The Elder Scrolls® Online

its a money grab and they don,t listen to player feedback especially with pvp

Zenimax Online is lying to their user base about the nature of their outage, unless they are so incompetent that they have no disaster recovery or redundancy. I highly doubt that they have no DR since they were acquired by Microsoft, who does their due diligence before acquisitions. I am not surprised that the game is full of bugs that have been present for years without resolution since Microsoft also does this and claims to fix it in future updates and version, which never arrives. Their user support is a joke. When in-game items go missing, they simply lie to users or reply back with tripe like "the item was deleted", which we already knew, as it was the purpose of the ticket. When the system deletes your items, how is that the fault of the user? They never resolve issues.

Elder Scrolls Online... as someone that began their journey in Tamriel with Elder Scrolls III (Morrowind), this game does not feel as personal as those experiences. However, after playing ESO, the previous titles feel empty, and that is because of the human interaction involved in Elder Scrolls Online. From the living economy of the game, the Guilds, and the whispers whether good or bad, the community is what makes this a great game. Once you get to a certain level, the pve is no longer challenging, except for group content which is imposssible to complete without others. PvP will always be challenging, because no matter how good you get, their will always be someone better than you, and that drives competition to create new ways to defeat opponents. After having played so much of Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim, this game feelss like an echo of those games rather than a new experience, but here you access places only spoken of in books of the previous games. As far as vidoe games go, this one is worthy of your time, in my opinion.

Server stability. NA and EU megaservers go down fairly regularly, so the premium cost of the game doesn't really make sense.

Cons:

Crown Crates (very low % of getting what you want)
Subscription is not mandatory but necessary (it allows you to hold materials in a separate bag so that they don't take inventory space)

Pros:

Great community (at least in my experience)
Always something to do
Dungeons are tricky (which is fun for me)
Leveling is pretty easy
Story is Extensive & if you do it in order you will understand a lot more, if not, each zone has a story that will get you very into the lore of the game & doing everything in order will help you understand better.
Game does not hold your hand, basically it tells you here's a tutorial on combat, scrying (need skill line), etc. Have fun
Werewolves are kind of broken if built well.

It is basically a solo game if you want it to be. The storytelling is often better than Skyrim's. Quite enjoyable to quest by yourself, or with others. Everything takes a long time and many systems are not well explained but if you enjoy questing, discovery, and the more than occasional google, you will have a great time.

I'll probably keep playing (if the game will ever let me back in again), but I recommend just not getting the game at all and saving yourself from my fate.

Pros:
Almost as fun to explore as other ES games, even though the zones are quite small.
Bosmer can have horns.
Great if you love opening containers and looting, like other ES games.
Vvardenfell area has the same feel as it did in the Morrowind game.

Cons:
A number of quests engage in disgusting both sides-ism (most egregious example: a slave killing the owner who tortured the slave's wife to death is considered by the narrative to be just as bad as the owner)
A lot of the writing is very weak and sometimes incoherent (it often seems that some quest dialogue was changed at some point but earlier dialogue wasn't edited to align with those changes)
Monetizes things that should be free.
Ruthlessly uses FOMO ("fear of missing out") to keep people playing (and paying)
Regularly crashes and loses contact with the server; the errors usually don't seem to be user-side.
Does a very poor job of explaining core mechanics.
Has a lot of achievements, but there largely doesn't seem to be a reason for most of them (while there are some achievements that are grouped and lead up to a final reward for finishing that achievement line, there don't seem to be any meta-achievements that you can get for just having a lot of achievements, so it seems like the huge number of achievements is only to incentivize people to keep playing forever).

Since the ye old days of Everquest , Dark Age of Camelot, PSO, through the times of Final Fantasy XI, WoW, Lineage, Aion, Warhammer online, LOTRO, and countless other online RPGS, I can with confidence say that Elder Scrolls Online was good at one point. I cannot recommend ESO in its current state due to its updated unethical business practices. Over the last few years the greed and absurd desire to create micro transactions has made this once great game diminish into embarrassment.

