The Elder Scrolls® Online

After over 5k hours and years of subscription, this new "update" made me leave the game for good.
This went from an awesome game where builds and classes did mather, into big mess of ... I don't have words for it.

Subclassing was a colossal mistake on a number of levels. There's going to be zero class identity and pretty much every build just got powercrept out of usability unless you're using assassination, spear or herald abilities for dps regardless that the devs say it'll bring "diversity" to the game. People will always chase meta and they basically just narrowed the game choices down even more.

For the casual questing player there's also no reason to run subclassing as far as I can see as the overworld content is so braindead easy why would you ever put effort into copying a build when any original build presubclassing works fine.

SUMMARY: This is a game that I've spent 700+ hours on, and at the end of it all I look back and realize that it was all... pointless. I had some fun, I learned some ESO lore, but nothing really stood out as an incredible experience I want to get back. Everything felt hollow to me. I think replaying Morrowind / Oblivion / Skyrim is more satisfying.

PROS
+ Terrific lore that goes deep into the Elder Scrolls. If you care at all about anything Elder Scrolls, then you'll learn some interesting bits here.
+ Despite being an online multiplayer game, you can solo most content.
+ The world is vast and varied. You can explore and find lots to do throughout. Each city has its own unique elements and characters, but at the same time they are all quite similar.
+ There are many viable classes and quite a lot of content for how to optimize if you want to.

NEUTRAL
= The graphics are quite dated at this point. While I understand that they have to work for the lowest common denominator, an engine rewrite would give a big refresh to this world.

CONS
- Despite the variety of scenery, all the cities feel the same at the end of the day.
- If you want to really be competitive, you end up having to min/max your build to the Nth degree. If you like following guides and / or crunching numbers on a spreadsheet, then have at it.
- RNG galore. While some loot is guaranteed, some of the more meaningful pieces for a build will require massive amounts of patience and many runs. This might sound good from the perspective that you have to work for something, but what ends up happening is that you join a dungeon crawl to only have the majority of players rushing through and skipping content. New players end up missing out on a lot of valuable background and story telling, because they're dragged along or killed trying to catch up.
- Despite mostly being solo-able, a lot of content still requires you to engage with others. This isn't inherently bad, but for those of you who are lone rangers, be warned. If you aren't into joining a guild, then you'll end up joining public dungeon crawls, which are a cluster**** half the time.
- $$$. The base game is cheap and has a lot of content in itself, but once you start getting expansions or thinking about buying addons, then you're going to be gouged. Most of the content behind loot boxes are junk so don't waste your money. There are some decent DLC. You can also explore the subscription, which gives you access to everything, but it's way too much money for me to justify.
- The PVP zones are far from balanced. You have to be an overpowered player with gear specifically designed for PVP (separate from non-PVP gear) to compete well.

I cant reccommend it because of the new monetization model. ESO plus is almost required to play or your inventory gets full every 5 minutes. ESO plus is a good value for the price, but now you also have to buy the season pass at $50 and it doesnt even include a new class. It has become an unecessarily commplicated model to squeeze out revenue.

I really do enjoy the atmosphere and community of ESO, but i wouldn't recommend it.
The housing idea would be so much fun if it wasn't priced to oblivion and limited to very minute designing.

I find myself coming on every once and awhile to turn off my brain and just follow the mind numbing fetch quest they throw at you. To each its own, but besides the amazing world; I just don't find myself enjoying the main game itself.

Its a fairly fun game but I cant wrap my head around the new business/content model

The marketing for ESO is always this epic, cinematic, open world fantasy full of adventure and OMG this other world that we all want to just live in!!!

The actual game? It's an MMO. MMOs are fucking boring. This one is no different. It's just. It's just another MMO, man. It's nothing like the videos. You ever play an MMO? Remember why you stopped? Yeah. This is that.

Kudos to their marketing department. If only they could make that into a game.

I mean, if you haven't gorged a huge chunk of your life on MMOs already, this is a good one to do that with.

if there wasnt a subscription system and paid currency like fallout 76 it would be a beautiful 9/10 but aside from that its a decent mmo with a lot of elder scrolls lore

"Subclassing" update is pure garbage nobody asked for.
1. Naming is totally wrong. "Subclassing" is adding more specializations of the current class. NEW lines unique to this class. What they have done is called "multiclassing". Instead of adding NEW skills, they are reusing existing ones. Lame.
2. Class identity and classes overall now almost have 0 meaning.
3. Amount of meta builds will be even more narrow now. Previously, builds were made for specific class strengths and weaknesses. Now everyone will just use the best build with most mathematically useful skill lines and that's all. From 10s of builds to few ones.
4. Nerfs to PURE classes. In order to "balance" their broken update that nobody asked for, they are nerfing NOT subclassed lines/passives, but OVERALL, so you HAVE to use subclassing to stay competitive.
5. Balancing issues that make pure classes obsolete.
6. Power creep, from 100-120k dps to 160k+.
7. PVP will take a huge hit, not sure how popular will it remain from now on, when everyone will be running the same few builds of "no class".

Although, I love ESO, this class change is the most awful thing ZOS has done to the game. Stopping my ESO+ sub.

I recently started playing with a group of four friends, two of whom already gave up due to how easy and lacking in challenge the early game is (it's just boring).

Another friend and I are still "insisting a bit" because we’ve heard that the end-game gets better. However, so far, we’re finding the game extremely easy and without any real challenges.

The lore is interesting, with well-crafted and engaging quests, but the gameplay, at least in our 35 hours so far, boils down to “go to a place and click on something that’s marked on the map.” You don’t even need to pay attention to the details, to be honest. The game feels like an RPG on "ultra easy" mode where nothing does meaningful damage to you, everything you hit dies quickly, and the game tells you exactly what to do, where to go, and what to click on. In short, it's a game for people who enjoy stories without needing to think much, react quickly, or solve anything complex.

