The Elder Scrolls Online

1.All areas open up at veteran level. Once you reach 50 you can go to all the areas.

You've given me something I now very much look forward to :D

Do you know if quests open up in those areas? I don't care about low-level quests, I really enjoy questing in this silly game :p

I don't quite agree here. I'm of the opinion that the downtimes last week were so inconvenient that they need to consider giving everyone a day or two free playtime. We had scheduled maintenance last week Tuesday, then on the same day the servers went down for several hours right in EU prime time. Then the server was down for several hours again friday morning, right at the start of easter weekend and it went down again for several hours on Saturday evening, right in the busiest time of the week.

Altogether we probably had between 12 and 15 hours of downtime last week. That's really a lot for one week, especially considering the times when most of it happened. I know they can't always foresee when issues are going to occur, but that's just terrible.

*cough* I may have slept through every single one of those downtimes :o

Any of you guys with the Daggerfall Covenant?
 
For pity's sake, I seriously gimp my characters to be able to fulfill these roles in dungeon groups and then have to sukkel through the harder open world content because of it, just to run 3 dungeons once per zone?

Not sure why u gimped, but my templar nukes mob packs easily while still keeping up the ability to heal effectively. U only need a handful of healing abilities to carry u through a dungeon atm, the rest should go into ur dps. The nice thing with doin this is that i can heal and DPS, so i have the option when running dungeons.

FYI

Address posted by ESO Game Director Matt Firor on official forums

As it’s now two and a half weeks since we officially launched on April 4, I think it’s a good time to bring everyone up to date on The Elder Scrolls Online service, maintenance windows, and what we’re doing to add content, make the game better, and address some issues that are near and dear to the community.

First and foremost, please know that we are doing everything we can to combat the gold spammers and bots – especially ones that “camp” dungeon bosses – that you see in game. I play the game every day; I see them too, and yes, they drive me crazy. We have had a daily running battle with them ever since the game launched – moving them from global chat, to in-game email, to creating bogus guilds and inviting players – and we continue to take measures to keep them away from players, even when it isn’t always apparent that we are. Most of the battle has been on the back end of the game – we regularly ban accounts involved in spam and bot activity – our teams are working on better systems to identify those accounts and characters that are doing black market activities, and we’re also working on some game feature refinement to make it harder for them to acquire gold in the first place. Fighting black market activity like gold selling spam and farming bots is a marathon, not a sprint, but we will do whatever we can to reduce their impact on the game.

The scope of the black market activity accounts for up to 85% of Customer Service emails/calls. Because of this huge influx of contact relating to this one issue, our CS team has been slower to react to other problems than planned – our sincere apologies if you have been held up for a long period of time waiting for CS to respond to you. Again, our goal is to keep this activity away from you so you don’t have to contact Customer Service in the first place.

Also very visible was last week’s gold “duping” (duplication) bug – where players could manipulate stacks of items in their inventory to create copies. We fixed the problem and banned the accounts of the worst offenders And yes, we erroneously caught up some legitimate accounts in that ban, for which we apologize – all erroneously banned accounts were reinstated within about 8 hours. Contrary to some reports, exploitation of this bug did not result in destabilizing the ESO economy in any way. We did turn off guild banks to limit the spread of the problem, but that was only until we put up a new version of the game that fixed the exploit later that evening.

All of these fixes have resulted in several more maintenance periods than we planned for – we know that everyone wants to play the game and hates downtime – but please be aware that every time we take down the servers for maintenance, it is either to fix a problem or put up an update that makes the game better. We are working on shortening the length of maintenances, this will get better over time.

So, here’s the list of our more prominent fixes since launch, as well as info about ongoing support that we’re doing for ESO:

Fixed the bug where a small percentage of players lost their expansion bank slots.

Fixed quest-blocking bugs, especially ones in Coldharbour, that prevented players from completing either a main quest step, or the Coldharbour zone.

Fixed many other quest bugs not related to the above where items/NPCs didn’t spawn properly.

