TESO: Between Epic and Awful

Riding into battle with hundreds (!) of other players on my screen, armies clashing into each other, catapults and battering rams wreaking havoc, turning into a werewolf and ripping enemies to shreds, feasting on their corpses to keep the blood rage going non-stop - man, that shit is probably the sweetest multiplayer experience I ever had in any game.

Being unable to finish the storyline, being locked out from two thirds of the game world, having no more means to progress and level up for an entire week, with the support staff literally telling me to "try and relog", then getting my account hacked due to zero security measures taken by the developers, waiting yet another week for information on whether or not my stolen stuff can be restored (still waiting), was easily one of my worst moments in gaming.

So much frustration
Look, I get it. It's a new MMO, they always have bugs and problems, WoW had disappearing boats, broken raids, and fucking emergency maintenance all the time. However, Blizzard compensated their users with free subscription time whenever the servers went down at the most inconvenient hours. And that whole thing was what, nearly a decade ago?

I've encountered a lot of broken quests in TESO. I'm not talking about the occasional non-interactive quest NPC here and there, but literally dozens of quests I could not finish and had to come back to at a later time. There are still a few quests in my journal, which I've been unable to complete for over a week (Graveyard of Ships, I'm looking at you).

But even with all of that broken stuff, there are so many quests, dungeons and stories in this game that the broken stuff rarely slowed down my progress too much. It isn't fun when you can't complete stuff, but there was still enough to do. TESO had a LOT of stuff for me to do and not all of it was broken. Yay, I suppose?

What really ruined it for me was when I approached the level cap. That's where you have to finish the storyline in order to access the so-called veteran content. As in, check out the other factions and play their storylines, gain veteran levels, use even cooler gear and so forth. And I couldn't access any of it. Thousands of players couldn't and many still can't, because it was impossible to interact with important quest objects and NPCs. Well, see for yourselves:

ZOMFG WER IZ QEST NCP??!?1

What you see up there is but one of the bugged instances in Coldharbour, rendering only as many players as latency would allow me at the time. All of these players are stuck, they can't progress, they're all sitting around waiting for stuff to be fixed. To be fair, this problem doesn't occur for every single player, but judging by the amount of complaints on the forums, it is pretty common. I had been stuck for six days, whilst my tickets and bug reports recommended a /reloadui. Great. An even better suggestion was to just move on to the next zone and go play there for a bit. Which is incredibly helpful, seeing as Coldharbour is the final zone in the storyline and you can't progress until you're done with it. Meanwhile, the 30 "free" days of play time were happily ticking away without compensation. And seeing as people have already been charged real money for their so-called free game time, it's not really as free as it said on the package, is it?

So much mediocrity
Alright, I'm finally past all this broken and bugged crap, so I'll stop moaning about it. And yes, I may have shared my thoughts about the GMs on the forums, wondering if maybe they've simply never played TESO themselves and they're really just 12 year olds somewhere in Pakistan. Outsourcing and all that. That was a bit rude and I'm sure they're fixing this mess as quickly as they can, but when you spend 120 Pounds on a game (one for me, one for Claire), subscription and everything and then you can't play for days on end, get no information on what's going on and you're supposed to write articles about the damn thing, well... at that moment I really wished I had taken Claire somewhere nice with all the money we've spent on TESO. We're not exactly rich, we can only do so much with our pennies and in its current state, TESO didn't feel like a great choice. Anyhow, moving on.

One big problem I have with TESO is how it constantly throws me back to the stone age of online gaming. Having to compete with 50something other players over quest items, boss monsters and other quest-related stuff hasn't been fun a decade ago and it isn't fun today. There's a reason why modern MMOs like Guild Wars 2 and even Neverwinter have abandoned much of this "fight over quest objects" kind of gameplay. Running into other players should be fun, not annoying. And it can be downright stupid on TESO, especially when those other players turn out to be a clone-army of bots, camping a dungeon boss that you need for completion:

"Fucking human players interrupting our farming all the time! Go away! 10010001011101011"

Another problem is that, depending on your alliance of choice, the first 15 to 20 levels of questing can be anything from exciting to downright coma-inducing and repetitive. Newbie characters, who pledge their allegiance to the Daggerfall Covenant, get to decide whether a bad guy lives or dies, they dodge traps on a weird dwarven obstacle course, they don costumes to fool the bad guys and do a whole lot of infiltrating and swashbuckling and all that sort of thing. Sweet!

