Month: April 2014

Bethesda has released a new infographic for its upcoming MMO The Elder Scrolls Online, revealing over 5 million people registered for the beta.

Other tidbits of info about TESO include the fact that there’s over 61 million items in the game, along with 10,202 NPCs and it’s all supported by 8.13 miles of cable in Zenimax Online HQ.

For the full list of info, check out the graphic below, and see how we’re finding the latest entry in The Elder Scrolls franchise so far.

Source from:http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/04/03/the-elder-scrolls-online-infographic-reveals-5-million-beta-registrations

My fourth day In The Elder Scrolls Online didn’t start until well after 3:00 p.m. thanks to the North American megaserver going down in the wee watches of Wednesday morning and remaining down for several hours.

When it came back up, the first thing I did was load into Doshia’s Lair outside Daggerfall with a pickup group that intended to finish a Fighter’s Guild quest called Anchors From the Harbour. Unfortunately none of us could see the others’ avatars inside the instance, so after several attempts at reloading and relogging, we abandoned ship [Ed. note: Yes it’s a solo quest, which wasn’t in any way made clear to the group trying to enter it!].

While additional data like this has caused me to reassess my earlier observations about ESO’s smooth (pre-)launch, it hasn’t affected my overall enjoyment of the game. In fact, ESO would need quite a few more bugs and several more days of downtime to qualify as a “bad” launch. If you disagree, well, I question how many MMO launches you’ve actually experienced.

Anyway, let’s move on to the actual gameplay. Shortly after my failed PUG experiment, I dinged level 10 and set about preparing myself to sample ESO’s much-touted three-faction PvP.

When I say preparing myself, what I mean is pressing L to bring up the Alliance War menu, clicking the rightmost campaign button, and selecting a home campaign, which as I understand it is basically an instance of the gigantic Cyrodiil PvP battlefield. Right-clicking my home campaign and selecting Enter then whisked me away from Daggerfall to a training camp well inside friendly faction lines.

From there I picked up a tutorial quest line and made use of the Transitus Shrine (i.e., the fast travel network between keeps, outposts, and gates). Fortunately for me, the Daggerfall Covenant was currently dominating Cyrodiil, so I could teleport to most areas of the map unmolested. It’s telling that Cyrodiil has its own fast travel system, too, because the zone is absolutely ginormous. I ventured outside the safety of my faction stronghold a few times just to explore, and I was blown away by the enormity of the place.

I guess it has to be big given the fact that ZeniMax says it can support 2,000 simultaneous users with 200 of them onscreen at any given moment. But I still wasn’t prepared for exactly how big it is until I looked at the zone map and spent some time traversing it on horseback.

First things first, though. Back at the Northern High Rock Gate camp, I turned in the first of my PvP newb quests and was rewarded with Alliance Points that are used on everything from new gear to repair kits to siege weapons and camps. Said siege weapons are a lot of fun, and they may even end up overcoming my PvP indifference if maintaining a steady supply of them doesn’t turn out to be a hellacious grind.

As you’ll discover when you arrive at the firing range portion of the newb quest, there are four types of siege weapons: trebuchets, catapults, ballistae, and battering rams. Each has its own unique abilities and situational usefulness. Catapults are great for taking out enemy troops, and they can even hurl boiling oil or nasty looking disease balls. Trebuchets, on the other hand, are ideal for pummeling keep walls. ZeniMax deserves quite a few kudos here, as watching the siege machinery in action is fun all by itself, even when you’re just firing it on the practice range.

The catapults clank noisily through their motions, and the impact effects of boiling oil are pretty spectacular. You can also dump said oil off of ledges and into the path of onrushing enemy players. And of course all of these siege engines take damage, so you’ll need to use repair kits that can be quick-slotted and key-pressed in the thick of battle.

So what’s the point of all this destructive machinery? In a nutshell you want to help your faction capture keeps, farms, lumber mills, mines, and even Elder Scrolls themselves, which buff your faction’s players after they’re yoinked and controlled. ZeniMax has also placed a variety of repeatable quests in Cyrodiil that range from scouting sorties to kill-20-players to resource-capturing battle missions and keep-capturing warfront missions.