Fixed the Greenshade (Aldmeri Dominion zone) problem, which caused the zone to crash every few hours. This one was fixed on 4/4, but was a problem during early access.

Fixed two dupe issues: the above one involving stacked items, and another (on a much smaller scale) involving crafting hireling emails.

Put many back-end fixes and procedures in place to block black market gold farmer activity.

We still have much to do – there still other quest problems on our fix list, most of them involving the situation where they become “de-synched” from the zone and don’t spawn their items or NPCs properly. We are in process of putting up our first major update to the game on our Play Test Server (PTS), which includes many updates to the game, including class and weapon ability tweaks, content fixes, and updates to almost all game systems. It also contains our new end-game Adventure Zone, Craglorn, with Veteran content aimed at 4 and 12-man groups. So stay tuned for PTS patch notes for all the other fixes that we’ve been working on. This is a major update to the game, so it will be on PTS for at least a week or 10 days for testing before we take it live.

We’re working on fixing problems, we’re combatting black market gold farmers, and we have a hefty new patch coming shortly. ESO is already an awesome game, and it will only get better from here. Thanks for your patience and support, and I’ll see you in Tamriel.

-Matt
 
My biggest issue with the game is still the dungeons. There is no reason to run them again after the first time. As a healer and/or tank, I like running dungeons, its good fun and a good way to hone your skills but getting 0 xp and 0 loot is not worth it. For pity's sake, I seriously gimp my characters to be able to fulfill these roles in dungeon groups and then have to sukkel through the harder open world content because of it, just to run 3 dungeons once per zone?

Ergh

It REALLY pisses me off.

Then, having to GRIND veteran levels to do the easiest dungeon at "end game", no thanks. So basically the game ends around 45 or so for my characters, 3 factions, 3 alts max.

I try hard to ignore the bots etc, but the dungeon thing just gets me really riled up.

I run Templar healer, but have plenty of DPS for the regular content (lv.28 atm). As for the veteran content the dungeons are completely changed, new enemies and bosses with new mechanics so you won't be doing "easy" anything after 50.
 
Main things that are extremely annoying to me is my game seems to just die when too many people gather at the same place in Cyrodiil. It would basically just disconnect, and then won't reconnect again for some times up to a half an hour.

Perhaps if/when they decide to move the EU servers to, well, EU, it would get somewhat better.

Secondly, gold farmers everywhere. The starter zones are permanently spammed by them, and ignoring them is mostly pointless because they keep remaking their chars with different names.

Nearly every single dungeon I've been do there had been a horde of bots insta killing the bosses.

I know this isn't unusual in MMO's, but they need to hurry up with dealing with this. This is a subscription based MMO after all. Among other things, I'd vote that they implement so that you can only receive loot/money from each boss once every 15 minutes or so.
 
You've given me something I now very much look forward to :D

Do you know if quests open up in those areas? I don't care about low-level quests, I really enjoy questing in this silly game :p



*cough* I may have slept through every single one of those downtimes :o

Any of you guys with the Daggerfall Covenant?


It doesn't quite open up like you think. It actually opens up in a specific faction sequence and you will actually HAVE to do the quests there to open the final faction etc. So basically you get to play the other 2 factions' areas as if you are leveling through there for the first time. Only difference is it's all scaled to lvl 50+ (so there won't be low-level quests either, it will the same quests just scaled) . Kinda like how Diablo 3 works with the difficulty levels. So the good news is, yes there is ALOT of content if you consider each factions quests+zones ALONE will take you to lvl 50. So those Veteran levels will be you leveling in the other 2 factions campaigns.

So this is probably a big consideration if you are planning to make alts, as you WILL play ALL the faction campaigns on every character at some point.


This is also where the phasing stuff comes into play, while you are happily leveling in those Daggerfall Covenant areas, there are lvl 50+ players from other factions leveling through the exact same content but in a different phase. This is probably a big pet peeve with alot of players, as you will never see players of the other factions EVER . Even if the "map opens up" , you will STILL not see the other players . Only place to see them is in Cyrrodil in the PvP zone.

