ESO: Morrowind

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Aren’t trailers horrible and awesome at the same time? That game looks awesome.

Back to reality, I want this to be great. I so badly want for it to be a true Morrowind experience. So much of me hopes it will be an amazing expansion and era of growth for ESO. Yet, so much of me remember the pains of ESO. ESO wasn’t the worst MMO I’ve played. But that’s really where the ‘praise’ ends.

We’ve given ESO more chances than it deserved. We played it on multiple platforms, played all 3 factions, and made numerous characters. It simply fails to ‘hook’ the player.

Additionally, the cash shop vibe it puts out turns me off completely. I’m not going to debate whether the shop is fair. Having one bothers me. An RPG — especially a mmorpg — loses immersion when I’m presented constantly with buying things from the cash shop.

From the official website:

Return to the iconic island of Vvardenfell for over 30 hours of adventure in a brand new location, with a new class, a new PvP mode, a new Trial, and so much more.”

So it’s like a mini expansion. That doesn’t seem fitting for Morrowind. One of the greatest RPGs of our time simply adds a class, a battleground, and 30 hours of questing.

I find myself once again grumbling over what this could have been. They could have gone the extra mile and made this into a new type of MMORPG that was more open and sandbox. They could have aimed for a new ‘game’ and attempted something in at least the same ballpark as Morrowind.

I’ll try to get over my skepticism and my disdain for what ESO failed to be and focus on what it is and what Morrowind may end up being. Despite my ridicule, I’ll try it out.

  • I would say that if you included all the free shit they added over the last year, this is a pretty decent amount of content for $30. How much content did a month of WoW + Legion get you for the first 30 days?

    • Monetary value is too subjective to make the center of a debate anymore which is why you won’t find me questioning the price. To answer your question, Legion + WoW was roughly 100 hours in the first 30 days and in the 50-100 hours (depending on time) in the next 30 days, and then roughly 5-20 depending on my interest for all subsequent months.

      The crux of my point here is that it’s taking Morrowind and distilling it. That’s ESO in a nutshell: Distilled Elder Scrolls. Even the word distilled is wrong since that means keeping the most important parts. Maybe it’s more like the powdered milk of Elder Scrolls.

  • One man’s trash is another man’s gold.
    ESO is the best MMO post wow imo, by a margin.
    I’m stoked about the expansion.
    But I didn’t go in there expecting Skyrim the MMO, I went in expecting a MMO based on the Elder Scrolls universe and that’s just what I got, a good MMO too.

    • Garbage is too harsh. I won’t call ESO garbage. It’s simply far less than I would have expected for the MMO version of a great sandbox series. Morrowind brings back memories (mostly watching Graev play) of a great RPG. Morrowind the ESO expansion simply reminds me of that “man i wish this could have been something more” feeling.

  • Lol Keen. Bitching while you hand over your wallet is pointless. It will never be anything different or close to what you want if you keep giving them your money. Besides, they are too far down the themepark road to turn back now.

    If I get an Elder Scrolls itch I will play Skyrim. I tried this out two months ago. It’s rubbish. GW2 and FFXIV 2.0 are superior product offerings in the themepark category. They should have gone more sandbox or done a multiplayer type structure. Seems pointless to use an open world IP to sell a themepark experience. No wonder it went F2P.

    • Playing games and writing about them (or trying to) is what I do. If I only played games I loved, my view of gaming would be even more narrow than it is now. I’ll bitch and pay because I can’t bitch and get it for free, though it has happened before.

  • I would argue the best “true Morrowind experience” is…. Morrowind. Playing it right now with the MSGO update and it’s great.

  • Agree with you here. Morrowind the game was great, but Morrowind in ESO is just going to be more ESO with a Morrowind skin. I do wish I enjoyed ESO more, but like you, it never sticks for me.

  • I have just returned to ESO after about a year off and find myself once again really enjoying it. I got back into the game as soon as I saw the upcoming homestead and have been preparing for that to hit next week. It has been a little odd to return to the game since they switched to One Tamriel because I use to enjoy just returning to low level areas to gather resources and slaughter enemies like a god but now everything is scaled to my level. Gone are the days of just plowing through low level mobs. That has taken a bit of getting use to.

    Personally I think the cash shop is incredibly fair in ESO, especially in the way in which they DON’T through it in my face as I am playing. I just think of games like Neverwinter Nights and how I was constantly being reminded to buy keys to unlock this or buy gems to purchase this other thing. I think ESO hits me with one window at launch from time to time and then I don’t even know there is a cash shop unless I click the tab myself. To me that is a great way to do it. Offer cosmetics and maybe even boosts in your shop but don’t constantly be advertising them to me while I am in game. That shit is a quick way to get me to stop playing. Hence why I played Neverwinter for about a month and never looked back.