I was involved in Elder Scrolls Online beta-testing and I had keen interest about how to use the MMO for freeform roleplaying. In practice the game developer had huge layoffs before the publishing so the game was clearly broken. Maybe the worst wasn’t game itself but audience that wanted Online Skyrim, while the game was more of a traditional MMORPG. The monthly payment was also problem because most MMOs had switched to Free-To-Play model. The problems led to people leaving and bitching about the game - something that did make roleplaying difficult and spoiled the game for me. So how is the most expensive RPG of all times today? I ventured back to Tamriel to find out!
Game information
Name: Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited Publisher/Developer: Zenimax Online Studios (2014,2015)
Platforms: PC, Mac, PS4, XBox One Type: MMORPG
Age ratings: PEGI 16, Tamriel Online PEGI 18
Reviewers: Rami (36)
Videos:
MMO Graveyard: ESO
How Elder Scrolls Online has changed (IGN)
DLC: Morrowind trailer
Mechanics and play
Elder Scrolls Online has action based gaming, with additional possibility to play from the first perspective. First mouse button hits and second one blocks. The player can have up to five skills plus one ultimate and changeable second set ready at all times. The weapons,armor, potions, foods and runes can be well crafted. The actual combat has similiar mechanic than Wildstar - GUI shows attack vectors in red lines giving cue to player to dodge. The skill points are not recievet but given from skyshards found from the caves and overland. After player reaches 50. level he will start to accumulate “champion”-levels. 2014 Veteran-levels were changed to system where champion points can be assigned to star signs, giving small but noticeable boost to different areas.
Something for experienced players?
The selling point of the original game was strong story. Not quite unlike to Star Wars: Old Republic the player can play alone or with the friend. The actual PVP arena was Cyrodiil which was contested by three opposing alliances. So called ‘raid’ content was basically nonexistent.
The actual gameplay is fun and intutive. All dialogs are talked and there’s lots to play. To my sock my veteran level chracter had poor equipment and it did some time to respec all the skill points. After studying and setting things I wanted the game started to work out. After all the player characters can move around with fair freedom so starting points don’t matter that much anymore.
Ethical message?
The game is all about being hero, the daedric prince Molag Ball tries to cause ‘Planemeld’ meaning that if succeed the Tamriel would merge to his own domain of Coldharbour. The player escapes from the Coldharbour and starts to fight back.
The downloadable content expands the story with thieves guild and assasins of Dark Brotherhood - this brings up more dark themes and caused PEGI to give the console and free to play version of the game PEGI 18 rating.
Interesting features?
The game is not really 'free-to-play' as it requires at least 30 euro game to be bought. Additionally all of the races are not selectable in every area, unless you already have Imperial-edition of the game, imperials being ones that can be everywhere. The in-game store provides costumes, DLC and other normal stuff with real currency. The 10 euros monthly fee unlocks quite many features including “craft bag”. This means that all the crafting material that previously did take space from your pockets are moved to their own space. Furthrmore all DLCs are free to play and experience points are recieved in faster pace. In other words ESO plus is A+ service.
In my opinion the Elder Scrolls Online is still one of the best MMORPGs available. Granted it was published late with bad funding model and cuts in development but currently it’s pretty much what it was supposed to be 2,5 years ago. One can enjoy it as free-to-play game and play the epic plot alone without bothering about other players. Not many MMORPGs offer possibility to sneak around and play as action game so even with its flaws it’s a good game and suits for small groups of friends.
The next DLC will be set in Morrowind. This is most likely huge nostalgia trip for old players, so that might generate some interest. I don't know how far this nostalgia goes but gradually adding whole Tamriel is one of the selling points.
For families...?
One thing I would to point out is slight unfinished touches of the game. The UI is still bugged - there were warnings about LUA memory running out without any addons. Of course I was saving chatlog but still. Well the solution was open config and add memory or find an addon which adjusts it automatically. The slight unfinished touch does bother sometimes, like I was warned by players that using V-Sync on causes memory leak!For the roleplaying perspective the game hasn’t developed much at all. There is still megaservers and no real space or servers for just roleplaying. Finding other roleplayers might be hard because game uses instancing like SWTOR - your friends might be in different version of said tavern. However istancing keeps the level sizes sane and the game doesn’t feel void from players. With Wildstar this was indeed a problem.
DLC?
There’s several DLCs that are not free to play:- Imperial City
- Orsinum
- Thieves Guild
- Dark Brotherhood
- Shadows of The Hist
One can buy these from the store or play with montly fee (ESO Plus). The store offers polymorphs, crafting styles and other sorts of things that are not affecting to game play (altough the bear as a mount would be cool…).
Age raiting?
Tamriel Unlimited and change to the Free-To-Play model introduced the possibility of killing the innocents (robbing and killing the inhabitants of the house is possible). The thieves guild and Dark Brotherhood capitalized this feature a lot. In practice area spells might hit to guards and they might decide to kill player on sight so quite many players turn this feature off (its ‘on’ by default). In other hand assasinations are not possible with this feature being turned off and the thief might get attacked by inhabitants if they see him stealing.
In practice possibility to “kill innocents” caused automatically to PEGI give the game PEGI 18 rating. This cannot be disputed with the system because they tend to think that digital humans should be protected. In other words the systems ratings are based on old research on game violence, while some other things might be judged to be more hazardous to kids today. The API of PEGI-system gives us rationale to the rating:
“Violence is similar to that already found in Elder Scrolls Online however in Tamriel Unlimited you are now able to commit acts of violence towards multiple innocent civilian bystanders and vulnerable or defenceless human characters, who may be unable to fight back or flee which can impact on the overall rating of the game.”
The actual change of the age rating came to my knowledge when in LAN-party the underage boy asked if he can feed his horse? I didn’t tell him no because in my opinion game isn’t clearly more violent when compared to PEGI 16 version. Player isn’t pushed to kill the bystanders and he is actively punished by that by the bounty on his head. If not killed outright the player character recieves penalties and looses all the stolen items. However the example above just tells what happens when the game age rating is switched after it’s publishing - it does make illegal for someone to play.
Families can talk about
- Age rating might cause some discussion.
- World of Elder Scrolls is vast and has several topcis.
- The game notes that there is eight divines, in earlier games this was nine. Who was the ninth?
- How to play the game? The game is indeed good co-op for gaming couples.
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