PROS
-Great lore and questing
-open world exploration
-HOUSING is the highlight of the game(but they know this in the cash shop...)
-great music with the atmosphere if you want to escape for some fantasy setting
-Solo and small group play with optional harder sweaty content if you are into that

CONS
-monetization of everything -LOOT BOXES FOR REAL MONEY-
-disorganized mess of the guild/market place, making money is a huge chore(you have to use an external website to search for items to buy/sell)
-cosmetics that are sold are so overdone they are lore breaking and immersion breaking(Me want to look like giant ice blob for 20 dollars rawr.....)
-the more recent sweaty checklist content to try and earn mediocre in game free things
-pvp used to be good - it is very unoptimized, and the pvp nerfs tend to affect the pve play negatively
-visually it is dated, and they tend to ruin graphic settings and visual "optimization" randomly with patch updates

I beta tested ESO on pc, what feels like a lifetime ago and the beta was better than the current state. I also played ESO on console for thousands of hours before realizing playing console nowadays is a scam within itself. I wanted to give ESO on PC a chance again, because at its base its a great game with heart and good lore and very fun aspects. However, the amount of effort and money needed in order to make this game enjoyable is unacceptable and disrespectful. It makes me sad, I love this game, and it could be so much more...

You would be better off spending your hard earned money on real, full versions of games with little to no micro transactions, that respect your time and enthusiasm.

Cool-looking world. Fun storylines. God-awful combat. Imbalanced PvP. Levels don't make you more powerful. Too many things behind a paywall. Insanely dumb "level-scaling" system. I hate that system in every game it's implemented in.

That about sums up my experience with the game. It's just not enjoyable. I picked up the game when it first released and had fun with it. After some changes to the game, I dropped it completely and I've never been able to get back into it. There's just no feeling of actual progression when the enemies scale to your level, so it's difficult trying to play an MMO with no clear increases in power. It also doesn't even remotely *feel* like an MMO. I can count on one hand the amount of interactions I had with other players during my playtime.

I just can't, in good faith, recommend this game to anybody. Even if it goes free to play... I just don't recommend it.

while the hours on my steam don't show it

This game has been my bread and butter since launch. my comfort game if you will.

it's easy to get into and no other mmo has done a better job with gear set building. which is what i primarily focus on in eso. i'm always thinking of what kind of character i want to make. what to mix and match with different sets/ clases/ abilities for trial and error.

The progression of it is also nice. i'm not having to wait in between weeks to get the gear i need i can run and farm whatever on my own time. with the collection book system you are guaranteed better chances at items with each run. out of all the mmo's i have played this one respects your time the most.

The community (outside of the occasional bad egg and/or meta elitists which all mmo's have to a degree) is fantastic. i have gone through alot of guilds my time off and on in eso and alot of them are willing to help you with getting gear/ run dungeons/ or simply learning the game.

all in all i don't ever think i will ever put this game down completely

I would not recommend this game due to its heavy reliance on pay-to-progress mechanics. While I own multiple DLCs, the one I didn’t purchase contained a weapon and armor set that are unavailable elsewhere in the game, creating a significant imbalance. This makes non-paying players feel disadvantaged and, in some cases, nearly useless. Additionally, the game feels like a grind fest, making it difficult to enjoy the content—especially when you’re repeatedly spam-killed while trying to farm gear.

took me half a day to get to character creation.

buying game, creating eso account, linking steam account to it is a mess and error labirynth.

if u make a mistake, it cannot be undone and u need new account. if u launch it from steam, start game, create account inside game, it lets you play without verification. password and verification comes separate and if u made any mistakes, u are fucked.

trying to create eso account on web browser and linking account is impossible and turns errors.

terms of service is 4 agreements you have to sign

I bought it to make steam account able to leave review, but my god what a hassle. dont even start.

It aged like a fine swine . Looks disgusting , plays disgusting . In 10 years they didn't improve the game instead they focused on adding 50 dlcs and their stupid "crown store" that is very predatory . They even sell quests and house furnishings for real money . Almost everything in the game costs real money !

Unless you are fanatic and a whale who wants to spend thousands of dollars on dlcs and other crap I doubt you gonna enjoy the game , especially as a new player .

As someone who's put in thousands of hours across PC, PlayStation and Xbox, I can say I still haven't finished the whole game.
I would recommend this game as a time wasting game, you'll put hundreds of hours into the game just going through story lines on multiple characters alone. Then there's still multiple things to do in between.
Tbh, I've stopped and played this game multiple times throughout the years from when I started playing back in 2014. Its great for a burst of time playing but I get burnt out easily.

