Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

From the reviews this is getting on youtube.... I'll wait for a Skyrim multi-player mod. (probably never happen but I'd rather wait for that than play ESO)

 SickSix wrote:
From the reviews this is getting on youtube.... I'll wait for a Skyrim multi-player mod. (probably never happen but I'd rather wait for that than play ESO)

There are already multiplayer mods for Skyrim but they're really janky.

I liked what I saw of it. I'm not sure how binding that NDA thing is, so I'm not going to give details on it, but there were some significant differences in things that I found refreshing.

It was hard to form a real solid opinion on the game because my PC did not at all do it the justice it deserved, but from what I saw I was eager to see more.

If the price wasn't so damn high.

I think this sums it up well. (need to read his editorial under the comic.)

http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20140210

 Morathi's Darkest Sin wrote:
I think this sums it up well. (need to read his editorial under the comic.)

http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20140210

Thanks.

The seems to sum up pretty well most of the crticial reviews of these new chocolate chip cookies I have been reading.

And based on that, I am not going to try this new recipe of chocolate ship cookie. I like the ones I have now just fine. Even if I can't eat them with others.

I took part in the latest beta test, and i did enjoy the game quite a bit. (I should probably mention that im not really a big player of MMO's.) I created a Nord DragonKnight character and played through the early 'Ebonheart' campaign, which honestly was a little boring as the first 2 islands you're stuck on aren't really that enjoyable. Once i hit level 7-8 though is when i started to have a little more fun, a new region opened up that was much larger than the previous islands and i had more freedom along with more quests.

I probably enjoyed the Alliance wars PVP the most during the beta, it takes place on an absolutely huge map of Cyrodiil and involves the 3 in-game factions fighting for control of 6 elder scrolls. (Each faction starts with 2 scrolls.) There are multiple PVP campaigns going at once with each lasting a certain number of actual days/weeks, the servers for each campaign can also hold roughly 2000 players which often leads to some insanely massive battles between factions.

Angry Joe recently put out a video about the PVP, its worth a watch as he covers a good portion of how the PVP mechanics work in the game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I82pz60iGL0&feature=c4-overview&list=UUsgv2QHkT2ljEixyulzOnUQ

Curious question. How is the ballance between archery, close combat, and magic?

Do the skills lock-on? In AngryJoe's gameplay there were a few times when he was hit by fireball spells that appeared to lock on and home in on him, without any chance of dodging.

It Dropped http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1487438-eso-support-and-beta-info-nda-has-lifted-updated-feb-15/

 The Dark Apostle wrote:
It Dropped http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1487438-eso-support-and-beta-info-nda-has-lifted-updated-feb-15/

Share for the work blocked?

ESO beta NDA is no more

The Elder Scrolls Online beta test is no longer under NDA! Feel free to share your beta experiences. As for media, like screenshots and video footage, please follow these guidelines for past betas - sharing content for any future events is fine.

The guidelines; https://help.elderscrollsonline.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5664/

Cool. I'll type up something later on my thoughts.

Welp, I only played a couple of hours on this last beta weekend, on a character I had from a previous beta weekend... I think I put a grand total of about four hours into that character, but it felt more like twenty.

I thought it was pretty awful; combat felt clunky as hell and the lack of any sort of feedback whatsoever other than a stat bar increasing or decreasing made it feel... crappy. I found I couldn't care less about any of the story elements; it seemed like the most generic and uninteresting fantasy tropes ever. "Blah blah chosen one, blah blah bunch of heroes blah blah betrayed by a necromancer with the sobriquet "King of Worms" (woah, what a surprsie!) blah blah Blind Prophet blah blah Daedric Prince."

Even the zone-based plot lines I encountered, which should've been cool, weren't. None of the characters or events were particularly memorable. I also got kind of annoyed at the quests that seemed to involve going through a door (loading screen!) talk to someone for fifteen seconds, leave (loading screen!) go into another building (loading screen!) collect an object, leave (loading screen!), go back to the first building (loading screen!) give object to dude, leave (loading screen!).