As for PVE (at least in the early game), everything is ridiculously easy. You're practically immortal. You can go to almost any zone and all the mobs are weak. The classic “Tank / Healer / DPS” roles don't seem to matter. You can enter an early-game dungeon with four DPS friends and clear it while chatting, barely paying attention to what's happening. You won’t die. You don't need to rotate mechanics, you don't need to dodge boss special attacks, you're just immortal.

At first, we thought this was part of the starting island, being an intro for new players, but as we moved on to other zones, we realized the game’s difficulty level is just absurdly low all around.

Even if the endgame gets better, the leveling experience is not fun at all. It's boring and discouraging.

PVP is kind of cool. It feels like it works well, with some interesting mechanics, and the freedom in building your character allows for some unique setups. I imagine that with solid game knowledge and hours of gameplay, you can create some pretty unusual playstyles, and that’s a nice aspect.

I'm still playing. Maybe I'll update this review later if things actually get more interesting.

I understand that a game can have bad moments and good moments, but the experience needs to be at least minimally enjoyable from the start. Many players don’t have the patience to wait for the endgame to finally start having fun.

This game is fun… sometimes. A lot moreso if you pay the monthly subscription. If I could, I’d label this review as ‘mixed,’ but steam only allows you to label your review as Recommended or Not Recommended, so I’ll lean towards the latter because this review contains a lot of criticisms.

Don’t get this game for pvp. It’s horribly unbalanced and people with 60k health and gilded tank armor will tilt you. Unfortunately I still found the pvp fun despite this- it’s one of the only mmo’s I can think of with such a developed fantasy faction war. When it’s good, it’s great- but sometimes you ride your horse 5 minutes to a keep just to get instantly one shot by an invisible assassin. Battlegrounds is slightly better, but with no skill based matchmaking you either get stomped or stomp the other team and feel bad either way.

Recently I don’t really agree with a lot of the balance changes and a lot of the time it feels like the developers just add things because they sound good on paper but don’t develop them enough. Subclasses, the new feature, sounds cool, but really diminishes class identity and sounds like a nightmare to balance in a game where a lot of the armor sets aren’t even properly balanced in the first place.

I appreciate a lot of the elder scrolls games for the diverse playstyle opportunities and ways to get from point a to point b, but diversity sucks in this game because every class is locked into the same meta sets.

You could say, “well, just don’t do super hard content if you don’t want to follow the meta,” but the difficulty jump between what’s considered easy and difficult in this game is so laughably vast that the argument doesn’t hold up, and I fear that the meta is only going to get more homogenized with the introduction of subclasses.

Older content and non-veteran content and dungeons are so easy it’s almost laughable. Three of the group members could probably fall asleep in the middle of a boss fight and still be carried through it. Modern DLC dungeons are 300x more difficult. There’s only a select few dungeons that actually hit any sort of ‘sweet spot,’ when it comes to difficulty.

I find this problem is really exacerbated in overland content. Every time I play through the story, I want to enjoy it. I want to have fun. But it feels like getting to the next story beat is a boring chore rather than a quest or adventure- at least in the main game, because there is no challenge whatsoever in completing these tasks. Killing monsters can be done with 3 button presses. You don’t have to dodge, you don’t have to think, you don’t even have to have cognitive brain functions.

The dark brotherhood, thieves guild, and other DLC quest lines are amazing and fun. The questlines that don’t utilize a gimmick like thievery or assassination or some other newfangled skill line are great, but they have to work against the most bland, boring gameplay in the universe.

You might think I hate this game, but I don’t. It’s got an awesome aesthetic that goes against the grain of modern “anime style,” mmo’s. The hard dungeons are fun and unique, and learning how to play through their difficulty is actually quite engaging. As long as you spend a bunch of time grinding materials and good sets, which may or may not be nerfed to absolute garbage in the next update when the developers want you to shell out money for the new overpowered DLC set of the year.

This is going to sound insane, but the thing that kept me coming back to this game for almost 2k hours was probably the fashion. I absolutely loved discovering motifs and creating different outfits. The crafting system is amazingly designed, and a lot of the armor sets have a beautiful look to them. though without the craft bag from eso+ crafting can suck bad.

the game isn’t very good about it’s utilization of fomo and lootboxes, all in all, the developers have difficulty treating player’s wallets with respect. It’s nothing new in the industry, though, so I cut them slack even if it’s stupid of me to do so.

So, in conclusion, this game *can* be fun. If you find what you’re looking for. If any of the positives I wrote about in this review appeal to you, by all means, try it. But I lean towards a more critical lens because I know what this game could be. In this game, I see a piece of coal painted to look like a diamond when it could just be pressurized into one with effort and time.

(Yes I’m aware the diamond thing is a myth but I couldn’t think of another metaphor)

A Unique MMO with Soul, Lore, and Depth
The Elder Scrolls Online is more than just a game — it’s a world I love to immerse myself in. It beautifully blends deep storytelling, captivating environments, and rich lore that truly feels like an Elder Scrolls experience.

What I love:
Atmosphere and Lore – The world of Nirn is incredibly immersive. Every location feels alive, and the quests are well-written.
Diverse Playstyles – Tons of skills and customization options that make your character truly yours.
Helpful Community – I’ve had multiple moments where fellow players came to help unexpectedly.
Housing and Decoration – One of the most robust and creative home systems in any MMO.

What could improve:
Inventory Management – Can be overwhelming and clunky at times, especially for newcomers.
Monetization – Some of the prices for cosmetic or QoL content feel too steep.
Latency/Performance – Players in certain regions experience consistent lag and slowdowns.

