I paid a fortune for this game and a bunch of DC's and only played a few hours. God I hate MMO'S...

Imagine like, an MMO… but 70% of the fanbase is super chill middle aged DND type nerds and the rest are really fun to irritate. It’s like if Skyrim had less snow, fewer dragons, and more random weirdos in ridiculous costumes. You can be one of those weirdos.

My impression after playing this game for all these hours is that this is not an Elder Scrolls game that happens to be an MMO, it is an MMO that happens to be set in Tamriel. I love this game for the sake fact that everyone on it is super chill and full of people that you can talk nerd sh*t about. While there is always that elitist group in every game, you don't even gotta deal with them! It’s an MMO for people who don't like to play with other people. It’s even one of the only games I've ever played where it’s common to run into girls!

It’s an MMO for the solo-player where you can be a Simple Fisherman or a Vampire Lord with their own palace and everything in between. Kind of like a single player game with MMORPG elements, features, and group content. Very customizable and easy to play. Combat is simple and limited to 10 slottable abilities at a time. Lots of exploration. It’s an awesome game where you spend tons of hours creating an elite character just to have that character reduced to nothing three months later. Then it’s just rinse and repeat, year after year. My wife’s boyfriend says it’s an adventure simulator with lore, lizard people, and cats.

Honestly it is what you make of it. Epic storyline and meaningful side quests? Check. Single player coop multiplayer check. PvP check. Mass PvP check. Raids check. Housing check. Meaningful character progression ehhh that's where it kinda suffers a bit cause while you have tons of options there's not enough challenging content for it. For an MMO the writing/story telling is fairly good and the fully voice acted NPCs are a big bonus. I also like how ESO feels a lot more open ended in what activities you participate in and that old content doesn't become obsolete just because a new "expansion" comes out.

The music is excellent, everything (EVERY thing) is voice acted and voice acted well, ambient and enemy sounds are incredible. Costuming is basically perfect, with very minor hiccups. I've spent hours at the outfit station, and I'll spend hours more. Simply the best transmog system I've seen. Housing system is excellent. You can argue that housing content itself is drip-fed painfully slowly, which I would agree with, but at this point any newcomer to ESO would have plenty of furniture to go learn, earn, or find.

The combat/gameplay is also easily the best out of any MMO I've played. A lot of other MMOs overload your hot-bar with a million abilities you'll never use, tab-targeting is clunky, awkward and out-dated, and other MMOs with "action" based combat feel "off" to me such as Black Desert Online for example. ESO gets most of it right when it comes to combat/gameplay.

Like most online game communities, you have perks and generous people willing to help. Then you have disadvantages and rude individuals that ruin the experience. It takes some time to comprehend how some mechanics work, but when you do it’s a cake walk. Have someone rushing through a dungeon or degrading you? Leave. Have a complex group that’ll actually guide you? Learn from them and keep that knowledge for next time. Enjoy the game as you see fit. Don’t let the negative outweigh the positive.

Outside of it just being a game, I absolutely love it. It’s given us incredible insight into not just lore but simply locations across Tamriel and beyond. We don’t have to play Arena to see all of Tamriel in old graphics before most of the locations uniqueness actually came to life or was even made, we can see how Tamriel is meant to look with amazing graphics as a bonus. ESO is a treasure trove for people that love the world of Tamriel and want to explore, see, and learn about all of it

Despite all the jokes, it’s the best MMO I've ever played. I love the setting. The world is HUGE. Tons of stories, characters, mythos. I can't recommend it enough.

10/10

It suffers from the typical MMORPG issue of the quests being lame and long. I struggled to find my immersion. There are a couple worthwhile story-lines and areas, and a handful of well-written lore, but the vast majority is trite nonsense content. To be expected with MMORPGs, I suppose.
The exceptions to this rule are:
The Clockwork City
Morrowind
The Deadlands
Necrom
Summerset

The "Overland" content is a joke. Not a single challenge.

The dialogue and stories are largely hammy, soulless, and often miss the point.

The written lore is 15% good, 85% droning.

Truly a shame considering the Franchise.

Some very high quality voice work, though. A+


The most recent "expansion" has a fitting name.
ZOS might as well say what they expect from this game. They find every way to entice you to pay for store content. They have a LEGION of players who drop tons of money on, say, a chair or painting for their house. A 'flashy' mount. A face tattoo. A different colored crab pet.

There you are, likely thinking, "Well you can just ignore it, this guys bent out of shape over nothing," and you may be right, but to that I say: In your weakest moment, late on a Saturday night, after you actually had fun with your guild trying to finish that trial on hard mode, and maybe you've had a little bit of your favorite medicine, and that one mount in the store looks really cool... I hope I've made my point.

