My Mixed ESO Emotions

I have played ESO in its beta phase (was allowed to hit level 14, so not sure where these “it opens up after 20” claims come from?). It is also hypothetically possible that I have seen/heard/played/discussed the Wildstar beta. Hypothetically. (Is their NDA still in effect?)

With that experience behind me, both real and hypothetical, I can say that ESO is the funner of the two in my book. Wildstar is hypothetically boring. If I wanted to play WoW again, but a WoW that had me dodge constantly and telegraphed even the most boring of mobs aoe areas, I would play WoW again. That is not a fun thing. Just because someone hypothetically implemented housing does not mean it would make me enjoy literally playing WoW again, with a different name. (And of course the stupidly trendy Arcade MMO experience that is the current oohhh-ahhhh factor for people. Don’t ask me how that became popular. How is spazzing around all over the place dodging and casting while running and channeling while running etc the new happy place for devs? I digress.)

While ESO has this newfangle stupid ArcadeMMOness going on, it also has the first person experience added to that, which actually does make the dodging/flopping around madly thing a bit more fun. The world seems huge, and the PvP seems like it could be quite fun even in a small-man setup. I enjoy the skill system quite a bit.

So from someone who thought the idea of an MMO Skyrim as horrendous, after having played it is in fact fun. Albeit not as fun or rewarding as Skyrim can be for us explorer types, the tradeoff is playing with thine broheims. At this point I have preordered ESO. I will not preorder or ever buy Wildstar. Hypothetically.

One thing I’ve noticed many people say is “I hate zerg pvp”, but what do you expect in any kind of massive pvp experience?

You want large scale pvp combat, it’s GOING to be zergs, people would fondly remember 8man group clashes in DAoC, while ignoring the fact many aspects of the game were absolutly broken and those 8man groups were farm groups that could take out far larger armies through CC and PBAoE abuse. Additionally they weren’t LOOKING for other 8man groups, but for solo players or large groups which they could ambush and abuse ability stacking with. In fact, most of the best “8man” groups were radar hackers specifically to avoid 8 on 8 battles.

Logically smaller groups of less skilled, less coordinated, or simply less geared players will group up to take on stronger players or larger keeps, the incentive is there to group up. This means, conversely, overgeared players or players with significant skill can’t single handedly dominate the fight, and “op combinations” become less apparent when theres so many of EVERY class in a fight. The complaint I hear most often is “but I want my contribution to MATTER”, while ignoring the fact it DOES matter, a few players can make a big difference, even while mitigating the individual skill contribution, and allows people of less ability to participate and more importantly, contribute. The large mass of players also allowed “zerg tactics”, push, pulling offensive and defensive lines at milestone locations, as well as having “front line” people to absorb and distract attacks before retreating to be healed and allowing ranged dps to go up and attack.

People want epic PvP experiences, yet only want small groups… theres a thing for this in wow, which they called battlegrounds.

I’m not even interested enough in ESO to sign up for the beta now they’re letting anyone in, but I do read people describing their experiences and I’ve watched some PvP footage (Werit’s, mostly). A few things come to mind.

Firstly, on the whole “the game opens out after level/zone x/y/z. Then you can stop following the breadcrumb trail and explore” thing. That actually describes most (not all) MMOs. Unless an MMO actually gates character progression behind specific quests (the FFXIV approach) then you can go off-piste, explore and generally do whatever the heck you fancy whenever you want. That’s exactly how I played WoW when I was there, for example, and LotRO, two MMOs that are often considered to be directive. Indeed it’s how I play every MMO that doesn’t actively prohibit it.

I think the big difference here is that for most MMOs you have an audience the larger part of which expects and even requires a very clear breadcrumb path whereas, because of its well-established, open-world, non-linear single player heritage, ESO is attracting an audience that expects to do its own thing. The issue isn’t likely to be whether you *can* strike out on your own, off the beaten path, and explore the world but whether the developers have coded in specific inducements for you to do so. Explorers will explore in any MMO but Achievers will only explore if there’s a clear benefit from dong it. If you’re an explorer at heart I’m sure ESO will open out just fine – if you’re an Achiever then you may well be right to be concerned that you’ll need to follow directive content to feel you aren’t missing out.

Then there’s the zerging issue. I agree with Danath. You can’t have large-scale PvP without large numbers of people. If large numbers of people gather together in an MMO it gets labelled a Zerg. If you’re going to attempt to emulate medieval siege warfare, albeit it with added magic, you are going to need an army. You can’t siege a keep with eight people if the people who own the keep have eighty people they can call in to stop you.