Please keep ESO's lore-driven focus and continue valuing player feedback. For many of us, Tamriel isn't just a game — it's a second home. It deserves thoughtful care.

A free to play game that is not free to play. Uses vary clever models to make you think your money/time is worth spent. Spending time only makes you spend more money. Spending money only makes you spend more time. Do the math.

They give you a lot of game play that just leads you into this need that can only be solved be spending money. I know this is confusing and will take 100's if not 1,000's of hour to realize, but let me give you one example (and there are many more)

My brother and I were farming for gear, just to realize that the gear needed for one of us was dropped by one boss, in a specific instance, in one dungeon. That Boss starts a auto kill sequence that can only be stopped by a skill that only another class (outside our classes) can stop. We can not kill this boss ever (Bro CP260, Me CP380). Even if we could join a guild or a random team, we would not be able to farm this item to complete a set build in a way practically possible.

Again, this is just one example, so don't come blazing in with the way that you got around this, this is one example. there are many more. The game pushes for you to spend money on new characters. New characters, new armory slots, new motifs, new research,....you get the point.

I love this game, and wish I could still play it (obviously i could), but I just can not support games that adds a mechanic that makes you spend more money on it then you already have to progress your build. Just make a good game and we will spend the money. If that doesn't make sense to you, then this review post is not for you.

Good luck gaming world. Hope to see you in the next gen..??!!??

Every aspect of this game would be "Simply Fine", if it was executed well. But it isn't.
Changes to lore and various retcons would be fine, if they were good. But they aren't. "Jungle Cyrodiil" is not just grognards nitpicking about inconsistency, it's that the vision of Cyrodiil (and the wider setting) illustrated in the PGE1 was simply more compelling than what replaced it. ESO's changes make the setting less interesting, and never more interesting.
The game is too easy. That is the root cause of everything, because lack of challenge hurts questing, exploration, character building, and so on. ESO is just dull to play.
It's dying, and it's in the last stage of an MMO's life cycle where they try to squeeze as much money out of their playerbase as they can before it all falls apart.
Do not buy.

I've tried a few times over the years now to get into this game, because of my love for the Elder Scrolls universe. It even has some of my favorite races in the same faction and some fun lore. It just hasn't gripped me. The combat is rough, and the over-world difficulty is far too easy to be engaging. The choice to implement and maintain a basic-attack style combat, similar to classic wow, is beyond my understanding. If they changed these things, I would be happy to give them my money.

i would not reccomend this game. it is one of the most addicting things you can play. the monetization is super super greedy like thewy charge 100+ dollars for an in game player house which thn they limit the number of items you can place within. without the subscription you cannot access basic things like a crafting inventory for your materials. this game will consume you....mind....body....soul.....bank account......everything.....it is easily the best MMO tied or arguably ahead slightly more than FFXIV. you will do unholy things......holy things.......depraved things.......i sold a woman to a god of madness for a book that grants 2 skill points......i cannot take the decision back and it haunts me.....i dont even use those skill points.....may talos have mercy........i have killed countless other players......more enemys than there are grains of sand on the beaches of summerset.....i have walked many many miles over many many moons across tamriel and beyond....through dimensions plentiful and vast......adventure unending.....ive killed gods....yes plural.....i dont reccomend this game......i demand that you play it.....throw yourself upon the altar and sacrifice everything that makes you who you are.....become many others.....make deals.....forge friendships.....and truely live life without regrets.....question everything.....learn....grow.....start again......close shut the jaws......there are drums in the deep.....they are coming.....

If you have the Gold Road edition, you need to pay for about 50,000 in crowns to own a license to all zones and dungeons. That's about $350. Really?

In it's current state, I can no longer recommend the game.

I don't feel like the playerbase is heard, or understood. Any time a huge wave of changes lands in the patchnotes, I can't help but wonder if these changes were selected with a dice roll. Half of them are incredibly heavy-handed, and the other half doesn't make sense. None of the serious issues are addressed, more are being piled up, and generally, the entire system feels like a shameless cash grab

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

I give a 5 out of 5 Stars ★ for The Elder Scrolls® Online

I am not into MMOs, stayed away from Warcraft but as someone who played Skyrim on XBOX 360 and loved it to the core, i gave ESO a try just out of curiosity and must say it is one of the best MMOs out there. The biggest strength of ESO is the lore, the script, the story missions, the voice acting, the absolute freedom and the variety it offers in terms of game-play.

There are two servers PC North America & PC Europe. Your characters in either server cannot be carried over but any crown store purchase items can be including mounts, cosmetics and dlcs. The ESO subscription is not mandatory but it gives you access to unlimited inventory bag which is very convenient.

The PVP multiplayer Cyrodill is most fun, followed by Imperial city and battle grounds which is ok. The community is overall very live and friendly and on weekends the server is packed

I play mostly solo and content feels endless with over 2000 missions across several chapters, DLCs, Dungeons and Trails

The more you play the more you get addicted so watch out. Overall the Best MMO out there which is going solid for 11 years and many more years to come.

Cheers! Have Fun!

My favorite MMO I've ever played. Most NPCs are voice acted, music is great, the core gameplay loop of exploration and questing is a great time for casual players. There is tons of content to explore, and gear to grind. Unlike other MMO's, this game is extremely keen on having never vaulted a single piece of content, which I absolutely love. While the graphics are dated, I think the art style is incredible, and I love that I can run the game at maxed settings with the game running at a locked 100 FPS.

If you enjoy MMO's, this will probably be the one that hooks you permanently.

