RACE UNLESS YOU GIVE THEM MORE MONEY. Seriously, the combat is worse, you barely get anything out of looting people.

    If you're looking for an Elder Scrolls game, I repeat: DO. NOT. BUY. THIS. GAME.    … Expand
  17. muzmuz
    Apr 11, 2019
    4
    A 2014 game that looks and feels like a 2011 game. Feels even worse to play in 2019. Five years later and the game still looks like a visual bugs galore noticeable at the very first hour of gameplay. Did I forget to mention that this game doesn't have a single Asian server? I'm not a big fan of MMORPGs and Elder Scrolls Online definitely didn't help change that.
  18. Gaming_Bear
    Dec 27, 2022
    4
    I'll start of by admitting that I am not huge into MMOs, but this is game just feels so bland and empty. I came to this game because my friends and I all loved Skyrim, but literally all the elements of what made Skyrim great (the story, the detail of the setting, the beautiful music) are all not here. I am struggling to play this game. At lvl 8 and it all just feels meh.
  19. T-Babyboi
    Apr 7, 2020
    4
    I give it a 4 because I'm below indifference, I call it negative. Let me point out I enjoy the feel of combat, the world looks cool, it's awesome running around with the realization real people, maybe even a group of friends are there with you, but the kicker for me is this.
    The game I think could be played for what it is, spending hundreds of hours getting mostly everything you want out    I give it a 4 because I'm below indifference, I call it negative. Let me point out I enjoy the feel of combat, the world looks cool, it's awesome running around with the realization real people, maybe even a group of friends are there with you, but the kicker for me is this.
    The game I think could be played for what it is, spending hundreds of hours getting mostly everything you want out of the game with very little real money besides base game and maybe major DLC, what phucks my brain is being in a game with options for the indulgencies such as housing, furniture, dyes and more.......only to find out that **** is blocked up behind a formitable grind wall, one so high it is designed, obviously to make you pay for it all.
    Housing things like an in house banker, crafting stations, must be purchased from grind gold or crowns, one phucking the other because both are designed to prevent one or the other.... Making it a loop of mediocrity and tedious trash.
    Idk about anyone else, but when I sit down to play a game in the back of my mind I need to know everything will be accessible to me within a reasonable accomplishment accommodation., otherwise the whole story is mucked with the background noise.... CROWNS.
    It is truly pathetic, the world as we know it cannot function without micro transactions and little schemes, so much time wasted for so little gained.
    I know it's as pathetic I sit here and rant over time lost, expectations let down with general mediocrity, I should move on and not even give this the time of day... And you're right, but I'm so at loss with how ****ty the silver lining of this world really is, I'm better off just **** until I'm dead.    … Expand
  20. Mizuiro
    Jul 22, 2023
    4
    Mediocre MMORPG not because of graphics ( that are bad and boring style by the way) but because of so POOR and boring gameplay mechanics.

    Not even worth it as a free game. An example of how to ruin a great game ( Skyrim , Oblivion, ..) because of not following their main mechanics.

    Also the people everywhere doing the same "unic" quests ruins the atmosphere of "you are the chosen one"..
  21. Capellini
    Feb 23, 2022
    4
    the story is **** didnt understand wtf was happening, i was planing a heist and for some reason i was on a ship traveling the world? dialog is garbage and I could not even find the main story after 10h of pure gameplay. there is just a bunch of things trown at you at the same time and a **** ton of menus, nothing like the single player games and also nothing like other mmos, i dont no ifthe story is **** didnt understand wtf was happening, i was planing a heist and for some reason i was on a ship traveling the world? dialog is garbage and I could not even find the main story after 10h of pure gameplay. there is just a bunch of things trown at you at the same time and a **** ton of menus, nothing like the single player games and also nothing like other mmos, i dont no if there are guilds cause i also could not find apparently race or politics dosnt mean anything and no clear instruction. wanted my money back but just the firsts quest already took more than 2h. Also couldn't find any battles that took affort or at least a friend. I dont know how but gtao is better than this ****… Expand
  22. JackPlack
    Feb 11, 2022
    4
    Too much worse than Skyrim, to boring. Too much reading/skipping dialogues. When skipping whole game is too pointless. Level up system unsatisfying. Ai of mobs to much MMO like. Not much graphics/details, Skyrim is still better, a specially with mods.
  23. sealkv
    Nov 29, 2021
    4
    When I bought ESO , nobody no warned me that in this reality I would be attacked by cretins and trolls, who cause healthy irritation in any normal living person, with their defiant behavior. I'm talking about ostentatious idiocy and trolling. Bethesda not doing anything to put an end to this all these 7 years this ESO has existed. More worse. ZOS( ZeniMax Support) help the scoundrels andWhen I bought ESO , nobody no warned me that in this reality I would be attacked by cretins and trolls, who cause healthy irritation in any normal living person, with their defiant behavior. I'm talking about ostentatious idiocy and trolling. Bethesda not doing anything to put an end to this all these 7 years this ESO has existed. More worse. ZOS( ZeniMax Support) help the scoundrels and trolls when they provoke players to respond and write denunciations about them. And ZOS employees receive their money for blocking game accounts due to the fact that some player said something personally in a private chat to some other player. It is enough to tell the troll in the game that he is a troll, and ZOS immediately block the game account of the one who was not afraid to say out loud what is obvious. This is stealing. If ZOS block game account, they DO NOT RETURN your money. What is the connection between the money paid for the game and a private conversation between two adults in a private chat? I pay $ 500 when buying this product 18+ and lose it due to provocation and trolling. This is how they steal money from people. ZOS wrote a letter to me(automatic mailing robot in response to my complaint about trolling by another player) the following: "If another player said something bad to you (in your opinion), you can add it to the ignore list. If you see harsh words, turn on the automatic blocking of swear words in the game." ZOS made it clear to me that this is how they solve these problems. When I write to ZOS a complaint about the actual trolling in ESO, they send me a spit in my face. ZOS send me a robot letter, where they give advice on how to behave with moral monsters and scum.
    ZOS help the trolls in ESO, that's why they hide their names and positions in ZeniMax because they are afraid to meet me on the street one on one, where they will have to return the money that ZeniMax stole from me when blocked my paid account, just for the fact that I expressed my dissatisfaction with the fact that ESO is propagating abomination. I am sure that ZOS are trolling this game themselves in order to provide themselves with a "job". ZeniMax security service is committed to eliminating threats to "business". And the threat to business is public voice over what you do. And when I say out loud that Bethesda are creating problems in this MMO, ZOS began to fight me. Roughly and effectively, they set provocateurs trolls on me. This happens in ZeniMax "Official Forum". This happens in ESO.
    ZeniMax has created an MMO(product and services on the Internet) that promotes perversions and pathology. Necrophilia,satanism,sexual perversions,drugs. Their bosses receive orders from politicians to reduce the population on Earth. They kill people, kill the health of their soul and mind. What I mean? Here's a simple example. You have made it possible in this game when a player puts on the outer shell of a corpse, and in this form is in the reality of the game among other players. This is a product from in-game Store, the name of this product is Skeleton Polymorph outer shell. There are many such examples. "Scary Clown" shell, or Mount "Rainbow Unicorn", and many others, this is a monstrous abomination created by and for devils anti-humans.
    I am a healthy adult, raised in a traditional strict family, in the correct religious and moral traditions. And I openly say that Bethesda are creating a product that can only please psychopaths and freaks who are actively trying to change this world, making it as ugly and scary as they are. In fact, they create the conflict situations yourself in this game. This is an MMO game. Players kill each other here. All know that. This means ESO is bought by those who want to kill people. That's why they came here.
    Here's what's going on. I meet in the game location another player who has put on a suit of a rotten corpse. Yes. These are the kind of players that walk in your game. And ZeniMax call it "Halloween Party". What kind of holiday is this? It is an abomination that causes anger and nausea, it is a walking corpse, it is a spit in the face of Nature and God. And my normal reaction to that is to destroy this abomination. But they have calculated it all in advance. This is provocation. They have deliberately created this situation. They know perfectly well that walking corpses are an abomination that causes hatred among normal people. And they deliberately create this to incite hatred and conflict in ESO. And when this happens, ZeniMax takes the side of the devils, and block the normal person's game account. I already wrote a letter to Bethesda about this. They are waging a war against normal people. They have created a "troll factory", ESO is a garbage dump, a ghetto for drug addicts, maniacs and freaks and other evil spirits, this is a stinking grave.
    The Bible says, "Judge the tree by its fruit." Judge a person by his actions. So who are Bethesda if these are their actions?    … Expand
  24. Giero
    Jan 3, 2023
    4
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  25. Nyurena
    Jun 3, 2014
    3
    The Good:
    Crafting is fairly easy to pick up and you are not limited in number of professions.
    A world that is quite nice to look at, but fairly hollow if you try to look too deep. Well, at least it was fun to see some Kahjit culture. The leveling system has some good freeform ideas that would be a fun Mod in Skyrim/Oblivion/Morrowind, but the game feels like a cheap cash-in to    The Good:
    Crafting is fairly easy to pick up and you are not limited in number of professions.
    A world that is quite nice to look at, but fairly hollow if you try to look too deep.
    Well, at least it was fun to see some Kahjit culture.
    The leveling system has some good freeform ideas that would be a fun Mod in Skyrim/Oblivion/Morrowind, but the game feels like a cheap cash-in to exploit long time fans of the series.

    The Bad:
    The dungeons are terrible! About 90% of the bosses had 10-20 people swinging at the air over the piles of dead boss and you had better join them if you want to land a hit on the respawn.
    You must compete with other players for chests and many other items, so if you fail your lockpick, then the next person spam clicking “E” on it will jump in your place.
    SPAMBOTSPAMBOTSSPAMBOTSMORESPAMBOTS. (You can’t read anything in chat unless you install a MOD to stop it or only use guild/party chat.)

    IMO:
    They could have taken a great many hints from Guild Wars 2 and made the PVE a fun and cooperative experience, but the other players in this game will only function to steal your thunder as a hero or just steal the loot chest you’ve been working on.

    I absolutely can’t recommend this game to an Elder Scrolls fan OR a basic MMO fan.
    What a waste…    … Expand
  26. Phoenixxl
    Jul 28, 2014
    3
    I played Until Veteran 4.

    Combat system is MEH. Archaic class mix and match system where 75% of people end up being useless in a group . Healers are forced to rely on the AI to know who to heal and ward. You can't select the main tank and heal him for example. There are no true power siphon classes, hybridization is forced on you. Loot / reward system is mediocre and generic. Randomly    I played Until Veteran 4.

    Combat system is MEH. Archaic class mix and match system where 75% of people end up being useless in a group . Healers are forced to rely on the AI to know who to heal and ward. You can't select the main tank and heal him for example. There are no true power siphon classes, hybridization is forced on you.
    Loot / reward system is mediocre and generic. Randomly generated loot was past it's prime even in diablo 2.
    The game engine is simply bad and passé. 50% of what made the last 3 TES games was the engine. This is not one of those games. Period.
    Definite lack of raiding.