Though one thing I dislike about this game is the need for a craft bag. If you're like me who hoards every single ingredient then you're going to quickly run out of slots to store them!

You can't craft or play 90% of the game unless you pay for their subscription service after purchasing the game. And even then you can't access the current chapter unless you shell out top dollar for it or wait 4 months for it to join the rest of the thousands of dollars of DLC in the subscription pool.
Can't buy cosmetics you actually want, you have to play their shitty little loot crate mini game. Spent $30 one time ever for crates in this game and got a bunch of consumables that i could already craft better variants of.
If you wanna decorate a house in this game, be prepared to spend hundreds of hours grinding to put together a nice little shack until you're ready to spend literal thousands of dollars to unlock furnished purchase-only mansions.

The gameplay loop is fun, the predatory FOMO overpriced microtransactions are shameful. If you can ignore those, go for it.

Game is confusing as can be they start off with a level system you get to level 50 then they change it to a points system part way though the game. The UI and Keybinding is ackward at best and I have played many many MMOs before including WOW, FFX14, Eve Online, and many many more. Everything is hard to do this game and poorly designed. The game is just over all poorly done. I am not happy with the game at has an extremely steep learning curve to it and this comes from an experienced MMO player. Over all the game is just fustrating and poorly done. Now today (Nov 30 2024) my game is randomly freezing and I am getting a very high latency spikes today of up to 800 ms. There is no connection issue here either my connection is working great and I Download at 700 - 800 Mbps and Upload at about 160 Mbps! I am on a high speed Gigabit connection. There is no connection issue its the game's servers! The creators of the game can't even properly maintain their servers. Again over all the game is horribly done! Keep away from Elder Scrolls Online!

this game is broken as fuck, doesnt even open when you press start game and i tried uninstalling it, now its stuck on my steam page on a perpetual "stopping" status which is an eyesore and incredibly annoying, BS game no wonder its FIVE BUCKS.

I have played this for longer than I should have, it’s just that you get invested in a game and you hate to quit even when you know you should. The developers are totally deaf to the concerns of their customers they refused to fix what’s broken they refuse to correct in equities within the game and they refused to ban abusive players that cheat. I think it’s time for me to find a new game and I cannot recommend this as it’s a big money pit.

The game offers some enjoyable lore tidbits, but Zenimax consistently fails to listen to player feedback. Issues pointed out on the public test build often make it to the live build unchanged, and the developers seem determined to go against what players actually want. Furthermore, the lead combat designer appears to have no understanding of the combat system he oversees, resulting in poor gear changes with every patch. Critique about the game is also heavily censored across all platforms.

The monetization is highly predatory: for example, some houses cost up to €100 but come with barely any furnishing slots, and additional loadout slots cost €20 each while only unlocking for a single character. The subscription is essentially mandatory unless you want to deal with constant inventory issues every few steps.

I continue to play ESO because I’ve already invested too much money into it, but I cannot recommend it due to the reasons mentioned above. Unless you’re a die-hard MMO or lore enthusiast—or have money to burn—I would advise against buying this game.

And now we wait for my account to get banned for speaking out against Zenimax.

I'd left this game before because the open world difficulty was waaay too low, but decided to give it a shot again. At one point I realized you pretty much can't enjoy the game without getting a membership so I bought it. I quickly started to actually enjoy the game as a singleplayer game - the quest design was cool, stories too, and the combat is smooth. Very beautiful level design too.

But so what if the quests are cool if the final boss can't put you below 95% health? I feel like none of the design decisions matter because the game is SO easy. I never died in a single normal dungeon all the way to Max Level (160cp). Veteran dungeons were also a drag. I died once or twice as A HEALER, and the party could just finish the boss alone because healing was optional.

I did 2 raids (trials) before max level easily. You can just get a single gear set and complete all of the PVE content. Progression is horizontal, which means you dont get wiped by expansions like in WoW, but progression still feels meaningless.

I go into a dungeon, and almost none of the classes and races have any identity. I can't tell what my teammates are. Not to mention that there is ZERO group play, so you don't even need to chat with you party members. People leave groups because they can't complete dailies, instead of teaching newbies the mechanics if they need to complete a boss in a specific way. And of course, you never need any help with questing, so the community aspect is dead.