To make matters worse, that mount is more than likely in ZOS's monthly Crate. Meaning, to "purchase" it you have to drop real money to receive a minuscule chance at getting it. If you don't, you'll have to spend anywhere from ~$200 to ~$400 (maybe more) to get enough crates to hopefully get enough items to then break down into 'gems' to then spend an inhumane amount of them on that one mount. Furthermore, if you spend, say $100 on crates and don't get what you wanted, you'll have to bank those gems, buy more crates when you can, and hope you do this in a month's time since you won't get the chance again for ~6 more months (or more...or never). Gambling is practically the only way to get that mount, and they motivate you to do so with every psychological trick in the book.

You know in other similar games when you spent all that time doing various time-consuming tasks in order to complete a rare achievement so you can get that really cool, mostly unique, thing? Well, you're not going to find that here. The only animated effect mounts are in the store. The raddest pets are in the store. The best homes are in the store. The coolest costumes are in the store. 90% of these items are on a monthly rotation that follows no discernible schedule and require you to gamble.
Yes, there are still "prized" things to achieve. There are a few for Exploration, Crafting, and Fishing. Some Veteran Trial/Dungeon achievements provide decent cosmetic goodies. There are 5 quest-lines that end in getting various homes. I could count the things I found worth it on one hand though.

Don't get me started on Seals of Endeavor...This currency is supposedly to stop naysayers like me from complaining about the store by offering a way to purchase your favorite shiny trinket (provided it is available that month) with in-game currency you can earn. But let me tell you, with 3k hours under my belt, and a concerted effort to gain these seals, I was never able to actually purchase a single top-tier mount, which are the only ones worth purchasing, I'd argue. I had one friend with more hours and dedication that managed to purchase a single top-tier mount.

ZOS should, and probably does, hold a masterclass on:
"How To Create Whales, and Milk Them"
Truly they could teach Vegas Casinos a thing or two.

If you were to critically analyze the "Good Content" vs the "Bad Content" in PvE, I believe most would agree (even current players) that its a 10/90 split. The fun in the game comes from joining endgame guilds and socializing, which, I realized at some point, was the only reason I continued playing.
I'd argue, in fact, that it is required to join an endgame guild and socialize in order to even attempt the hard modes.

Quick preface to show I am qualified to understand the concepts that follow this section:
I have led hundreds of Trials/Dungeons from normal to veteran hard-modes, and formed a couple guilds over my playtime to successfully complete a good deal of the end-endgame. I was a raid lead in 6 guilds, and held scheduled trials twice weekly. I had it down to a science with how to get my trial group through a trial quickly, efficiently, enjoyably, and to completion. I have every class leveled to max with endgame gear. I have participated as every role in all the content...
I primarily played PvE content. Nothing in the following section is geared towards PvP endgame content.

I would like to point out a glaring mega-con that many of the people I am about to call out will inevitably tell me I just have a "skill-issue". I'll let you be the judge of it:
The DPS role is a joke. There is a certain point where you realize that you cannot get the harder, more important, content done unless you reach a certain threshold of DPS. Hey! This is fine, that is every MMORPG! Dear reader, get ready to hit that "hot take" button. Let me introduce you to the concept of "Light Attack Weaving".
The premise is simple: Put a light attack in-between every skill cast you make. Sounds easy, right?

Wrong. Particularly on keyboard, the input timing is so strict and erroneous that unless practiced heavily, you will never achieve the level necessary to step into the easiest of endgame dlc veteran content.

Your rotational damage primarily comes from your light attack, NO MATTER YOUR CLASS. The recent addition of Arcanist had attempted to fix this, and allowed people like me to finally be able to join harder end-game content as DPS instead of being locked into a support role. But of course, the fun was short-lived. Whilst this is still a viable class, it continues to get nerfed in the name of balance, or perhaps in the name of appeasing the Elite Jerkwads who think because they had to practice for hours days on a training dummy to get their LA Weave perfect that you should have to suffer in kind.

LA weaving DOES NOT WORK for my brain, and I am not the only one. The concept is simple, but it takes an incredible amount of practice for the average player to achieve a modicum of the DPS necessary to enjoy Hardmode Trials/DLC Dungeons as a DPS player. NO ONE can say that they 'had fun' doing this, and not be trolling.

All this can be avoided by being a support role, but I am sure seasoned MMORPG players understand the downside to always being the Tank or Healer.
Further, far more often than not, the DPS role is:
Stand in the right spot, do your dps. Move when needed to avoid mechanics.
Whereas the Tanks and Healers are required to know everything about the mechanics and make sure the DPS take care of business as safely as possible. 9/10 times your raid lead will be a support, and they will be primarily herding your DPS around.

There are more issues that I may add in detail later, but for now my main gripes are listed.

I recently uninstalled and since then I have had a much more enjoyable time playing various other games instead of being glued to a single one that doesn't respect my time or wallet (or maybe respects them too much). I write this review in order to hopefully save at least one person from buying into this and wasting 3k hours of their life, and possibly thousands of your local currency. Comments enabled if you seek more information.

No Australian servers. Game is literally unplayable.