Also, i am playing Dragonfall Covenant, just finishing up Rivenspire. So far not a bad faction line, the zones up to now is very mild/pleasant and kinda stock standard medieval europe looking. Rivenspire is slightly more barren, and i've seen the next zone is again Desert sandy (like the starter island). Overall i can't complain too much, nothing extraordinary, but nothing annoying me either.... there is a bit of an overuse of the whole "zoning into a dream/memory/alternate reality" in most of the quests, but i did realise it's Zenimax's way of handling the phasing (you zone into a place, when you zone back you zone into an altered phase, i.e. typically a town that is now saved etc).
 
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I run Templar healer, but have plenty of DPS for the regular content (lv.28 atm). As for the veteran content the dungeons are completely changed, new enemies and bosses with new mechanics so you won't be doing "easy" anything after 50.

When I mean sukkel, I mean not being able to solo the skull and cross bones bosses without a lot of kiting. I have no problem with normal content. I see people solo those bosses all the time with less hassle than I do. Still, I want xp and loot in dungeons!
 
@ Diabolus -- Thanks for the awesome response!

Not sure how I feel about existing in a separate phase to other players in other faction areas... Feels pretty stupid but infinitely better than not being able to reach those areas at all.

Looking forward to it :)

I preferred the Daggerfall Covenant primarily because they seem like the most diplomatic of the lot. Also, I like "human" lands.

The whole foresty, flowery elf thing of the Aldmeri Dominion and WELCOME TO MORDOR aspect of the Ebonheart Pact don't really appeal to me for a faction I want to side with.

I'm such a frikkin' pain when it comes to having a lot of choice thrown at me :p
 
After reading the below just now it just made me kinda pissed at Zenimax.. is this the new way lately to make a EU server and then it's still hosted in US and false advertise.. Now lately everyone is doing this.

Kai Schober, the german CM, did state yesterday on the official forums, that there's no ETA for the server move to Frankfurt(Level3)/Germany/OldEurope at the moment. They still plan on moving it, but it sounds like it won't happen in the near future.

"Sounds like it won't happen in the NEAR FUTURE" ... what BS is this, it was first said it will happen just after release..

Lots of talking going on about it on Reddit here: http://www.reddit.com/r/elderscroll...ax_the_eu_server_need_to_be_moved_to_eu_asap/
 
After reading the below just now it just made me kinda pissed at Zenimax.. is this the new way lately to make a EU server and then it's still hosted in US and false advertise.. Now lately everyone is doing this.



"Sounds like it won't happen in the NEAR FUTURE" ... what BS is this, it was first said it will happen just after release..

Lots of talking going on about it on Reddit here: http://www.reddit.com/r/elderscroll...ax_the_eu_server_need_to_be_moved_to_eu_asap/

Well luckily this is a subscription game, so europeans can in return just say they wont pay subs in the near future either....

I think this is more a sign that the game is not doing that well in terms of numbers, they probably dont want to pay money for a second european team when the game has very little subs right now and declining in 2 months. Classic case of launching with 30 servers and then have to merge and ahut down 27 of them 3 months later. I bet they are expecting/working to only have 1 server .
 
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Kai Schober, the german CM, did state yesterday on the official forums, that there's no ETA for the server move to Frankfurt(Level3)/Germany/OldEurope at the moment. They still plan on moving it, but it sounds like it won't happen in the near future.

Well luckily this is a subscription game, so europeans can in return just say they wont pay subs in the near future either....

And this is precisely what's going to happen.

I have absolutely no interest in continuing my subscription after being told we'll have an EU server "soon after release" only to later discover that the EU server is hosted in Canada, that we're paying 15-Euro per month for the privilege of American latency and that they suddenly have no time-frame on when the servers will move.

Leave it to Bethesda/Zenimax to fuck up the release and marketing of the first MMO in years that I've actually taken a huge liking to.
 