    Positive:
    A new and fresh approach to multiplayer pvp in the form of tower/castle capturing.    … Expand
  27. HEISTT
    Apr 5, 2014
    3
    While being a decent MMO to spent some time on, they are using a shady payment model. You do NOT get 30 days of free gametime if you do not have access to a credit card. People without credit cards need to pay another 15 bucks for the second month of subscription to actually active their game product! As I am not able to fund the second month, I cannot claim the game and gametime I paidWhile being a decent MMO to spent some time on, they are using a shady payment model. You do NOT get 30 days of free gametime if you do not have access to a credit card. People without credit cards need to pay another 15 bucks for the second month of subscription to actually active their game product! As I am not able to fund the second month, I cannot claim the game and gametime I paid for. Support department is not helpful either, their messages do not really answer the question at hand and they are just relaying standardized messages. For anyone without a credit card: avoid this company.… Expand
  28. Kitruck
    Apr 8, 2014
    3
    Prácticamente falla en todo. Debería haber sido un Skyrim pero masivo, mismo tipo de misiones, cazas de dragones y otros monstruos en raid, aventuras cooperativas en grupo, etc.
    Pero en lugar de eso, es un MMO que prácticamente falla en todo. Resulta repetitivo, y lo que más debería divertir en un MMO, explorar, te aburre increiblemente cuando llevas un par de horas jugando. Tiene una    Prácticamente falla en todo. Debería haber sido un Skyrim pero masivo, mismo tipo de misiones, cazas de dragones y otros monstruos en raid, aventuras cooperativas en grupo, etc.
    Pero en lugar de eso, es un MMO que prácticamente falla en todo. Resulta repetitivo, y lo que más debería divertir en un MMO, explorar, te aburre increiblemente cuando llevas un par de horas jugando. Tiene una interfaz muy poco intuitiva, unos gráficos peor que su antecesor, y desde luego se aleja mucho de ser un Elder Scrolls.
    Sin duda el juego merece un pago inicial de 40/50 €, pero NUNCA una suscripción. Dentro de unos meses cuando la gente se haya ido, porque se irá, y lo pongan gratis, quizá juegue, mientras no me aburra...    … Expand
  29. krammerlock
    Apr 6, 2014
    3
    It is a huge disappointment. They changed what worked in Skyrim and did not change what did not work. The game is unbalanced, graphics are average at best, combat is boring, stealth is meaningless, and skills are limited. I am playing as a high elf sorcerer and it is a weak character. No good AOE and no meaningful control spells at all. Early in the game any 2 enemies can take you down.It is a huge disappointment. They changed what worked in Skyrim and did not change what did not work. The game is unbalanced, graphics are average at best, combat is boring, stealth is meaningless, and skills are limited. I am playing as a high elf sorcerer and it is a weak character. No good AOE and no meaningful control spells at all. Early in the game any 2 enemies can take you down. Don't bother joining the fighters guild as the first quest line is not possible with a sorcerer. In Skyrim stealth was a real advantage and one can argue the most powerful combat tactic in the game. In ESO it is meaningless. In Skyrim I could learn any spell but in ESO I am constrained to the ones they assign my character. This makes Sorcerer both boring and needlessly hard to play. In Skyrim you could sell almost anything for some gold, but in ESO many things are set to 0 value, even though they may be valuable. In Skyrim you have a much larger inventory than ESO, which is very small especially considering the wide range and number of things you need to collect. The skill tree in Skyrim was the best feature of the game, but in ESO it is gone. Groups do not work like those in any other MMORPG and not for the better. Some quests are so crowded with participants that you can complete them just by standing around. ESO go play a good game like Neverwitner on-line and make some major changes please.… Expand
  30. Ananisapta
    May 9, 2014
    3
    I started WoW in 2005 and since then have played LotRO and GW2. I played Skyrim with all the DLC for about 600 hours. Before that I ran through Oblivion a couple of times. I've also played several of the Fallout series. I'm sorry to say that The Elder Scrolls Online is the low point of this series.

    This game is EXTREMELY BUGGY and the quest difficulty is absurdly unpredictable. This    I started WoW in 2005 and since then have played LotRO and GW2. I played Skyrim with all the DLC for about 600 hours. Before that I ran through Oblivion a couple of times. I've also played several of the Fallout series. I'm sorry to say that The Elder Scrolls Online is the low point of this series.

    This game is EXTREMELY BUGGY and the quest difficulty is absurdly unpredictable. This especially applies to the 'main story' quests. The player economy is broken, making crafting a waste of time. Voice acting ranges bizarrely from very good to very poor. Animations range from good to fair. Scenery has repetitive elements and lacks real artistic flair. Especially bizarre is instance play. Most instances are public, including most of those labeled as 'solo dungeons'. That robs them of all difficulty when other players are nearby. It's very strange to see other players in instances where the story line suggests you are uniquely able to overcome a certain challenge. Often these other players will have carbon copies of the same 'unique' npc who is trailing you around. Occasionally you'll meet an unbeatable boss in a true solo instance that will hold you back as much as ten levels. Often you'll be defeated by buggy combat mechanics -- like, you knock-back a boss who passes through the scenery and then resets the entire fight, or even refuses to engage you after that so you have to abandon the quest or reboot the game to progress.

    It's a crying shame that such a promising series leads experienced players into positions of extreme frustration with such frequency.    … Expand
  31. Terminal-Rex
    Jul 21, 2014
    3
    Following TESO since its original announcement, i was pretty excited when I finally got to sit down and play. I loaded in and the character creation was a fantastic first step in the game, however from there things gradually go downhill. The first thing you notice is that the graphics have been dramatically downgraded (in terms of skyrim), for obvious reasons, being that it is an mmo, thisFollowing TESO since its original announcement, i was pretty excited when I finally got to sit down and play. I loaded in and the character creation was a fantastic first step in the game, however from there things gradually go downhill. The first thing you notice is that the graphics have been dramatically downgraded (in terms of skyrim), for obvious reasons, being that it is an mmo, this is not such a big problem, however a lot of the animations are also poor, which almost emphasise the fact that the graphics are no skyrim and also the fact that you are now playing an mmo. A lot of people will tell you this game is very different from most MMOs, it is not. The same core principles apply to this as to most other MMOs on the market albeit it has a slighlty different look. However one most important things for an MMO to get right, questing, feels hollow and unimmerssive. The biggest problem I have with TESOs questing is that for an MMO the Multiplayer and Co-operative elements are somewhat lacking. If you decide to do a quest you can follow your own path, but as soon as you try teaming up with friends the quest is not shared, unlike for example guild wars where you group up and alll get the same cut-scenes ect ect, This means that you can take the same quest logs but it never really feels like you have teamed up with friend morte like you are playing a single player game whilst your friends also play a single player game at the same moment. The when you are questing alone often you run through rooms which are already being cleared out by other players making your role in the quest utterly pointless, it makes the game completely unimmersive and frankly a little bit boring.

    My verdict is that TESO is no skyrim if you want the skyrim experence buy skyrim, which is a fantastic game. =
    - If you want an online version of Skyrim, this is not the game, it will leave you feeling utterly disappointed as the graphics are worse, the animations are terrible, its unimerssive, the controls are worse, every aspect of the game is a downgrade on Skyrim.
    +(However)+
    - If you want a decent MMO this is also not the game for you, it is sub-par at best, especially in comaprison to other MMOs currently on the market. Some feature seem pretty cool at first glance but in actual fact they are pretty gimmicky and add nothing to the overall experence. It is also a very expensive game in terms of base price and the per month cost compared to some much better MMOs and most importantly it lacks the core multiplayer gameplay that MMOs are supposed to offer.

    This is a game that can surely only dissapoint two target audiences, MMO gamers and Skyrim fans.    … Expand
  32. izazael
    Nov 7, 2014
    3
    Great visuals, great score, and it's fantastic to be able to play in the various areas of Tamriel... I just wish it wasn't released unfinished, buggy, unbalanced, and essentially still a beta game. Every update fixes some seriously broken mechanics and usually seriously breaks a bunch of others. Paying $15/month for a game that doesn't remotely feel complete is an insult.

    I never    Great visuals, great score, and it's fantastic to be able to play in the various areas of Tamriel... I just wish it wasn't released unfinished, buggy, unbalanced, and essentially still a beta game. Every update fixes some seriously broken mechanics and usually seriously breaks a bunch of others. Paying $15/month for a game that doesn't remotely feel complete is an insult.

    I never thought I'd say this, but: unless this becomes F2P, I won't be playing it again.    … Expand
  33. Ceridwen8
    Jun 1, 2014
    3
    I played this through beta & briefly, into live. I don't have a lot to add to the criticism, except to say I found no reason to actually play this mmo. If it's aimed at PvP mainly, I wasn't aware of that when I bought the game, & I had read enough to believe the ES world & story would be paramount. It isn't. The play style itself is awkward & irritating, the races basicallyI played this through beta & briefly, into live. I don't have a lot to add to the criticism, except to say I found no reason to actually play this mmo. If it's aimed at PvP mainly, I wasn't aware of that when I bought the game, & I had read enough to believe the ES world & story would be paramount. It isn't. The play style itself is awkward & irritating, the races basically interchangeable & for some reason, it's too easy to put your, say, High Elf among the Bretons. I'm not sure who they're catering to, but it isn't people who loved Skyrim.

    We already have mmos that cater to PvP, to raids - and I found *nothing* in ESO that offers something new, improved or unique. It's a step back in many ways - shared nodes, cooperative play, character personal story. After trying this, I cycled back through the old mmos I'd played, & depending on your taste, each one offers something unavailable in ESO.    … Expand
  34. ginnk
    May 4, 2014
    3
    Poor Elder Scroll Licence! This game is purely and simply bad! It's not an Elder Scroll game and not an MMO game, a bad mix of them. Pity.
    This game is not playable alone, if you want to level up , you could do this easily till level 7- After, if you wish to play alone, you have to stop the game, you'll can't do it - it becomes very hard to make XP ( 2 days to go to lvl 8, playing 8 hours    Poor Elder Scroll Licence! This game is purely and simply bad! It's not an Elder Scroll game and not an MMO game, a bad mix of them. Pity.
    This game is not playable alone, if you want to level up , you could do this easily till level 7- After, if you wish to play alone, you have to stop the game, you'll can't do it - it becomes very hard to make XP ( 2 days to go to lvl 8, playing 8 hours a day! That's purely inbelievable) Craft system is so ...bizarre - And there are still yet so much graphical bugs! (ressources dissapear just before you can collect them!) and fight are very frustrated, press on keyboard to escape doesn't work all time - sometimes yes, sometimes no... Then you die often - Very desappointing. Well, I go back to GW2, best solo playable MMO ever!    … Expand
  35. Doctor-J
    Oct 2, 2014
    3
    This game is not an Elder Scrolls Game! It is not! It defiles all Elder Scrolls history, it's an average MMO that steals the name along with our money; It has huge maps, but it charges 20 dollars for a horse so you can move through it, since running is totally impossible for people who work and have little time to play. Shame on you Bethesda!! Shame on you for letting this game happen!This game is not an Elder Scrolls Game! It is not! It defiles all Elder Scrolls history, it's an average MMO that steals the name along with our money; It has huge maps, but it charges 20 dollars for a horse so you can move through it, since running is totally impossible for people who work and have little time to play. Shame on you Bethesda!! Shame on you for letting this game happen! There is no excuse for this game!… Expand
  36. matty_o
    May 14, 2014
    3
    You can't give this game 10. Or a 9 or anything above a 5. All the fanboys rating 10 are simply comparing it to WoW instead of Skyrim. No, Elder Scrolls fans deserve better. From the shockingly boring gameplay, to the horrendous group options, to the inability to correctly play coop in the same quest, to the removal of building/modding houses as well as the ability to interact with prettyYou can't give this game 10. Or a 9 or anything above a 5. All the fanboys rating 10 are simply comparing it to WoW instead of Skyrim. No, Elder Scrolls fans deserve better. From the shockingly boring gameplay, to the horrendous group options, to the inability to correctly play coop in the same quest, to the removal of building/modding houses as well as the ability to interact with pretty much anything other than an enemy/resources. The Elder Scrolls charm is long gone. Gold per kill is 1, max 2 even on a boss. Horses are anywhere from 20,000 upwards unless you BUY the Imperial race or the horse. This is a downright slap in the face after paying for the game in full as well as the monthly subscription!
    If you idiots want to keep comparing this game to WoW obviously it's better but it's no where close to what it should be. Definitely not worth $80. The ESO team was good enough to give me a refund, I suggest you all do the same. Wait till free to play rather.    … Expand
  37. Xonerix
    Jan 15, 2021
    3
    Garbage mmorpg, a very bad gimmick of Elder scrolls games. Nothing in the game is interesting enough to keep you playing for long.
    The world map is huge in ESO, but it's literally blueprint copy paste regions everywhere, if you fully completed at least 1 region, then you can count it as if you played the whole game.
    Even though PVE is not p2w, PVP is pay to win, because you can buy DLCs    Garbage mmorpg, a very bad gimmick of Elder scrolls games. Nothing in the game is interesting enough to keep you playing for long.
    The world map is huge in ESO, but it's literally blueprint copy paste regions everywhere, if you fully completed at least 1 region, then you can count it as if you played the whole game.
    Even though PVE is not p2w, PVP is pay to win, because you can buy DLCs that you can complete to gain more powerful skills to use in combat, which gives you unfair advantage over other people that didn't buy that specific DLC.    … Expand
  38. xveganroxx
    Apr 24, 2014
    3
    This is a painfully bad MMO that is skinned with excellent Elder Scrolls lore. The environment is pretty nice, the soundtrack is good, the art design is good if uninspired, and the voice acting ranges from cringeworthy to excellent. That's all the good stuff. Here's the bad: there's no active combat, there's no open exploration, and of course it's priced above every other MMO offeringThis is a painfully bad MMO that is skinned with excellent Elder Scrolls lore. The environment is pretty nice, the soundtrack is good, the art design is good if uninspired, and the voice acting ranges from cringeworthy to excellent. That's all the good stuff. Here's the bad: there's no active combat, there's no open exploration, and of course it's priced above every other MMO offering (game cost + subscription + cash shop). It will be free-to-play soon, which will bring in its own problems I'm sure, but I don't see any fixes for the lack of combat or exploration. If you ever shot an arrow into an enemy from a distance in Skyrim, don't expect anything like that here - you target an enemy and click, there is no aiming involved. You can't explore, either, since if you try to leave the area you're in you'll find the next area has much higher level mobs, so you have to grind, move on, grind, move on, etc. Also, the mob AI is laughable. Enemies don't attack you unless you're 5 feet away from them. There's limited instancing, so when you enter a dungeon everything is already dead and dozens of bots and other players are camping the spawns. This is a mess of an MMO that could only be recommended to masochists or people who are willing to put up with awful gameplay just to experience Elder Scrolls lore. I thought I was one of the latter, but it turns out that I'm not. I think anyone interested in this would be better off playing either WoW or Skyrim (or The Secret World, which has lots of its own problems but does what ESO tries to do in a much, much better way). Avoid this mess of a game.… Expand
  39. Tredent
    Apr 6, 2014
    3
    Often u get underleveled since quest system is badly done so you don't know where to go sometimes etc.
    Even when u do quest for ur same level some "boss" monsters is noway u could solo. Guess they dident look on other mmo's that much.
    Hopefully they patch the game and make it less buggy. Kinda boring to play right now.
  40. archanjo
    Mar 4, 2016
    3
    god this game is terrible.. where should i start with...ok lets see hmmm oh got it
    pros: has uninstall button
    cons : the rest