Except that, of course, in a video game you can – by programming in restrictions. That’s how we ended up with instances in the first place. Go down that route and we’re all back in battlegrounds again. Again the issue isn’t going to be “does everyone Zerg?” but “if I don’t join the zerg, can I have fun and be effective?, which comes down to the much same thing as exploring vs achieving – does the game feel sufficiently enjoyable and rewarding if you set your own goals or do you have to go where everyone else is going and do what everyone else is doing if you don’t want to miss out?

A lot of this is too subjective to assess meaningfully from reading or watching other peoples’ experiences. I suspect you won’t know if you like the later levels and gameplay of ESO until you try it for yourself. Which, again, puts it in the same boat as most MMOs.

Expectation is that opens up in the same way every other MMO opens up. I am guessing their quest spread is going to be a little bit better since the beginning is weak.

PvP will probably be really good but miss a few essential building blocks to make it good. I have feeling these are building blocks which wont fit in the current design and will never be added.

Then a sprinkling of Skyrim esq systems that are nifty but not meaningful.

I don’t like any measures that directly interfere with zerg PVP. If that is how people want to play, they certainly should – I dont see it as a necessary evil that we need to get rid off. However, having said that…I like the idea of indirectly messing with it. I would think, the bigger the PVP zone, the less effective a zerg is…if the zerg can pretty quickly reach every noon and cranny then you might as well stay zerged. A large zerg on a large map can only be in one spot and the large the map is the more useless the zerg becomes.

Additionally, if you give individual classes powerful abilities, then a well played group can actually deal with a zerg that outnumbers the group by a lot. We usually don’t see this much individual power as everything is “balanced.” It is one necessary part of promoting group play though…

Finally, as usual, it is also about risk and reward. I don’t know what you get for your PVP efforts in ESO but if group play would be substantially more efficient than zerging then a lot of people will drift towards group play.

“You want large scale pvp combat, it’s GOING to be zergs, people would fondly remember 8man group clashes in DAoC, while ignoring the fact many aspects of the game were absolutly broken and those 8man groups were farm groups that could take out far larger armies through CC and PBAoE abuse. Additionally they weren’t LOOKING for other 8man groups, but for solo players or large groups which they could ambush and abuse ability stacking with. In fact, most of the best “8man” groups were radar hackers specifically to avoid 8 on 8 battles.”

I guess I do disagree with this paragraph. Calling powerful abilities “absolutely broken” is one reason why MMOs are lackluster and suck these days. Fixing these “absolutely broken” abilities means “balancing,” However, balancing in modern MMOs means neutering abilities so that everyone feels equally mediocre. In the end we simply exchange weak blows with our opposition. It would be much more exciting if everyone has access to powerful offensive and defensive abilities – in my opinion, this is proper balancing instead of the lazy approach to neuter everyone.

With powerful abilities in place (as in DAOC) we see situations where a smaller well played group can take on a dumb large force. How is this not something that we want in our games? In a modern MMO we usually have longer TTK (time to kill) ratios because everyone is weaker anyway…that is probably across the board, I’d prefer TTK ratios being related to how well a character is played meaning that powerful abilities exists that can push the TTK ratio quite a bit down if a well played character faces a poorly played character and that TTK go up compared to modern MMOs if 2 well played or two poorly played characters/groups engage each other. If I talk about powerful abilities – I am not limiting this to offensive abilities but this would include powerful defensive abilities as well. If we dont get away from balancing everyone by denying them powerful tools, MMOs will continue to seem lackluster.

The “powerful abilities” in DAoC that people are talking about was Crowd Control. It was a real and influential part of Dark Age. The reason a group of 8 well played character could come upon a zerg of 20+ and not only do well, but potentially win, was crowd control. Coupled with the fact that casters were unable to cast if being interrupted (by anything), set in motion a dynamic that I will never tire of.

Unfortunately the rest of the whiny world doesn’t like it when they “can’t play their character” wahhh waahhh. A zerg in a game without CC simply means the larger number of people will win, every time. A zerg in a game *with* CC will mostly still win against a smaller group, if they are paying attention. But if not, if that smaller group gets the drop on them, they have a chance to pull off the W.

ESO will have zerg issues, sure. So does every pvp game. With the map that pvp is played on being so large, there will indeed be action for small man pvp, and with stealth there will even be action for soloers.

The zerg can only be in one place (per faction), and heading to only one place. That gives a whole lot of wiggle room for everyone else.

I’m quite the fan of the game. I have played beta until about lvl 10.

I actually see it as Warhammer 2.0 in many ways.

We were promised a different, relevant crafting system in WHO and we never really got that. TESO seems to have this. It’s at least way more fun than the one in WHO, however it seems to actually be relevant.

