My First Three Hours with the Elder Scrolls Online Beta

As I hinted at in a
recent angry rant
, I got an invitation to the Elder
Scrolls Online
's press beta weekend, which ran from January
31 to February 4. Unfortunately, due to the enormous size of the game
client and my chronically-weak internet connection, I didn't get a lot of
hands-on time with the game. By the time the game client was downloaded
and installed, the event was nearly over, and I only got about 3 hours'
worth of time into the game. And, evidently, I wasn't the only one this
happened to.

Three hours is not a lot of time - in general, we prefer to log a minimum
of 20 or so hours into a new game before writing about it. You really
can't get a lot done in three hours in terms of thoroughly reviewing a
game's mechanics and systems, and you certainly can't get a feel for mid-
and late-game content. But three hours is enough to build a solid first
impression and blast through the introduction. So that's what I set out to
do: build as thorough a first impression as 3 intensive hours can provide.

Character Generation

Your first taste of any game is the character generator, and this is
where you can start to see the unique hybridization that is the Elder
Scrolls Online. On the one hand, it is way more detailed than most MMOs,
with a giant array of sliders for body and face proportions and a great
assortment of details. You're not just presented with a palette of faces
and hairdos so that everyone ends up looking more or less the same. It's
more like an Elder Scrolls game, where you can make pretty much exactly
the character you want.

The class selection aspect, on the other hand, is very MMO-like. Or,
rather, more like the very first Elder Scrolls games from 20 years ago,
but with even fewer options. As of the press beta, there were 4 classes to
choose from: Dragonknight, Sorcerer, Nightblade and Templar. You pick one
and play it. That's it - no tweaking ability scores or sets of specialty
skills, no gradual introduction to your choices through gameplay. 

3 Hour ESO Beta Impressions - character generator

That's the hybrid. It's an Elder Scrolls roleplaying game mated with a
MMO. You get aspects of both things - some MMO aspects will be more
pronounced in some areas, but others will retain the unique Elder Scrolls
flavor. 

For my brief introduction, I rolled a heavily-tattooed and bearded Orc
Dragonknight. He looked pretty badass.

Introduction

Some good news here: the Elder Scrolls Online stays firmly rooted in
tradition with its new-character introduction. The character starts out
once again as a prisoner and must battle his way to freedom while learning
the basic mechanics of the game. This time around, the prison is located
in Coldharbor, the hellish Daedric realm of Molag Bal.

The hybrid nature of the game is quite solidly established here. Gameplay
is simple and dynamic like an Elder Scrolls game - left-click to hit
whatever is in front of you, hold it down for a power-attack, right-click
to block, both buttons together for an interrupt.

After gaining a level, the character has access to special class powers,
which are slotted in an action bar at the bottom and bound to the top-row
number keys by default. This is more MMO-like, but reminiscent of newer
games rather than older games with hundreds of skills filling row upon row
of action bars.

3 Hour ESO Beta Impressions - Coldharbor introduction

Combat is dynamic and active, somewhere between the simple Elder Scrolls
combat style and that of modern action-combat MMOs. Enemies telegraph
powerful area attacks, and these can be interrupted or dodged. I didn't
get a chance to mess around with a magic-user character, so I can't speak
to how that works, but melee characters feel simple and powerful. My Orc
Dragonknight started out with a pair of axes, and figured out some basic
combat moves against Coldharbor enemies fairly quickly.

It seems like they burned through half of the big-name voice talent for
the introduction. And the encounters with these characters feel
all-too-brief. It is my hope that the player returns to Coldharbor at some
point later in the story and reconnects with the characters left behind
there. But, with only a 3-hour session in which to explore the game, I'll
have to find out more about all that later on.

My First Three Hours with the Elder Scrolls Online Beta

Stros M'kai

After escaping Coldharbor, the Orc Dragonknight found himself on the
island of Stros M'kai, off the coast of Hammerfell in western Tamriel.
It's unlike anything I have seen in previous Elder Scrolls games, but it
has a kind of strangely-familiar feel to it. It's actually a fairly apt
metaphor for the rest of the game - the architecture is kind of a hybrid
of Arabic and European, grey stone castles with "onion" domes.  The
art is gorgeous, but it is clearly wrapped around very simple frames.

3 Hour ESO Beta Impressions - Stros M'Kai

Characters are kind of the same way. They have richly-detailed textures
like Skyrim, but they use simpler, low-polygon-count models like a MMO.
Imagine Skyrim textures wrapped around Morrowind models. That's a bit of
an exaggeration, of course - the character models in the Elder Scrolls
Online are much more detailed than Morrowind's - but it gives you an idea.

Combat animations are interesting, dynamic and relatively fluid, but
running animations seem stiff and unnatural. This is not something I'm
particularly concerned about, being a beta, but I don't imagine the live
game will be that much different, if there's any difference at all.
Players expecting a step up from Skyrim graphics - and there are
apparently a lot of them - are going to be disappointed. Players coming in
from oversaturated MMO worlds will find the Elder Scrolls Online's
graphics to be gorgeous. It really is a very pretty MMO, but likely not as
breathtaking as The Elder Scrolls VI would be.

Stros M'kai had a very Elder Scrolls kind of feeling to it. Once you've
excaped from Coldharbor, you're pretty much free to do whatever the hell
you want, apparently. My Orc Dragonknight woke up on a ship, and I didn't
try to leave right away - I got the quest from the captain first - but I
feel like I probably could have, and that would have been perfectly fine.
I decided to focus on questing rather than exploring - I wanted to get
some levels in my brief play time, and that's usually the quickest way to
do it.

Exploring the island a little bit, I came across a group of dudes betting
on a mudcrab fight. This may not be the super-complex AI from Oblivion and
Skyrim, where NPCs followed daily patterns of sleeping, working, procuring
food, eating and socializing, but it certainly makes the game world feel
alive and dynamic.

3 Hour ESO Beta Impressions - mud crab fighting

The Orc Dragonknight graduated from his paired axes to a few different
weapons as he ran around the island. This is where the Elder Scrolls
Online's hybrid model gets a bit confusing: players get a limited
selection of essentially inflexible classes, like any other MMO, but have
unrestricted access to any weapons and armor they want to use, like an
Elder Scrolls game. There's nothing stopping a player from dressing his
big strong melee character in wizard robes and running around shooting bad
guys with a bow, or from having his Sorcerer clank around in full plate
armor bashing things with a giant mace. Chances are, that kind of setup
won't work particularly well in later-game content or in group dungeons
and the like, but it's an early option.

Right now, it's tough to say what kind of broad appeal the Elder Scrolls
Online is going to have because of this hybrid style. Elder Scrolls fans
are going to bristle at the MMO mechanics, and the MMO people who are
currently using the impending release of ESO as a reason to point out
perceived faults in their current games might not find the mythical
ultimate, perfect gaming experience they are apparently expecting.

On the other hand, I personally found the game to be very engaging right
from the start. I consider myself to be fairly picky when it comes to
MMOs, and when I start a new one I usually end up comparing it unfavorably
to the ones I've been playing a long time and really love (e.g. "it
doesn't have this feature from LotRO, or this feature from SWTOR, and this
other game does this part way better," etc.). But my first three hours of
the Elder Scrolls Online left me wanting much, much more.

So I was super-happy when they decided to extend the event. First
impressions are good and all, but I'm also interested in things like
longevity, immersion and mid-level grind. Luckily, I got the rest of the
week to learn about those... stay tuned!


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our The Elder Scrolls Online Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

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