    so so so bad....i died a little inside
  41. Johan701
    May 1, 2014
    3
    It's a MMO game that ends up being played as a mediocre single player.
    It actually fails at keeping you willing to play it.
    The whole problem of this game has always been and still is, trying to combine the elder scrolls to a MMO environment, someone says they failed, someone says they did a great job, what i think is that they made a mixup that is barely decent in both aspects, the    It's a MMO game that ends up being played as a mediocre single player.
    It actually fails at keeping you willing to play it.

    The whole problem of this game has always been and still is, trying to combine the elder scrolls to a MMO environment, someone says they failed, someone says they did a great job, what i think is that they made a mixup that is barely decent in both aspects, the REAL PROBLEM, sadly is that you don't really want to have a barely decent mixup of these two things.
    That's why people always played single players immersive games and MMOs separetely.

    It lacks the depth and immersion of a real single player "elder scrolls" game. It's not really bad, they made a good effort trying to eliminate the usual mmo-like quests (kill 20 X, gather 15 Y) but they ended up being repetitive in other kind of stuffs(ghosts and dreams anyone?) and that ends up being boring anyway after a bit of time.

    What i found incredibly disapponting on the MMO aspect is the total lacking of game mechanics complexity. There are no builds, the are really no items to choose from.

    It seems like there is a lot of personalization of you character (many skill trees, strange combinations like mages in heavy armor with dual wield)... but it's not really personalization if you can revert that anytime and end up being able to do anything and to complete every single skill tree just by collecting all the skill points.

    When i heard some people from DAOC worked on it, i hoped to finally see a game where equipment wasn't just a dress piece with a color to measure his effectivness for your character.
    I believe i've never seen a mmo with such a dull and pointless equipment system. Crafting is almost useless, enchanting makes a 4/5 dmg difference from droppable glyphs. No personalization, no builds, no creativity involved even here. Nothing even close to resemble daoc really good equip-system.

    PvP is chaotic, the combat system feels strange and doesn't help you at all,.
    You pass all your time trying to understand what to do and where to go, but what happens is just 1 faction alternatively crushing another, forever and ever. You need to make a lot of walking to reach fights that always go entirely 1-way. with not even many people dying.

    Pvp rewards are just non-existent , you make pratically no exp points and after the first levels you advance in rank very slowly, even worse if you aren't in a group.

    Personally i think this mmo is just another useless hole in the water, it could have been an almost-decent single-player experience if he didn't require you so much time to level up and see the main quest ending.

    They tought naming Daoc and inserting a 3 realm RVR pvp system to think people would blindly come to play thing ignoring the fact that it's not 1/8 as deeply structured as daoc was in terms of equipment/builds/classes and setups.

    I mean, even comparing a game with 4 classes with one who had almost 30 different ones? come on...

    Also the 4-people parties are really bad and limitative.    … Expand
  42. Genelegasse
    Apr 21, 2014
    3
    Nothing to see here, fellas... nothing extremely special. It's a huge game! the quests are pretty poor and very spread out, they make a poor effort to explain anything to you of how the game works. So many bugs make it nearly unplayable me and my friends have been stuck in loading screens countless times makes you just want to log out. That's what i'd advise... logging out.
  43. RobertC
    Apr 11, 2014
    3
    Broken quests and dungeons might be overlooked. But, the vanishing banks is over the edge. Add to that the horrid customer service and, this is one to avoid until/if they get their act together. Really sad as, I was a huge fan up until release.
  44. floatingbumblee
    Apr 22, 2014
    3
    One third of TESO players who took the time to review it think it sucks.
    ONE THIRD!
    That's pretty damn sad. Personally each time I turn it back on it feels like i've picked the top off a scab just before it has healed. The "Critic" reviewers saying this game breaks new territory... i uh... really? THIS GAME IS A COOKIE CUTTER of EVERY OTHER MMO YOU HAVE EVER PLAYED only more    One third of TESO players who took the time to review it think it sucks.
    ONE THIRD!
    That's pretty damn sad.
    Personally each time I turn it back on it feels like i've picked the top off a scab just before it has healed.
    The "Critic" reviewers saying this game breaks new territory... i uh... really?
    THIS GAME IS A COOKIE CUTTER of EVERY OTHER MMO YOU HAVE EVER PLAYED only more infuriating because it feels like they spent all their resources on named actors when they could have spent it on fixing bugs and developing thrilling content and making a truely OPEN WORLD (where you can climb **** mountains and swim to OBLIVION if you want to... so annoying).
    Freetoplay FTW!!!!!! You lost me Betheduhyeah... i just dont get yous    … Expand
  45. mietha
    Apr 4, 2014
    3
    This game is the worst $60 I've spent in years. It's not even a bad WoW knock-off. It's more like a bad LOTRO knock-off. Don't believe the semi-hype and don't waste your money. There are many, better, completely free MMOs out there. The ENTIRE time I was playing, all I could think was "I'd rather be playing WoW" and I've not played WoW in years. The combat is a dumbed-down version ofThis game is the worst $60 I've spent in years. It's not even a bad WoW knock-off. It's more like a bad LOTRO knock-off. Don't believe the semi-hype and don't waste your money. There are many, better, completely free MMOs out there. The ENTIRE time I was playing, all I could think was "I'd rather be playing WoW" and I've not played WoW in years. The combat is a dumbed-down version of Age of Conan and every thing else is ripped from LOTRO, D & D Online, WoW, and a host of other games. The VERY few original ideas this game does have are unilaterally bad. Just don't do it.… Expand
  46. tgirgis
    Apr 12, 2014
    3
    If your into open world games like Skyrim, Stay away from this catastrophe. It's an awful SW:TOR clone if I ever did see one, and anyone who tells you otherwise is just trying to convince themselves that it's good.

    I'm amazed at the amount of lies on this page, I mean you can say you like it all you want, but when the word "immersion" gets thrown in, I know it's someone with so much    If your into open world games like Skyrim, Stay away from this catastrophe. It's an awful SW:TOR clone if I ever did see one, and anyone who tells you otherwise is just trying to convince themselves that it's good.

    I'm amazed at the amount of lies on this page, I mean you can say you like it all you want, but when the word "immersion" gets thrown in, I know it's someone with so much emotionally invested in this trash game that they will say anything to see it succeed. As stated by another poster, if you support this game you will be supporting the continued degradation of MMOs and games in general.    … Expand
  47. carsonnapier987
    May 10, 2014
    3
    TESO is as boring as WoW. Until one accumulates an obscene amount of cash the game play resembles a running simulator more than an RPG. The quests are go here, kill that, fetch this bring it back rinse and repeat. The Elder Scrolls immersed me in a world that afforded characters, quests and a storyline I cared about TESO not so much. I quit WoW when it started to remind me of work TESOTESO is as boring as WoW. Until one accumulates an obscene amount of cash the game play resembles a running simulator more than an RPG. The quests are go here, kill that, fetch this bring it back rinse and repeat. The Elder Scrolls immersed me in a world that afforded characters, quests and a storyline I cared about TESO not so much. I quit WoW when it started to remind me of work TESO is already becoming a chore. The graphics are ok but not comparable to PC versions of Skyrim. All in all I paid far too much for the game and the monthly fee adds insult to injury. This is a major disappointment for me.… Expand
  48. ElvenArcher
    Apr 27, 2014
    3
    not a good mmo or multiplayer game
    not a good tes or singleplayer experience
    it's not anything it is meant to be.
    but it is everything it's not meant to be.

    avoid it at all 'costs'... get it?
  49. InsidiaGaming
    Apr 9, 2014
    3
    First of all if you are going to compare this to WoW you are going to have a bad time. WoW has had nearly a decade to get things right, tweak things here and there to find out what works and what doesn't work.

    If you played the ESO beta you'll remember bugs in it (as you do in beta) and some of those bugs are still there. Several times now I've logged out in frustration because of quest    First of all if you are going to compare this to WoW you are going to have a bad time. WoW has had nearly a decade to get things right, tweak things here and there to find out what works and what doesn't work.

    If you played the ESO beta you'll remember bugs in it (as you do in beta) and some of those bugs are still there. Several times now I've logged out in frustration because of quest bugs (such as the boss is supposed to jump down from a balcony to fight you, and ends up getting stuck and floating in mid air). The game is riddled with bugs here and there, putting it simply you'll run into some form of bug probably every 10-15 minutes whether it be a graphics bug, npcs half fallen into the floor, npcs that are "stuck" in combat, audio bugs you name it. This is the main reason why i'm giving it a low score, harsh possibly for bugs but there are that many bugs and at the moment Elder Scrolls Online is flawed and is heading in the same direction as other MMO's. At this rate it'll be free to play in around 8-10 months just in time for everyone to stop playing anyway and play the next WoW expansion when it's released at the end of the year.

    People should not be paying 39.99 for a game, then 8.99 on top of that for a monthly subscription for a bug riddled game from what is meant to be a top studio.

    The graphics are nice, but I've failed to see anything that captures you like that of Skyrim.

    The combat system is buggy, at times I've had to re-position myself because my blade just kept going through the mob and not hitting it (although naturally it could hit me). Even as a caster it just doesn't feel right.

    Character Creation, nothing more than average. Not bad, but nothing special either with a load of wasted templates you'd never use.

    Conclusion: You are not missing anything and chances are you won't gain anything at present only a forever burning hole in your wallet. Big let down from Bethesda who should know better than this, they had the betas, they had the players for it, they had the feedback and it's still ****    … Expand
  50. zombiechan
    May 28, 2014
    3
    It wasn't the bugs that bothered me so much as it was that it was just not Elder Scrolls. I much rather of had a borderlands co-op for games like Morrowind and Skyrim. The combat was interesting and the questing was a little more interesting than most MMOs. But it just wasn't that great, and made me just want to play a real Elder Scrolls game.
  51. Iluvatar21
    May 5, 2014
    3
    ESO plays immersive but feels dull & lifeless. Biggest offense: uses the TES name. A singleplayer game cannot be an MMO & vice versa!
    ===========
    HOW I RATE: 10-9 score: perfect or near-perfect don't exist; 8 score: one of the best games ever. Top score; 7-6 score: great but not one of the best; 5-below score: serious flaws.
  52. TheHoboMan
    Apr 4, 2014
    3
    Bugged quests, clunky combat, bland environments, bland spell effects, clunky looking animations, bad voice acting, cookie cutter classes...the list of bad things in this game go on and on.

    I will give Bethesda a nod for making an attempt, but the game does not feel immersive at all. But I am disappointed that they would put out such a crap product. Some series are just not meant to    Bugged quests, clunky combat, bland environments, bland spell effects, clunky looking animations, bad voice acting, cookie cutter classes...the list of bad things in this game go on and on.