I won’t pretend to have the full measure of ESO’s PvP at this point, as so far I’ve simply engaged in a few cat-and-mouse games with enemy players who’ve ventured close to the borders of DC-controlled territory.

I traveled to Cyrodiil as soon as I hit level 10, and while every low-level PvP participant receives the buffs required to make them useful throughout the zone, I’m still at a disadvantage compared to higher level combatants who have access to more class, race, weapon, guild, and other assorted skills.

I can tell you that I’m very much looking forward to delving into Alliance Wars as I continue to play ESOover the next few weeks. And given my history of PvP apathy, that’s definitely a feather in this game’s cap.

Source from:http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/04/03/massivelys-elder-scrolls-online-launch-diary-day-four-pvp/

I’m just about to level 10 as the sun sets on day three of my Elder Scrolls Online pre-launch experience. After plenty of decisional paralysis on Sunday, I settled on a Redguard Nightblade and spent Monday and Tuesday leveling him through Stros M’kai, Betnikh, and the city of Daggerfall.

Now I’m working my way northeast through the wilds of Glenumbra, stopping occasionally to assist the citizens of Deleyn’s Mill and clean up the Vale of the Guardians.

MMO story
There’s a lot of solo quest content in ESO’s early Daggerfall Covenant levels, and I haven’t even bothered with the main story quest as of yet. Well, technically I have, but the level 3 quest in that line is buried underneath all the other errands on my Glenumbra to-do list, so whenever I can stop gawking at the sights, sounds, and resource nodes of Tamriel at some point, I’ll polish it off.

The story’s not half bad if you’re into that sort of thing. I’m not, really, since I’m more of a sandbox fan, and in ESO’s case, a fan of wanderlust and random exploration. But the story looks to be competently handled. It’s fully voiced, of course, and there are some interesting wrinkles in terms of decisions that may affect my access to NPCs down the road.

For example, I chose to side with Betnikh’s Orc clan and destroy a troublesome artifact rather than turn it over to the Daggerfall Covenant, and while the tribe and its chieftain greatly appreciated it, the Covenant-sympathizing pirate captain who transported me to the island and farmed out her crew to serve as my quest-giving NPCs was none too happy with my decision.

She made noises about refusing to do business with me again, but thus far the moral choice hasn’t had any discernible gameplay consequences since the Orc chieftain forced her to sail with me again, anyway.

It’s a nice idea, though, branching story quests with gameplay consequences. BioWare shied away from meaningful choice in Star Wars: The Old Republic, so I’ll be interested to see if ZeniMax follows the same path with ESO’s narrative or if the devs had the time, resources, and inclination to actually implement consequential arcs in an MMORPG.

Random fun stuff
Apart from questing and Glenumbra’s terrific production design (seriously, high fives and raises all around to the art team and whoever is responsible for those gorgeous god-rays-through-the-forest-canopy effects), a few other positives stood out on my third day. I love, love, looooove all the emotes in the game. The fact that ZeniMax included six different sitting animations, not counting /sitchair, is indicative of a game that at least acknowledges fringe groups like roleplayers and immersion junkies, even if it doesn’t build itself around them.

Public dungeon instances are a treat too, and the dev team has absolutely managed to capture that oh-cool feeling from the Elder Scrolls single-player series where you happen upon an unmarked labyrinth in the open world and discover a vast network of tunnels and crypts, all beautifully rendered, beautifully lit, and stocked with plenty of those addictive trunks, baskets, and bone piles that basically serve as a sort of kleptomaniac’s harvesting node.

Some negatives
Though I’m still having quite a good time with the game, I do have a couple of bones to pick, as it wouldn’t be much of a launch week diary if I spent it all telling you how The Elder Scrolls Online is a big fat fangasm from start to finish.

