The University Gaming Club

[Ardreas]

I've only experienced PVE combat so far, no PVP yet. It's getting harder for me to balance real life with the time commitment of an MMO these days. I must be growing up...
Anyway, combat so far feels like a blend between classic Elder Scrolls games and combat in GW2. I love how they added dodge rolls to it. You also get little indicators in a fight when your opponent is about to cast a major AOE attack. The ground lights up red in the area he's about to hit, giving you a second to dodge roll away if you're on top of your game. Otherwise you get clobbered and it hurts.

You still have to manually aim your attacks, just like classic Elder Scrolls style. If you're facing the wrong way, you're not going to hit anything. No handholding here.

The game definitely feels more like an MMO than a regular Elder Scrolls game though. Enemies respawn way faster than in Skyrim or Oblivion. It's like "I just killed you and you're up again!?" But that's how MMOs go, lots of players need the loot. It's not just about you anymore, you're sharing the world with thousands of other people.

I found a good guild I'm a part of now. That's the big plus about a multiplayer game. I like having company to adventure with. I also got married to a friend of mine who's playing. Our Dunmer characters can now adventure together wearing our rings of Mara and get a bonus to xp. This is really nice since leveling takes a long time. I would be level 9 by now, but ran into a few more bugs last night. At any rate I should hit level 9 soon after logging in tonight. I'll post more pictures later, when I have time.

[Benevolent Thomas]

Does the game have raids in it or cooperative instances/dungeons?

[Ardreas]

Yes and yes. You can do your first dungeon around level 10 (something which I look forward to doing with my guild very soon, I'm level 9 now). There are also world boss events in each of the major zones after the starting area. They're really easy to see, too. I giant Daedric anchor appears in the sky and opens a portal to Oblivion. Various mobs start appearing around it, very much like in TES IV Oblivion, except the portal is floating in the sky not on the ground. There are Scamps, Clannfears, and other familiar monsters to any veteran of the Elder Scrolls. Groups of players can assemble and try to destroy the anchor. This usually causes a world boss to appear and there's a big fight. Then everyone who participated gets access to a chest which appears after he's down. They seem to have borrowed from GW2 in the mechanic of this, in that the game has more enemies spawn the greater numbers of players are present. So if it's a small group its a small number of enemies, but a big group would meet heavier resistance. Keeps it balanced.

Another thing I really like so far about this game is the voice acting and music. Michael Gambon does the voice for The Prophet (a major protagonist npc). The first time I heard him speak I thought, "Dumbledore!!"

I mentioned the music, one of the new bard songs is done by the very talented Malukah. I've been a fan of her work for a while now, so hearing her sing in-game when I got to an inn was pretty epic.



Also, there is this music video she did about the game when it was still in beta.



If those don't get you wanting to play, I don't know what will.

[Elite]

Wait, an Elder Scrolls game with good voice acting?

[Ardreas]

Heh, yeah well miracles and all.

Anyway, time for moar pictars! Enjoy.

Working on my profession. In ESO you can select a skill to improve, just like in any previous elder scrolls games. In fact, you can choose to work on all the skills if you want to. But they take time! In fact, leveling up a profession in this online version feels like it takes longer than in the traditional games. So for someone like me who has to balance my time between this and real life, I can really only work on one skill at a time.


At the Inn, listening to a bard sing Malukah's song (linked previously). They did a good job at keeping the cheery tavern atmosphere. Also, if you log out in an inn you get a rested effect, just like in skyrim from sleeping.


Ah, Mara, goddess of love and companionship. This is one of the great parts of this game, adventuring with a friend! Not only that, but you can get married. So here I am at a shrine of Mara marrying a friend of mine. Unfortunately I missed the part where the goddess lifted us both up in some sort of glowing embrace. Hit the wrong key on my keyboard instead of the screenshot key. But here's this at least.


Here's what the ring of Mara does. Basically you each get one and you wear them, and whenever the two of you are adventuring together you get a nice bonus to all xp gained. So yay faster leveling! Which is a big deal because this game levels so slow.


Questing together...


To adventure with a friend... the biggest reason to play! If you want to play by yourself, you might as well stick to traditional elder scrolls games. But this one gives you the option to share your adventure with someone, or lots of someones. So it's real nice.


Found my first standing stone... I thought they were all in Cyrodill. But apparently some of them are in other zones as well. The Lady gives a boost to armor, which is nice for a low level like me. I'm not nearly capped yet, so extra damage protection is a welcome thing!