    I will give Bethesda a nod for making an attempt, but the game does not feel immersive at all. But I am disappointed that they would put out such a crap product.

    Some series are just not meant to be made into an MMO..    … Expand
  53. RonStuart
    Apr 4, 2014
    3
    I didn't like it either.Just another mmo exactly and costly too(i hate subscription).I think the game will have problems with userbase if they are going to charge for monthly subscription.After playing evvery Elder Scroll games from arena to Skyrim,it really don't deserve to be in the list.
  54. Deathmain
    Apr 5, 2014
    3
    Après Skyrim on pouvais s’attendre a du contenue et du graphisme au rendez-vous. Hors des graphisme terne, des map qui ce ressemble, des quêtes pas trop épique, un manque cruel d'information a l’écran pour un MMORPG, bref trop casual et surement trop orienter console..
    Bref il va surement faire parti de ces MMO qui s'orientation Free-To-Play rapidement car actuellement il y a un cruel    Après Skyrim on pouvais s’attendre a du contenue et du graphisme au rendez-vous. Hors des graphisme terne, des map qui ce ressemble, des quêtes pas trop épique, un manque cruel d'information a l’écran pour un MMORPG, bref trop casual et surement trop orienter console..
    Bref il va surement faire parti de ces MMO qui s'orientation Free-To-Play rapidement car actuellement il y a un cruel manque de contenue PVE HL.
    Quand au PVP, une map...du même modèle que GW2...tout ce ressemble, rien de nouveaux et encore une fois un manque de contenue évident.
    Amateur de ESO passer votre chemin, casual débutant amusez vous bien...    … Expand
  55. lucasshark33mic
    Apr 25, 2014
    3
    Very much looking forward to this one, but having played the beta my expectations plummeted.

    And the release version is alas no better. On the plus side the game has huge scope, and voice acting throughout (although the delivery is often interminable sloooowww). Now on to the negatives, and alas there are many. - The game is utterly bug ridden. Uncompletable quests, clipping    Very much looking forward to this one, but having played the beta my expectations plummeted.

    And the release version is alas no better.

    On the plus side the game has huge scope, and voice acting throughout (although the delivery is often interminable sloooowww).

    Now on to the negatives, and alas there are many.

    - The game is utterly bug ridden. Uncompletable quests, clipping issues, getting stuck in the middle of scenery and disappearing completely off the gaming area. It still feels like an early beta.
    - The combat is a mess. You have only a minimum of skills available at any one time, and your energy/magic supply to use these runs out after about 1 billionth of on a nano second after each fight begins.
    - User interface is highly unresponsive. I have lost count of the times I have clicked the same skill five or six times before the game actually responds (and no this is NOT because there was no power/magic available).

    With a few months works, and a complete overhaul of the combat system it may yet grow into something worthwhile, but my advise to anyone considering this title is to give it a miss. At least for now.    … Expand
  56. max_lives
    Apr 8, 2014
    3
    Let’s get some things out of the way first:

    This is neither the best TES experience, nor is it the best MMO experience. Of all the things I’ve disagreed with over previous TES games, the opinion that the graphics are amazing is top of the list. While I really enjoy playing through each Elder Scrolls title, the characters, the materials used on scenery (glossy bricks overload!) and    Let’s get some things out of the way first:

    This is neither the best TES experience, nor is it the best MMO experience.

    Of all the things I’ve disagreed with over previous TES games, the opinion that the graphics are amazing is top of the list. While I really enjoy playing through each Elder Scrolls title, the characters, the materials used on scenery (glossy bricks overload!) and the terribly ropey voice and motion capture acting all put a knot in my stomach when I first start playing. But hey, I forget about it after a while and get down to just enjoying the freedom and little side-stories that are going on.

    Now, the graphics in ESO for me are much, much better. Unfortunately, after you’ve gotten over the graphics, the stuff that makes TES games so endearing and involving - the “meat”, isn’t there. The progression-style gameplay and hand-holding takes away all real sense of adventure, and while you can still just go off and explore, don’t expect to be able to enjoy the fruits of your explorations until you’ve gone back to where you came from and followed the breadcrumbs until they lead you to these amazing places you’ve discovered.

    Which aren’t amazing. Most public dungeons are carbon copies of one another - a small circuit, sometimes ending in a Shard - which makes me wonder if the only purpose of these places is to stop lower level adventurers (yes, you, you dirty explorer types!) from farming shards.

    Some of the group dungeons are interesting, until you’ve done them once and realise that actually they’re really a-b-c. There’s no intelligent thought behind them, and when puzzles (cartographic or mental) are present, they’re of the tic-tac-toe variety you expect to find in airport crossword puzzle books. Dungeon Master has more to offer.

    Above ground things aren’t much better. Kill X rats is replaced with Rescue X Guan, or X prisoners, or X *insert bright new idea here*. The point is, there is still copious use of # / # in the Quest Tracker.

    Quest Tracker.The worst quest tracking system I’ve ever seen in any game, single or multiplayer. When you pick up a new quest, or hand in a milestone on a quest you’re on, the tracker changes to highlight something else. Support helpfully informed me to press T to cycle through the quests. Thanks for that. How many quests do you have in your Journal?

    The UI in general is a nightmare. We invented floating windows for a reason, people. FullScreen mode for every-single-aspect of character and inventory management is like stepping back to the ‘80’s. I don’t care if it’s for console too… I’m a PC MMOer and we’re your bread & butter, fools.

    And Chat. Well, you have /zone and you have your /g# guild chats. That’s it. Because there’s no public AH, everyone spams /zone with their WTT messages. So technically /zone is mostly spam. Meanwhile, because everyone can join 5 guilds, /g# is often either dead, or filled with the worst offenders of /zone. I’ve found one guild which isn’t like that, and I like em, but 95% of the people shown as online don’t respond to chat because they’re only listening to some *other* guild … their presence in this guild is only so they can access the guild bank & store. Don’t ask about chat lag…is it 2014 or 1992?

    Crafting is quite good. Anyone can make anything, so you don’t need to worry about selling in a few months.

    Combat blows. I died 3 times last night because the hotkey input was lagging … movement and combat are in separate packets it appears, so you can find yourself able to move but not fight (and NPCs don’t care, pew pew).

    3/10 .. 2 points deducted for wasting $200 on this thing, which is the most galling part of it all.    … Expand
  57. awais142
    May 5, 2014
    3
    An elder scrolls game thats trying too hard to be an elder scrolls game and an mmorpg, cant make its mind up. Graphics are dull textured, the gold you get off enemies is ridiculously low, horses cost way to much and they made sure of that by limiting the gold income from grind. Game is disgusting in party grouping, you cant help other people quest that you have done, so you just watch themAn elder scrolls game thats trying too hard to be an elder scrolls game and an mmorpg, cant make its mind up. Graphics are dull textured, the gold you get off enemies is ridiculously low, horses cost way to much and they made sure of that by limiting the gold income from grind. Game is disgusting in party grouping, you cant help other people quest that you have done, so you just watch them do it on thier own, wtf is the point in grouping for quests then??

    Once again, a game trailer misrepresenting a mission with the cinematic to this quest with an epic invasion of daedric army, which of course only consisting of only 2 enemies ingame at a time and having them greet you like its just another sunny day at the beach really? Tricking your fans with trailers is just sad. Many areas you see people just waiting to kill a boss, where the hell is the innovating combat ? You just wait around for major enemies to spawn during a quest line, its disgusting and very boring. Entire game feels like a borefest, very soon to go free to play in no time.    … Expand
  58. statickinetics
    Apr 14, 2014
    3
    Deceptively beautiful, frustratingly generic and mechanically flawed. In a nutshell.

    I wanted to like ESO, because as someone who has only really enjoyed one MMO (EVE), I have been craving for an experience that will provide actual replayability. Unfortunately, ESO is not that game. Before getting into why this game is fatally flawed, let me just get this out of the way: The world    Deceptively beautiful, frustratingly generic and mechanically flawed. In a nutshell.

    I wanted to like ESO, because as someone who has only really enjoyed one MMO (EVE), I have been craving for an experience that will provide actual replayability. Unfortunately, ESO is not that game.

    Before getting into why this game is fatally flawed, let me just get this out of the way: The world design is excellent. This is probably the only redeemable feature of the game, although you're probably better off admiring screenshots than dropping 60 bucks on the game. Environments are lush and crisp, full of interesting details and creatures. Unfortunately, they are also filled with rote NPCs that drone around and remind you that yes, this is in-fact just another MMO.

    The fatal flaw with ESO is the level progression. This is a game that effectively forces you to PvE, and in particularly forces you to complete quests. Going around killing things nets you practically no XP, at least relative to the quest rewards. And let's be clear: these quests are horrendously boring, rote, and uninspired, full of tropes and cliches from a thousand other MMOs. The plotline is so unoriginal and the dialogue (while voice-acted) so tired and bland that you find yourself mashing the skip button just to get through the quest as fast as possible. The game effectively pushes you down a path to quest-grinding, which discourages random exploring (random exploring being the hallmark of games like Skyrim).

    Once you have gotten through the arduous grind to level 10 so that you can access PvP, you can enter a partitioned area of the map solely dedicated to PvP. At first, this seems promising. The area is very large and full of nodes that can be attacked. There are even siege weapons that can be deployed and battles with large numbers (in the hundreds potentially) are relatively smooth and lag-free. However, the experience quickly loses its allure once you realize that the only way to gain meaningful XP is by completely "quests" which are either rote (scouting missions), impossible (capture some objective on the other side of the map far far away from friendly territory), or time-restricted (kill 20 players... but only available once per day).

    What this means is that you could be running around, killing players, helping cap objectives and generally advancing the fight for your faction and gain zero XP, zero gold and only a random loot item every now and then that gets mailed to you.

    Now, all of this would be acceptable if the combat itself was interesting or dynamic. It isn't. A game like EVE is successful because the PvP is deep, complex and rewarding. There are genuine risks involved and the rush of winning a battle or getting a kill is hard to compare to any other game.

    ESO is the complete opposite. PvP basically involves mass zerg rushes, spamming random buttons and if you happen to die in the mix or get caught out by some hidden gank squad, you just respawn back at base with literally no penalty. No penalties and no rewards = boring, not-fun. The combat is lazy and skill-less. All that matters is you have the right combinations of buttons to push and almost all of the skills are equally effective so there's no real need to worry about optimization.

    Needless to say, my time with ESO didn't last long. Maybe about a week. I won't be subbing past the free month. I uninstalled the game and went back to playing Natural Selection 2, which is game that actually feels rewarding getting kills, capping objectives and winning. ESO fails on all of the fundamentals that make a game rewarding by not offering a challenging experience, or one that provides any incentives in the form of risk/reward. Most importantly, it forces the player down a path to arduous quest-grinding of the worst kind for few rewards or for any real purpose beyond having a bigger number next to your character name.    … Expand
  59. zyander
    Apr 15, 2014
    3
    Basically a very good game, lots of fun and interesting things to do and a few challenges.
    But....
    This is 2014. I'm beyond excuses for poor technical implementation of MMO. Everyone gets by on launch issues because "that's how it is for all games". I'm tired of that lame excuse. I played UO for almost 7 years, it had a very shaky start, rebounded and was great. Then WoW for about 7    Basically a very good game, lots of fun and interesting things to do and a few challenges.
    But....
    This is 2014. I'm beyond excuses for poor technical implementation of MMO. Everyone gets by on launch issues because "that's how it is for all games". I'm tired of that lame excuse. I played UO for almost 7 years, it had a very shaky start, rebounded and was great. Then WoW for about 7 years. Same bad start, fixes, then okay.

    Why haven't any MMO publishers learned from all of the mistakes that have come before. Most technologies has advanced greatly in the 17 years or so since UO launched, yet MMO launches all seem to be falling into the same old problems.

    MegaServer is a good concept, but I question it's viability. They have already removed a lot from the game, nameplates being the most obvious, I believe because their megaserver can't support it.

    Dozens (maybe more but this is from my limited play) of bugged quests (many reported during beta yet the game launched with them), terrible server lag, frequent disconnects for Unknown Error (I'm concerned about unknown, but more because they capture no data in the error folder that might allow them to determine what happened).

    Lot's of people losing banks, upgrades, skill points, 5-6 times a day kicked out and rolled back 5 or so minutes and lag of up to 20 minutes in chat.