Also the fact that everything was uninstanced was actually a weakness. Need to explore a dark, mysterious cave to kill the evil conspirator inside? Cool, there's gonna be fifty other melon-fethers in that cave all sitting around with their thumbs up their arses until the guy respawns, then there'll be a button-mashing frenzy and a bunch of people will get credit and the other thirty melon-fethers who didn't get him will be left there waiting again.

I really saw absolutely nothing that convinced me that the game was better off being an MMO. They really should've just made it a normal Elder Scrolls game with a multi-player option. I seriously have never been so bored with an MMO so quickly and I've played a lot of 'em. Like, a stupid number of them.

YMMV, naturally.

EDIT: Supposedly the PvP's fun and the game in general gets better at level 10+. I just couldn't stomach it long enough to get there in a single (or even two, apparently) weekends. I know that MMORPGs aren't exactly gripping at low levels, but this was the only one I've found intolerably dull.

LOL that cookie sounds worse than Everquest for sure.

from what I've played, it seems like they sacrificed a bit too much elder scrolls, and a bit too much mmo

Really they just sacrificed any redeeming features whatsoever.

seems so to me

Bethesda and GW have a lot of common. Instead of furthering the damn story line and revealing the mystical foreign lands one by one (Akaviri, Cathay, etc) they waste resources on gak that there was never really any demand for. Who the feth thinks it is a good idea to keep release EQ-clones? Everything other than WoW had bombed in the western market with perhaps the sole exception of GW/GW2. Warhammer Online and The Old Republic had sexy trailers as well, both fell flat on their faces within the first six months of their release.

http://www.p4rgaming.com/zenimax-lifts-elder-scrolls-online-nda-in-the-hopes-of-finding-one-person-who-likes-the-game

With so much negativity surrounding The Elder Scrolls Online, the pressure is being felt by many of the people working on the game. In an interview with game director Matt Firor on the game’s site, he explained why they are lifting the non-disclosure agreement.
“We needed to find someone who liked the game,” said Firor, “It’s too hard to read what people have written about the game on the internet. We figured that the most hardcore dedicated fans are actually keeping quiet because they don’t want to get in trouble with the NDA. This is why we had to lift it. It was way too depressing in the office before.”

 Palindrome wrote:
http://www.p4rgaming.com/zenimax-lifts-elder-scrolls-online-nda-in-the-hopes-of-finding-one-person-who-likes-the-game

With so much negativity surrounding The Elder Scrolls Online, the pressure is being felt by many of the people working on the game. In an interview with game director Matt Firor on the game’s site, he explained why they are lifting the non-disclosure agreement.
“We needed to find someone who liked the game,” said Firor, “It’s too hard to read what people have written about the game on the internet. We figured that the most hardcore dedicated fans are actually keeping quiet because they don’t want to get in trouble with the NDA. This is why we had to lift it. It was way too depressing in the office before.”

I actually had a good laugh at that. Its another perfect example of a Developer unable to acknowledge that maybe he fethed up. No. OBVIOUSLY its "Hardcore Fans" keeping quiet. Absolutely. Totally.

“We needed to find someone who liked the game,” said Firor, “It’s too hard to read what people have written about the game on the internet. We figured that the most hardcore dedicated fans are actually keeping quiet because they don’t want to get in trouble with the NDA. This is why we had to lift it. It was way too depressing in the office before.”

And once again, Jimquisition is proven right. THis is the kind of self confirming nonsense that has put the industry in the position it is today. People aren't keeping quiet, evident by the fact that you keep being told your game is not that good. Hardcore fans don't keep quiet you twit they're the most vocal douchebags on the internet!

You're not making the latest mainstream game where you can just throw together some half assed attempt at a mediocre experience, collect $60 and then throw out some DLC and see who buys. You're making an MMO. If the hardcore fans aren't happy you have no business because they're the only ones who are going to pay a subscription fee for more than a few months.