Unfortunately, I'm with the Ebonheart Pact. And the first 20 or so levels make them the ultimate victims. Every city, every outpost, every fucking public outhouse is occupied by enemy troops! There's a whole army sitting outside, waiting for... well, you. A single player goes in guerilla style and saves the day. Which is cool once or twice. Maybe three times. But you can only collect so many bandages, help up so many wounded soldiers, save so many troops in distress and backstab so many enemy leaders until you can't help but feel you're playing the same damn quest over and over again. Meanwhile, an Aldmeri character of the same level gets to shut down Oblivion gates and fights daedra and dremora. You tell me which of these options sounds cooler.

So much epicness
Fortunately, once I made it to Shadowfen somewhere around the twenties, the story and quests became a lot more interesting for the Ebonheart Pact. Yeeees, some Argonian city was under siege by invading pirates, but instead of patching up even more wounded villagers, I had to tame a nest of giant wasps and blow up pirate ships and everything was fucking awesome. Also, music:

You can fight a bunch of murderous pirates, not give a shit because it's just another kill quest and maybe rub one out whilst looking at some porn on the 2nd screen or something, seeing as TESO's 5 button gameplay doesn't require an awful lot of hands. Also, the game features no true fullscreen-mode while I'm writing this, so you may as well multitask.

Or you can crank up that music, hack and slash them in style and feel epic the entire time. TESO's soundtrack is so amazing, I can tumble down a cliff on my horse, get eaten by mudcrabs or just chop some wood and the whole time I'm feeling like it's the most heroic thing I've done in my life. I'm not being sarcastic, the music really is that good!

Also, the characters. Claire and I got "married":

Whilst most MMORPGs force you to pick a class with a very particular selection of strengths and weaknesses, TESO lets me play exactly the kind of character I want. In a dungeon, I'm the tank, the warrior, the guy who sets the pace and calls the shots. I stand between the big, fat monster and the squishy sorcerer. When I play play by myself, I jump baddies out of nowhere, riddle them full of holes with hand-crafted critical daggers and disappear again.

Sometimes I "stalk" friends and guild mates when they're stuck. People moan about being stuck on a particular quest or boss, so I teleport to them (there's a handy "travel to player" option for friends and guild mates), sneak up on them and do the /shh emote when they spot me.

"Shhhh!"

I go shhhhh, sneaksneaksneak, stabstabstab, bye. It's hilarious.
Sometimes I do it with random players, who are stuck in a public dungeons, because they can't take on the baddies on their own. Happens more often than you think. I just shhhh them, stab everything, shhhh some more and give them their daily dosage of WTF.

Awesome customization
Another controversial subject. Some of my friends complain about how there are really just four classes, each of which only feature so many valid playstyles for each of them. I disagree. For instance, I'm a Dragon Knight. I've played alongside other Dragon Knights, who specialised in fire magic, using cloth armor, staves, typical casty stuff. Completely different play style than my own and perfectly valid. I'm using a pure melee spec, alternating between sword & board and dual daggers depending on the situation. Average time to kill is a bit longer than on any pure DPS build, what with my tanky heavy armor spec and everything, but I can take on five or six baddies at a time and live, while the more glasscannon type of builds kick the bucket if they aren't careful. Sometimes I wear a cloth hood instead of a heavy helmet to show off my badass eyepatch and to boost my spellcasting power a bit.

Also, I'm a werewolf:

Yes, there are only four classes, they only get three unique lines of skills each, there are only three guild-related lines of skills, there are only three armour types, you can only use two simultaneous weapon sets, you can only choose to become a vampire, werewolf or specialise in hunting them through the fighters guild... Notice something? That shit adds up. One of my friends is playing a nightblade, who focuses on heavy two-handed weapons, of all things. Another friend is playing a ranger-type nightblade, focusing mainly on bows.