    I really want this game to be good and the next game I play for 7 plus years, but unless there are significant fixes soon and better communications to the player base, I sadly feel it will fall by the wayside. I'd hate to see that happen, the Elder Scrolls games have been some of the best for 20 years. I had already setup a 6 month sub, but will be removing that before the "free month" is over unless some real change occurs.    … Expand
  60. DarkJinks
    Apr 18, 2014
    3
    As a single player experience, it's good but still falls very short of Skyrim quality. As a multiplayer experience, it's practically not there! There is absolutely no teamwork involved in the quests, even if you're in a group, you have to finish quests separately. This means that the only thing other players are good for is getting in your way and stealing your resources. Just play Skyrim!
  61. Masterpulha
    Apr 21, 2014
    3
    Im a mmo lover, played all big titles and unfortunately this is not the game i was expecting. I was expecting a fun game, exciting, tons of things to discover, a game that would glue me to the screen for months .. instead i got a game that made me bored in 1 week game play. 1 week, that's how long you will play this game before you get UBBER bored of questing and farming .. cause that'sIm a mmo lover, played all big titles and unfortunately this is not the game i was expecting. I was expecting a fun game, exciting, tons of things to discover, a game that would glue me to the screen for months .. instead i got a game that made me bored in 1 week game play. 1 week, that's how long you will play this game before you get UBBER bored of questing and farming .. cause that's all you can do. Wow took me months to get bored, even Aion was more fun than this game. Huge disappointment for someone who pre-ordered Imperial Edition.… Expand
  62. drcritspam
    Apr 21, 2014
    3
    This game is complete garbage. I'll list off some of the worst issues with this game:

    1. This game uses insane money grabbing tactics. Keep in mind that you have to pay 60 dollars+ 15 dollars a month just to even start this game. Do you want to be able to play all 3 factions? (A required feature in all MMO's) Do you want to start the game with a horse? (if you don't pick this option    This game is complete garbage. I'll list off some of the worst issues with this game:

    1. This game uses insane money grabbing tactics. Keep in mind that you have to pay 60 dollars+ 15 dollars a month just to even start this game. Do you want to be able to play all 3 factions? (A required feature in all MMO's) Do you want to start the game with a horse? (if you don't pick this option you'll have to kill 17,000 monsters to get a horse.) Do you want to play as every starting faction? (again, an option that is required in all MMO's.) Well you'll have to pay 20$ for the "collectors edition." So you have to pay 20$ more for basic features and a horse. So that's 80$ to start up the game. And you have to pay 15$ per month. Paying for basic features is unacceptable. But even the game that's under all of these paywalls is pretty terrible.

    The grinding is insane, even for MMO standards. You have to pay 17,000 dollars for the most crappy horse in the game. While players of MMO's may consider this to be a small amount, this grinding is magnified because every monster only drops 1 gold coin. Bosses only drop 2 gold coins. No matter where I've gone in the world, the gold drops stay the same. I also have friends who tell me its the same at higher level quests. This goes for all items in the game.

    This game's matchmaking/party/group quest fails to meet industry standards. You can't EVER replay quests with your friends (this sucks if your trying to get a noob up to your level quickly). You can only see and play with people from your own faction(unless you play PvP). Unless you're in a dungeon, good luck trying to play with your friends. The pVe grouping in general sucks on every level. People can randomly jump into your dungeon when your playing with friends and steal all of your loot. In fact i've gone to multiple dungeons with my friends only to see that the boss is being farmed by a pack of elite players. The phasing is terrible, it feels like you're playing a single player game with your friends hovering around.

    The quests are bad. Quests in this game either fall into 2 categories, they are either incredibly easy and boring, or they're battles that should of been awesome, but were turned into 10 minute skirmishes against pockets of NPC's. The epic castle siege stage that was plastered all over this games ad campaign literally lasted 15 minutes. And those 15 minutes were just spent taking on weak monsters in single file order.
    The UI is too minimal to convey info to the player. But you can use mods to circumvent it.

    The game doesn't have any of the free-roaming experience that made the original elder scrolls great. Though because this game is an MMO i believe that this was more of a concept problem than an implementation problem. Still a major issue.

    Overall, this game is just... bad. It's a blatant cash grab. It's buggy, boring, and repetitive. Don't listen to these 10 out of 10 reviews, i assume the devs payed them to review this game. This. game. sucks. avoid at all costs.    … Expand
  63. Lycus
    Apr 22, 2014
    3
    Honestly, I feel the idea and concept is fantastic, but execution is not quite as great as you would expect from Bethesda. In truth, the game just does not feel like a 'The Elder Scrolls' title, it feels like a third party has taken the brand and made an MMO based on the Bethesda franchise. Of course, with this being a Bethesda game, this is not the case. It is certainly a step towards aHonestly, I feel the idea and concept is fantastic, but execution is not quite as great as you would expect from Bethesda. In truth, the game just does not feel like a 'The Elder Scrolls' title, it feels like a third party has taken the brand and made an MMO based on the Bethesda franchise. Of course, with this being a Bethesda game, this is not the case. It is certainly a step towards a good game, but it falls short of being the big titled MMO that was expected. I am sure I am not the only one that was searching for and expecting similarities between the previous The Elder Scroll's games, but with suitable changes making the game appropriate for the MMO format, yet I feel that many of the key aspects that give the series up to now its personality and enjoyability seemed to have been missed.

    When playing the game it simply feels unfinished, the vast amount of items and interactivity found in the series Single Player titles is not present to even near the same level, and with the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood missing from the initial release, you feel as if Bethesda are holding features (perhaps already made) back to release at a later date to justify the hefty monthly fee they charge to pay. As mentioned above, key aspects of the previous titles seem missing. One of which is the variety of items and the feeling of being able to find some awesome items that may be useful in any chest. I went through the whole of the initial area finding water alone in almost every chest, with a few having some type of food in it. After leaving the first section and entering the outside world, I decided to explore, look around - yet there was no such enjoyment of being able to find secret caves, chests and secret items, the most I stumbled upon was some nirnroots. The traditional encouragement to explore seemed to have disappeared, with it being easy to navigate into territory not suitable for your level range where death comes quick and easy, and no real incentive to even do so, because most the places found seemed to come with quests that gave little to no rewards and many seemed to come up as destinations in chest chains anyway.

    On top of this, but the connection to characters just was not there either. When playing Skyrim, Oblivion or even Morrowind, you felt a connection with some of the characters; you felt sad if one died or such as in Oblivion, if a Mage's guild is destroyed. Yet TES Online stirs no such connections up, at one point I got a choice of two parties of which I could save only one. Despite having been with these people for a while, I had little knowledge of one party and could not careless about the other. The choice to me seemed to be there to feel like the player got the power to impact the flow of the game, yet no matter the choice I made, the outcome was the same, just with different people stood about at the end.

    Overall the game has some great points and it occupied me for a good few hours. However there is no justification to be spending so much monthly on it what-so-ever. I feel that may be if I were to pay in a year or so, when many releases had been made, bugs fixed and much needed balancing sorted, may be it would possibly be a bit more worth it. The main issue with this payment system is the later you start playing and paying, the better the worth of your money, because the game is bigger when you first begin.    … Expand
  64. momointheunderd
    Apr 22, 2014
    3
    Terrible. Just awful. It's embarrassing to have a title as large as elderscrolls be associated with such a boring mediocre game. Hopefully the next Elder Scrolls Is done right.
  65. damageinc
    Apr 23, 2014
    3
    I love MMORPGS, i love ES franchise for years. I preordered, played in beta, early access, the regular game many days after its launch. But deleted my character and uninstalled the game yesterday. I’m totally disappointed to experience a total mediocre, sadly avarege game. Elder Scrolls Online is a BROKEN GAME. Even they somehow manage to fix all those terrible bugs, fix the economy,I love MMORPGS, i love ES franchise for years. I preordered, played in beta, early access, the regular game many days after its launch. But deleted my character and uninstalled the game yesterday. I’m totally disappointed to experience a total mediocre, sadly avarege game. Elder Scrolls Online is a BROKEN GAME. Even they somehow manage to fix all those terrible bugs, fix the economy, THEY'LL NOT BE A ABLE TO FIX A BROKEN STRUCTURE!!

    This game is boringly linear, most of the time it’s NOT fun, exciting, surprising and challenging. It’s tedious and lame! We’ve been waiting for this game for years but unfortunately it’s a total disappointment for me and my friends. I believe hundreds of thousands of people are angry and sad to have paid for this mediocracy!    … Expand
  66. nefariousfiend
    Apr 23, 2014
    3
    It's very disappointing spending 80 dollars on a game plus a 15 dollar subscription per month I expected a lot more out of this game. It's about half the speed of wow and twice as dull if you ask me. The caster classes are underpowered and mana starved. you only get 5 abilities at a time unless you switch weapons then you get another 5 but lose the previous 5. The options are very limitedIt's very disappointing spending 80 dollars on a game plus a 15 dollar subscription per month I expected a lot more out of this game. It's about half the speed of wow and twice as dull if you ask me. The caster classes are underpowered and mana starved. you only get 5 abilities at a time unless you switch weapons then you get another 5 but lose the previous 5. The options are very limited as to what you can do. Bag space fills very quickly and you have to do a lot of crafting and grinding mats yourself to better your gear etc. It's much more of a grind than I expected. Lets not even get started on the bugs and downtime you will experience. The PVE really isn't social based in any way. It's more like playing a console game with a few random people running around with you. The quilds are a joke and not necessary in any way people just start one up and invite as many people as they can. Helpfulness for questions is pretty much non existent from my experience, your better off google searching. The chat in the game for Zones is pretty much bots spamming to sell gold power level and immature kids. Think of the crossroads in wow add 3/4 spam then the zone chat and you have a good idea of what to expect. The group dungeons etc is picking up random people and running through a quick 10 minute dungeon with little to sometimes no reward unless you count a little xp. Gear drops... what gear drops? It's make your own and improve it or run around in greens and maybe a few blues that you don't really want since they don't really help with your whole whopping 5 abilities. With the lack of abilities, the lack of social play, bugs and slow leveling, grinding and constant annoyance of running back and forth to clear bag space, and immature nature of chat and spam, I rate this game a 3. I feel it was a complete waste of money and time. Unfortunately, what's done is done. I just hope to save the next person 80 dollars or 60 depending on what version you buy.… Expand
  67. terriptus
    Apr 24, 2014
    3
    This game is boring and painfully 'average'. For a game that promised to break the mold of MMO's, it hasn't done anything new. I won't go into some long winded rant about why I'm only giving this a 3, as Angry Joe and Francis/Boogie summed it up better than I could and I suggest going to watch their reviews. Maybe Wildstar will prove to be better implemented.
  68. Shasta2344
    Apr 29, 2014
    3
    Terrible, I have always been an Elder Scrolls fan, but this game is neither a good MMO or a good ES title. I played this game for about 15 hours, I kept telling myself something will make this game be worth the $50 I shelled out. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

    I'm going to give it a half a**ed rating which is more than it deserved. Graphics: Decent, nothing too exceptional though.    Terrible, I have always been an Elder Scrolls fan, but this game is neither a good MMO or a good ES title. I played this game for about 15 hours, I kept telling myself something will make this game be worth the $50 I shelled out. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

    I'm going to give it a half a**ed rating which is more than it deserved.

    Graphics: Decent, nothing too exceptional though.

    Combat: in the same old MMO standard its a giant grind fest.