 Palindrome wrote:
http://www.p4rgaming.com/zenimax-lifts-elder-scrolls-online-nda-in-the-hopes-of-finding-one-person-who-likes-the-game

With so much negativity surrounding The Elder Scrolls Online, the pressure is being felt by many of the people working on the game. In an interview with game director Matt Firor on the game’s site, he explained why they are lifting the non-disclosure agreement.
“We needed to find someone who liked the game,” said Firor, “It’s too hard to read what people have written about the game on the internet. We figured that the most hardcore dedicated fans are actually keeping quiet because they don’t want to get in trouble with the NDA. This is why we had to lift it. It was way too depressing in the office before.”

And this is why we can't have nice things. Because nobody listens to the internet, the true fans are all to shy and quiet to use such new fangled technology. Nope it's not the fans that are gakking up a storm because the game is bad no its just the naysayers on the internet. "Move along nothing to see here"

I can get that a developer doesn't want to just listen to the internet, but why they insist to themselves that the internet is some mythical place that only the 5 most unpleasable people in the world live is bizarre. If you have 100,000 users, and 10,000 regularly post on the forums at the official site, why assume that those 10,000 represent some minority party rather than a sample of the larger player base, and that when 2000 of them are complaining about something, maybe a little though should be given?

 LordofHats wrote:
I can get that a developer doesn't want to just listen to the internet, but why they insist to themselves that the internet is some mythical place that only the 5 most unpleasable people in the world live is bizarre. If you have 100,000 users, and 10,000 regularly post on the forums at the official site, why assume that those 10,000 represent some minority party rather than a sample of the larger player base, and that when 2000 of them are complaining about something, maybe a little though should be given?

With the number of people who will set up dummy accounts on "official forums" to troll/rage(in addition to them trying to get beta keys, etc)--it's not that hard to understand why a developer would not take the Internet seriously at this early of a juncture.

It's also worth noting that most of the people who "complain about something" do it in the most unintelligible, nonsensical way possible. To use an example, any time the balance changes for Mass Effect 3's multiplayer came up you would get the same people complaining about the smallest thing in the balance change--and it would always be a huge wall of text filled with swearing and the statement that "X could do a better job balancing than these developers".

I should add that yeah, sometimes you do get really useful complaints and feedback but more often than not it's just verbal diarrhea.

Stuebi wrote:

 Palindrome wrote:
http://www.p4rgaming.com/zenimax-lifts-elder-scrolls-online-nda-in-the-hopes-of-finding-one-person-who-likes-the-game

With so much negativity surrounding The Elder Scrolls Online, the pressure is being felt by many of the people working on the game. In an interview with game director Matt Firor on the game’s site, he explained why they are lifting the non-disclosure agreement.
“We needed to find someone who liked the game,” said Firor, “It’s too hard to read what people have written about the game on the internet. We figured that the most hardcore dedicated fans are actually keeping quiet because they don’t want to get in trouble with the NDA. This is why we had to lift it. It was way too depressing in the office before.”

I actually had a good laugh at that. Its another perfect example of a Developer unable to acknowledge that maybe he fethed up. No. OBVIOUSLY its "Hardcore Fans" keeping quiet. Absolutely. Totally.

Its a joke, that site is the gaming equivelent of the Daily Mash.

With the number of people who will set up dummy accounts on "official forums" to troll/rage(in addition to them trying to get beta keys, etc)

That's a lazy excuse (and an actual minority). Most trolls don't go through the process of proxying IP's and most server software can descern how many unique users are accessing it even if they do because even fewer people will proxy their MAC address. The technology is readily available and you'd think a company that codes for a living would use it.

This of course assumes they want to listen. They don't want to listen. It's far easier to blame pirates/trolls/metacritic/other games for poor sales than it is to tell share holders that the company is making bad decisions.

 Kanluwen wrote:

It's also worth noting that most of the people who "complain about something" do it in the most unintelligible, nonsensical way possible.