My friend got me into this game, I had fun for a little while, think I got to 270 in rank or something like that? But It's monetization scheme is just so scummy. Plus, the game mechanics are also scummy. X Gear set is hyper specific. Y Gear set doesn't work on Z ability even though it should. Veteran Dungeons are a pain if you get even 1 bad teammate. I got so annoyed at the game that I decided to stop trying to take the honourable route and went straight for slapping on Oakensoul and using twohanded. I don't care that it's super strong, maybe it's not super strong, maybe everything else is too weak, or complicated, or batshit insanely specific for me to want to do it. It's a game, I want to have fun, I don't want to feel like I'm working a second job just having to keep up a minimum DPS to be able to do Veteran dungeons and not get autokicked from the group.

Good game, has some elements that are less than ideal but has some other elements that are fun a done well.

In short, you can get many hours out of it just from the base game. The stories can be done as a solo player, or you can find a friend/group. Most interactions are positive. Recommend if you want to dive in or get into crafting/player homes then to get ESO Plus (the subscription, i.e. pay more money for the game you payed money for).

Longer:
The difficulty of zones has slowly gotten harder with time (world bosses for example) forcing the player to either learn the mechanics and get great gear or to find help from other players (depending on zone and time of day this can be harder). Some zones are dead, while others remain active.

Veteran and end game content has gotten more accessible to players since they added the activity finder, but will still typically need to join a guild (which may require you to Join tHeRe DiScOrD).

Crafting mechanic is simple but can be complex, the biggest grip is that crafting has a time gated aspect. To unlock traits you'll need to find the gear in that trait then research it which can max out to 30 days. So for example, for me to finish researching the last trait on a bow i'll have to wait 30 days, then boom I can make bows in any trait. BUT WAIT, theirs more! Then there are style pages/motifs, want to look like a bada** warrior with wings n S**t, gonna need the pages for that buddy and the materials to craft it. Oh whats that, where do you get it? Either by pure luck or running the Trial (12 man group content) on Veteran, but that requires you to have friends (me, crying because no one wants a terrible DD, because everyone is a DD in this game). Ahem. Anyway.

Housing: ESO in my opinion has some of the best housing in the MMO space. Yes, typically it is easier to drop a bunch of IRL money on crowns to buy a home. BUT, you can unlock homes via completing zone stories, in-game events, or with in game currency (gold, that you can get from killing mobs, quest etc.). Not only do some homes have cool features, but you can craft furniture (requires materials found in game and crafting recipes also found in game), you can buy zone exclusive furniture after completing zone stories and achievements. You can randomly get furniture through in game log in rewards, looting, fishing, collecting resources, etc. Then once you've got some furniture you can place it your home a decorate however you want. Like legit. A dude remade the town square from Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask MOON INCLUDED in his player owned home like WHAT?!?

Voice Acting: All the characters related to quest have voice actors, so you can play this whole MMO without reading.
Lore: Want lore. Books, Books everywhere. Quest, so many quest. Oh and the characters have voices, so they can just talk to you about (some) lore.

Achievements: MMO not sweaty enough for you, oh boy don't worry theirs in game account and character achievements. Want to show off that you are a Grand Master Crafter, unlock the achievement buddy. Want to show off that you are a god in PVP, unlock that achievement buddy. Want to show off that you eat trial bosses for breakfast, unlock that achievement buddy. Want to go crazy trying to 100% a zone, guess what, better unlock those achievements - what can't find some random book sitting on some random rock that you have jump halfway down a mountain to find, well that's why you don't have that achievement buddy.

Daily quest: Too many (if you have all the DLC). Each new DLC zone has 2-5 daily quest (kill world boss, clear delv, trial, find random item, please the crows, please the crows, PLEASE THE CROWS FEATHERLESS ONE. - Can be a bit overwhelming so i'd recommend just doing the crafting dailies and whatever zone/area your working in/on. Or you could just grind your daily quest.

Guilds: You can be apart of 5 guilds (unless they updated it and I just don't know, mostly solo player here). Best to join a merchant guild so you can sell random loot you get. But they have merch guilds, PVP guilds, PVE guilds, Roleplaying and ERPG guilds, questing guilds, find all the kitty cats guilds, you get the idea. So there is a community out here if you want to be apart of one!

K. Thanks for reading.

Legitimately one of the best MMOs currently on the market, if not the best, and possibly Bethesda's most enjoyable and successful project.

If you're torn on whether to buy, just understand that this game has tons of side distractions, dungeons, some raids, a seemingly endless number of hand-made quests and questlines, incredibly deep character build options, amazing crafting mechanics, world bosses, pvp, etc... and none of it really feels like a waste of time.

for fucks sake, they put an entire fucking card game that plays out like no other competitive card game on the market, they made it able to play into progression, and it's just one of the little things you could be doing... and you could do it to your heart's content, making xp, currency, crafting materials, etc from it the entire time.

Definitely has it's flaws, it's payment model is about the same as DDO's in which you're expected to either pay the monthly sub or have to continually pay up front for every new content addition... but that doesn't make DDO any worse of a game, and it doesn't for this one either. you CAN however trade people in-game currency for paid store items, kinda similar to warframe except DE did it better by just letting you trade the premium currency straight up.

The game is also INCREDIBLY confusing for a new player. You're going to get lost, you're going to be told to go to a zone that requires you to ride like 10 different fucking boats to get to before you can just unlock it's fast travel, you're going to get a ton of different items that have weird stats, weird set bonuses, weird activation requirements, etc... the combat itself doesn't play out that bad until you start min-maxing it, but learning how to utilize abilities can be. There's a big hurdle to jump before you're going to feel like you understand this game.

But overall, again, if it's not the best theme park mmo on the market right now, it's at least in the top 3.