Just taking care of a trouble maker. This quest was bugged when I first tried it. I've experienced several like that during this week of early access. But they finally dropped a patch yesterday which smoothed things out a lot. I expect there will be another tonight, as the game goes live to the general public. They seem to be staying on top of the bug reports pretty well. I haven't been pulled back into the sky again since the first day, so that's a plus!


Lore time!! Professor Dumbledore educates me on the Elder Scrolls and the Amulet of Kings. Ah, fangasm!


Here's one of those Daedric Anchors I was talking about the other day. Giant portal to Oblivion hanging in the sky. Can't miss it. Don't approach without a group unless you want to die... or are a real badass.


So this is Argonian architecture... They live in giant mud huts that look disturbingly like dung piles.


Cooking time! Provisioning food and drinks lets you get lasting buffs for while you adventure. You can eat a meal while you're out of combat that will give you a boost to stats like health, magicka, or stamina recovery so you last longer in a fight. Can't eat during combat though, but that's what potions are for!


Ow! Ow! Ow! I'm on fire! Oh wait... I'm a Dunmer. Haha fire resistance!


Just sittin by the sea, watching the ships. Waiting for my 'wife' to come join me so we can kill a boss Netch for a quest. Look at the pretty water. And I only have the graphics set on Medium (cause my computer is 4 years old). Imagine how epic this game would look on Ultimate.


And here's combat. I figure I'd show this just so you can see what the action bar setup is like. You only get a few hotkeys, nothing like WoW. But it seems to work fine so far. You can also switch between weapon sets which gives you a whole new action bar that you can hotkey other abilities to. So that works I guess.


Anyway, here I am at level 10. Just a shot of the character menu, you can see a summary of my stats and all that. And that was when I logged off for the night. So, more this weekend! Maybe my first dungeon run too, yay!

[Benevolent Thomas]

That looks really awesome!

I've heard complaints that there is so much time spent walking between quests and that there are no side missions to help occupy the time like those in games such as WoW and SWTOR. I've also heard that much of the landscape is very barren which makes travel seem to take even longer. Is this true?

[Ardreas]

I guess it might depend on what part of the world you're in. Tamriel is a big place and this game aspires to cover all of it. So far I have only created the one character and played through Morrowind. I haven't even been to Skyrim yet, let alone other territories to the west. I heard from my friend that the Summerset Isles are particularly beautiful and their city puts Ebonheart to shame, which makes me jealous, but that's how it goes I guess.

I do think the game could use an infusion of extra quests, sure. Just yesterday I was complaining to my guild that it seemed like the quests I had were leveling up faster than I was. That one in the pictures where I was going after those 3 beasts for trophy hunting... was a level 13 quest. So yeah, the questscape seems a bit barren for now. But there are so many other things to do. This may be an MMO, but it's an Elder Scrolls MMO. You don't have to even DO quests. You can just wander around and explore, poking your head into various caves you find to see what's around. In fact, doing so is generally a good idea because that's where you find locked chests that you can practice your lockpicking on and get good loot from. So while the quests may not be as common as in WoW, I would not say that the landscape is barren. There's always been stuff around where I have been playing. In fact, sometimes it feels like some places are over crowded with mobs. But maybe again that's different with zones. I don't know what it's like out west.

Actually, I felt like WoW had an overabundance of quests that were constantly swamping me with things I had to rush about and do. It was like grooming day at a Wookie convention.

Think about it more like Elder Scrolls and less like a typical MMO. Do you really want to get flooded with tons of filler crap to do? Or would you rather wander out and explore Tamriel? I like the free form of wandering around and just seeing what's there. And there are quests, certainly. Often you'll stumble across quests while out adventuring that you didn't even expect to find.

My biggest complaints so far have been:

1. Glitches, both with quests and in the world. Some of these have been addressed already (and we're still less than a week in!), but I was still having trouble with one quest target last night that didn't want to spawn for me.
2. Lag. In the major cities lag has already been getting bad, and that was still a day before open access went live. At first I thought it might be my internet connection, but I remember playing WoW and running around Dalaran without this much lag, so that can't be it. Gotta be some kink in the meta server they still need to iron out.
3. Experience scale. With my partner, I level at a decent rate. But by myself it feels like the levels crawl by agonizingly slowly. Maybe that's the intent? Slow you down and make you smell the roses along the way. I guess that's cool. But I was really hoping to dive in and run with the leading edge of players out ahead of the pack toward the final levels. Maybe it's just me, since I used to play WoW competitively but now I have a job and a real life and can't spend as much time in a game as I used to. That'll take some getting used to I think.

