Tamriel Unlimited Might Be Worth It

Whee! I'm on a horse!

Strange things are happening these days. After five years of freezing my ass to the toilet seat during the cold months we're getting double-glazed windows in every room of the house and they're redecorating our bathroom. Quality of life, no more sitting in a drafty house, no more petting that fluffy, black carpet of mould in the bathroom when I soak in the tub. And that whole thing about me not really reviewing games much these days? Well, someone has just made me an offer I couldn't refuse.

For the past few months I have made most of my money writing gaming-related news. I wasn't a huge fan of it at first, but they're nice enough to let me write my articles using my crude sense of humour instead of forcing me to be all dull and boring about it. I do get the odd reader in the comments section, who feels the need to point out that gaming is serious business and news shouldn't be funny, but I'm starting to gather a bit of a (minor) fan base, who appreciate what I do, so I'm actually having fun with it. I get to be creative, the hosts of the website let me get away with my weird shit, my stuff stands out a bit and everybody is happy. Good money, too.

I'm getting the hang of this whole writing quest text thing, too. I do a bit of translating and simple story crafting on the side for a bit of extra money and for as much as I loved reviewing games, I really didn't miss it all that much. But now I've been asked to take another look at Elder Scrolls Online, they're offering decent pay, I get free ingame goodies on top and frankly, I was tempted to give it another try, anyway. It's the enforced re-spec, which made me stay away until now.

That and finding a decent-looking dye combo that doesn't contain red, black and white.

They've recently changed the way some of the attributes and skills work and everyone got their stuff reset. Clean slate. On a max level character in a game you haven't touched in months. Enjoy distributing your 50something attribute points and 200+ skill points! I realized that when I re-downloaded the game two or so weeks ago, changed my mind and just removed all that crap again. Then I got the job to re-review ESO, so there's that.

It took me a fair bit of research to come up with a new specialization for my character, but now I'm glad I had to look into it for work. I went back into the fray and immediately felt like a badass. I went into the nearest dungeon, killed some giant snake boss monster and got a "group event" achievement for killing that thing all by myself. To be fair, I cannot really tell whether I'm getting on so well in combat because I'm such a BAMF or whether they made the game a lot easier over time. But so far I'm breezing through the veteran content, I'm fucking shit up and I'm seriously enjoying it.

Being a werewolf is suddenly awesome!

When I last played ESO, shape-shifting into a werewolf usually ended after about ten seconds because a) I got killed, b) I got stuck and killed, c) I actually managed to kill something and then transformed back, because it was fucking impossible to maintain transformation.

I tried it again today, eradicated an entire spawn of enemies, whacked a named quest mob, then ate her face. It's entirely possible to remain a werewolf for several minutes at a time now and doing so actually makes you stronger and more dangerous instead of turning you into a gimped sports mascot. I didn't have any annoying lags, delays and all the usual problems I always used to have with switching weapon sets in the middle of a fight. Everything just worked.

Right now the cash shop is perfectly acceptable. Bunch of costumes, some mounts, cosmetic pets, but no experience boosters or anything. I believe those had been announced for the shop, but they don't exist right now and I like it that way. The optional subscription gives you a monthly stipend of cash shop currency and a 20% experience boost, but that's pretty much it until they add new premium content, which you can only access by paying for it or subscribing. Right now there's well over a hundred hours of play time in this bitch, which requires only the client software and is perfectly enjoyable without a sub or any purchases in the cash shop. And that's a lot of play time for very little money.

And face-eating! Don't forget face-eating!

With all that said, they seriously need to add new content. The new champion system functions a bit like paragon-levels on Diablo 3 (though champion points cap out at 300 right now, I think), so basically, everything is end game. Solo questing in pve, group dungeons, what little raid content there is and pvp. Problem is, if you're into raids, then you've probably played Craglorn to death. If your veteran rank is maxed out, then you've played all the quests and explored the whole world. And if you're not into pvp, well...

And that's a problem right now, at least to veteran players. If you're a returning player, then there's a shitload of content waiting for you and there is really no pressure here to spend any real cash. If you're a newcomer, now is the perfect time to start, because ESO has finally reached a state where it feels polished and playable. If you're at Veteran Rank 14 and you're tired of running the same old veteran dungeons every day, then you might just be a bit fucked, because aside from rolling a new character, grinding pvp all day or just mindlessly slaughtering spawns of monsters, there really isn't much left for you to do in order to get those champion points.

Zenimax did the right thing by polishing their combat and balancing, adding stuff like the justice system and granting players a greater sense of progression, but now it's time to expand the world and add to the story a bit. I've defeated Molag Bal a long time ago and I only have another six veteran ranks ahead of me before it's pvp, raids or daily dungeon delves. And that selection feels just a bit limited right now...

-Cat