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[Kala]

Ah, ok.  Misread what you said a bit there (thought you meant you that's how you reacted in single player games compared to MMOs, not ESO compared to other MMOs - even though you said so quite clearly  )

But yeah...agreed, hiding shinies is putting the motivation to explore in the wrong place.  I think pace is definitely also an issue.  A lot of MMOs feel absolutely frantic to me. Which is part of the hook, but doesn't lend itself to just...looking around at stuff.

I explored the shiiiiet out of Ultima Online and there was very little reward/incentive for that other than my own interest  In fact, there was mostly death  But you sorta had to just...go find something to do yourself.

People commented in that ESO review I linked that it's silly to complain that areas are gated, as it's a MMO and MMOs have to do that, as mobs can't scale up to your level as they could in a single player game.

UO didn't do that.  You could go all over the land and sea, and sometimes there'd be things you could handle in the wilderness - sometimes not.  Sometimes you might find a dungeon you could cope with, other times you'd walk in, find a load of dragons and liches, turn round and run out again (because no).  If you happened along something that you couldn't cope with at your level of skills, hard cheese. You'll die, likely lose your stuff and learn to run away next time.

Sometimes I feel like a little old person.  IT WAS BETTER IN THE OLD DAYS.

[Lyn Farel]

Quite so.

[Ollie]

When I (explore) on other MMOs, it's mostly willingly because it's beautiful, not because I want to search every corner and turn back every stone to find if I haven't missed anything... 

This is one of the best things about Skyrim (and most of the post-2000 ES games), in my experience. You're on your way somewhere to kill 10 rats/fetch a sword/blahblahblah and you see something that makes you go 'Screw this dull quest stuff, I want to go there' and you do and suddenly you're unable to account for exactly what you've been doing in the game for the last two hours.

While it probably sounds cliche, there's no reward in that except the immersive experience itself.

If ESO managed that, I'd be purchasing and subscribing, but to me it sounds more like just another theme park with a bunch of signs indicating which height you have to be to participate in the various rides?

[Lyn Farel]

Skyrim and other ES are themeparks too. That's their very definition, you enter the game (the park) and you then have access to a lot of quests and stuff (theme attractions, carousels, etc) scattered everywhere, just like it is in a themepark. Just with less restraints and corridors and more freedom to go wherever you like.

The problem I see starts with "screw this dull quest". Why bothering developing dull quests in the first place ? It's one of the main things with western RPGs, you always have a shitload of so called "secondary quests", where the story most often tastes like shit and is indeed dull as hell, just for the sake of adding more content because they can't fill their game lifespan quota with their main story to begin with. Secondary quests always feel like either "kill 10 rabbits" or when they are more advanced, like they were not deemed good enough to be part of the main story. If they suck so bad, why putting them nevertheless in the first place ?



Granted, I have heard that in Skyrim for example, some secondary storylines like the brotherhood of darkness are actually even better than the main storyline.

Oh well, in the ES games (which are really good games I think for those who like) you have 2 mentalities. I have friends that love it because their reasoning is not the one of an achiever. They explore stuff that seems interesting and if they find a goodie somewhere in there, it makes them happy with that little bonus they discovered. To me it has the exact opposite effect. I just have to know that there is stuff to be missed that exploration suddenly turns into a nightmare that usually make me stop playing pretty fast if I have to turn every stone to find the stuff I might miss. And i'm not speaking about useless goodies, i'm speaking about lore, stories, or important leveling items, whatever.  vOv

[Matariki Rain]

ESO is being kinda fun so far.

Weird thing: my primary conditioning is to go all High RP on it, but I'm sufficiently worn out with RP and second-job-you-pay-for gaming that I'm happy just absorbing the lore and wandering the world. (The good stuff is off the paths or on the bookshelves. To understand my idea of "good stuff" remember that I appreciated Dear Esther.)

There's some very pleasant voice acting and some pleasing character writing. I'm not sure whether I'll find myself an end-game that'll be satisfying longer term but... I'm in no hurry.