Well, i managed to get hold of a 60 day prepaid card for like R290 (on G2A.com , strange place, but lots of bargains with some risk ), so i'm sorted for 2 more months, but admittedly i won't be paying R200 a month (the euro price) or see myself playing beyond the 2-3 months. I also did not expect more either, i hoped to be surprised, but ESO is stock standard 3-monther MMO fodder ;)


Since this game is mostly a single player game for me, i'm not too bothered with the latency. The europeans are complaining about 200-300ms latencies, which is what we would be getting anyway if the server was in europe.

Regardless, just watching that Angry Joe review, i agree with alot of what he stated. This game is NOT good at the "massively multiplayer" part. This is pretty much Diablo 3 style of "forced to be online but actually still playing by yourself" . The whole phasing thing (as very nicely illustrated by Angry Joe) is so anti-group , anti-multiplayer they might as well have placed everyone in their own instance for the entire game...at least we wouldn't have the silly immersion breaking situation of bots and public dungeons/instances where 10 other players are sneaking around with you...

Overall the game is still RPG worthy, in a single player sense, and this has kept me entertained. The phasing works perfect for solo play as it feels you are literally changing the world. However i can't say i have found ANY worthy multiplayer aspects that i really enjoyed or found worth paying a monthly fee for. The PvP is fun, but i can do all that in GuildWars 2 for free and there is a ton of games out there that does similar things. The lack of AH / Economy / Trade / Seeing other players in the open world totally makes this single player material. It is quite sad to realise you won't ever see a lvl 50+++ player in all their decked out gear while you are lowbie level 10 leveling (and vice versa or even other factioned players outside of PvP), they will always be in their own separate phase....and that is part of what an "online world" is about.

So i'm not sure what Zenimax wanted to do here, the game got great stories and things that is fun in a single player setting, but creating a living breathing online world? What online world?

I like the semi classless system, but that will grow old at lvl 50 VERY quickly. So even though you got the entire map to unlock at lvl 50, as Shrike also said somewhere, do you really want to do it with a character that no longer gain any new abilities and pretty much have a fixed build by then?

I wouldn't give ESO a 5/10 like Angry Joe though, maybe a 6.5 (that is "average" in my scoring system) but i do agree that this game is "perfectly average" . I haven't seen any "wow" moments either. Even Age of Conan as angry as people was about that game, actually had a few "wow" moments for me, both in terms of the scenery and the combat mechanics (which was quite unique at the time). ESO, well it does have some memorable voice acting going , people i really recognized (John Cleese for instance and the dude that always play the main villain vampire in the Underworld movies). There was 1 quest that i found quite promising (it is on the Covenant starter island where you get a riddle and travel to various spots on the island until the final treasure) but then that was it , haven't seen a similar quest since.
 
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Done ESO on Aldmeri to 44 on my templar healer, going to do the same on Ebonheart with my DK tank. It is still a ton of fun testing and using synergy between skill lines and I am sure it will keep doing that until the build is set after 40 as well. At around 40 you realise that yes, you can kill this group of mobs using x build and swap mid fight to other skills but after a while you ask yourself, why? You have perfected a nice set of 5 buttons that kills groups quickly and with little fuss, why swap? To do the same thing with other skills?

And now to hit 50 and do the same thing with the same skills for another 100 levels worth of content? (yes VR1-10 is almost like doing another 100 levels, since you have to complete 2 full factions of zones to get there).

I would rather do the other faction levels with a totally new character with a totally new set of skills to play with. Once all 3 characters are at 44 or so, I will pick one to finish the guild stories and main story with and call it a day. Hopefully that will be around the 1st of June, when I can open a portal to another universe and play Wildstar.
 
Overall the game is still RPG worthy, in a single player sense, and this has kept me entertained. The phasing works perfect for solo play as it feels you are literally changing the world. However i can't say i have found ANY worthy multiplayer aspects that i really enjoyed or found worth paying a monthly fee for. The PvP is fun, but i can do all that in GuildWars 2 for free and there is a ton of games out there that does similar things. The lack of AH / Economy / Trade / Seeing other players in the open world totally makes this single player material. It is quite sad to realise you won't ever see a lvl 50+++ player in all their decked out gear while you are lowbie level 10 leveling (and vice versa or even other factioned players outside of PvP), they will always be in their own separate phase....and that is part of what an "online world" is about.