Oh, as an afterthought. The level of enemies is bound to the zone, not to your level like in regular Elder Scrolls games. In this sense it's more like an MMO. Which means you can't just go run wherever you want without thinking about what enemies are there. You'll get killed fast that way. You have to treat it as a typical MMO and make sure you're high enough to handle the mobs in a new zone before going there.

[Benevolent Thomas]

The overabundance of mobs is preparation for when the game goes live. Pretty soon you'll be seeing 10+ people in every zone at once so there's got to be enough for everybody. Is it true that people that bought the special edition (or whatever its called) version of the the game get access to an exclusive race (the imperials) that can be member to any faction? I think that's shrubbery considering everyone else is paying $60 and then an additional $15 per month to play. Subscription models are supposed to enforce equality of opportunity, not give certain players an advantage (or exclusive content). I've even heard that pre-orders can join whatever faction they please in spite of race which kind of defeats the whole purpose. I hope this isn't true, otherwise I can see this game going Free to Play and full of micro-transactions very soon.

[Ardreas]

Those who bought the Imperial Edition do gain access to the Imperial race as one of the perks for paying extra. Obviously, they had to get something extra for their money. And yes the Imperials can join any faction because they, unlike everyone else, don't have a safe home region. Their home region is the world's PVP zone! Cyrodill is getting trashed by all the other factions seeking power, so where should the Imperials go? Wherever you want, pick a faction and play for them. I don't think it's unfair to get something like that for buying the collector's edition. It's not game-breaking. It doesn't give anyone an advantage. It just lets you play as a race with the option to choose your faction rather than a race that is born into a faction. Think of yourself as a mercenary, if you want. WoW did the same thing with the Mists of Pandera.

I don't see anybody being given any particular advantages in the game for buying stuff. There is no store like GW2 has (aside from being able to pay a bit more to "upgrade your game to the Imperial Edition" if you want). The only advantage, I guess, is the 5 days of early access to let us get ahead of the pack. But as I mentioned, since I have less time to play, I'll quickly lose that particular advantage. By this time tomorrow I'll probably be surrounded by newbies again.

I don't have any numbers yet for subscriptions, but I don't see this going the F2P path any time soon. Of course, I was first through the gates into TOR as well and that didn't turn out so good, so maybe I'm not the best judge of character. I just want to hope that this game does well, though. I've been looking for a good replacement for WoW for the past 2 years. This is the first time I think I might have found it.

[Benevolent Thomas]

Yeah, I've been looking for a WoW replacement for years. I quit that game back in like 2006 I think and I haven't found a good MMORPG to get rooted in ever since. I thought TOR was the answer, but the end game was just so bad.

[Ardreas]

I loved TOR at first. A bunch of my friends from another forum were all pre-ordered, in the beta, and had our guild set up and ready to go way before launch. We were the first on our server to down the Coruscant world boss, and we led the pack all the way to level cap. It was really epic for a while. The voice acting was incredible, the cut-scenes were some of the best I've ever seen, and it was just so cool to play a Sci-fi RPG for once instead of swords and spells. But in the end, there just wasn't enough to keep it going. One by one we got tired of it. It felt too much like WoW, just with a different skin. There wasn't enough end-game content, and the pvp was not all that interesting. Slowly we migrated away to other things and the guild disbanded. Then there was nothing to go back for.

After that I tried out GW2 for a while. That was fun too, for a bit. The combat was different, the skills were alright, the world vs world pvp was awesome, and the graphics were amazing. I leveled all the way to 80, and I had fun exploring the world. Jumping puzzles were interesting and yet annoying too. The achievements were fun to go for, and the ingame holidays were pretty cool. I enjoyed the Halloween event that first year (except for the infernal clock tower!) Over all it was a good experience, and I liked that it was free to play. But in the end, it just didn't hold me. After reaching level 80 there wasn't as much incentive to keep playing. I didn't have as many friends in the game as in previous games. And since I wasn't paying a subscription I didn't feel as much that I needed to log in every day to get my money's worth, so eventually I just stopped.