We were promised great RvR and while we partially got that, it was really deeply flawed, haunted by FPS issues and silly mechanics. TESO is absolutely amazing when it comes to FPS in large crowds and its RvR game seems much better though out: actual sieging, ability to break through multiple paths (any actually, since the walls are destructible), huge maps with relevant PvE content in between, 3 faction system.

The questing system is not on-rails either, at least not fully. Exploring the world gives you quests that are not announced before hand and that you could easily miss if you only stuck to the main road / storyline. Exploring is fun too, with the chance to find chests, lore, skyshards. It’s not Skyrim snadbox level, however it’s most definitely not WoW / WIldstar either.

The combat might be the game’s weak point. I agree it could use some polishing, especially when it comes to animations, however I haven’t found anything game-breaking here.

So yeah, I really enjoyed the game and can’t wait to try it our for real at launch. I think it has great promise.

I disagree wholeheartedly, Danath. What made CC in DAoC relevant was in fact that lengthy duration. In current Arcade-MMOs you have maybe a second or two of CC? Maybe? Is that even worth hitting the button? Why not just spaz out and dodge any direction instead? Neither choice really has meaning.

Yes, the group that was paying attention and won at CC had a distinct advantage. How is that a bad thing? Are you against the people that are on the ball, paying attention, actually doing what they should be winning?

CC was a major integral part of RvR in that game, certainly. But it was not the end-all either. There were plenty of options for stopping/ending/reducing the durations. SoS, Determination, Purge, Charge, MoC (from a stopping interrupt standpoint), and then even to passive things, like having a good template so that your resists against said CC are capped. Sure, these are mostly usable abilities gained from actually doing RvR. But again, isn’t that the point? Shouldn’t the people doing what they are supposed to be doing win?

I played everything from a dedicated 8 man RvR group to a solo stealther, to a zerg surfing Healer etc. I can honestly say that most of the 8 man groups on my server were actually out to fight other groups of 8, not simply maximize RP. Did we ever fight the zerg? Certainly. Mostly because we hung around somewhere too long and ran into said zerg, or more likely because the 8v8 action was dead, and we wanted to do something. Running headlong into the zerg and then slowly kiting them to death was always a fun experience.

Good luck doing that with today’s standard of “Crowd Control”. If 10 people fight 7 people, those 7 are going to die. All other things being equal (not afk etc). I don’t know why anyone would ever find simple power in numbers as the funnest way to pvp.

I never said that, I was fine with CC, but mez should not last the thirty+ seconds it lasted originally, which was what was breaking, if it was 10-15 seconds fine, but 30 is a LONG time to get wailed on with the power of insta death PBAE spam, and for some reason I remember purge not being that great, I don’t remember why though. Something that if you got out of mez, there was another form of CC that could be slapped on you, I THINK.

I did solo armsman, 8-16man arms and of course zerging, but my experience with 8mans is while yes, there were great fights, they were designed to ambush and demolish larger groups through PBAE abuse more than any kind of balanced setup, with high damage melees picking off important targets that dont get mezzed/stunned or needed to die first.

At the time I was playing I don’t remember there being alot of ways to resist CC, was that a frontiers thing? Or do you just meant something to buy with realm ranks? It’s been a long time.

@Keen
Yeah, but I consider those helping the main zerg, more often I saw stealthers prowling certain areas killing people on quests or attempting to level than trying to chase after zergs.

@Danath Mesmerization breaks upon any damage taken, also when some debuffs are applied. Mezz is like being asleep, anything that happens will wake you up. Stun lasted, at a maximum, 9 or 11 seconds I believe? And that was only with the melee versions, think the casted stuns were much shorter. Root was the longest duration hard CC in DAoC, would stop you from running (nothing else) for a minute or more. Again, any damage broke it.

Besides stun, the other forms of CC aren’t really “abusable” as far as laying damage on someone while they can do nothing. It was simply a way to stop 30 people, so that you could deal with the rest in a timely fashion.

@Balthazar I haven’t played WoW in multiple consecutive years, and probably never will again. I do however remember the forms of CC they had initially. And then they nerfed them, and then they added diminshing returns. To the point that, to me at least, it was atrocious. My warlock went from being able to Fear someone as a viable means to take them out of a fight, to them being able to trinket that first fear and then laugh at the duration of any I applied after that.

But like I said, I haven’t played in forever. Maybe it got better? It sounded like you said they were nerfing it again though.

I ended up taking the plunge. I like what I’m seeing in the streams I’ve watched. I’ll get more out of it then I did FFIV anyway.