So i'm not sure what Zenimax wanted to do here, the game got great stories and things that is fun in a single player setting, but creating a living breathing online world? What online world?

I think you're blowing this a bit out of proportion. It's not as bad as you're making it out to be. Yes, you don't see extremely high level players in the same instance as you, but other than that it feels every bit as online as any other MMO. I'm constantly encountering and interacting with other players in the world. In fact, it's very beneficial to interact with other players because it makes a lot of things easier. Earlier this evening I was in Coldharbour and I was struggling to kill some Harvesters on my own, but shortly two players on the same quest came by and we fought them together. We then quested together in an impromptu group for about half an hour and it felt completely natural.

There's no denying that the game can be played as a solo game, but it's no less an MMO than something like GW2 (which ironically could also be soloed pretty easily).
 
I think you're blowing this a bit out of proportion. It's not as bad as you're making it out to be. Yes, you don't see extremely high level players in the same instance as you, but other than that it feels every bit as online as any other MMO. I'm constantly encountering and interacting with other players in the world. In fact, it's very beneficial to interact with other players because it makes a lot of things easier. Earlier this evening I was in Coldharbour and I was struggling to kill some Harvesters on my own, but shortly two players on the same quest came by and we fought them together. We then quested together in an impromptu group for about half an hour and it felt completely natural.

There's no denying that the game can be played as a solo game, but it's no less an MMO than something like GW2 (which ironically could also be soloed pretty easily).

Sure you can do that sort of random group up thing, but what i was trying to get to is that, unlike WoW, the game is not structured to ever reach a "critical mass" of social attractiveness. So while -I- might enjoy my time in ESO right now, i already know there will be zero reason to return in 3 months. Why would anyone? It's not like you are going to interact with players , you're not going to trade or arena or do some raiding . While some of these features are there , it's just designed poorly and nowhere near as open as MMOs that are over a decade old....

So yes i am harsh here, but it is because i've been through this sort of thing many times before and inevitably the game can have amazing stories,graphics and class options , but you do need the correct amount of social and online "life" to make the game feel alive. As it is, people are going to treat it like any other multi-player game with a single player campaign (which implies 2-3 months and most people are done with it).

The subscription on top of it, unfortunately is not helping at all. So the $60 box price i'm happy with, but would you pay $15 a month to play Skyrim with an in-game chat channel to talk to your friends who happen to play it also? Neverwinter Nights (the old PC game) did this years ago and there was no extra fees involved.
 
I'm finding the PvE to be okay, but my main goal is to get to veteran rank with my group so we can do the end game content like Craglorn.
 
Sure you can do that sort of random group up thing, but what i was trying to get to is that, unlike WoW, the game is not structured to ever reach a "critical mass" of social attractiveness. So while -I- might enjoy my time in ESO right now, i already know there will be zero reason to return in 3 months. Why would anyone? It's not like you are going to interact with players , you're not going to trade or arena or do some raiding . While some of these features are there , it's just designed poorly and nowhere near as open as MMOs that are over a decade old....

Well said, well said indeed.
 
Sure you can do that sort of random group up thing, but what i was trying to get to is that, unlike WoW, the game is not structured to ever reach a "critical mass" of social attractiveness. So while -I- might enjoy my time in ESO right now, i already know there will be zero reason to return in 3 months. Why would anyone? It's not like you are going to interact with players , you're not going to trade or arena or do some raiding . While some of these features are there , it's just designed poorly and nowhere near as open as MMOs that are over a decade old....

So yes i am harsh here, but it is because i've been through this sort of thing many times before and inevitably the game can have amazing stories,graphics and class options , but you do need the correct amount of social and online "life" to make the game feel alive. As it is, people are going to treat it like any other multi-player game with a single player campaign (which implies 2-3 months and most people are done with it).

The subscription on top of it, unfortunately is not helping at all. So the $60 box price i'm happy with, but would you pay $15 a month to play Skyrim with an in-game chat channel to talk to your friends who happen to play it also? Neverwinter Nights (the old PC game) did this years ago and there was no extra fees involved.