In the interim I filled my RPG void with games like Oblivion and Skyrim, and the Dragon Age series. Lots of mods and replays kept me involved there for a long time. But nothing has ever truly filled the void left by WoW. I spent 3 glorious years there with a whole bunch of real life friends. We had some epic adventures together, and there are some memories I'll probably carry with me for the rest of my life. I don't know if I'll ever find a game that will quite replace what I had then. But I'm hopeful that this time, at least ESO will do some of it. I guess we'll find out with time. But it's off to a promising start.

[Benevolent Thomas]

PvP not all that interesting?! Blasphemy! TOR had some of the best pvp I've ever come across in any game. Huttball was totes amazebllaz. I'd get up on the sides of the arena and launch missiles at everyone who walked by (I was a mercenary bounty hunter). I had fun in TOr all the way up until level 50. then nothing. The dailies were boring and that warzone planet (forgot its name) was still completely bugged out months after launch. It was so disappointing given how revolutionary an MMORPG TOR was. A perfect Bioware game filled with amazing voice acting, cut-scenes, companions and morality system.

[Elite]

Somewhat relevant:

[Ardreas]

So I had a fun weekend. For anyone who doesn't know, Saturday was International Tabletop Day. I hosted table gaming events all day at the local library. We played Forbidden Island and a few other games at my table. I wanted to get a game of Axis and Allies going, but not enough takers there. It was pretty fun overall though. Too many kids these days don't even know what table games are!



On another note, I had one thing in ESO that really cracked me up. I was turning in a quest and I got this message from the guy:

Obviously a poke at Skyrim players. Had me laughing anyway.

[Witchcraft and Sorcery]

Yahtzee reviewed Titanfall. And it perfectly describes every reason I have for why I will never buy this f**king game. I don't see why people find fun in it. At least CoD: Ghosts has a decent single player mode.

[The Candy Lane]

I never really got into Titan Fall, read a few reviews but decided against purchasing the game. Now I'm getting into skyrim again... might even buy an expansion or two. We will have to see. These RPGs seem to have a lot more value for your dollar than FPSs IMO. Regardless of the franchise I can't bring my self to play a fps for say, a month straight. Whereas RPG's are easily played for a month, and when you're done you can try a new story line.

[Witchcraft and Sorcery]

Oh yeah, you get so much more in the RPGs. I will probably not stop playing Skyrim for a very long time, I love that game to death. The Dragonborn DLC is very good, I would highly recommend getting it for more to do after you finish the main quest line. I've also gotten into Hearthfire, mostly because even though the results of the houses you build yield pretty generic results I've found some absolutely hilarious glitches in Lakeview Manor. For some reason armor that I put on the mannequins seems to duplicate itself whenever I take the stuff off the mannequin and leave the house, then come back a little later. I think I have three or four copies of some of the dragon priest masks from doing this. Easy gold right there... lol

[The Candy Lane]

Sounds like a good means to purchase more houses

[Ardreas]

I love the house I built in Hearthfire. I even downloaded a number of mods to help with the aesthetic. A realistic lighting mod made it too dark inside, so I downloaded a mod that let me make and place my own candles. So now my house is bright again, but with realistic lightening and shadows. It's awesome.

Dragonborn is superb. A great storyline, plus lots of Morrowind lore! So if you are an old time Morrowind fan, you'll definitely find plenty to love with that expansion.

I also like Dawnguard. The vampire questline was pretty cool, and I love the addition of crossbows. My main, who is a 2h warrior, had no use for bows before Dawnguard. Now he carries a powerful enchanted Dwarven crossbow with him on his journeys as well. Lorewise it fits with his character a lot more than a regular bow, which he probably wouldn't be very good with.

On the subject of FPS games, I have enjoyed a few over the years. But my fondest memories of FPS games will always be Halo parties on the original Xbox at my friend's house with Halo 1. Nothing since then has just felt quite as good. I tend to find so much more enjoyment in story-driven RPGs now.

[The Candy Lane]

Yes there's nothing like playing around of Halo with all rockets. I bought the Anniversary addition just so I could play it on my 360. In addition to the awesome memories the game is a ground breaking classic with a fantastic story line.

[Deleted]

Meh...I enjoy Skyrim, it just takes a lot for me to get motivated to play it. I have the same problem with Oblivion as well. I think it's just games that are exclusively open world; I run off and explore and get bored quick, try to do a couple of quests, turn the game off and play something else, and then come back in a span of anywhere between a day to a year.

