is it worth getting back into ESO in 2024? Is the new player experience good enough?

[Odin]

I played ESO during the first 5 months after its official release and i kinda want to get back into it as i don't really have any other MMO to go back to at the moment (played enough WoW, GW2, Destiny and OSRS).

ESO to me looks overwhelming as hell as it has a lot of expansions to catch up with so my question is: Is the new player experience good in 2024? Is the game still thriving and are past expansions still relevant and NEEDED in order to play the game?

[AmaiAmai]

At this time there is free ESO+ trial so you can literally try everything.

However, things to understand: the game is not in its Golden Age. Better than on release, but inferior to its own time in 2016-2019.

If you read a few posts on this forum you will see some people hate the game, others like it. Only you know what you like and what you don't.

[Question Mark]

You need several dlcs/chapters to be up to date. Is it worth it ? Depends on what you are looking for..... My personal opinion is that ESO is not worth it. If u already own the game and u are bored, the game is playable (when the servers aren´t down)- but it is far from great and has lots of problems.
If you are a mmo-fan that enjoys teamwork or competing with other players/PvP I wouldn´t recommend ESO at all. If u like solo-player experience with some multiplayer-experience in between and lots of grinding- ESO might be worth it for u - but than again, there are lots of other games that can offer you that

[Askys]

so many downers here :c personally love it! sure there's some wonkyness, mainly in PVP.

If you like Elder scrolls then go for it :D

(Ps you can build a house out of sweetrolls)

[No' Name]

I'd say that depends on your server experience, by this I mean your latency on the server you pick.

A LOT of people have experienced Ping issues from 120-140 as the "normal" now, and no it has nothing to do with our connections, just the crappy Zenimax servers. It's not so much fun when all your skills feel delayed as hell, even if you're a casual PvE player, dungeon running can feel like a pain in the ass, and not a rewarding experience at all. Best thing to due before even starting to feel committed to ESO is boot it up, check your Latency (/latency), because anything over 90 Ping is going to Eff over your experience.

This game almost forces you to subscribe, rather than buy separate expansions, or at least it used to, not too sure how that works now. For example you buy "X Expansion", and you're still gated out of some of the content, unless you subscribe, which gives you access to ALL content. As stated above, if your Latency is above 90, don't bother with subbing to the game, it won't be worth it.

That being said, I don't think any expansion is really "needed" in order to enjoy the game. Expansions are just different stories/parts of the Tamriel. You'll still hit the max lvl which is 50, and still get champion points, no matter what.

The action combat in this game is about as bland as they come. Swing= Auto Attack, which depending on your builds you may, or may never use them at all, unless it's just holding down your attack for heavy attacks to build refill mana.

The only good thing ESO (in my opinion) has going for it, is the fact you can basically customize your classes around weapons you enjoy using, and they are not class bound.

The two "new" classes are hidden behind a Subscription, or you flat out buy them, are they worth it though? Well Necromancer isn't really a Necromancer in terms of raising minions to fight for you, they're basically skills with poorly animated skull heads/ Skeletons that go boom. Very disappointing class and skills.

[Allwynd]

If you've played only when it launched and stopped then, if you play now, it will feel completely different.

At launch leveling was challenging and interesting, zones had certain level range and if you pull more than 2 mobs at a time, it would easily mean you could die. Now it's scaled so you can complete each zone at whatever level you want, screw the story coherence. It's also so easy to level, you can literally strip your character naked with a basic dagger in hand and pull 10 mobs, guaranteed you will kill them all and not be nowhere close to dying. If you have full gear, which as good stats and you utilize your abilities properly, you kill mobs at the speed of Dynasty/Samurai/Pirate Warriors games - in other words it's like the arcade beat-em-up games. It's so easy and dull that it literally makes 80% of the game (which is leveling, exploring the world and questing) so boring and pointless that it makes you constantly question "why are you even wasting your time playing this?"

Because it is the case - there is literally no point in leveling - it's just a waste of time, since you don't learn anything other than how easy the game is. Until you enter group content with PvP or Trials, where you realize people are nolifer elitists who demand the absolute best performance out of you in PvE and in PvP you will get pubstomped by people with low self esteem whose real life is in shambles so they try to compensate in a game where they delude themselves they are in control.

Also the official forums are an echo chamber where if you complain about something branded unpopular, such as how easy leveling has been made, you will get attacked by everyone and if you try to defend yourself, you will get muted or soft-banned by the moderators, which has happened a few times to me. I have posted about this at least 2-3 threads, each time I get attacked/mocked/ridiculed by the people who think the easy leveling somehow made the game better and if I defend myself, I get banned or muted. After around the 2nd or 3rd time, I lost all hope for the game and left it completely.

