My wife and I have been big fans of the Elder Scrolls series since ES III: Morrowind, but we've never really had much experience with MMOs. When Xbox Live Marketplace had a recent sale on Elder Scrolls Online, I finally decided to give it a try.
Having played long enough to reach level 25 with my Ebonheart Pact Imperial, it's been an interesting experience so far. As I expected, doing quests as a typical "chosen one" persona is strange when a bunch of other "chosen ones" are scurrying about doing the exact same quests. I am also reminded that many gamers are foul-mouthed punks; the first thing I do now is turn off voice chat. Otherwise I get to hear lots of crude vulgarities, racist comments, and generally obnoxious noises, especially in the cities.
I haven't done any PvP yet, and although I've dabbled in a couple of group dungeons, most of my play has been solo. As a fan of the series I'm enjoying the lore, and exploring Morrowind has been a lot of fun. Many of the quests do feel a bit vanilla, however. The leveling system and skill tree structure are fun and it seems like there is a lot of variety in how you can build up your character. I also think the crafting system has the potential to be interesting.
I bought the Imperial Edition of the game, thinking that my wife and I would both have access to the Imperial race and the horse, only to be disappointed that the bonus content is associated with my account only, so my wife would have to pay extra to access the same content. It took her a long time to save 10,000 gold coins in-game to finally buy a horse!
Overall I'm having fun with it, and my score for ESO is 7 out of 10. If there are any TMP'ers out there playing ESO on Xbox, hit me up with your gamer tag. Maybe we could team up for a dungeon.
's preferred method for stripping paint from resin and plastic models.