    Quests: Boring you'll notice familiar voices from Skyrim and all they did was remind me of what a really ES game was like.    … Expand
  69. procyon
    Apr 29, 2014
    3
    I went into ESO with high expectations wanting to join a community that I thought would be vibrant and fun. It turns out that I was in for a letdown. The NPCs voices are voiced at least in Ebonheart by New Zealanders whom Zenimax has chosen for it's dunmer or dark elf race. But all the major ones are voiced by the distinctive voices we heard in Skyrim. So distinctive in fact that hearingI went into ESO with high expectations wanting to join a community that I thought would be vibrant and fun. It turns out that I was in for a letdown. The NPCs voices are voiced at least in Ebonheart by New Zealanders whom Zenimax has chosen for it's dunmer or dark elf race. But all the major ones are voiced by the distinctive voices we heard in Skyrim. So distinctive in fact that hearing the same ones on character after character begins to melt them all into the one waxy image in the mind's eye. Add to that bodies that do not move when you are speaking to an NPC and you are interacting with at best what I describe as a clothed upright log. Also the game is full of bugs. the bugs get patched and this opens up the way for more bugs. Disgustingly the game has an autoban feature. For instance say too much, even via helping other players and this broken auto ban feature will see it as spam and ban you without even the decency of an email to let you know they stole your game from under you. Or fall thru one of the many holes the developers left in this bugged out world and you can be banned for cheating. Don't expect an email to notify you they banned you, you are left to try and get fail after fail attemps logging into the game the following day wondering why you cannot log in. It is criminal. Then you are left with WEEKS, in the case of many players, trying to get some answers out of support. They don't seem to care and they are giving the impression they do not want us playing their game. Sadly I have found Elder Scrolls Online seriously wanting. I never see two or more players grouped up tackling PVE missions for example as you will see in Guild Wars 2. It's just single players running around, mostly not helping others (unless there is something in it for them), The loot system is another bone of contention. Chests abound, but arguments avail as it's first come first serve. If you want a fun immersive community game to play as an MMO then I suggest you look farther afield. ESO is lacking in just about everything, the graphics are not up to the latest that you will find elsewhere and the combat feels off, askew. Don't waste your money here.… Expand
  70. Gubz
    Apr 29, 2014
    3
    This game is not Elder Scrolls, and it was a ZeniMax online studios game.

    The game lures you in with the lie of Elder Scrolls gameplay and the slaps you across the face with ZeniMax's complete ineptitude at creating an MMORPG. This game has a good crafting system and a good environment, everything else is a complete shlieb. (Something that clearly wanted to be something better, but    This game is not Elder Scrolls, and it was a ZeniMax online studios game.

    The game lures you in with the lie of Elder Scrolls gameplay and the slaps you across the face with ZeniMax's complete ineptitude at creating an MMORPG.

    This game has a good crafting system and a good environment, everything else is a complete shlieb.
    (Something that clearly wanted to be something better, but didn't put for the effort to get there)

    The PvE balance is a joke, the PvP is one giant bland zergfest, and you can safely assume that pay-to-win micro-transactions will soon be on the way.

    Rift is better, and it's free. Alternatively, you could play World of Warcraft for the true 5 star MMORPG experience.

    My advice would be to avoid this game at all costs. I want my money back.    … Expand
  71. callucallu
    Jul 14, 2014
    3
    I update my score.
    I WAS enthusiastic, i saw a lot of potential in this game. After 4 months, a monthly paid teams has done NOTHING to fix the big problems of this game. i'm not referring about bugs, that's are macromistakes, i'm telling about all the features that a mmporg player is expecting to find! No PVP, at all, just people randomly zerging the evening casting random aoe in random    I update my score.
    I WAS enthusiastic, i saw a lot of potential in this game. After 4 months, a monthly paid teams has done NOTHING to fix the big problems of this game. i'm not referring about bugs, that's are macromistakes, i'm telling about all the features that a mmporg player is expecting to find! No PVP, at all, just people randomly zerging the evening casting random aoe in random places.
    PVE i hell boring, if you are unlucky and you don't find other three free people in your guild you cannot even advance in your progress.
    I won't spent more than a phrase about veteran lvls...shame on you, just a shame (i'm vet 12.. most boring things ever done in my entire gaming life)
    Housing? what is it! guild features?why! Auction house? no, we don't want gold sellers(ha...ha...ha!)
    3 skill to improve? some classes just unplayable alone (and some others sucks in pvp), totally unbalanced.
    Considering that some banks bugs have DESTROYED the economy, some players have thousands of rare item for crafting, so there is no more economy to build..
    Farewell my dear, Spending 80$ and more on you was a painful mistake...    … Expand
  72. kbrulles7
    May 6, 2014
    3
    It's probably a great MMO - I dunno I don't play them but it isn't the same experience as the traditional Elder Scrolls game. I just couldn't get into it

    I hope to the gods they don't do this with Fallout.
  73. JoeJoeJoeJoe
    May 23, 2014
    3
    As an Elder Scrolls fan and player of MMO's I am disappointed in this game in both aspects.
    I nearly stopped playing immediately, but continued. The recent craiglorn patch has made things even worse, unfortunately.
    Main negative aspects: -Many bots, even on the higher maps and strong reliance on the client for security. There is no focus on removing this problem. -Laggy combat;    As an Elder Scrolls fan and player of MMO's I am disappointed in this game in both aspects.
    I nearly stopped playing immediately, but continued. The recent craiglorn patch has made things even worse, unfortunately.

    Main negative aspects:
    -Many bots, even on the higher maps and strong reliance on the client for security. There is no focus on removing this problem.
    -Laggy combat; laggiest that I have ever seen in an MMO. (I played SWTOR, Flyff and some others)
    -No way to effectively grind; 2 exp per enemy when grinding, 50 when you kill a lone enemy, or a continuous 20 exp per kill when grinding with 2 players. That is insane.
    -Only 5 hotbar-able skills that me long back to SWTOR, when I strung many skills together
    -Few if any buffs for healers to cast on teammates.

    -Main positive aspects:
    -Good, spoken, dialogues on many if not all characters.
    -Interesting quests, very few repetitive 'kill X of Y' or Gather 'X of Z' quests.
    -Familiar TES environments

    The main 'distinguishing' feature combat and gameplay wise from other MMO's is that you need to aim and can miss. However, I find this a large downside, since it is hard to play this way and far more straining on your mouse arm.    … Expand
  74. DarknessDragon
    May 23, 2014
    3
    Very bad. Crapy gameplay, boring story and almost has no liberty. Full of bugs, the unique thing i liked is the combat system. I played almost 20 hours and i found it very disappointing. This is not a Elder Scrolls, this is a crapy online game.
  75. BurningLCD
    Jun 12, 2014
    3
    I honestly expect that anyone who could honestly say ESO was a good game is A, astroturfing, or B, still suffering from the shock of how awful it is. Is it a good MMO... Not really. Is it a good Elder Scrolls game, not really at all.
  76. SomeLameName
    Jun 12, 2014
    3
    I had such high hopes for this game as i played all the games to date. The best ones in my opinion was Oblivion followed by skyrim. However with that being said it was clear within a week that this game would go F2P in 6 months to a year. Why? I'm glad you asked! First the business model is terrible. First to have buy the game. Fine ok i can do that. You get a free month of playI had such high hopes for this game as i played all the games to date. The best ones in my opinion was Oblivion followed by skyrim. However with that being said it was clear within a week that this game would go F2P in 6 months to a year. Why? I'm glad you asked! First the business model is terrible. First to have buy the game. Fine ok i can do that. You get a free month of play but you have to pay for your first paid month up front before you can get your free month of play and access to the Imperial race and a mount to start off with is hidden behind a pay wall. There is Micro Transactions within the game as well. Second: this is a game that is set in the TES world that is meant to be played with others. In the month i have played i found playing with others irritating and tedious at best. If you are not on the exact part of the quest your friend is on you can't help them or even see them. The main story line is solo only and the roles within a dungeon setting is horrific at best. You can play any of the 4 classes in any role you prefer BUT only the way Bethesda has intended it to be played. The skill lines in said classes are mediocre at best and choices to customize those skills are in no way dramatic or game changers. The combat is terrible and clunky and poorly executed. The graphics a horrible and group play is not fun at all. The roles are poorly executed. For example if you are a tank your role in the group is to taunt the boss, continuously block and heal yourself. You actually feel completely useless and is in no way engaging in any way. Healing in the game takes away as you really don't have any control over who you heal. The heals are suppose to be "smart" healing but in many cases is incredibly dumb and doesn't actually heal who it's should and when it should. DPS is fun for about 10 seconds then it gets boring. The quests are terrible and most of the time you feel you are doing the same quest over and over just with different mobs. Sometimes you get a companion to come and help you but most of the time they just stand there and do nothing. Spells often fail to cast which require you to double click them, THEN when they do go off the added function of the spell fails to function correctly. Everything about the Knight Blade class is broken at the moment. Classes seem to have been created with a certain role in mind and if you deviate from that it feels too clunky and inorganic. The PVP content which has been the major selling point of this game is fun the first time around, after that it just gets boring. There is no relevant economy to speak of other than getting into a guild to sell stuff to other people in your guild. To take it a step further in order to access the guild market you have to have 50+ members. The server is always down and the game is riddled with bugs. When they fix one thing they break 10 other things in the process. Whoever thought that this game was a good idea to produce in it's current state with it's current business model and constantly broken features should have been fired on the spot.

    In short if you like Paying money for a game and then paying a monthly sub for a game you'll grow tired of in a month then i say buy it. If you actually want to be entertained for weeks and have fun with friends while doing it, simply put... LOOK ELSEWHERE. GW2 is F2P just have to buy the game. Neverwinter is totally free to play give that a go as well.

    Those who have stuck around to read this far, thanks. Have fun gaming!    … Expand
  77. LooneyKiwi
    Jun 19, 2014
    3
    Very unbalanced, destroys the idea of playing with friends and everything is hidden behind a paywall.
    This is a fun game but barely, when you can get past the crashes the terrible storyline and the average combat you might have fun. Only worth playing for the law.
    Wait until a price drop and for it to become free to play.
  78. jkemmery
    Jul 18, 2014
    3
    First of all, I did not play any of the Elder Scrolls games before Skyrim ... but I absolutely fell in love with Skyrim, so I was anxious to try this game. The only previous experience I have had with MMO's was WoW and I only played that for maybe a month if that. I did NOT enjoy ESO for several reasons. First of all, the quests are relatively uninteresting and not compelling. Second, itFirst of all, I did not play any of the Elder Scrolls games before Skyrim ... but I absolutely fell in love with Skyrim, so I was anxious to try this game. The only previous experience I have had with MMO's was WoW and I only played that for maybe a month if that. I did NOT enjoy ESO for several reasons. First of all, the quests are relatively uninteresting and not compelling. Second, it really isn't an open world: if you stray too far from your origin at a low level you will not survive long at all. Third, you are pretty much forced in to crafting your items because you cannot buy specific items. You cannot buy ore or ingots. You have to search for ore, mine it, then use it for crafting. If you want decent weapons or armor you have to spend hours and hours scouring the landscape to find the ore, mine it etc ... it becomes monotonous and a waste of time. Lastly the combat system is clunky and you are stuck with goofy special abilities to try to defeat your opponents. As a game, for me, it was a complete failure and I shelled out $80 to play it. Yes, I fell for the "Imperial Edition" figuring it would be a wise investment considering the hundreds (over a thousand) hours that I played Skyrim. I played this game maybe 60 hours before I gave up in disgust. I give it 3 points because the graphics are astounding, and the huge world is quite a feat of graphics and design. Unfortunately it's not a world worth staying in very long. Huge failure on the part of Bethesda and Zenimax as far as I'm concerned. I will think twice about shelling out my hard earned cash for future Elder Scrolls products, as it seem likely Skyrim was the jewel of the lot. (I have since attempted to play Oblivion and didn't last in that one more than maybe 3 hours ... I did not like it either.)… Expand
  79. ToughCrowd
    Jul 24, 2014
    3
    ESO is a true flop of its genre. The rough gameplay makes for a unenjoyable experience. While the animation is somewhat groundbreaking, it lacks energy and the voice overs are rather grainy. Voids in the structure and plot of the game create a very unlikeable atmosphere. Having played previous elder scrolls titles Online strayed from the traditional lore that made me fall in love with theESO is a true flop of its genre. The rough gameplay makes for a unenjoyable experience. While the animation is somewhat groundbreaking, it lacks energy and the voice overs are rather grainy. Voids in the structure and plot of the game create a very unlikeable atmosphere. Having played previous elder scrolls titles Online strayed from the traditional lore that made me fall in love with the series. It's saddening to see such a disappointing product from a favourite developer. All in all, Zenimax's first outing into the world of MMORPGs was an anticlimax. Perhaps their next venture may bring some more success, but for now I look forward to what they can do with their minds trained on the franchise.… Expand
  80. D0n0van
    Sep 1, 2014
    3
    This game broke my heart.
    All the hype, all the years of wishes........ and it turns out to be a shoddy and greedy grab for fan$ dollars.
    It was like a bad relationship break up. I was sad, angry and just felt empty inside. And no one cared when you cried about the servers always being down during prime time in Australia. OR that all the servers were flooded with hackers and bots.    This game broke my heart.
    All the hype, all the years of wishes........ and it turns out to be a shoddy and greedy grab for fan$ dollars.