A game with tremendous potential, but too much focused on pay-to-win system. It's a shame, because I have a lot of sentiment for The Elder Scrolls series.

This game has a lot of great features, but is its own biggest enemy in the end. There are two main things that this game does horribly wrong and if it ever changes, so will my recommendation.

1) There is no way to buy or sell with other player without joining a guild. This game really needs something like the "Black Lion Trading Post" in Guild Wars 2.

2) Just like in Fallout 76, there is a paywall to being able to carry unlimited farmed materials. It's a bag that you get with a subscription in this game. In Fallout 76 it's a scrap-box. An MMO should encourage farming not work against it. There could be other benefits given to those who subscribe, but farming should be unlocked with the purchase of the game.

Better than anything Bethesda has made in about 19 years.
I would recommend it (on sale)... But... Like all other MMOs, the premium shop is overpriced. They charge $25 for ONE name-change token.
The game itself is playable. But they've still got very predatory financial practices, seeking to pinch every penny out of every possible person for any reason or desire or want or need...

Certain features (like crafting, especially at a large scale and for writs) are clearly designed to be done only with a plus membership. It doesn't seem like they even tried to balance it for non-members.

They throw a lot of useless crap in your inventory which is confusing, not well designed... (If you get the right mods and have the know-how, you can know which ones are useless enough to delete/sell/give away and not bother storing.) Probably intended or at least left alone because there's SOME chance a sucker will buy a 10 slot increase to inventory or bank for $10 worth of crowns instead of the miniscule amount of gold in-game it costs. Also the increased demand for the storage upgrades even with gold slows a lot of players down, incentivizing premium purchases and membership subscriptions.

I can't recommend it for those reasons, the clear BS. But, if you can look past that, it's actually got a lot of positive sides to it.

It's kind of like navigating a minefield, but the journey is arguably worth it. Much more-so than many other MMO's IMO.

I wouldn't recommend anyone get pressured to invest money in memberships or anything in this game. Only if it's a convenience you think is worth your time and money, and if this is that kind of game for you. There are arguably many better things to spend that money on. And I feel a bit guilty even saying I situationally recommend this product given the amount of predatory practices and mistakes people can make on it, especially without good financial prudence. (To reiterate though, it's not all that different from your standard MMO's scumminess as far as I can tell.)

I guess that's that then. If you aren't good with finances, stay clear from this game. If the minor inconveniences the game throws at you tempts you to buy a membership... Or spend money on some terribly priced upgrade... This isn't the game for you. Save yourself, your time, and your money. (There are simply going to be some activites, some features that you are not not TECHNICALLY locked out of but they're really tedious to manage without a Plus subscription.)

If you are responsible with your time, your money, etc... Go for it. It's not bad at all. The game isn't well-designed FOR the consumer in many aspects (which is why I can't recommend it generally,) but if you can hold your own, and are willing to learn what the traps are and when and how to avoid them, how to take alternate routes... It's got some fun and worthwhile content to offer. That which would make the general time investment worth it, even with all the negatives (assuming you didn't fall for them.)

It has a lot of solo content and some decent group content. And really interesting class design and variability. I just would be wary of getting too attached to the product. Playing as more than 1 character is hell, skyshards only save per character and not account-wide... Because they gotta sell those "buy all 16 skyshards in this area for 10 bucks."

It sucks because a lot of the game's core gameplay mechanics and core gameplay loop is really, really well designed. A lot better than a lot of other MMOs.

But, this game is pretty much the epitome of the monkey's paw dilemma. For every good thing, there are 3 bad things. Which granted, is a better conversion rate than most MMOs.



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EXTRA: Beyond The Concise Review: (in progress)
Though of course it still has your standard MMO's dated design of: "Pop a potion or consumable (or equip an armor set with XP boosts) before turning in repeatable quests and/or grinding a dungeon or boss or whatever, to get a 150% boost to rewards and xp and blah blah blah" Just your typical lazy dated design. God forbid they balance a competent cohesive progression system that inherently values your time without having to jump a million and one hoops to maximize your efficiency, which may meet or exceed the expected progression, who the hell knows. The devs probably even don't. Just more items, more consumables, more buffs, more (boring ass) stuff to do and account for, more = more good.

The armory was a GREAT addition, being able to seamlessly change your builds free of cost... Too bad they only give you two slots. And to buy more it's $15 each. Per character... That's right, not even per-account. So they give the community what they asked for sure, but with EXTREME caveats, and with a clear intent to milk the pay-piggies and poor suckers. So it's like wishing upon the monkey's paw. You're only going to get what you ask for if they can profit off of it, and you're gonna get only a fraction of what you wish for every time because you'll only ever get a sampler platter without shelling out the big bucks. Oh and if you want to change your build on the fly, not at your base/house, it's $50. For a dude you can summon almost anywhere. At the cost of... $50. And if you ever want a different cosmetic? You gotta shell out another $50. No they didn't even hide the feature behind a paywall and then put the cosmetics on top and interchangeable... They hid the feature behind a paywall locked to each cosmetic variant. Because money.

And all this is... Yeah all of this is still very much a problem even if you buy the full premium edition of the game. You should probably do a fair amount of research into what those things grant, because the game pay-locks a LOT of content and features behind the in-game store.

I decided to poke my head back in and see how it was going. The answer is poorly. The game itself is pretty fun, I enjoyed getting up to around lvl 10 in the early zones. Goofing around, killing cultists, bandits, ya know, elder scrolls stuff. Decided to go see how much it would be to catch up on the past expansions, so I can slowly quest through them over time.