There is indeed a lot of content considering when you stopped playing, but if you complete it in order of release, you will have a lot of content, but the caveat is a lot of the new content from the past 5 years is really underwhelming and the price/quality ratio is bad - you are asked to pay a lot of money for content that just isn't good enough. I would say just going through the Base Game content is the best part of the game, after that it's just bad. I have the Morrowind Chapter and I was really excited as TES3 Morrowind is my favorite TES game, which I still play to this day and the version of Vvardenfell in ESO is just so underwhelming and disappointing, it has boring quests, too little content and the whole are of Red Mountain is not even accessible unless you're willing to walljump out of the map boundaries, but even that is not worth the effort.

Subsequent chapters are even worse and more boring, also they have reduced their size so now they are as big as what DLCs used to be. And DLCs are so small that it's a crime they still ask money for how little they offer and not release them as free updates.

If you still plan to play, read on the internet the order in which you play zones, because since there is now scaling, you might end up in the wrong zone and your story will get messed up. But I would say that even playing for the story in 2024-2025 is not worth it as they made the game so easy it feels like you have a god mode cheat enabled at all times and it just devalues the whole experience as there is no thrill or adrenaline in leveling, you never feel like you get stronger, leveling up means nothing, getting better gear or learning new abilities means nothing.

The developers ignore all the problems with the game and act like the game is a massive success that only keeps getting better with each update. The combat has been bad for a long time, when they made the game dumb-dumb level easy, the bad combat became even more glaring and obvious. The servers are struggling, especially in PvP, but nothing is being done about that, performance is also bad, but nothing is being done about that either. So overall, I don't think playing the game is worth it today. The game is a shadow of its former self and even if you own it, it's not worth wasting time on it. Better play something like Turtle WoW or 2009Scape instead where the server owners at least care about the game and lore and put out more content that no other version of the game has. Right now Turtle WoW is by far the best way to play WoW, hands down, better than Retail, better than Classic, better than any other iteration. I was expecting that by this time, the base version of ESO would have been made F2P, but they still charge money for it and it's not worth it. I guess the only people who keep playing are those who are too invested and have no self-respect and some newcomers who don't know anything about the state of the game and blindly jump in and a very small portion of them stick with it after the first few weeks.

TL;DR:

Save yourself the trouble, what the game was in 2014-2015, it will never be as good, it only keeps getting worse.

[UnderNewManagement]

Publicado originalmente por Allwynd:

If you've played only when it launched and stopped then, if you play now, it will feel completely different.

At launch leveling was challenging and interesting, zones had certain level range and if you pull more than 2 mobs at a time, it would easily mean you could die. Now it's scaled so you can complete each zone at whatever level you want, screw the story coherence. It's also so easy to level, you can literally strip your character naked with a basic dagger in hand and pull 10 mobs, guaranteed you will kill them all and not be nowhere close to dying. If you have full gear, which as good stats and you utilize your abilities properly, you kill mobs at the speed of Dynasty/Samurai/Pirate Warriors games - in other words it's like the arcade beat-em-up games. It's so easy and dull that it literally makes 80% of the game (which is leveling, exploring the world and questing) so boring and pointless that it makes you constantly question "why are you even wasting your time playing this?"

Because it is the case - there is literally no point in leveling - it's just a waste of time, since you don't learn anything other than how easy the game is. Until you enter group content with PvP or Trials, where you realize people are nolifer elitists who demand the absolute best performance out of you in PvE and in PvP you will get pubstomped by people with low self esteem whose real life is in shambles so they try to compensate in a game where they delude themselves they are in control.

Also the official forums are an echo chamber where if you complain about something branded unpopular, such as how easy leveling has been made, you will get attacked by everyone and if you try to defend yourself, you will get muted or soft-banned by the moderators, which has happened a few times to me. I have posted about this at least 2-3 threads, each time I get attacked/mocked/ridiculed by the people who think the easy leveling somehow made the game better and if I defend myself, I get banned or muted. After around the 2nd or 3rd time, I lost all hope for the game and left it completely.

There is indeed a lot of content considering when you stopped playing, but if you complete it in order of release, you will have a lot of content, but the caveat is a lot of the new content from the past 5 years is really underwhelming and the price/quality ratio is bad - you are asked to pay a lot of money for content that just isn't good enough. I would say just going through the Base Game content is the best part of the game, after that it's just bad. I have the Morrowind Chapter and I was really excited as TES3 Morrowind is my favorite TES game, which I still play to this day and the version of Vvardenfell in ESO is just so underwhelming and disappointing, it has boring quests, too little content and the whole are of Red Mountain is not even accessible unless you're willing to walljump out of the map boundaries, but even that is not worth the effort.

