ESO: Week 2 - How Did This Happen?

Yep, still playing Elder Scrolls Online. And doing all the stuff I hate doing in MMOs.

I hate MMORPGs with a passion. The endless grind and repetition, the hurrdurr click a rotation everyone copies off the internet and move out of red circles and, most of all, the people. I hate the entire genre so much, I told GameStar magazine I was done being their MMO guy. They originally employed me specifically because I played MMOs, so that was a safe and steady (albeit tiny) source of income. See, if you're a games critic, then that's yet another reason to hate MMOs - you have to spend infinitely more hours playing and reviewing an MMO than some asshole who gets to review this year's Need for Speed or Call of Duty, but nobody pays you by the hour. You're getting paid per fucking page. So do you want to work 20 hours for your 150 Quid or would you rather spend 80 hours getting the exact same lousy pay? Exactly.

Fuck WoW in particular
"But you're enjoying the genre and playing these games anyway, so basically you're having fun and making a bit of money on the side?" That's usually the reason why MMO reviews aren't paid any better, but that was just the thing. I fucking hated MMOs to begin with, so I finally quit the whole genre, even if it meant I would potentially have to look for a new job. I didn't and they just gave me different games to review, everything worked out fine and I'm already going way off topic in the middle of the second damn paragraph of this stupid entry. Focus, for fuck's sake!

Cosplayers always miss the shitty ponytail.

I gave WoW: Legion a try a while back, after I had not taken a look at Blizzard's MMO since the Pandaria announcement. Oh what fun I had! Frequently landing in quest hubs, which were being utterly destroyed by the enemy faction, so I'd enjoy getting ganked for the next half hour. Repeating the ever-same daily shit in Argus, looting the same random chests over and over again, hoping for a fucking legendary. Asshole tanks, who threaten to quit dungeon PUGs if you don't cough up loot. And a completely worthless guild. Dear guild mates, if you're reading this, I still love you. But if we all agree to meet and play some dungeons, then one of you doesn't show up at all and the other one delivers DPS the size of a kitten's nostril, while we're already one player short on the best of days... look, be offended if you want, but every once in a while it would be nice to actually beat at least SOME current content instead of dicking around in ancient raids nobody gives a shit about, only to give up two or three bosses in, because we suck too hard to make it any further.

And don't get me started on all the stupid padding and artificial time-sinks. "Wanna use your flying mount here? Just complete every single quest and grind out rep with every damn faction and you're good to go!" Yeah, thanks! It's super helpful to let me fly after I'm done with all the stupid content! "You need to wait 20something hours for a fucking timer bar in your class hall to run out if you want to unlock this quest!" For fuck's sake, Blizzard! I'm paying premium money AND a subscription fee to play your stupid game and you're still locking me out of content like I'm one some shitty freemium mobile game!

Or one of the many awful rip-off titles. Is LordCraft even a word?

Leave me! I soro!
As I mentioned in my previous post, I went and had another look at Elder Scrolls Online. The Clockwork City DLC added a new zone for me to explore on my own, so I went there, did that, got the skyshards. That's how I usually play this thing. Do all the story stuff and the quests, pretend other players don't exist and then uninstall again for several months until new solo content gets added. The occasional round of PvP aside, I never really treated ESO like an MMO for all the aforementioned reasons. The Elder Scrolls games were always a safe haven for me, away from chat spam, loot-hogging, griefplay and orcs with pink dresses and stupid names going out of their way to fuck up the atmosphere. Who the hell has even asked for an Elder Scrolls MMO? That's the one question which kept popping up in all the low-70ish reviews the game racked up when it was released.

But something must have happened since then. I'm not completely sure whether it's ESO itself, which kept changing and improving more and more over the years or whether it's my attitude. Over the past few days I've found myself taking part in activities on there, which I generally avoid like the plague in other MMOs. What's weirder, I actually enjoyed them! And it must be something about the game, because I sure as fuck didn't stay on WoW. I also immediately quit SWToR after completing all of the (super awesome) story content, because fuck grouping up with other people!

Successful stealth = free instakill. OP and stupidly enjoyable.

Yet here I am, dicking around on ESO and seriously enjoying the exact shit that drove me away from the genre as a whole: Group dungeons, repeating content for loot, fucking stealth and leveling a goddamn alt! The thought of doing any of this nonsense stops me from installing this kind of game. But ESO just pushes all the right buttons for me.

Gear for everyone
As mentioned in my last entry, I seriously love the large-scale PvP in this game. As it turns out, there's now* a pvp vendor, who shows up every weekend to sell legendary goodies and certain monster-sets, which are normally obtained by playing group dungeons.
*By 'now' I mean the vendor has been there for ages, but I haven't been playing much, so it's all new to me.