Everything is a grind to artificially make you spend more time. The Crown store (microtransactions unit) is hilariously overpriced in a classic gatcha fashion. Designed to trick new players into spending money.

If you're gonna play ESO, just know that it's a single player game, masked as an MMO.

Awesome game... Spent hours playing and still find something new... love the story and the combat...

to much content to pay for cant even craft storage without 2000 crowns. campaign is ight

This game initially seems like it has a lot of promise, but it feels empty and pointless and I can't find any motivation to play it.

Big game with tons of content - great for single players and for groups.

Heavily monetised, this would be fine were it a free to play, but you buy the game, to have to buy more shit to play it, like their "optional" sub which grants you an inventory with infinite slots for mats, and you have to buy every new dlc, not to mention their horrible crown shop.
Very displeased

This is a great game that allows you to experience the storyline and play dungeons with friends. As a fan of the Skyrim series, I am more suitable for it

Account banned for no reason. Didnt bought ingame items or money. Didnt use any bots, software, hardware. I didnt even talked to anyone (i mean alive humans).
P.s. Account restored by support.

Fun game with an expansive world. Not as good as Skyrim but enjoying it.

Played on and off since Beta, you can either play solo or in a group it does not matter. Your adventure is how you make it. I've enjoyed all 6k hours of my play time, majority of getting Trifectas and achivements or hanging out doing community and guild events. Thanks to everyone who I met along the way and if you're considering investing your time into this game I would highly recomend joining the adventure.

The game is unequivocally awesome in terms of the IP it is created from, but like Runescape i reluctantly shelve it due to the sheer amount of time it would take to keep up with it. It does however, look like if i was crazy enough to pick up one again, it'd be between this and Runescape.

I figure this review despite not being made of much substance is a better endorsement than no review at all. I would recommend to the right individual.

I like build crafting, very good about flexible building for low levels, idk how variable high level play is

Awesome game, I had a Skyrim craving but played until I was bored to tears. Bought this gem and voilla, back to having fun with a new game that will last me for some time. Best game money ever spent!

Fantastic questing experience with every single quest voice acted. Questlines are gripping and interesting.

This game claims to support Mac OS but does not support Apple Silicon Macs, and fails to start properly on them.

This game is very fun and there are a lot of quests and things to do. you re not bound to just doing a single story zone quest at any time

This is the first MMORPG with made me feel like a real Rogue and Thief and that's impressive. Loved the stealth system and how it worked in PvE. Also, they translated the levelling system of usual TES games to this format very well - I recommend!

Met some great people on this game and there is so much to do, and you can play the game however you want and do alright

I love everything about the game. The extensive story. The battles. The players. The wide ranging map. It is overall the best mmorpg out there.

The questing is amazing. Probably most fun part of the game for me, alongside pvp.

Never been a fan of mmorpgs. However I have always been an Elder Scrolls fan. This is the game that got me to try an mmo for the first time and it does not disappoint. Many people will tell you this doesn't play like a traditional mmo like WoW or Dota. This is an Elder Scrolls game through and through with hundreds of hours of lore and singleplayer content to delve into. Would highly recommend if you love the Elder Scrolls for the lore and not just the gameplay. I say that because this game plays NOTHING like Skyrim, Oblivion, or Morrowind. But it is definitely a whole nother beast of a game by itself. You can explore every bit of Tamriel and even places from the mainline games like Skyrim and Cyrodil. Morrowind is my favorite place in ESO just for the atmosphere alone and the wildlife. This game is fun to find a group and get into but it takes some learning and a few tweaked settings to really optimize the experience. Thank God Bethesda hasn't messed this one up.

If you want to play a game solo that's fun, this is it.

If you take some time off and play other games, and try to come back to play it again and want to update your user ID to match your current one on other games, good luck.

Been waiting nearly all day now on an email with my code.

A bit old UI and graphics but well fleshed out. Good group play as well as solo availability.

This game is fun but jesus christ, this shit crashes more than drunk drivers do

I started to play this game but now I have to stop and uninstall it. To ZeniMax and Bethesda you want to put real world politics your video games, then I will not support you. I will never buy another product form you. I play video games to get away for the real world, to place myself into a different one for a while. It seems that you need to current day everyone, so I'm done with you. One more nail in the coffin of the games industry. I have a good amount of games in my backlog, I will be playing them instead of yours, maybe i will start supporting indie-games.