Let me start with ZeniMax’s decision to reveal player account handles to everyone on said player’s friend list. I wish I were joking here, but unfortunately the devs did fail IT Security 101, so if you’ve got a login handle that you’d just as soon keep private, well, don’t join a guild and don’t make friends!

I can’t for the life of me understand the logic behind this decision unless ZeniMax is hoping for a rash of account hackings so it can start selling you USB security keys in a few weeks. Gold spam is already prevalent in ESO’s zone chat, and making one half of a player’s login pair public is simply asinine with a capital-A.

To say nothing of the fact that now I have to buy a second account if I want some quality alone time with an alt apart from my guildies!

Quest bugs
Past Elder Scrolls games have been fairly notorious for their launch bugs, and while I’m still willing to callESO the smoothest pre-launch I’ve experienced in a number of years, it’s certainly not perfect. [Ed. note: OK, maybe it’s not all that smooth anymore due to the NA megaserver being offline for hours on April 2nd!] I’ve experienced no lag to speak of, but I’ve encountered a handful of iffy quests throughout my Tamrielian vacation.

I say iffy because I’m not sure whether they’re all bugged or just poorly designed. I found myself waiting around for what seems like an eternity for those infernal Bloodthorn Necromancers to spawn and deliver their motes. After that, I found myself waiting around for another eternity as the Seamount hunters I was supposed to duel stubbornly refused to regenerate their health bars after their encounter with the previous player.

And who could forget those Bloodthorn Assassins who have been refusing to spawn on that damn ship at the Daggerfall docks for several days now? Yesterday afternoon’s impromptu one-hour maintenance session fixed two of those quests, at least for me, but stuff like that does unfortunately have to go in the negatives column of a fair launch summary. Finally, come on guys, it’s 2014. Shouldn’t we be able to claim pre-order account rewards across our entire account without having to claim them on one character and then spend half an hour moving them around at the bank?

These are small nitpicks, to be sure, but I feel the need to point them out since, contrary to occasional commenter opinion, I am not on ZeniMax’s payroll and I can get away with saying, hey, fix this stuff!

Source from:http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/04/02/massivelys-elder-scrolls-launch-diary-day-three-questing-st/

Never in 15-plus years of MMO gaming have I been so bewildered when it comes to picking a main class and character. Part of this is because I ignored The Elder Scrolls Online prior to March 30th. So I’m drinking from the information firehose in terms of game mechanics while simultaneously trying to keep up with friends.

The other part of it stems from the fact that ESO has an absurd amount of build customizability. I’m glad it has only four classes instead of six or eight because six or eight would probably send me over the decisional paralysis edge and into some sort of fugue state. I think for the purposes of this launch week diary — and my own sanity — I’m just going to stick with my Redguard Nightblade and forge ahead. There. Done.

Maybe.

Classes
As I mentioned in the intro, ESO currently features four classes. They are the Dragonknight, the Templar, the Sorcerer, and the Nightblade. These roughly correspond with tank, healer, caster, and rogue, in that order. I say roughly because ESO’s skill lines are really the game’s meat and potatoes, as it’s entirely possible to build a plate-wearing Wizard, a Ranger with self-heals, and so on and so forth.

Think of the classes as a baseline or an archetype, and then feel free to go wild experimenting with skill builds as radical or as vanilla as you’d like.

Skills
You basically have access to six actives at any given time, five of which are ordinary skills and one of which is a super-spiffy “ultimate” skill. To acquire skills you must acquire skill points to spend, which can be done by leveling up (one skill point per character level ding), collecting particular shinies called skyshards (one skill point per every three skyshards), and completing story quests and dungeons. There are probably other ways (PvP?) but frankly I haven’t gotten there yet.

If you’ve played earlier Elder Scrolls titles, you’ll recognize the familiar skill up messages underscored by subtle drum beats every time you advance one of your lines. If you’re a newb, what it boils down to is that you level up, say, your two-hander skill, your medium armor skill, and your class specialization skills (of which there are three lines per class) alongside your overall character level as you’re out doing whatever you’d like to do.

