Respawn

Welcome to Respawn Rants, the new Tuesday version of Respawn where we just randomly rant about things that tick me off or are just kinda dumb. Today’s topic: whining about ESO early game.

A lot of people are out there writing whining about The Elder Scrolls Online early game and how it sucks. Because something in this world must suck at all given times or else I guess people get uneasy. Now that the NDA has lifted, we’ve got a flood of people saying that the early game is boring and drull.

To some extent, they’re right. If you pick Daggerfall then the starting area is this boring dull sand area and sand is always boring. My claim in EQN: Landmark is in some sand and everyone is like psh this is so boring. I mean that’s kind of one of the issues that I have is that to be a Breton you have to go deal with it and just eat sand.

Eating sand isn’t fun, but that’s alright because like any game, you can’t judge the game by the start. There isn’t a lot of reason to highlight the first hour of a game and label is as dumb because there is sand everywhere. Likewise, you can’t take the first hour of a game and say it’s awesome because the starting zone is super polished.

Shroud of the Avatar

I could, for instance, say this screenshot looks REALLY dated from Shroud of the Avatar. Then again I could also mention that it's in super early alpha.

I don’t know, detractors of anything always annoy me unless there is some justifiable purpose for their dissent. A good example is EQN: Landmark which is in the early adopter early alpha for people who just REALLY want to start playing today. The game, in the few bits I’ve played it, has made major improvements and is still in early development. Do people care? No. The game sucks because it’s not finished yet. But they word it in such a way that it sucks forever and ever because the version that they played sucks today and forever.

We get disconnected easily from the idea that it’s okay to have excuses. Excuses are fine. Detractors often latch on to the Human nature to dismiss excuses, but for games in early development or still in development, the excuse is valid. You have to consider it and you can’t lambaste everything because of arbitrary points.

That’s not to say you can’t be critical. I mean if something does suck you can say it sucks, but you have to keep things in context and the context can’t be a footnote to push some kind of obscure agenda at a game you may or may not like because TES is so popular but for many just getting into a game and enjoying it can be too much of a hassle.

Like if I was going to be critical, I would say that yes sand is boring. Sand is always boring. There is very few zones (if any) in any MMO where the sand didn’t make you just slug along. If every fantasy world could just do away with sand areas, I would be happy and content. Vibrant and pretty colors are awesome and we should get more of that in every MMO. Except MMOs in space and it’s okay to not force vibrant and pretty colors down your thought in a spaceship.

However, in ESO, the boring early game parts are very short. Maybe 15 minutes or so long before you get to the first major area, unless you want to stick around and just hang out. For the other factions, the starting zones weren’t boring for me and even defining boring is tough - it’s such a subjective statement.

Ah well, to that extent if you think something sucks voice your opinion. Just be sure that it’s an opinion and not an agenda. That’s all I have to say this fine Tuesday. See everyone tomorrow!


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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

About The Author

Get in the bush with David "Xerin" Piner as he leverages his spectacular insanity to ask the serious questions such as is Master Yi and Illidan the same person? What's for dinner? What are ways to elevate your gaming experience? David's column, Respawn, is updated near daily with some of the coolest things you'll read online, while David tackles ways to improve the game experience across the board with various hype guides to cool games.

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