I love the game world, even though it is such a mess sometimes and content locking (Kinda pushing you to buy a subscription after a certain point, whether its for new DLC zones or Crafting bag...) is awful.

I think there are things that should just be universal like upgrading mounts. If you upgrade a mount type or that specific mount it should be accountwide. PERIOD. I don't see why you should be forced at a ultimatum of 60+ days to upgrade one single stat to max for mounts, or pay 6k (I believe) to get to 60 on one stat. It's incredibly predatory, though they have given away smaller DLCs and other content I still abhor that stance, using a slow mount vs your fast mount on your main for example is incredibly jarring and honestly downright awful.

Some stories are better than others but thats to be expected. Just be aware of the marketing I guess, Since this was a monthly sub it sorta makes sense but it still suffers alot when something like SWTOR hands you old content for your sub and maintains a quite large playerbase, or other mmos which are making mounts universal or speed something that you can get ahold of a bit easier (case in point for WoW, which has lowered its cap for mounts by a INSANE amount and flight aswell to some degree.) I understand there isn't flying in ESO and thats fine I just wish getting around didnt feel so sluggish.

I only say I'd recommend this because you can seriously get lost in it, after all I do have quite a lot of hours and am returning after a few years to once again get lost in it.

Parts of this game are fun, had some good times with other players but all in all this is a just a huge time sink, money pit that never ends. Off and on for almost 10 years, this is my second account.
There are thousands of horrible players for every one good player you meet in the game who destroy any hope of having a consistently fun time.
MMO's are not fun anymore.
Buy a deck of cards and invite some people over or fire up the BBQ grill. You will have a much better time with less stress, plus you can borrow their lawn mower later.

Reviewing negatively because the changes to Battlegrounds, and the fact you can't play anything but the new BGs, pisses me off.

The change from 4vs4vs4 in a Big Area to a 4vs4 in a Tiny Area turned BGs into a first-person shooter. This is not to mention the awful 8vs8 mode which is also played in an area the same size a World of Warcraft 2v2 Arenas are played. Absolute insanity.

There's no point in playing anything but a glass-cannon build, because whatever you build, you are going to die withing 1-2 seconds. The only way to prevent yourself from dying is to kill the enemy faster.
There's barely any room to maneuver since the area is so small that there's always an enemy nearby.

This review stays negative until battlegrounds are playable again.

The game used to be really fun back when I played years ago. Now the game is just EASY mode with the whole game scaling to your level. I do not find ANYTHING outside of dungeons to be challenging at all. Even world bosses can be solo. But the worst part is, they added LGTBQ BS agenda to the game. Now conversations confuse tf out of me with incorrect grammar and English. For example (It wont be 100% accurate but it goes like) "I'll meet you at Toothmaul Gully, I can't wait for you to meet them" Who is them? One fucking person, I thought it was her crew. Who is her? It's a they, I was told they fawn over new people like me..... Can we just keep the English normal? I really don't care of you are gay, at all. My issue is the language and gender.... Stop it.... Since I bought the fucking game and DLC I will finish it BUT I will not be buying new DLC nor support this game any longer after Gold Road is finished.

Played for YEARS on xbox, sank A LOT of money into it, then started over again after moving to pc... and I have a terrible hate/love relationship with ESO, and with all things good and bad considered, overall I would not recommend ESO.

It's almost impossible to play without ESO Plus and the extra storage space/crafting bag, some things are pretty much pay2win (such as pvp), everything has become a monotonous copy-paste-change-skins-and-colors mess, a new class will come out then be totally nerfed in later patches/updates, the in game economy is simply atrocious and coming by large amounts of gold is not so easy, zone chat is constantly FLOODED with Guild 'advertisements', new armor sets are pumped out and constantly replaced with new ones that make the older ones almost obsolete and they try to drain your pockets as much as they can...but if you can get past all of that and other shit, and can manage without ESO Plus, it is still an Elder Scrolls game and can be pretty enjoyable for a few hours at a time.

Its fun if you have ppl to play with but they try and squeeze money out of you at every turn. Not quite pay to win but if you dont fork over for eso plus your not going to have a great time. Its cool being able to explore most of tamriel but gotta give it a negative over all for the scummy micros