Whatever you’re wearing and using will level up, and as you progress through various skill trees, you’ll unlock new abilities, higher-powered versions of existing ones, and the ability to “morph” certain skills and supplement them with extra effects.

For an example, let’s look at the active skill Strife from my Nightblade’s Siphoning tree. In its base form, Strife DoTs your target and heals you simultaneously. After you level it up a bit, you can choose to morph it into either Funnel Health or Swallow Soul, the former of which adds an ally heal and the latter of which increases the self-heal.

And that’s just one active skill from one of the three Nightblade lines. Similar mechanics exist for weapon skills, armor skills, guild skills (i.e., the Fighters Guild or Mages Guild from the single-player games), racial skills, and more.

The weapon and armor skills form the backbone of ESO’s foray outside the traditional themepark progression box, as they make it possible to roll a Sorcerer who also wields a greatsword and a bow or a Nightblade who can pick up a magical staff and sling some spells — or heals — on occasion. Don’t be afraid to venture off the beaten path when you’re adventuring, either. Exploration is one of ESO’s strong points, and you may run across other skill lines for your toolbox as I did when I happened upon a Daggerfall NPC guild called the Undaunted that opened up an entirely new advancement path once I agreed to join.

And don’t forget to spend your attribute points as you level! You’ve got health, magicka, and stamina pools, and the general rules of thumb for fantasy games apply: health for tanks, magicka for casters, etc. Feel free to experiment, though, because that’s half the fun of this game. If — like me — you feel a bit overwhelmed, you can always look at what others are building.

Finally, crafting has dedicated skills lines as well, but I’ll save that for another article.

Activity recap
In terms of my day two activity recap, I completed all of the newbie quests in Stros M’Kai after finally settling on my Nightblade and am now firmly entrenched in the Betnikh line. I’ve played mostly solo thus far and have yet to join a guild or sample the game’s PvP, which opens up at level 10. I plan on doing both in the next couple of days, and I’m also hoping to get a look at dungeons and crafting before the week ends, so keep an eye out for those reports.

My opinion of the game is still largely positive. It runs well, ZeniMax has clearly planned ahead for the player load (at least during this early release period), and the visual palette has grown on me even since yesterday. It helps that I left the dreariness of Daggerfall behind in favor of the lush greenery of Betnikh and the sands of Stros M’Kai. I’ve always been a sucker for MMO deserts, and this one doesn’t disappoint.

At the risk of going all buzzword on you, Elder Scrolls Online feels much more immersive than your average MMO themepark. Part of that is probably the IP and my history with it, but it’s also the UI, the ability to do what you want with your character, and the little things like rewarding exploration, disguising your character for certain quests (and getting to keep the disguise to wear later), and the way your avatar stops and reads a scroll when you’re menu-diving or otherwise disconnected from the hustle and bustle of the virtual world around you.

If you’re just joining us, don’t miss Day One of Massively’s ESO launch diary.

Source from:http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/04/01/massivelys-elder-scrolls-launch-diary-day-two-skills-and-pro/

Like any proper Tamrielian title, The Elder Scrolls Online starts you off in chains. This isn’t the boat-bound incarceration of Morrowind, though, or the relative comfort of Oblivion’s initial Imperial lockup. This is the Wailing Prison, an otherworldly abyss stocked with iron maidens, soulless inmates, and a spectral Prophet who sounds a lot like Albus Dumbledore.

Don’t worry, though; ZeniMax didn’t blow its budget on Michael Gambon or the rest of ESO’s A-list voice cast. This is a fairly deep game, and it also does a surprisingly decent job of translating 20 years’ worth of single-player sandbox history into a mass market MMORPG.

Launch diary
Before I get more specific with my early release impressions, let me lay the groundwork for this week’s launch diary. This isn’t a review series, per se, and it’s certainly not a guide. It’s a snapshot of a particular play experience that may help you to decide whether or not ESO is worth your time. Or maybe you’ve already decided, but you’re stuck at work and feel like commenting. Either way.