    It was like a bad relationship break up.
    I was sad, angry and just felt empty inside.
    And no one cared when you cried about the servers always being down during prime time in Australia.
    OR that all the servers were flooded with hackers and bots.

    Trying to quest with friends is as much fun as installing windows on an old pc using 50 floppys.
    Why did they make it so hard and unreliable?

    I hope the people behind this game feel bad for what they did to the elder scrolls.
    It really is a crime against a video game franchise.    … Expand
  81. Mastodon
    Dec 4, 2014
    3
    The best word for this game is "Average." Aside from graphics which are decent but not top notch everything else is just anti-climatic. To a run of the mill WoW player this game is probably good... but to a Skyrim or Oblivion player it is simply awful.
  82. XBurningDogX
    Sep 10, 2015
    3
    I am not here to rant, downscore this game, or just to write a quick review, I am here to inform gamers who are considering buying this game.

    For the millionth time IF YOU ARE EXPECTING A ELDER SCROLLS (SKYRIM, OBLIVION ETC.) YOU WILL MORE THAN LIKELY FIND YOUR SELF VERY DISAPPOINTED! this is a MMORPG not an RPG. I took a vacation a week off work a month ago and wanted a new game to    I am not here to rant, downscore this game, or just to write a quick review, I am here to inform gamers who are considering buying this game.

    For the millionth time IF YOU ARE EXPECTING A ELDER SCROLLS (SKYRIM, OBLIVION ETC.) YOU WILL MORE THAN LIKELY FIND YOUR SELF VERY DISAPPOINTED! this is a MMORPG not an RPG.

    I took a vacation a week off work a month ago and wanted a new game to get into playing. It has been a while since i've gotten lost in a mmo such as runescape or world of warcraft. I love rpgs such as skyrim and witcher 3 yet interacting with other players removes that "lonely" feeling we all get time to time playing a single player game.
    I played this game for two days straight and I must admit, the "new game woah this is cool!" phase lasted for 2 hours. I became very bored with this want to be mmo. ALL YOU DO is go talk to this npc, oh and then that npc tells you to go talk to this npc, and then find this npc and talk to them, and you might kill a couple monsters running from npc to npc. Am i being a Debbie Downer? No I am stating all I expereniced playing this game for two days. I reached level 10 and quit.

    The graphics are pretty good for an mmo, but other than that the game is so "empty" like a desert. Their is very little to do other than zone chat with other people about real life things. I have tried picking this game up over and over harder than ever, because I WANT that go to MMO that I think about at work all day, I WANTED to come home and get lost in the world of elder scrolls online. But unfortunately it is too dull and boring to.
    Try this game at your own risk, even with the free subscription this game is worth no more than 5 bucks. It feels so unfinished you will want your money back worse than bringing home a game and opening it up to find broken disk. Thank you for reading my review, I am sorry i sound so negative, but then again, you want to read a honest review right?    … Expand
  83. ZenterX
    Dec 5, 2014
    3
    The 3 different factions you can choose from all have different backgrounds but the same repetitive missions. Though some blame the TES "fanboys" for the negative reviews, this game has an unbelievable amount of similarities and references to Skyrim where it fails as a predecessor. I did not like this game at all, the only "plus" to this game is the massive high quality environment andThe 3 different factions you can choose from all have different backgrounds but the same repetitive missions. Though some blame the TES "fanboys" for the negative reviews, this game has an unbelievable amount of similarities and references to Skyrim where it fails as a predecessor. I did not like this game at all, the only "plus" to this game is the massive high quality environment and splendid soundtracks.… Expand
  84. Duroga
    Apr 27, 2015
    3
    I couldn't even manage to get to mid level on this one. The graphics and sound are OK, but the gameplay is probably the most horrible I've ever experienced. A complete waste of $60
  85. GainesvilleGuy
    Jun 16, 2018
    3
    The cash shop absolutely ruins this game. There is no reason to play, as most of the best cosmetic rewards are purchased and not earned. I stopped playing this game and refuse to buy any expansions due to this absolutely horrible cash shop. I give this a 3 and not a 0 because it actually is a decent MMO. If there were no cash shop it might be a 9.

    Cosmetic is pay2win in an MMO where    The cash shop absolutely ruins this game. There is no reason to play, as most of the best cosmetic rewards are purchased and not earned. I stopped playing this game and refuse to buy any expansions due to this absolutely horrible cash shop. I give this a 3 and not a 0 because it actually is a decent MMO. If there were no cash shop it might be a 9.

    Cosmetic is pay2win in an MMO where cosmetic rewards is about half the reason to play. Those who defend cash shops just don't understand gaming and why most people play. And I have a ton of money it isn't about being able to afford this pay2win cosmetics shop, it is my refusal to pay2win out of principle. I will never give one dime to any game with a cash shop. EVER.    … Expand
  86. CodySellers
    May 28, 2015
    3
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. I have stayed with this game for a year thru all of its hardships. and I must say, I am very disappointed. There has been little-no improvement over the last year to ESO. Yes there has been new content, and new content is all well and good, but improvements? No.

    The PvE is boring and so easy that it is possible to one man world bosses and public dungeons, which are supposed to require a group to take on. The trials are a joke. they are nothing but blob up and spam crap. No strategy, no planning required, just run and gun. the Veteran content is boring, and is nothing but a long, tedious, mind numbing grind. The story too it does not even make sense, one is forced to go thru the other alliances story lines, making it difficult to find a reason to make characters of other factions, and it is just lazy. the player will spend more time watching that slow XP bar chug along than actually enjoying the content once the player completes level 49 and enters the veteran ranks,

    PvP is an utter joke. It cannot support hundreds of players at once. In truth, it can barely support 40 players on the screen at once. As soon as a huge force of players start fighting, the game literally turns into Microsoft Powerpoint. The lag is atrocious, and has been around for almost a year with little done or attempted to fix it. There are numerous cheats(such as getting thru outpost and keep walls without knocking them down, which ZOS has confirmed is an exploit) that are downright abused with little-no consequence. The cheat I mentioned above has been done for about 6-8 months now. As soon as someone provides video evidence on the forums, it is closed due to the "name and shame" policy. ZOS would rather ignore evidence than fix the issues. The game is a cheaters paradise, and has made it a joke to play.

    The balance in PvP is non-existent. the game is currently dominated by infinite resource builds(and that has sadly found its way into blackwater blade) throwing any kind of strategic resource management out the window. This, combined with block casting, low Time to kills, and one shot wonder builds finding their way into the game, has turned ESO PvP into an ancient 3rd person era of Call of Duty, with blocking. No strategy, just hold down block and spam abilities. its pathetic.

    The worst part? the developers simply do not care. ZOS ignores any evidence of cheating, they let bugs and game breaking exploits stay in the game for a ridiculous period of time, and they would rather "upgrade" their "crown store(aka cash shop) than work on the actual game. ZOS lets issues remain in PvE and PvP for far to long, and do not fix them in a satisfactory rate.

    I give this a 3/10 because I have played it for a year and because it is an elder scrolls game. Do not get this game unless you are a die-hard elder scrolls fan.    … Expand
  87. BrianD
    Oct 14, 2015
    3
    Are you a PvPer?
    Do your research before buying this game!
    As it stands, if you are in a group of more than 6 you will gain a 50% damage reduction in PvP. Yep. AoE is capped at 6 targets. To be fair there is talk of removing the cap, but do your research before you come here. It was always capped but now its even worse because damage in PvP is halved. See, this gives every guy after    Are you a PvPer?
    Do your research before buying this game!

    As it stands, if you are in a group of more than 6 you will gain a 50% damage reduction in PvP. Yep. AoE is capped at 6 targets. To be fair there is talk of removing the cap, but do your research before you come here.
    It was always capped but now its even worse because damage in PvP is halved. See, this gives every guy after the 6th a 75% damage reduction. Yikes.
    Search AOE caps on Zenimax forum you'll see what I'm talking about.    … Expand
  88. Rcarlos3
    Jun 25, 2019
    3
    At first this game looks awesome, cool quests, interesting skill system, a lot of dungeons and raids. PvE content is fine. PVP has lots of different builds, game modes, Cyrodiil, skilled players can 1v6 win fights. But there is one problem, because of which all recent reviews are negative. DEVELOPERS AND PERFOMANCE. The lags are unbearable, and they last in Cyrodiil for 3 years with 0At first this game looks awesome, cool quests, interesting skill system, a lot of dungeons and raids. PvE content is fine. PVP has lots of different builds, game modes, Cyrodiil, skilled players can 1v6 win fights. But there is one problem, because of which all recent reviews are negative. DEVELOPERS AND PERFOMANCE. The lags are unbearable, and they last in Cyrodiil for 3 years with 0 fixes. In prime time you literally have 3000 ping, buttons are not working etc. it is hard to believe that this is possible in such a game. Even in 4 man dungeons and raids you have 130 ping and sometimes buttons are not working. Pvp is impossible. Group finder is broken for years and you have to press ready for 40 mins to get into a battleground. Now when ppl stormed the forums, devs implemented a new mechanic: spam left mouse button for 20 secs to get into a queque, there you will spam ready only for 1 minute. It is way better, but there is a 30% chance that you will be kicked from server...
    You cant believe this? Than how about the fact, that ultimate from psijic skill line (it is live for a year and a part of a paid dlc) is working only in 50% cases. You just press it and you lose ult points but nothing happens. And devs are not fixing it. Everyone is like ok, it is a nice ultimate, but it is not working, so put it for passive effect, but never press. So forget it, the game will never get fixed. It is a pity, without lags and broken skills this game would be perfect. Dont pay for it, pls.    … Expand
  89. kira84
    Oct 30, 2019
    3
    This was bad at release, turned okay after 1.6 but since then the game is worst with every new release. Server crash, game crash, lag, the dungeon finder tool which is a basic feature in every mmo is bugged and the developper are unable to fix for almost a year now. Trial (raid) runs at 25 fps with a High end PC (1080 TI and 8700K). Cyrodiil (the big pvp area) have lag spikes of +999 ms,This was bad at release, turned okay after 1.6 but since then the game is worst with every new release. Server crash, game crash, lag, the dungeon finder tool which is a basic feature in every mmo is bugged and the developper are unable to fix for almost a year now. Trial (raid) runs at 25 fps with a High end PC (1080 TI and 8700K). Cyrodiil (the big pvp area) have lag spikes of +999 ms, frame rate drop there too to less than 20 fps on the same RIG, players with average PC play on a slideshow. Crown store is full with overpriced item (+30 € on average), skill tree are sold so you don't have to grind them because Zenimax made them to be inncovenient on purpose. Loot boxes are sold too where the chance to get the best item is less than 0.01%. Expansions turned into chapter with half the content of previous ones but with the same price. What can you expect from a company like Zenimax who own Bethesda (yeah the one that made Fallout 76).… Expand
  90. ruslannikulin
    May 15, 2021
    3
    Постоянные вылеты и отвалы серверов в PvP и в подземельях. Игре уже больше 7 лет, а они ни как не сделают стабильное соединение. Но самое забавное, это когда после отвала сервака вы не можете вновь зайти на очередь подземелья или PvP-арены, так как вам причисляют штраф за дезертирство. То есть за свои косяки они игроков штрафуют. Серьёзно, Зеня, серьёзно?!!Постоянные вылеты и отвалы серверов в PvP и в подземельях. Игре уже больше 7 лет, а они ни как не сделают стабильное соединение. Но самое забавное, это когда после отвала сервака вы не можете вновь зайти на очередь подземелья или PvP-арены, так как вам причисляют штраф за дезертирство. То есть за свои косяки они игроков штрафуют. Серьёзно, Зеня, серьёзно?!!
  91. chekb
    Mar 25, 2020
    3
    ESO is rather strange and ambiguous. On the one hand, NOT BEING a bloody copy of Warcraft, this is a very good MMO game. ZoS made it good (not great) for quite some time. On the other hand, it would be great if they continued to do it better. Of course, they release DLC that increase the number of hours spent in the game, as well as the amount of money that ZoS earned. However, this isESO is rather strange and ambiguous. On the one hand, NOT BEING a bloody copy of Warcraft, this is a very good MMO game. ZoS made it good (not great) for quite some time. On the other hand, it would be great if they continued to do it better. Of course, they release DLC that increase the number of hours spent in the game, as well as the amount of money that ZoS earned. However, this is all unimportant, because they only complement the game, and not improve it. I spent almost 700 hours at ESO. During this time I received a lot of pleasure, but also disappointment. In fact, I do not remember the moment when ZoS did something that could improve the game. I don’t remember more than one damn patch that saved us from bugs. Seriously. I started having problems with ping, downloads between locations only after the last NOT LARGE patch. And what will happen after Greymoor? I used to have a stable ping (90 - 120), but now I have a stable 300-999 +. Great, isn't it? For all my 700 hours, this is my first ping. And why did I pay them money? Is this game worthy to be paid when it is not worthy of it? Thank you for making at least some DLC free. They would have made it so that everyone could use the jewelry machine, and not those who have Summerset; generally there would be no price. But I think I forgot something. Oh yes. I forgot about server crashes and group searches. For those who don’t know, ZoS has been trying to solve this problem for so long. Event associated with the search for groups, only means that there will be a breakdown of the search. Players will still try to do something, find a group. All this will cause server failure and subsequent technical work, which can take a very long time. This game has a lot of disadvantages. Most offensively not for the fact that they are present, but for the fact that it is quite possible to fix it.… Expand
  92. Pitchyburdell
    Dec 4, 2020
    3
    It's a good game if you live in 2006. Bad graphic, bad animations, bad quest and bad immersion, totaly waste of money, buy it if you like to farm everything everyday in a ugly world.
  93. Zycomag
    Apr 14, 2021
    3
    I just started playing ESO as a free monthly offer on Play Station. I enjoyed Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim a lot, so I am quite familiar with the ES universe.