I am uninstalling the game now. Its a combination of ungodly expensive, confusing, and stupid. DLC and Content packs are separate things? Some dlc is only on the crowns store, not on steam, some of the content packs on steam may or may not include the DLC from the crown store? What the fuck is happening? Does the sub include everything? No apparently not, it does not include one of the content packs and 2025 stuff, which, is that a DLC, or a pack, or something new and exciting and different that isn't included in anything?

I give up, fuck you, I'm just going to mod skyrim again.

tldr, its fun for the casual or responsible adult, not that fun for the avid gamer. try gw2

Elder scrolls online it's great until you realize it's not...but then you realize it's good and fun, then you remember it's not great but you will forget this...until you remember.

ESO it's an "horizontal" MMO, meaning that everything but the most hard content "scales" the difficulty so it will be waiting for you. if you stop playing for months or years, you can come back and continue "without being left behind".

I'm using a lot of "" because there are some important details here. Horizontal progress is great for the adult gamer, the one juggling with life and hobbies and this is great. You can always come to ESO, play and relax. The problem here is that ESO is VERY EASY and if you want to go further from casual gaming IS VERY ANNOYING.

Right from the start you are a killing machine, everything is made of cardboard. M almost finishing the base game story from my alliance and guilds and it was incredibly easy. This really breaks the immersion because the final battles, the so incredibly evil an powerful story bosses become trivial, these fight last 2 seconds (literally). You will always remember the hard battles, not the easy ones and I cant remember the stories from 3 or 4 zones ago. So the game is """"horizontal"""" because instead of scaling with you, it's scales DOWN for you.

This really bugs me because I can see there is good writing and there is GREAT voice acting.

The only instances that the game can be hard are world bosses (not all of them), Trials and multiplayer dungeons but only if you select veteran difficulty. Sadly is hard to experience the story of those instances since the hardcore gamer wants to rush these dungeons as fast as possible to get unique loot.

For the avid but "poor" gamer it's kinda difficult. The base game is trivial so you wanna level up fast, get your sets and builds so you can "finally play the game" as in every other mmorpg. The thing is that maybe these sets drop only on DLC content and maybe you want to craft or upgrade these items....oh.

Crafting it's a core mechanic in ESO and there are a LOT of materials that will flood your inventory and bank FAST and sooner than later you will ran out of space. You will have to pay for ESO plus which gives you an infinite inventory for materials and double your bank space as long as you keep paying.

There are 2 other "game modes" that are great. There is a rogue-like that will of course scale with you on each stage and its very fun for the same reason. its a challenge. The other mode it's a deck-building card game that if you are a card game enthusiast like me you're gonna love it. (like realms card games, ascension, etc) Sadly it's just a small part of a game obviously.


The solution for me is that zenimax should make a way to select the difficulty on singleplayer content and private instances.
The DLC stuff I get it...you gotta get money for the content but sometimes it can be confusing, annoying and sometimes pay-to-win.

i'm gonna keep playing until this problems makes my game boring. If this happens to you too, check guild wars 2, there is great single player content, a lot of stuff to do, less things to pay for and all their great ideas they have are being copied by other mmos.

It's like the Elder Scrolls but very empty and soulless

I can't recommend this game anymore with the direction it's going. It's purely a cash-grab at this point. Content pass, ESO Plus (basically just storage pass), outdated graphics, and never-ending bugs that the devs neglect. This game was a lot of fun but now it's just bland. Sad times for MMOs...

After more than 4.000 hours having played this game, I can't recommend this game. Let me explain why.

There are a lot group dungeons in the game, but they all are pointless, because there are a lot people who run like crazy through them because they are only there for leveling up or for an event, which is needed for the rewards of the event. Don't think you get time to do the quest in the dungeons and follow the lore of the dungeons. Because you can't, thanks to the majority of players who just rush to them. There are chests and heavy sacks in the dungeons, but also they are pointless, if you are lucky you can loot a heavy sack, but for chests? Before you have opened the chest, you are already pulled into the next boss fight. And no there will be no communication about it, because the rushers are in a hurry. And there is no option to run dungeons on your own until you are a high level player, but you need the skill points you earn by doing the quest for dungeons just when you are low level. And wouldn't it be fun to know the lore at the start?
And the worst thing which happens a lot in dungeons is that a lot of people are so badly in a hurry, that they take a class like Tank or Healer while they are a DPS and can't heal or tank at all. They change their class so they are faster in a dungeon. Good luck when you are new to the game! Also in trials people try to skip as much as possible.

This rushing behavior does also have consequences for events, people go like crazy for the rewards at the start of the event, while you do get enough time for completing them. But when the ending of the event comes nearby, no one does the required content anymore, so it does take much longer to complete the event because of waiting times, searching for people who want to help you out.

Stay away from the Crown Store, it is a really bad scam! You can buy loot boxes, you don't know what you get and mostly you get trash items. You can trade them for an in-game currency like Gem Stones and that sounds nice but it isn't. For example a mount costs 400 Gem Stones, when you get a mount double it will be automatically turned in for Gem Stones, but you only get 5 Gem Stones for a mount which costs 400 Gem Stones, that's not nice but a scam. There are only in-game currencies shown, so it is never clearly how much money you actually are spending in the Crown Store. For example a house is 14.000 Crowns which do cost you €35,= and after you buy the house you find out that you get far too few slots to decorate it properly. So was that worth your money? And if you do want to buy in the Crown Store read the description very well, there are items which only work on one character and not account wide!!! For example when you like to glamour your gear, you can buy extra slots for real money (expensive) but it will work only on one character!!!

PVP: I like what they have done with the siege weapons, but that's all about it. As a new player you will have not one chance to stay alive over there. Gear is everything in PVP that gives you a fair chance for not getting one shotted over and over again. There was a test a few weeks ago where all players were equal, that was the best experience I have ever had.