It bears mentioning that I’m a fan of the franchise who started playing with Morrowind and who has sunk many hundreds of hours into that game and its two sequels. In other words, I want to like Elder Scrolls Online, and thus far ZeniMax is making that pretty painless.

Creation
Familiar is the word that best describes the day one experience. And I don’t mean that I beta-tested the game or followed it much at all prior to yesterday’s early-morning server stampede. It still felt familiar, though, because ZeniMax aped Skyrim’s PC interface (get ready to love your ‘E’ and ‘Alt’ keys) and because that oh-so-brief snippet of Jeremy Soule’s famous franchise fanfare goes a long way toward setting my personal mood.

Character creation is, in a word, robust. It’s divided into four stages, the first one being your racial and faction choice. Depending on whether you select the Daggerfall Covenant, the Aldmeri Dominion, or the Ebonheart Pact faction — and depending on whether or not you purchased the Imperial edition of the game — you’ll find yourself selecting from one of the franchise’s nine traditional races (10 if you bought access to the Imperials).

Once that’s done, it’s on to a deceptively simple class selection screen. While you’re initially restricted to Dragonknight, Nightblade, Sorcerer, or Templar, trust me when I say that the game’s progression opens up substantially once you start playing.

The body and facial sections of character creation feature a lot of options, and it’s highly unlikely that you’ll find your twin running around Tamriel due to the sheer number of sliders and presets. Yes, you can have a beer belly on your Orc. Yes, you can roll a female avatar that would make Sir Mix-a-Lot proud, and no, you can’t make one of those tiny target PvP midgets or an Aion bobblehead doll with a ginormous hot pink afro. In other words, well done ZeniMax!

Baby steps
Combat is also familiar, at least at first. You’ll need to aim at your foes and fire off ranged and melee attacks with your left mouse button. Holding down the right mouse button blocks. You can also deliver a stronger attack by holding and then releasing the left button. As in many of the action MMOs you’ve probably played in recent years, mobs will telegraph their intentions both via body language and with red cones or circles that you’ll want to step out of as soon as possible.

Your health, stamina, and magicka vitals are displayed in bar form at the bottom center of your screen. They disappear along with the rest of the UI, though, (yes, even your hotbar) when you’re not in combat. It remains to be seen how the recent mod community nerfs will affect the UI over the long term, but personally I couldn’t be happier with the game’s default interface. I’m not a min-maxer, nor do I particularly like math, and as I’m given to wandering around my favorite MMOs in “screenshot mode” with the UI turned off anyway, I’m completely on board with ZeniMax’s functional but minimalistic approach.

One final dose of Elder Scrolls familiarity manifests itself in the ability to pick up random items in the game world. Mine had to have been the most leisurely escape in the annals of The Wailing Prison, as I stopped along the way to pillage and plunder every barrel, basket, backpack, and bone pile I came across. I even helped myself to the foul hides rotting away inside those gruesome maidens, and I pilfered quite a few lockpicks that I’m sure to find a use for later.

Final first day thoughts
In terms of aesthetics, thus far ESO is a mixed bag. The newbie prison instance is a visual marvel with its kaleidoscopic blues and purples and its hellish production design. By contrast, the starting city of Daggerfall is a bit of a letdown. I won’t go so far as to call it ugly, but it’s clear that ZeniMax opted for open world performance over eye candy, and I found myself reminded rather frequently of 2008’s grimly stylizedWarhammer Online.

Performance was generally good, though I do have to report a couple of loading screen freezes and one instance of NPCs failing to appear in the game world. A restart fixed both issues, and fortunately logging back in was instantaneous thanks to a complete lack of server queues.

All in all, I’m happy to tell you that my day one Elder Scrolls Online experience was almost entirely positive. I put approximately eight hours into the game and spread it across six characters (yes, I know, I need professional help). Check in with Massively tomorrow for my day two journal, where we’ll talk about progression, skills, and the leveling experience.

Source from:http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/03/31/massivelys-elder-scrolls-launch-week-diary-day-one/