I'm a cat. I'm a werewolf. I have an eyepatch. I'm a tank. I'm a bit of a comical rogue in heavy armor (meaning sneaking up on baddies usually does nothing, but it's still hilarious). I can drain the life of my enemies and set them on fire. I can set my own weapons on fire. I'm unfuckingstoppable, probably because the game really isn't that difficult and not because my build is so fucking epic, but no other MMO allows me to play exactly the kind of character I want to play the way TESO does. Being able to craft my own gear, choosing which style and stats I want, whether I want to focus on stronger enchantments, higher critical rate or even weird stuff like enhanced sprint duration - I can do whatever I want. Heck, I can even train my horse to be really fast, have lots of stamina or insane amounts of carrying capacity for all that sweet, sweet loot! And most importantly - this stuff doesn't simply "work". I kick ass in pve and pvp. So much ass.

PvP is so fucking good
In many MMOs, going for the tanky heavy metal build often means you're awesome at getting punched in the face and shit at everything else. In TESO I lead the pack like I would in a dungeon. Gather a small force to take over an enemy mine or a lumbermill, get them in position, then charge at the guys who are holding the flag. That's not a job for a mage or a stabby rogue - this is where you need a tank, unless you have enough people with you to grossly outnumber the opposition.

Some enemy mage or archer breaking stealth behind me and pelting me with ranged attacks? Shield charge, bleed DoT, fire DoT, life drain, watch them die as they try to run away. Instant happiness. And when enemy tanks attack, I can switch to my daggers, shhhh, stabstabstab, bye.
This isn't the "one build to rule them all" or some shit. But it works. I can defeat other players, beat all kinds of play styles with skill, adapting to the situation, by using whatever abilities and skills I decided to put on my hotbar. No "well, it's rock-paper-scissors and you're not supposed to be able to beat every class" kind of bullshit. Rock-paper-scissors isn't fucking balance, it's a lame excuse. TESO doesn't do that. I can play the way I want and kick ass in pvp. Huge plus!

Speaking of huge:

These screenshots don't even do the pvp any justice. There are those insanely massive battles with hundreds of players, much greater than any zerg vs zerg action on Guild Wars 2 and it runs without any lag or stuttering. Low draw distance this, shoddy 2d foliage that, fuck off, pvp performance in TESO is fucking magic.

One thing that ultimately drove me away from GW2's World vs World was the choppiness and stuttering. Yes, you may now tell the game how many players you want rendered at any given time and how detailed these player models you want to be, but it simply ruins the immersion for me. If I have to make the enemy team look like an army of faceless, low-poly clone soldiers or set it so I can never see more than 20 detailed player models on-screen at any given time, then it simply doesn't feel like proper large-scale PvP.

TESO shows friends and foes in all their glory, no low-poly placeholder models, no "you may never see more than 20 players around you" bullcrap, it just runs, it looks great and it's epic.
Castle sieges and massive skirmishes are incredibly fast-paced and exciting, thanks to how the siege engines work. Everyone can buy catapults, ballistae, battering rams and all the good things that make PvP so much fun for very small amounts of gold or PvP tokens. You can place that stuff anywhere you want - BOOM! Instant ballista! Go kill some enemy players!

Are you done shooting all the bad guys? Pack that ballista back up again and transport it to the next battle. How great is that? Players can carry their siege engines around the battlefield and start destroying enemies and castle walls in no time. Realistic? Of course not, but who gives a fuck, if it's so much fun? It's so much better than the slow-paced sieges you get on GW2.

Siege blueprints in GW2 are relatively expensive compared to siege in TESO. And on there you can't just plant that shit from one moment to the next. Setting up siege requires resources, meaning you'll have to find team mates, who will help you construct your catapult before it's ready to go. If an enemy player destroys it before you're even done setting it up, well... tough. Say goodbye to your blueprint! And once the battle is over, your siege engine will sit there and rot, because you may not move it, let alone put it back in your inventory. Nothing is more annoying than a battering ram, which has been built a couple inches away from the enemy gates, meaning it'll just sit there and never breach anything. Wouldn't it be great if the fucking thing had wheels, so you could move it? Yeah, TESO does that.