Another point I want to make is that the game really demands that you log in daily. Otherwise you miss out on your daily rewards and leveling your mount even slower. (Of course they sell riding lessons in the Crown Store for a lot of real money) It takes 180 days to fully level your mount and that's per character!
And speaking of content that is per character, you can get different companions, but for every character you create you have to follow the exact same quest line over and over again, which are usually really boring and way too long. What is nice is that when you have them leveled to the max, the extra skill you get from them works on every character. The same goes for wayshrines you previously found on another character, you will also have to find them all again on your slow mount. And so the game quickly starts to feel like a job rather than a game you play for relaxation.

When you are playing in the EU during daytime there is a lot of downtime for all kinds of maintenance's even on public holidays! ZOS does not take European players into account. The duration of a maintenance will take most of the time 5 hours, but can be longer.

Is it all bad? No, the lore in the game is good There is a lot to do in the game. If you want to start this game just take your time, the game is really overwhelming for new players and with the upcoming update it won't be easier for new players. Try to find a nice guild, with friendly players, you will need them! Play the game for free! Don't pay a monthly subscription for it, It is not worth it. You get double inventory space and an unlimited crafting bag, but that's really not needed for just playing this game and you are not focused on something like housing or crafting. The game is huge and not all content is immediately playable (most is) as a free player but it will eventually be added to the base game and therefore free to play. Your patience will be rewarded.

I've been playing for a year now, I did play a lot... But also I have cancelled my subscription. From now on I will play this game for free casually with the friends I have made and do all the solo-able content like the stories.
This was my personal opinion, feel mad if you disagree with my opinion.

Give the Crafting bag to base game, i would be playing this game if it not was for the ESO+ . people wouldn't mind buying DLCs every now and then.

get rid of that unnecessary headache.
give the players some freedom.
the more money you ask the less players wanna keep playing...

I play this game mostly for classic elder scroll exploration and quest experience, treating it like other elder scroll single player game while ignoring many of it's multiplayer aspects. Experiencing morrowind in the past before ES3 Morrowind release, meeting character of legends mentioned in some elder scroll games. It's been great!

After nearly 300 hours we are unable to get into our accounts. Neither me or my buddy. Any email service from ESO doesn't work so make sure if you play this, you write down all your login details. Forgetting your userID means forgetting your account. They have avenues in place to recover your account, but those avenues don't work at all. Multiple requests and support tickets over the course of days, without even a single email in return. I can't recommend this to anyone in 2025. It is beyond greedy to litter this game with micro transactions and a subscription while simple services like automated emails do not even work.

Good game if you don't mind being nickle and dimed at every corner...
By that I mean the gameplay itself is good but you have to shill out money and they kneecap you in the most worst ways to do so.
To craft you need dozens if not hundreds of items and your storage is very limited so you need their monthly subscription which gives you a specialized crafting item storage with INFINITE space... that's how much of a problem the number of items is, the storage had to be infinite...
Have fun starting a new character that has to train up their mount each time once daily, it's been a while but I think like 3 stats of 70 each, so 210 days... and if they release a new class you need another 270 days, or you know pay them to boost it... or you know just suck it up in the world PVP and trying to keep up with people to get anywhere...
And lastly the icing on this shit cake, the new expansions. The monthly subscription gives you access to all the lil expansion areas, except the new one, which they withhold for 1 month to try and get you to pay for it...
Oh and don't go into PVP expecting to do well as anything but a DPS, the game is heavily skewed in favor of damage.

I wanted to like this game... I really did but the nickle and diming finally got to me.

As you can tell I've got nearly 6,700 hrs in this game, I'm almost CP 2300 ... and obviously I've liked it for quite some time, but let's be frank, this game is expensive af. The yearly updates are expensive, now there is a season pass -.-, the membership is expensive, the crown shop is expensive (paid lootboxes are 100% cringe). This game is a shameless cash grab, and I'm really starting to lose much of the joy I used to have playing it. I've had a serious fomo problem and I feel like this game feeds a harmful addiction. They still haven't fixed the combat bug (and they probably never will), ballgroups run amuck in pvp (would it kill the devs to cap cross-healing ffs?), and there's terrible balancing as well in the pvp theater. I will never enjoy the tanky meta. Thoughts and prayers to all those necromancers that don't get much love from the devs. Transmutes capped at 1k and Event tickets capped at 12 is also a persistent annoyance. Honestly, I've had much more fun single playing Skyrim, Oblivion, or Fallout with a metric ton of mods. It's also a heck of a lot cheaper. Do yourself a favor, if you like the Elder Scrolls Franchise, play those instead. Sincerely, Lydia the Burdensworn.

Great game for delving deeper into the elder scrolls story and if you enjoy mmos, but honestly with the release of the content pass feels that they're trying to kill the game with more in game purchasing and trying to make eso+ useless.

Best MMO game i ever player, and the best thing is that it is designed for players who loves RPG stories and single player games, because in this game you can actually play like that without any hassles

it's my review for this game..

(Strengths)
Skill Progression System
Presentation and Voice Acting
Lore and Storytelling
PvP Content

(Weaknesses)
Combat Mechanics - because of some lags
PvE Content - sometimes is boring
Technical Issues
Old Graphic
and a lot of money needs for get all stuffs in game :)

i like it and i play it everyday but i hope at least the prices should be cheaper...

Until ZOS decides to do something about the people who were scammed out of their money on the Anniversary ESO plus deal, I don't think I can recommend this game to anyone. It's very frustrating to have this happen, and right as I was deciding to pick it up again.

Its pretty fun. PVE is enjoyable and typical mmo stuff is good. Other players are pretty friendly

To start I love this game, it shows that there is passion behind the development team and behind the game's community, it shows that they do care about the game. I have 1k+ hours on consoles, decided to restart on PC. I would like to give thanks to ZOS_Kevin and ZOS_JessicaFolsom. You two are the pillars of the community and we are grateful for all the work you put in.