Subsequent chapters are even worse and more boring, also they have reduced their size so now they are as big as what DLCs used to be. And DLCs are so small that it's a crime they still ask money for how little they offer and not release them as free updates.

If you still plan to play, read on the internet the order in which you play zones, because since there is now scaling, you might end up in the wrong zone and your story will get messed up. But I would say that even playing for the story in 2024-2025 is not worth it as they made the game so easy it feels like you have a god mode cheat enabled at all times and it just devalues the whole experience as there is no thrill or adrenaline in leveling, you never feel like you get stronger, leveling up means nothing, getting better gear or learning new abilities means nothing.

The developers ignore all the problems with the game and act like the game is a massive success that only keeps getting better with each update. The combat has been bad for a long time, when they made the game dumb-dumb level easy, the bad combat became even more glaring and obvious. The servers are struggling, especially in PvP, but nothing is being done about that, performance is also bad, but nothing is being done about that either. So overall, I don't think playing the game is worth it today. The game is a shadow of its former self and even if you own it, it's not worth wasting time on it. Better play something like Turtle WoW or 2009Scape instead where the server owners at least care about the game and lore and put out more content that no other version of the game has. Right now Turtle WoW is by far the best way to play WoW, hands down, better than Retail, better than Classic, better than any other iteration. I was expecting that by this time, the base version of ESO would have been made F2P, but they still charge money for it and it's not worth it. I guess the only people who keep playing are those who are too invested and have no self-respect and some newcomers who don't know anything about the state of the game and blindly jump in and a very small portion of them stick with it after the first few weeks.

TL;DR:

Save yourself the trouble, what the game was in 2014-2015, it will never be as good, it only keeps getting worse.

this person has 14hrs playtime for eso lol. I just got back into it in 2024 and think its great. every zone feels relevant still and has been fun to go through in no particular order. but try for yourself

[Allwynd]

Publicado originalmente por UnderNewManagement:

this person has 14hrs playtime for eso lol. I just got back into it in 2024 and think its great. every zone feels relevant still and has been fun to go through in no particular order. but try for yourself

I don't have the game on Steam, I only played it on Steam when it was free, I have over 800 hours in ESO, but thanks for showing how unsmart you are.

[UnderNewManagement]

Publicado originalmente por Allwynd:

Publicado originalmente por UnderNewManagement:

this person has 14hrs playtime for eso lol. I just got back into it in 2024 and think its great. every zone feels relevant still and has been fun to go through in no particular order. but try for yourself

I don't have the game on Steam, I only played it on Steam when it was free, I have over 800 hours in ESO, but thanks for showing how unsmart you are.

i mean, you recommended a private server version of wow which equates to piracy on a steam forum which also prolly doesnt allow discussions of piracy or private servers sooooo unsmart yeahhhhhh about that.

[Toothbrush]

game is trash now, every major game design choice is made to appease the 1% top players.

[Question Mark]

Publicado originalmente por No' Name:

I'd say that depends on your server experience, by this I mean your latency on the server you pick.

A LOT of people have experienced Ping issues from 120-140 as the "normal" now, and no it has nothing to do with our connections, just the crappy Zenimax servers. It's not so much fun when all your skills feel delayed as hell, even if you're a casual PvE player, dungeon running can feel like a pain in the ass, and not a rewarding experience at all. Best thing to due before even starting to feel committed to ESO is boot it up, check your Latency (/latency), because anything over 90 Ping is going to Eff over your experience.

This game almost forces you to subscribe, rather than buy separate expansions, or at least it used to, not too sure how that works now. For example you buy "X Expansion", and you're still gated out of some of the content, unless you subscribe, which gives you access to ALL content. As stated above, if your Latency is above 90, don't bother with subbing to the game, it won't be worth it.

That being said, I don't think any expansion is really "needed" in order to enjoy the game. Expansions are just different stories/parts of the Tamriel. You'll still hit the max lvl which is 50, and still get champion points, no matter what.

The action combat in this game is about as bland as they come. Swing= Auto Attack, which depending on your builds you may, or may never use them at all, unless it's just holding down your attack for heavy attacks to build refill mana.

The only good thing ESO (in my opinion) has going for it, is the fact you can basically customize your classes around weapons you enjoy using, and they are not class bound.

The two "new" classes are hidden behind a Subscription, or you flat out buy them, are they worth it though? Well Necromancer isn't really a Necromancer in terms of raising minions to fight for you, they're basically skills with poorly animated skull heads/ Skeletons that go boom. Very disappointing class and skills.

Expansions are needed if u wanna keep up with others.... One expansion to get access to jewelry, one expansion for scrying/excavation, one for companions, one for scribing etc...

If you wanna have a normal/decent inventory you also need to subscribe...