Seeing as I was sitting on ridiculous amounts of pvp currency, I went on a bit of a spending spree and put some nice new kit on my character. This is another reason why I'm enjoying this game so much. I spend countless hours in pvp and the game rewards me for it and throws some really powerful gear my way. You know, gear that's actually useful and not "useful, but only for pvp" or "almost as good as raid-gear" levels of useful. You want the same cool stuff lovers of pve get in dungeons? Go ahead and buy it with pvp currency! You know, as opposed to saying, "we're giving you slightly inferior gear, because your time spent on the battlefield isn't as valuable as time spent by raiding players". I absolutely hated that about WoW. Where battlegrounds gear was nice to have, but if you wanted the good stuff you had to participate and win in the arena every week. And you still didn't get the best stuff unless you went for the top ratings.

Farm epic gear, then sell your character for money. Welcome to MMOs.

Yes, ESO has group trials and a solo arena with exclusive rewards on hard mode, but not playing any of this stuff doesn't mean you get excluded from obtaining powerful endgame items. You may not get the same amount of options a hardcore player with an active guild might get and that's perfectly alright. There's a shitload of powerful gear available to players of each and every kind and gearing up a max level character is laughably easy. And for as weird as this may sound, it actually doesn't hurt the game - it helps make it better!

Welfare epix are a good thing?
'Welfare epix' was a term WoW players used a lot when the game started handing out purple items for relatively mundane tasks, like waiting for a garrison quest to complete. In classic WoW it was perfectly normal to play all the way to the level cap (which could take an average player a month, because we were all noobs) and never obtain a single epic item in the process. I found my first ever epic item, a ring, whilst grinding pirates in Tanaris. Back then it was also normal to just farm monster spawns in order to level up. I wouldn't obtain another epic until they introduced the T0.5-questline. It wasn't really surprising when some people were upset when it became easier to get epic items on WoW. Of course it's all an illusion and while these items may be purple, their stats still don't compare to powerful raid items of the same colour, because of course they don't.

And then there's ESO. Once you hit the level cap (and the game's champion points gear cap of 160 if you want to get technical), every bit of loot you find will be level-capped. Not only that, but you're also constantly finding set items. The game has dozens upon dozens of sets. You may be more likely to find these items when fighting world bosses or clearing group dungeons, but you also find them in treasure chests, when completing quests and you'll even get them in the mail whilst playing PvP. Gear drops in such abundance, you can buy entire epic sets off guild traders for such tiny amounts of gold, they're practically free. And if you level up your crafting professions, then you can upgrade any item from shitty white quality all the way to legendary. The final, legendary step requires some rare, expensive resources, but if you keep harvesting, crafting and complete your daily crafting missions, you'll get enough materials fairly quickly without ever having to pay for anything.

And that's why I love crafting on ESO - which is another thing I never do in other MMOs.

Gearing up isn't the ultimate goal like in other MMOs. It can be if you desperately want that one special weapon you can only get for beating the Maelstrom Arena or you really want the monster helmet you can only loot in a specific veteran dungeon. But unless you seek out some very specific items, gearing up a level-capped character requires zero effort, costs next to nothing and then you go back to playing all the activities you actually want to play, whether it's story-based stuff, pvp, random dungeons or whatever floats your boat. Meanwhile, every single thing you do in other MMOs revolves around the dreaded item-treadmill. Gear up so you can raid, so you can gear up in the raid to do the next raid, where you gear up for the raid that comes after, then watch as new green quest items will be better than your epix in the next content update. Yeah. I think I prefer ESO's approach.

Rolling alts can strengthen your main
Since it's so piss-easy to kit out a character, creating new characters is actually pretty damn fun. I love my berserking khajiit dragon knight, who stabs people in the face with his daggers and riddles enemy players full of holes with his bow in pvp. But there are so many fun play styles out there, I simply couldn't resist creating a sorcerer, who commands a bunch of pets. There's my pet clannfear, who tail-whips baddied into submission, while my winged twilight attacks enemies from a safe distance and heals my group. I can also summon a storm atronach, who trolls enemies with lightning.

And then I went and looted an item set, which surrounds me with a cloud of ravens, which are all too happy to take turns at attacking my enemies. I rounded it off with another set, which occasionally spawns a monster that sprays bad guys with acid and stuns them for a while. I'm a one-man-army and I'm having stupid amounts of fun with it.

Can't get the pony to attack anyone, though. Boo!