Now for the bad stuff:

- ZOS please fire the person/people who writes the promotion materials. This is not the first time that something like the ESO+ discount "misunderstanding" (bait and switch in reality) has happened. I wouldn't be surprised if the ECC will send them a letter to compensate the scammed players. Makes me believe that you not only communicate with your playerbase poorly, but also with the different departments in your company. You also need to communicate it better with the new players that the COMPLETE collection doesn't actually give you all the content in the game.

- The official forums moderators should also get replaced. They are power hungry, they will delete comments, ban anyone who they just don't like. I was considering name dropping some of the scourge of the moderation team, but I'll leave them out.

- ESO+ - That's it, it's just unnecessary. You create the problems and sell the solutions

- The Crownstore. Stop selling Vampire and Werewolf unlocks for 13€ when you can just type it in chat, and someone would happily bite you for free. Also quit selling inventory upgrades. They are unlockable with the in-game currency. I also hope that the EU's new regulation will get rid of your predatory Crown Crate system. It's disgusting that games are allowed to have an in-game casino.

Overall please note that I am not hating just to hate on the game, but rather want to give my feedback to hopefully improve the game. Note that all the negative I wrote isn't about the game mechanics/story quality/design or anything. Your biggest problem are the people making the decisions behind the monetizations or rather how you present them.

craft bags are locked behind a subscription :/
thats the only reason i quit
this world is meaningless if you cant collect crafting materials....
and the game is cheap so they can get you to subscribe or buy dlcs

False advertising and wouldn't correct it the transaction. Steam stating 50% off on membership. After 5 days of contact with them with support. They stated they corrected the wording on the mistake but don't want to offer any money back.

Game itself is pretty good. However, I do not recommend purchasing ESO+. They offered a 50% sale on their website and very clearly stated it was for ALL Steam players. Upon purchasing ESO+ it was not discounted and full price was charged.

I contacted both Steam support and Zenimax support, after a few days they changed the post on the website to say "only first time subscribers", and then they just told me there was no refund, and "apologies for the confusion". ESO had left the post up for several days, and many people bought ESO+ based on this information.

Not much else I can do at this point, but leave this review as a warning for how they treat their players.

Would be such an amazing game if everything didnt cost over 30 bucks.

Also, I resubscribed during a sale, only to pay full price and for steam to tell me that I couldn't get my money back...

PLEASE bethesda, this is like the only fucking game u actively work on.

The DLC peaked with Elsweyr and has been getting worse since. Its super expensive to play any of the fun parts of the game now and yet despite that I can't stop fucking playing.
I really enjoy this game but I can only recommend it when its on sale. Don't make the same mistake I did, the dlc largely isn't worth it especially if you don't plan to get into the game competitively. Too much locked behind paywalls that should be free for all, like the craft bag, jewelry crafting, antiquities, etc. Lots of "Causing a problem and selling the solution" with some of those things, especially with the craft bag.
Honestly if the option was available I'd make my review neutral, I don't despise this game, but unfortunately I can't say I adore it like I used to.

Video gamers need to stop being stepped on by the game developers. They just want to get every bit amount of money from them before nerfing their set-up then hide the overpowered stuff behind a new pay wall. Cyrodiil and dungeons continue to have more bugs each patch, which someone of them instantly kill the player. Example: Steam pipes cannot be turned off in the Volenfell dungeon and will kill the player after about 5 seconds.

Can they finally update the animation?

Like seriously, its 2025. And I know its unqiue.. feel.. is what gives the game its own look and identity, but honestly, I really don't like the very basic character animation the game has. The sound design and effects are great, so are the quest and story lines and NPCS. Now just update the animation and you have a great game.
But in its current state.... gosh I dont get why they stick with it. Its just sooo outdated and even worse than Skyrim which came out 14 years ago...
In addition, I am also, not a fan of the fighting sytem, which is like the chore of the game.
You just feel so weak as a character as you have to deal an incredible amount of damage to even the smallest of foes to kill them (not just like in Skyrim where you could two- or even one-hit a foe with a two handed battle ax - which is turn is very satisfying and rewarding, but nah not in ESO where your foes just seem to withstand twenty hits with a battle ax thats swun by a beefy guy who can split a guy in half with his axe). And even worse, every enemy is levelling up with so whenever you get new items that "increase" your damage, the amount of damage to do compared to your enemies health stays the same, making the gameplay loop quite boring and unrewarding. It also gives room for the question: whats the point in even getting new armor and weapons? Or killing enemies in general? I have often found myself just running through an area filled with mobs and not fighting any of them just so I reach the item or character or whatvever I have to reach for the quest to proceed and not wanting to fight any of the mobs because its rather pointless and boring.

I guess I just dont like the whole MMORPG elements of the game and am expecting from it to be more of a Multiplayer version of Skyrim, but bro, if that actually were the case. An updated version of Skyrim with better graphics and (even more) smooth animations (if the game had Skyram animations and characters that would already be a massive updgrade)... man that would be awesome.

Instead we got this..
A game with an incredible amount of content, great stories, locations, characters, music and effects.

Yet with character animations that is awfully outdated and a fighting system thats awfully unsatisfying, clunky, boring and quite pointless as there is hardly any progression, making it rather frustrating than fun and which feels more like a burden than actual something you would like to spend more time doing (in a game where you do this 70 percent of the time..)

Had this game for 10 years under the same account name, decided to play some PvP matches one night for the first time and the next day I was perma banned for my account name. Tried working with support, but they wouldn't do anything about it.