I like games like the new Tomb Raider, Dragon Age, Dragon's Dogma, and the like. They're not entirely open (aside from Dragon's Dogma), but they're not completely linear like older games/Final Fantasy XIII. However, I will say that I do love the fast travel concept for the open world games, since it saves a hell of a lot of time getting to and from places...and with the Hearthfire expansion for Skyrim letting you buy the horse carriage? That was pretty awesome since you could take it ANYWHERE (compared to the other carriages around areas).

Normally, I'm a Fantasy RPG gamer. Throw me Fable, Skies of Arcadia, Tales of Vesperia/Phantasia/Eternia/etc..., or the like, and I'm good. It's mostly because I like the style of fantasy RPGs the most...with Lost Odyssey being one of my overall favorite RPG styles for a game.

I also enjoy the occasional platformer/adventure game such as American McGee's Alice: Madness Returns (first was good, but more a 3rd person shooter), Legend of Zelda, Castlevania (from N64 up to Lords of Shadow 2. Haven't played any before that) and the like...though throw me a good fantasy RPG and it'll always catch my eye more.

Sometimes I'll sit down with a more modern-style game such as the Batman Arkham trilogy, Bioshock, Half-Life, Portal, Silent Hill, and so on. These ones I have to be in a certain mood to get an enjoyment out of, excluding Katamari.

Rarely, I'll sit down and play a futuristic Sci-fi game, the main that I actually somewhat enjoy being Mass Effect. For some reason, it's a genre that I can't really get down with despite it just being a more futuristic vision of Fantasy most of the time. My taste in books is actually the same; I have a list of Fantasy and Modern Fantasy books that I enjoy, and only a small handful of Sci-Fi books that I'll get into.

[Ardreas]

Dragon Age is incredible. Are you looking forward to Inquisition as much as I am?

[Deleted]

Apr 10, 2014 20:50:42 GMT -5 Ardreas said:

Dragon Age is incredible. Are you looking forward to Inquisition as much as I am?

Admittedly, I was close to being tremendously disappointed with Dragon Age II. Did they even explain Flemeth or Morrigan more than the two appearances you see of the former, and the slight mention of the latter?

That and the constant repeating of areas (no, I don't mean multiple visits to places like the wounded coasts...meaning more visiting 50 different caves, and them all having the exact same layout as the previous, and so on) kind of bothered me a little. The fact that again they mentioned thousands of areas and we were stuck once again on continent (I swear, I've heard Tevinter Imperium 5000 times and we've still never seen it) was a little bothersome as well.

Outside of that, I was impressed with the change with the main, letting us actually hear him talk with every dialogue choice he makes. I also liked the fact that the choices you made did in fact alter things for later on, such as deciding to spare the Mage woman and her turning against you later. I was a little curious as to why they changed Isabela's appearance as well as the look of the Qunari (since Sten looked almost exactly human, whereas the Qunari in this game had much more monstrous forms).

I am interested in seeing how Inquisition will look. I'm not grabbing hold of a table trying to contain my excitement (like I am for Kingdom Hearts III, and was for Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds), but I enjoyed the game enough to warrant interest in wanting to play the 3rd. I'm also interested in seeing what choices they'll carry to the 3rd game.

[The Candy Lane]

Saw the Civ: Beyond Earth announcement today. Looks pretty cool

Here's the trailer

[Ardreas]

Oh. My. God. Are they really doing that? Finally making an updated version of Alpha Centauri? THE BEST TBS GAME EVER MADE!? By all the gods I hope they don't screw this one up. Alpha Centauri is practically the holy grail of tbs gaming in my book. This is either going to be the highlight of the year, or the last straw with Firaxis' recent debacle (looking at you Civ 5).

[Ater Nox]

This is terrible news. I am supposed to be productive this year, but there goes that plan out the window...

I've read some of the details about the game, and I like the sound of the technology web rather than technology tree.

[Deleted]

It's neutral news to me. I've never been the biggest Civilization fan, myself. I was always more of a Age of Empires kind of guy.

[The Candy Lane]

AoE is great too, I was once an avid player of both. Getting together with a group of friends for AoE or Civ LAN parties, ah those are a blast

[Benevolent Thomas]

Hopefully Beyond Earth comes out after my delegacy ends. I don't want to become a bum delegate because my life will once again be Sid Meier's.

[Deleted]

It'll come out the day it ends, just for you.