If any of you can recommend lore resources which explain more about the social units and typical life paths of people from the various species/races, I'd appreciate pointers. More info like that in Katrina's post two pages back is the sort of thing that I'll lap up.

(Edit: Why, yes, I'm an Elder scrolls newbie. Ulf's given months of his life to the franchise, but still can't answer my questions about things like where little Orcs come from if the chief is the only man allowed to take wives. Does a chief take lots of wives and maintain a small clan of close family, or do the non-chiefly folk somehow manage to reproduce without marriage? Questions like that one still exercise my mind. Gently.)

[Lyn Farel]

From what I have seen for now, ES is one of the most irrational universe I have seen that doesn't really bother explaining that kind of things, as long as it serves their storytelling...

[Gwen Ikiryo]

There's a bunch of good guides to all the playable races on teso-rp, their backstage analogue, if I remember. With sources and stuff. That might be a decent place to start.

That being said, Elder Scrolls is such a stupidly massive universe where so much of the information about the world is framed through a subjective lens, that it's probably impossible to just learn the whole setting. That's not the best way to approach it.

And yes, the chief takes a lot of wives.

[Matariki Rain]

I'm currently enjoying http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_Wiki

[Rin Kaelestria]

I've been using a different wiki for the TES lore. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Main_Page Mostly the same stuff, but there's been some things in the past here and there that one wiki has that the other one doesn't. Course, this was back when I was using it for Skyrim purposes. <_<

[Dessau]

So, uh... I heard Zenimax pulled a SquareEnix and let a monumental exploit slide into the initial release version of the game. In addition, they will possibly have to pull a SEGA and rollback the servers.

Confirm/Deny?

[Rin Kaelestria]

Exploits happen in every MMO, that's a given. Though one that helps someone make gold so easily could explain why the Gold Sellers showed up so soon in ESO.    As for a roll back, haven't heard anything about one possibly happening.

What I DO know, is that there's a major bug with the in game bank shared between your characters. Items disappearing from it, your gold stored in there also disappearing, and your bank expansions that you bought with the in game currency no longer there, either. This by far is the most disapointing one that seems to ruin the game so some, and one they haven't found out a solution to rectify it. It's hit a lot of people (myself included, lost about 6-8k gold), too. Frustrating to go put something in your bank only to find your money gone.

[Ibrahim Tash-Murkon]

Exploits happen in every MMO, that's a given. Though one that helps someone make gold so easily could explain why the Gold Sellers showed up so soon in ESO.    As for a roll back, haven't heard anything about one possibly happening.

What I DO know, is that there's a major bug with the in game bank shared between your characters. Items disappearing from it, your gold stored in there also disappearing, and your bank expansions that you bought with the in game currency no longer there, either. This by far is the most disapointing one that seems to ruin the game so some, and one they haven't found out a solution to rectify it. It's hit a lot of people (myself included, lost about 6-8k gold), too. Frustrating to go put something in your bank only to find your money gone.

I don't think my character banks have been affected but I'm pretty sure my guild bank has been eating items and now when I try and access it the loading never stops. Very, very frustrating indeed.

[Morwen Lagann]

The exploit I heard about was one that involved duplicating items that was present in beta.

Like Rin, I haven't heard anything about server wipes/rollbacks/whatever, but I've also yet to pick up the game 'for real' since the betas so all I have to go on is people making mentions of it on places like twitter or here. Couldn't justify the purchase right away.

[Ibrahim Tash-Murkon]

Oh, it seems that the Guild Bank isn't a problem exactly but that Zenimax shut it down earlier as part of a response to the dupping exploit (which was apparently known about during the beta). Their handling of this is hardly inspirational. 

[Dessau]

Exploits happen in every MMO, that's a given.

Apologies, by 'letting it slide' I meant that they had done as SE had; offer no fix for a well-documented bug in CBT/OBT, and launch the game with bug intact. In Zenimax's case it seems that the duping has now been patched, so it's likely a fix has been in the works for weeks, but the market is still flooded with fraudulent rare items and currency, much as FF14 was.

I don't know if SE ever addressed their security vulnerability.