Fingers crossed
Look, I'm not very good at my job. They keep giving me work, because I'm somewhat reliable and occasionally funny and they can't find anyone else, who'd hide a dozen or so dick jokes in every article on an even lower budget. After the beta I genuinely believed that TESO could become really, seriously big. Maybe not WoW-big, but close. Because of Tamriel, its rich, complex lore, the many fantastic stories this setting has to tell and all the diverse races and creatures and... seriously, bugs and problems aside, Tamriel could be my "happy place" kind of MMO. You know, the kind of game you go to when you want to get away from your everyday bullshit for a little while. I love the music, the many different zones and races, I find it all highly immersive and I simply like my character a lot, because I feel that I can play him just the way I want and I'm not simply one among hundreds of thousands of cookie-cutter Dragon Knights with the exact same build and playstyle.

In its greatest moments, I'm enjoying TESO as much as I used to enjoy WoW before it started to suck (for me, personally). And that's saying a lot, because I've been hoping to find an MMO that draws me in and blows me away like WoW did for a long time - and no other game ever came close.
Long story short - I think this game has the potential to become really, seriously big. There's a fantastic MMORPG hiding underneath all those bugs and problems. But if I were so great at predicting whether or not some new game is gonna be a huge success, then I'd be rich by now and I wouldn't waste my time writing a blog and shit.

That said, you simply can't ignore the fact that there are thousands of players, who have been stuck for a week or more, due to show-stopping bugs. Players, who have paid to play, who are losing paid subscription time right now, while the GMs can't seem to do anything to help them progress. Some players, myself included, have been hacked, because there aren't any decent security measures to protect user accounts. You can see every player's user handle in-game, so all you have to do is brute-force their passwords. There is no limit on how many consecutive times you can fail to type in the wrong password. There is no authenticator. I did get a bunch of emails warning me that somebody was attempting to break into my account from a foreign IP, but by the time I managed to get back into the game, all my gold and half of my stuff had been stolen.

What's worse, the response to my ticket came within just a few hours, saying they'd take care of it immediately. That was five days ago. I didn't get my stuff back, I don't know if or how they're planning on restoring it and I'm paranoid to play right now. If they decide to give me a personal rollback, then I'll lose everything I've gained between the moment I got hacked and the actual rollback. I'd probably put my nutsack in the door frame and slam the door a few times.

Lots of people are getting their ingame banks wiped, due to a yet unknown bug. Tens of thousands of gold pieces, a hundred items, everything gone. Some players have been waiting for over ten days to get their stuff back, but to no avail. Crafting will occasionally destroy the helmet your character is currently wearing, which is extra awesome when it's a rare set helmet. Some characters get disconnected from the database, losing every ability, skill, item, mount, everything but their name. Imagine being at the level cap with no gear, no skill points, no nothing. And waiting paid day after paid day of premium time for somebody to help you.

"Gimme your lunch money!"

Other MMOs had bugs at launch, problems and a support crew, which couldn't possibly keep up with the many reports, tickets and requests. Thing is, Guild Wars 2 cost no monthly fees when it came out. Most games these days don't. SWTOR did and went Free2Play almost instantly, when people felt they weren't getting their money's worth.

Tamriel is not a happy place right now. I'm frustrated with the bugs and problems, I was incredibly pissed off when I couldn't play for a whole week, losing lots of subscription time in the process. I'm still coming back. And this isn't even for "work" anymore. My build is complete, I know everything I need to know, but I come back there, because it's fun. Because I want to keep playing. But I'm worried they may not get all the many problems fixed in time. I haven't seen such a problematic launch since Age of Conan. You know what happened to that game. I hope they'll get it all sorted ASAP, lest TESO becomes another F2P game people joke about.

-Cat