    Since then I got hooked by the Soulsborne/Sekiro serieswhich I absolutely adore - especially Bloodborne - and kind of set as a standard for myself. That said, after playing ESO for a week now (no worries, I spent literally    I just started playing ESO as a free monthly offer on Play Station. I enjoyed Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim a lot, so I am quite familiar with the ES universe.

    Since then I got hooked by the Soulsborne/Sekiro serieswhich I absolutely adore - especially Bloodborne - and kind of set as a standard for myself.

    That said, after playing ESO for a week now (no worries, I spent literally days there due to the pandemic), rising to level 30, I think this is quite a boring game with some really annoying mechanics. Mind you, the landscape is beautifully done, the characters are well designed and the interaction a real progress to the older games. The myriads of tasks and story lines that are thrown at you contain some gems, that make the game fun in the beginning (and even made me buy the Greymoor Addon. I can’t tell if I’ll be motivated enough to play it after experiencing the downsides of ESO. And there are a lot for me).

    First of all it’s the unnerving map. Apart of the (black and white. Why not give them colours at least?) symbols being so tiny and only zoomable to a slightly bigger, but still hardly distinguishable size, I run around a lot, travel to the wrong places, pay to get to another wrong place till finally finding the quest I am looking for. If I don’t get distracted by another task. That in itself can be part of the fun, motivating you to explore the area. What’s off-putting is, that if you accept a quest it’s automatically set as your new goal. Not a huge problem as you can switch your actual quest in the Journal. But more than once I didn’t find the original quest that I went on. So I had to run around and search for the place I was supposed to go to. You get help though to not getting lost totally, as arrows on the quest bar show you the direction. Which still can be confusing as they don’t tell you if the quest is in the same area or in another part of Tamriel.

    The second, and probably for me the biggest issue, are the fighting mechanics. Unlike e.g. Soulsborne games, where you have to time very precise moves to hit someone, which makes a win often so difficult, here in ESO I just run around between foes and push buttons, not really knowing what I’m doing (actually I do more or less, but it feels random). Really infuriating is, that sometimes enemies attack from 10 meters away and still hit me. There is no way you can foresee if someone is able to strike you down or not (not talking about the red AOE markers!). It’s just awful. Well, I don’t blame anyone who thinks a game like Sekiro is too hard. I don’t mind going for something easier, but hell, at least you want a fight to feel a bit more realistic and challenging, no?

    A ridiculous blow to the atmosphere is that if you get attacked standing in a group of people, they don’t bother AT ALL. You swing your weapon in all directions, no NPC gets hit, but hey, why should they, if a fight for life or death doesn’t affect them.

    Then, if you finish a quest by slaughtering enemies, more of them still pop up and attack you even when the quest tells you that you pacified the area. Or, attacking one single baddy, you find them miraculously multiplying into 2, 3, sometimes more enemies. Yes, ridiculous!

    The various guilds and the possibilites to develop and train certain skills like alchemy, cooking, clothing, woodwork etc. are kind of nice in the beginning, but get also kind of boring after a while. I just don’t care anymore to decide if I keep some random plant and throw something else from my inventory, not having enough space (which you can expand and is probably no issue anymore later in the game).

    As mentioned above some quests are more interesting, sometimes even funny, some are short (and often too easy), some quite long (and can lead you into more difficult territory). But did I find any quest up to now thrilling or scary? Making me yearn to go on? Naw. Running through a swamp, fighting crocodiles and hags, looking for a dangerous witch, could be creepy. Not not here. It seems that they really go for quantity at Bethesda, not for quality.

    I can’t say too much about the PVP or groups as I’m in general a solo player. It might be more fun in a group tackling the real baddies that are indeed hard for one alone. So if you are a group person you might have a lot of fun in Tamriel.

    I will keep playing for a while, even have a look into Greymoor. But I guess that will be about it. If I change my mind at some point, I will revise my review. For the moment I’m not a fan.    … Expand
  94. libno
    Apr 26, 2014
    2
    Now from what I hear, PvP is a marvel. If only the game were captivating enough to bring me even halfway there.

    The Elder Scrolls Online features gameplay and combat reminiscent of previous installments in the franchise as well as more generic MMO elements. However, both of these aspects feel dumbed down, which is quite surprising because I was unaware that both point and shoot    Now from what I hear, PvP is a marvel. If only the game were captivating enough to bring me even halfway there.

    The Elder Scrolls Online features gameplay and combat reminiscent of previous installments in the franchise as well as more generic MMO elements. However, both of these aspects feel dumbed down, which is quite surprising because I was unaware that both point and shoot mechanics and skill bar grinding could be simplified. This blight of gameplay was achieved by also taking the slow pace of the traditional MMO gameplay and merging it with the monotonous fps/tps gameplay.

    Once you leave combat behind, you are left with the quests. After suffering through a highly generic tutorial, players are brought to their faction's starting location. However, instead of being thrown into an event such as those from Guild Wars 2, a decision driven story instance like SWTOR's, or quite simply a decent world, like almost every MMO ever, we are thrust into a harbinger for some of the most bland and MMO-esque quests in history. In fact, the very first quest I received was a debt-collecting quest, where I talked to bandits and they fought me for 2 seconds and then paid up. After having to farm the same four bandits ten times, I began to yearn for even a "kill 10 wolves" quest.

    In short, ESO advertises elements of PvP and exploration that are deviant from more traditional members of the genre, but fails to bring the player to these points by neglecting its core elements.    … Expand
  95. kram789
    Apr 21, 2014
    2
    I have played all of the Elder Scrolls games and was looking forward to ESO. Unfortunately, it is a very disappointing effort. Much of what worked so well in Skyrim is abandoned (Stealth, Skills, Economy) and what did not work so well was not improved (combat, traveling, balance). The game is unbalanced to the point that many quests are only doable by one type of character. Some bossI have played all of the Elder Scrolls games and was looking forward to ESO. Unfortunately, it is a very disappointing effort. Much of what worked so well in Skyrim is abandoned (Stealth, Skills, Economy) and what did not work so well was not improved (combat, traveling, balance). The game is unbalanced to the point that many quests are only doable by one type of character. Some boss quests do not allow teaming up and the lack of meaningful control spells for High Elf Sorcerer makes the type ridiculously hard. The only groundbreaking achievement for this game is its cost. Not only do you have to pay $60 to get it, you then have to pay $15/month to play it. The normal MMORPG mode is to do one or the other but not both. Making this the most expensive game ever! And for all that money you don't get anywhere near enough value to be worth the cost. Save your money.… Expand
  96. kalimah
    Apr 4, 2014
    2
    Pve is a joke. Pvp is ok. Someone complained that the pvp was like doc lol... you wish! Linear pos. This is only for the older WoW generation who wants complete crap for an mmorpg. Yes.. Wow was a POS. I dont care how much it made in its time. I was hoping for more outta this game.
  97. Korld
    Apr 8, 2014
    2
    Hello,
    This is not an MMO.
    The game is bad (Interface, Skill Tree, Management quests, enemies are poorly reported etc ...)
    The story is bad stories quests too.
    European servers are empty.
    MMO done quickly and not finished.
    I played three days (79 €) and I went on WildStar.
    TESO is theft.
  98. houjo2000
    Sep 22, 2015
    2
    I will give the PC version some credit- it's better than the ps4 atrocity. You can at least mod this version for things like a mini map, and there's social options that make the world feel more alive. If you must play ESO, the PC version is the best of all of the versions.

    That said- it's still a bland WoW clone with horrible combat and few positives.
  99. Tastycakes
    Jul 17, 2014
    2
    Rushed, hollow, lacking and sense of achievement or reason to keep playing. Welcome to the world of bugs, rehashed concepts that aren't done as well as any existing franchise and a non-existent end-game. Save you money, avoid this product at all costs. If you really feel like you want to play Elder Scrolls, Skyrim will be much more entertaining even on a seventh play through.

    A lot of    Rushed, hollow, lacking and sense of achievement or reason to keep playing. Welcome to the world of bugs, rehashed concepts that aren't done as well as any existing franchise and a non-existent end-game. Save you money, avoid this product at all costs. If you really feel like you want to play Elder Scrolls, Skyrim will be much more entertaining even on a seventh play through.

    A lot of people wanted this to be good. But it just isn't, and that's a shame.    … Expand
  100. Savante
    Apr 13, 2014
    2
    as a max-level VR10 Elder Scrolls fan who experienced ALL the content in the game, I can tell you that this game is NOT a good MMO. First of all, there is definitely not enough endgame content in this game. You level up to VR10 and then wonder “What now?“ as there is nothing to do besides boring PvP.

    I really hated the PVP in this game since all you do, is riding horse for miles, then    as a max-level VR10 Elder Scrolls fan who experienced ALL the content in the game, I can tell you that this game is NOT a good MMO. First of all, there is definitely not enough endgame content in this game. You level up to VR10 and then wonder “What now?“ as there is nothing to do besides boring PvP.

    I really hated the PVP in this game since all you do, is riding horse for miles, then get into a huge battle where your individual abilities don't matter at all. Battles are won by pure numbers and nothing else. After you die, you realise that you really want to leave the area rather than running for 10 minutes to a 10 second battle. As a veteran player, I'm hard to kill and take down 2-3 enemies at the same time outside a huge battle. If my relatively rare deaths discourage me this much, I can't imagine how those 3 lowlevels feel when they die to a single veteran. There needs to be a better system for pvp implemented by the developers.

    As for PVE, there is absolutely nothing there besides 4man dungeons which don't give the progress feeling. There won't be any countless raid nights to down a boss which gives your raid hard times. Adventure zones and trials don't seem enough by the looks of it. questing with 4man group or an event which you kill random waves of enemies with 12people sounds weak (though we haven't seen them so these are far from facts as they may very well be really fun in the future)

    The game itself has countless bugs which breaks the game so often that I got used to the idea of buggy game. Game should still be in beta. It's far from completed and it seems like it needs rather long time to complete.

    You can't imagine how disappointed I am after waiting so long for this game only to get bored in a few weeks.    … Expand
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Awards & Rankings

4
#4 Most Discussed PC Game of 2014
14
#14 Most Shared PC Game of 2014

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
71

Mixed or average reviews - based on 64 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 27 out of 64
  2. Mixed: 36 out of 64
  3. Negative: 1 out of 64
  1. CD-Action
    Jul 23, 2014
    60
    Eight years of development, a team consisting of even 250 people at some points, budget reaching hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s a pity that this ‘Skyrim Online’ disappoints both fans of previous Bethesda games and MMORPG veterans who expected some fresh air in the stale genre. [06/2014, p.44]
  2. LEVEL (Czech Republic)
    Jul 8, 2014
    60
    A well done MMO that can lure players not familiar with the genre. But if you've played MMOs before, this one doesn't offer anything new, nor anything exciting.
  3. DarkStation
    Jun 16, 2014
    50
    60 days was more then enough time for me to determine that I would rather spend my time elsewhere.
    Read full review
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