I don't know if I fully understand or grasp what u mean my social attractiveness. From what I remember from my WoW days there is little to no difference in social interaction other then cities being completely swamped with players of various levels (1-lvl cap). for example our TS server has been open to u guys since even before u joined the guild, but yet there hasn't been a desire to join up and get a little more social. This game is a platform like any other game and its down to u how u play it. I sometimes feel like people put way to much pressure on themselves (probably due to previous games/ experiences) and the current game they playing. I mean my one mate and I still enjoy firing up quake 3 and still play the same 3 maps with the same intentionally turned-down graphics. Who cares 3 months from now, who cares whether u spending $15 or not, cause if u not spending it here guaranteed u spending it elsewhere so realistically its not about the money. For me right now im immersed in the game and im enjoying it, will I feel that way tomorrow or when I hit 50, who actually cares. I spent the last like day just hunting sky-shards in shadowfen not even bothered about levelling.

I sometimes worry that when a game comes we are like lemmings and we look for the same stuff we had in a previous game and constantly we trying to relive a feeling we had, instead of trying to find a new one.

U speak of online "Life", what have u done to achieve that cause it sure as hell wont fall in ur lap. Communities make games not seeing pixels on a screen. I mean heck they have allowed u to join up to 5 guilds, that's a lot of social potential right there. Im not defending the game, just poking at your outlook and expectations.
 
I don't know if I fully understand or grasp what u mean my social attractiveness. From what I remember from my WoW days there is little to no difference in social interaction other then cities being completely swamped with players of various levels (1-lvl cap). for example our TS server has been open to u guys since even before u joined the guild, but yet there hasn't been a desire to join up and get a little more social. This game is a platform like any other game and its down to u how u play it. I sometimes feel like people put way to much pressure on themselves (probably due to previous games/ experiences) and the current game they playing. I mean my one mate and I still enjoy firing up quake 3 and still play the same 3 maps with the same intentionally turned-down graphics. Who cares 3 months from now, who cares whether u spending $15 or not, cause if u not spending it here guaranteed u spending it elsewhere so realistically its not about the money. For me right now im immersed in the game and im enjoying it, will I feel that way tomorrow or when I hit 50, who actually cares. I spent the last like day just hunting sky-shards in shadowfen not even bothered about levelling.

I sometimes worry that when a game comes we are like lemmings and we look for the same stuff we had in a previous game and constantly we trying to relive a feeling we had, instead of trying to find a new one.

U speak of online "Life", what have u done to achieve that cause it sure as hell wont fall in ur lap. Communities make games not seeing pixels on a screen. I mean heck they have allowed u to join up to 5 guilds, that's a lot of social potential right there. Im not defending the game, just poking at your outlook and expectations.


Yea, look, while you are clearly now trying to play the man instead of the ball here. It is not about "what have i done for the game to create community " , it should be about "what has the game done to encourage me to want to be part of a community" .

Whether i jump on every guild's TS server while at same time being on Skype,Facebook and Whatsapp with people playing entirely different games should not even be "a thing" with a specific game.

So i understand what you are trying to say here and that we should all just chill and play the game, which most of us are doing. However as i said, there's very little in my eyes in ESO that will make this game -grow- as opposed to -shrink- . I seriously do not see this game growing in numbers, the people that are playing it now is pretty much it and it can only go down.

In terms of WoW and social attractiveness, if you haven't noticed the difference between the WoW Social factor (and how the game got 100 times more social interactive design than ESO without even having large scale RvRvR ) and what we have in ESO, then i'm too lazy to type it all out as it is going to be a long reply and most likely won't convince you either way.

And yes, something as silly as 200 players dancing around in Shattrath or Oggrimar, showing off their mounts , their glowing armor and having duels outside the city gates IS something that adds quite a bit of "social" and "life" into the mix. Hell stupid things like seeing guild members logging in / out and having big achievements announced. ESO do not have it, and will never have it, unless they make rather big fundamental changes to their phasing tech .
 
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