“you CAN pick a direction and find stuff to do as well. ”

As you can do in any MMO out there. The point is that the efficient way of progressing is linear. Is not like skyrim that the core design is to explore and pick directions. I can wear light armor to my rogue in wow, with intellect and spirit, does this mean that the game offer a Deep character system where you can chose what to wear and what stat to focus on? No, you wear leather and you pick agility.

If you want to explore for the shake of it, do it. That does not mean the game core experience/design is not linear.

“The issue with CC in DAoC was it lasts for WAY too long, and covered a really massive radius. It was very easy to use a CC, kill a large group of people with PBAE with them unable to react, (AE Mez > AE Stun, PBAE), while everyone had to stand there for 30+ seconds, and then pick people off the remainder one by one. PBaE was also ridiculously powerful, but with long CC’s, and stacking people who could use such abilities, meant whoever got the mez off first won. I don’t have issues with CC, but it was very much an iwin button in DAoC with little chance of recovery.”

Bullshit. Just don’t run around in a blob and you can’t get mezzed, stunned and bombed. Just that you can stick to your group leader and alt-tab to youporn while running around doesn’t mean you should. Last time i died to that was in 2005 or so. And I played DAoC on and off all the time. Mezzes also can get cured.

Long CC in DAoC is only a problem for terrible players.

First few levels of ESO seemed fine to me, but I didn’t think there was any way I would be buying until I tried the PvP. Now I just might. The purchase and sub cost isn’t the least bit of an issue for me as it is a lot cheaper than dual DAoC accounts ever were, but the cost of time could be tough.

ESO PvP seemed to be saturated with a DAoC RvR feel, which is great because my first and only true MMO love was DAoC. I had to quit DAoC about 9 years ago to handle real life demands, and have since dabbled in numerous MMOs (EQ2, WoW, Warhammer, ToR, GW, GW2, Rift, you name it) but no other has grabbed me. If I hadn’t been forced to quit I might just still be playing DAoC, but have not been able to bring myself to go back since it is so old and I know would be a serious commitment.

Most of what I was able to do in Cyrodiil this past weekend was zerg, but my impression is that there will be a lot of freedom to PvP the way you want thanks to scale of the map. I think the key to DAoC for me was the freedom and variety afforded by the open ended RvR end game. I suspect that if I were to try ESO and find a guild similar to what I had in DAoC, I might just end up hopelessly hooked on an MMO once again. And now I can’t stop reminiscing about the hole left in my heart by DAoC especially with the 8 man talk in other posts here…

Started my first two characters – a champ and a bard – before Shrouded Isles came out. Leveled them side by side, alt tab mostly, in a kind of abject poverty that only early DAoC players could fully understand (mismatched bits of wrong armor type greens and greys in the 40s anyone?). Then I joined a solid little 8-10 player hib/crossover mid 8v8 guild. Quickly got over the sting of my early poverty by growing filthy rich and self-power-leveling a large variety of classes to 50.

Yeah I was an 8er, but no hater. I really don’t understand the common resentment against 8 mans, which mostly just did 8v8 and only occasionally tried with great amusement and enthusiasm but varying levels of success to stomp zergs. If you succeed in stomping a zerg with a single group, then I think you and the zerg both deserve the outcome. If you fail then you still might knock out satisfying enough number of players but in any case know you deserve the wipe you earned by trying and failing.

You really should try and get some RvR in if they have another beta weekend Keen. I had no intentions of playing this game prior to this last beta weekend. Heck, the beta weekend before this last one, I didn’t even log in, that is how much I hated the early pve stuff. This last weekend though, I told myself I was going to force my way through to level 10 so I could try it out. Now I’ll be getting the Imperial Edition. It is just eerie how close this is to DAOC. I’ve been seeing the same sentinment with a lot of ex or current daoc players. If you get the chance to try it out, make sure to explore, and get a feel for how big the map is. Try out running with the zerg to experience the large keep fights, but also try to find those areas between enemy keeps where you get traffic and the opportunity to gank, and get smaller fights after the zerg has gone by. If you are able to, you can even get a small group with all the classes, and have a stealth group that isn’t just rogues. So many possibilities.

Also, while the fact is that you choose your campaign and it isn’t permanent like DAOC, the campaigns do last 3 months, which I like a lot more than the 2 weeks guild wars does. If you happen to be in a matchup that sucks, you aren’t stuck for 3 months though. You can guest to other servers, or you can pay with alliance points to switch your home campaign. Also, as rivalries between guilds build, I could see guilds continuously staying with the same campaign every 3 months, so in that sense, you could always see a lot of the same enemy guilds if you wanted to.