I'm also thinking about picking this up on PC tomorrow but as someone who doesn't really like MMO's Im not sure if I should. Is it worth it if I plan to play solo only? I'm a big fan of the universe and this is as close to a new TES game as we're gonna get for the foreseeable future but I don't want to buy it and then find out it's too much like other MMO's I've tried and not enjoyed that much.
Of all the MMOs i've played, this game is almost TOO solo friendly, i actually felt like they got halfway with Elder Scrolls 6 and decided to convert it to an MMO midway . It has a gigantic campaign to play through, actually it has 3 gigantic campaigns to play through (each faction has its own campaign and their zone content almost never overlap!) and most of the content is Skyrim-like questing on your own. There are group dungeons , similar to what you'd get in WoW at the end of each "act" or "zone" , which is the only place where i remotely felt i needed to be in a group.
That said, i do think the game is a tad dumbed-down compared to Skyrim (for obvious reasons). So the combat is alot more arcady/actiony (i actually preferred it over skyrim combat) and the class/skill options look very simplistic , but actually is pretty open ended and gets complicated later on. Despite picking a class at the beginning, you can actually make a Heavy Armor-two-handed-sword-wielding-sorceror or a fireball-throwing-cloth-wearing-templar. I remember i wasted way too much reset-money to change my builds.
There are these "quick dungeons" , similar to a cave/dungeon in Skyrim, where you do sometimes need a group for an "elite" mob, but odds are you will find other players in the dungeon already . Back in the day, you would reach the final boss, only to find he is already dead with 10 other players hovering over him waiting for a respawn (so it can break some immersion here) . So it's very informal type of grouping with this.
The "official" dungeons, is same as WoW dungeons, where you need to find a group and works like any other MMO dungeon, although they are pretty optional to the campaign story line.
In fact, alot of the main story missions you can not group up anyway. I think they sorted out some of the issues with bringing in buddies to help with a campaign quest, but when i played it, you were pretty much forced into your own little instance during campaign/story missions (including the boss fights) .
The multiplayer aspect only really starts to come into play from lvl 50 onwards. The "elite" or "veteran" zones are lvl 50+ content , this is where you start needing buddies to group up with to do the content. However, you can here choose to do the solo campaigns of the other 2 factions (it becomes a little like Diablo, you can play the other campaigns scaled to your level ).
The PvP zone in the middle, you can solo happily there if you want to, it is pretty much like GuildWars2s WvWvW / Siege zones , you pop in, join some zerg-group and take down castles...although unlike GW2, the PvP zone is alot more like a fixed zone with little towns and quests (which you can do on your own) ..the zone status will remain in tact (so if you leave it and return 30 minutes later, it will most likely still be the same zone).
Anyway, i'm going to replay this game on console, game is releasing tomorrow *rubs hands eagerly*.