Than there is the crown store where you can buy stuff to max out your characters inventory, get exclusive access to races of other realms etc.

ESO is expensive and ZOS is squeezing hard for money. A lot of stuff is hidden behind paywalls. Like good ingame houses are sold for 100+ dollars etc.

The most recent chapters/dlcs have often the most powerful gear/class/skills. It often is straight up broken and doesn´t get fixed/nerfed until the next DLC/chapters with broken stuff is being released. At this point it is p2w.
Riding research/crafting research takes round half a year real time to max out- or you can get the max skill in seconds buy using real money to buy it in the crown store.

In general ESO is full with real money-transactions. The chats constantly are filled with people trying to buy crowns (ZOS currency) or external websites offering services/items/gold cheaper


The publishers/devs clearly have no love for their own game. Sadly it is normal that bugs might not get fixed (some are years old), new problems appear with every patch, also: lags, horrible balancing broken game design, no gms etc.
In recent years there have been problems so bad that servers had to go offline several times.
New patches/events often have stuff that wasn´t thought through and gets exploited. Servers do not get rolled back and items etc do not get removed. Exploited stuff stays in game. Exploiting in ESO is not punished but rewarded.

They have pretty much given up on PvP altogether and took away the choice what bgs to play (all random, and the new bgs are horrible design). Over the years ESO has gotten worse. It is also grindy on purpose. The game has for exmple hidden limitations on drops. certain stuff will can only drop every 24 hours once- no matter how much you grind.
Dungeons drop only one weapon (ignoring chests) at the last boss- forcing players to run the same dungeons over and over again. Daily dungeons are random and u often get dungeons you already did countless times/don´t need.
That is no fun and people constantly do speedruns- new players/players doing quests often get left behind. In random groups, which are the standard, there is not much teamwork....

Many PvP/MMO fans have left a long time ago- what is left in eso are often single-players. People play next to each other instead of with each other.
The game design itself doesn´t help either. Joining 5 guilds with up to 500 players each and no real guild activities makes the connection between players weak. Compared to other mmos the guild chats seem often to be dead.

Mixing all three realms together also takes away a lot of competetive spirit and identification (us vs them in other games, fan videos and lore for your own side etc). Everyone has chars from every realm.

Last but not least: The game is mostly not challenging. The enemies scale with the players level up to cp160. Open world enemies are usually just there to grind.
The challenging PvE content would be trials and vet dungeons. These are only hard because of instant-death-mechanics. Learn the mechanics and u are usually fine. There is no real AI where you need to use your brain and change tactics instantly - just learn the mechanics, stop thinking and just keep grinding the stuff over and over

I bought the game around 9-10 years ago but stopped spending any money on ESO with the release of the last chapter since it crossed the red p2w-line for me. ESO is a playable if u are bored and don´t expect a high quality MMO. It is a theme-park MMO with focus on single players. Features are usually copied from other games, you will not find innovative new stuff here.
Like I said, it is playable but has problems. I wouldn´t recommend ESO to any serious MMO player though

[..::Krea::..]

Bought CE at release but didnt like it back than combat / class didnt click with me . Now i am playing a arcanist with controller and it feels super smooth and impactfull and i normaly never play mmorpg with controller .

No idea why ppl make big problem about dlc just grab a sub and you have all content only not the newest expansion . Bought eso complete package for 20 euro or so on black friday which includes all.

[Tangopappa]

no i dont think so. alot of server disconnects and no support to fix these issues.

[Yvaralys]

Publicado originalmente por AmaiAmai:

At this time there is free ESO+ trial so you can literally try everything.

However, things to understand: the game is not in its Golden Age. Better than on release, but inferior to its own time in 2016-2019.

If you read a few posts on this forum you will see some people hate the game, others like it. Only you know what you like and what you don't.

"This game is not in its Golden Age". Lmao, and it won't be until the game is actually completed. Until you can walk (or ride) from one side of Tamriel to the other, the game isn't finished. It's not inferior to 2016-2019, there is literally loads more content now. Player numbers are sufficient. If it was too crowded, it would be annoying.

[󠀡󠀡]

Publicado originalmente por Yvaralys:

"This game is not in its Golden Age". Lmao, and it won't be until the game is actually completed. Until you can walk (or ride) from one side of Tamriel to the other, the game isn't finished. It's not inferior to 2016-2019, there is literally loads more content now. Player numbers are sufficient. If it was too crowded, it would be annoying.

Learn what golden age means

[Question Mark]

Publicado originalmente por Tangopappa:

no i dont think so. alot of server disconnects and no support to fix these issues.

100%. I have 3 accounts. Can´t log in with 2 after their servers went down. The Support doesn´t help at all.
They told me to change my Email-address, while sending Emails. Zero competence