Developers (presumably in possession of some intellect) should be capable of descerning feedback. They already hire people to manage the forums, it's not going to kill them to hire people to shift through said forums and find useful information, especially since they have access to metrics that will tell them how many users are on the forums, what thread sthey view and how many pages, what posts recieve likes/dislikes.

Its a joke, that site is the gaming equivelent of the Daily Mash.

Curse you for giving false hope to my righteous indignation!

 LordofHats wrote:

With the number of people who will set up dummy accounts on "official forums" to troll/rage(in addition to them trying to get beta keys, etc)

That's a lazy excuse (and an actual minority). Most trolls don't go through the process of proxying IP's and most server software can descern how many unique users are accessing it even if they do because even fewer people will proxy their MAC address. The technology is readily available and you'd think a company that codes for a living would use it.

This of course assumes they want to listen. They don't want to listen. It's far easier to blame pirates/trolls/metacritic/other games for poor sales than it is to tell share holders that the company is making bad decisions.

It might be "an actual minority", but it's not like it is that hard now to proxy IP.

 Kanluwen wrote:

It's also worth noting that most of the people who "complain about something" do it in the most unintelligible, nonsensical way possible.

Developers (presumably in possession of some intellect) should be capable of descerning feedback. They already hire people to manage the forums, it's not going to kill them to hire people to shift through said forums and find useful information, especially since they have access to metrics that will tell them how many users are on the forums, what thread sthey view and how many pages, what posts recieve likes/dislikes.

The thing about that?

They do. It's just they won't publicly acknowledge those people, they'll do it privately.

To go back to the Mass Effect examples(I know--you wish I had more, but that was the only game where I was really active in giving feedback), any time a BioWare employee posted in a thread--it would get swarmed with people who thought they had the solution to whatever problem(real or perceived) cropped up in their latest playthrough of the multiplayer.

Oh I've been to the Bioware forums. I rank it as one of the 5 Cess Pools of the Internet. But I'll also point out how Bioware routinely ignores posts about technical problems for their games. I'm one of a small number of people who can't play ME3 at all because the Origin Cloud encounters an error with the game that makes it perpetually update and never stop updating, making it unplayable. It's a problem with the cloud not my computer.

People have been pointing to this problem for years since the game released and Bioware has never fixed it, commented on a fix for it, or even acknowledged the complaints. In itself it's kind of understandable until you see the same thing happens with nearly every game on Origin to some people. EA has never acknowledged the problem.

Likewise Cryptic, the developer of Star Trek Online, does the opposite. They use metrics to make decisions about their game but completely ignore the forums which would actually explain their metric and give them real context for why they're hemorraging players.

MWO likewise I think has an increasing problem with ignoring its playerbase and its inability to solve long standing problems, but that's just a hunch because companies don't release real statistics publically.

In the same vein, I've heard few positive reviews of ESO bordering on none. The game is becoming a joke on the internet for how mediocre a game it is. Yet, Zenimax isn't commenting on it, talking about it, and doesn't even seem concerned that this game will likely tank faster than any MMO in the past few years. Compare to SWTOR, Guild Wars 2, or even RIFT, all these games had very positive word of mouth upwards of a year from release and two of them still failed. ESO has mostly negative word of mouth and is 3 months out and no one making the game is seemingly listening.

If anyone is interested there is another stress test Beta weekend coming up on the 28th of February until the 2nd of March, it should pretty easy to get a key as numerous websites have been giving them away today. (Someone made a list of those websites here. http://orcz.com/ESO:_Beta_Key_Giveaways.)

If all of those websites are out of codes, there are 2 beta codes in the spoilers below that i accidentally snagged when testing to see if a one of those sites still had any codes left... (Be warned that the game download is roughly 24-30 gigs, so please don't use a code if you have no intention of playing.)
To redeem either of those codes you will need to create an account on the Elder scrolls online website.
https://account.elderscrollsonline.com/register/account-information

I have about 4 codes from my multiple emails so if people want them PM me