Having additional characters also means getting more crafting resources in the mail, getting extra attemps at daily dungeon chests (I'll get to that) and more possibilities to earn account-wide champion points. Champion points provide passive bonuses to resistances, critical hits, armor penetration and all that sort of thing. They allow characters to progress and get a little stronger after they've hit the level cap. You earn them simply by gaining experience. Problem is, my main character has already completed all of the quests and story missions, so outside of group dungeons, pvp and monster grinding, there isn't a lot he can do to gain more points.

Luckily for me, I already have 300 of these champion points, which each and every one of the characters on my account may use any way they want. Better still, whenever I complete missions and just generally play around with my sorcerer alt, I'll earn more champion points, which are also added to my main character's points pool. So no matter which character you play - all toons on your account become stronger as a result. You only get rewarded for playing multiple heroes. There is no downside.

A chance to shine
Here's the one thing that surprises me the most about ESO - I'm currently just killing time whilst waiting for the server maintenance to end, so I can finally play more group dungeons. You know, that shit I hate the most in MMOs. Having to team up with other people. I absolutely love the way group combat works on ESO - and how I can make a difference as a single player.

We get it, you're fucking vegan!

Remember how I said you may want to go after a specific item, which can only be looted in specific content? Well, there's a piece of gear I want, which can be obtained from daily dungeon pledge reward chests. And that means teaming up with other people, unless you wanna go full hardcore and solo that shit. So I begrudgingly fired up the LFG-tool, queued up for the dungeons I had to complete and surprisingly, it wasn't awful.

Things started off with an easy dungeon, where my group just rushed through and rampaged all over the place, murdering everything in our path. And right before the final boss our tank ran into some issues with his lack of gravity resistance, ran off a cliff by accident and got stuck. Meanwhile, the healer couldn't be fucked to wait for the tank to come back and pulled the boss. The tank was now locked out. And it took all of ten seconds for our damage dealer to die, because not standing in a pool of lava is hard, apparently. And then there were two - the overzealous healer and my stressed ass, fighting the final boss on our own.

Go fuck a landmine, Bubsy.

So I stab-stabbity-stabbed the shit out of the boss, the healer did whatever it is that healers do and things went okay for a while until the healer kicked the bucket. And then it was just me. And I aced that shit. Mind you, the boss was on his final 15% by then, there were no hard modes active and I never leave the house without a crapload of potions and healing abilities. So the whole thing wasn't as epic as I'm making it sound, but it felt awesome at the time. Yes, my group consisted of a bunch of idiots and the entire situation was perfectly avoidable. I'm not even mad.

I love the insane pacing. You see 'tanks' charging from one enemy to another, bunching them up and pulling them all over the place with fiery chains. There are no massive AoE-tauns, so everyone gets to deal with a bit of aggro. It's a good idea to bring some defensive buffs and/or healing abilities even when you're not the designated tank or healer. Meanwhile, it's perfectly fine for the tank to whip out a massive warhammer or stereo axes when not blocking a minotaur's horns with his face. Tanking doesn't mean you don't get to deal damage. Dealing damage doesn't mean you can go entirely without protection. The "holy trinity" isn't as extreme and brain-dead as in other games of the genre. Nothing is more depressing than speccing into maximum defense for "the greater good", causing your enemies to die of old age, if anything. Or being unable to handle more than basic trash mobs solo if you're a damage dealer. You can build a character that way, but you don't have to. Thank fuck.

Bound to account
One small gripe I have with the whole dungeon pledge thing is how the rewards are so random. The pledge reward chest that potentially contains the thing I want only grants a 1 in 12 chance for the desired piece of kit to drop. And since the item in question may randomly drop as cloth, leather or plate armor, it's entirely possible I'll finally get the desired object, only to realize it's the wrong material. RNG is generally sucky. I prefer a token system, where I know that I'll definitely get what I want after a set amount of runs, for as long as the amount of required tokens isn't absolutely ridiculous.

Getting pretty takes a bit of effort.

BUT - there's a guaranteed dungeon set shoulder in every chest. And you can open the chest six times a day when you play the veteran modes (three if you're a wuss) - plus additional keys for every character in your account you want to run daily dungeons with. So getting the stuff you want is still a relatively quick and painless process. And since the stuff in the chest is account bound rather than bound to a specific character, you can always pass on unwanted loot to your alts. And seeing as I'm enjoying the dungeons so much, I really don't mind running these dungeons multiple times. Not only is there a massive amount of dungeons to keep repetition to a minimum, but it's also so much less depressing than having to repeat Argus until you throw up on a certain other game.

I quit MMOs. I quit writing about MMOs, quit reviewing them, quit accepting work involving MMOs. Thanks for making me such a fucking hypocrite, ESO. Also, thanks so much for extending today's maintenance till 1am. You bastards.