The Elder Scrolls Online

[AndyKurosaki]

So I got this for PS4 the other day. Sly seems to think I'd utterly hate it, like most people he knows that played it. Had a couple of hours today with my brother and his 2 mates. And we had a great time. Admittedly, we did a fair bit of pissing about, using dance emotes that looked like we were shagging. But it has a wide range of such emotes. So it already pisses over Destiny's poor selection of dances, haha.

Never played an MMO before, as I can't be arsed with PC's. So I can't compare it to Warcraft. But in my first couple of hours, I like it. Though it's a bit bollocks that if you don't choose the same guild as your mates, you can't join their game. And unless you pay Crowns to get a horse, hope you enjoy walking for fucking ages. Thanks to Games bundle though, I had 5000 Crowns. So spunked some on the most expensive horse in the game. Jet black, with fire coming off it's hooves. I called him Haribo.

I'm playing a Tank character with a massive two handed mace. My character is named Noel Edmonds.

More impressions to follow...

[Sly Reflex]

I want this to be a regular thing, similar to Rio Ferdinands adventures.

[Sly Reflex]

Whenever he gets to a loot box he's going to ring the banker and ask his co-op buddies if he can buy it off them for 20p and some torn up hedgerow porn.

[Sly Reflex]

My local shop sells jazz mags. I'm not entirely sure where the market is for that sort of thing these days, given you can get dirtiness beams straight into your eyes via a smartphone.

[AndyKurosaki]

I almost thought that said Hedgehog porn at first. That's special ?

Well I didn't want a boring name like Cryrodic Doombringer. So Noel Edmonds it is. I nearly went with Jimmy Saville but thought "better not".

My first character was called Captain Birdseye,but had to delete him as i was in a different guild to my brother and his crew,and couldn't play with him.

[illdog]

I've got a real feel of what this game is like to play thanks to this impressions thread.

[Sambob]

This game is excellent for about 40 hours or so, that sounds like a terrible piece of criticism but maybe you will see what I mean. Theres a long period of time where you can almost pretend that its a skyrim sequel but bit by bit you start to wake from your peaceful Skyrim slumber and realise that you are playing an MMO.

[AndyKurosaki]

Sorry for the lack of updates, ive been knackered from my night shifts, and had 2 new starters to train up. They had to shadow me for 9 hours, while I showed them what to do, and talk bollocks.

Anyway, I intend to play this with my Guild Members (my brother Colin, his best mate Les, and their mate John. John has only recently started playing online with me. Pity him, muhaha). Apparently they've crafted me some good gear.

The Adventures of Noel Edmonds and his horse Haribo continue. Right after a new episode of Eamonn Holmes eating Fruit Loops with his buttocks.

[AndyKurosaki]

Had another session with my fellow members of Epic Guild. John really seems to like the word Epic. I'd have gone with tits myself. But hey ho.

It can be a bit of a pain getting a co-op session going. You can be on each others map, yet be unable to see your mates. Logging out and back in tends to fix that issue.

Not done much questing, we spent most of today running round in circles in a area. Killing enemy wolves to skin them, so my brother could craft us some better gear. While we all discussed the big events of E3. And John said Epic a lot.

Gameplay wise, it's certainly similar to Skyrim, in terms of looks, abilities and crap you can steal. I've unlocked a spell that let's me shoot out a flaming spear that pulls enemies towards me, Scorpion style. Toasty!

[Sly Reflex]

Epic.

[AndyKurosaki]

You want Epic? This now has a mandatory 15gb update. Currently clocked at 40 hours. This fucking generation, man.

[Sly Reflex]

MMO's. If you want to play them, then you have to deal with it.

[AndyKurosaki]

Cool. Well,we are enjoying it. So suffer it we will.

Oh,I now also have a pet cat that follows me about. Called Knackers.

[DisturbedSwan]

 

[Sly Reflex]

Last Christmas Steam sale I got a coupon for money off and looked around my wishlist for something that could give me a lot of bang for my buck. I settled for ESO, which at the time cost me about £2 for vanilla and Morrowind.

 

This happened

 

So yeah, Probably the best few quid I've ever spent.This game has come on in leaps and bounds since I originally played it. Not that it's all good, there's some bad changes that they've made also, but overall I can't really think of a better long term time waster if you're into this sort of thing.

 

I played through vanilla again, but not a different faction, so that didn't really change. Played a fair bit of Morrowind as well, but I did this first and it didn't make any sense, so I went back to play vanilla before I get to this part.

 

Orsinium was absolutely fantastic from a story and characters point of view, but the game itself was more or less the same. Stunningly beautiful area as well, but then again this game throws up the most beautiful vista's while you're out on your adventures.

 

Off to Hews Bane for the Thieves Guild DLC next, I already played this to completion back on the PS4, so I know what to expect. Got everything right up to Summerset, so I'm set for a fair while yet, might even double my hours on it in that time.

 

You don't really need to do this, but it's become part of my day to boot the game and do daily crafting stuff. It's the perfect podcast game as well when you need to stock up on mats, get some Joe Rogan on and do some farming in the small hours when nobody is on. Proper chill out gaming.

 

If you ever want to give it a try on PC, then there's a guild spot open for you as well as people there to help. You're more than welcome to come and join us, even if you're casual as fuck. There's no requirements or anything like that.

[DisturbedSwan]

 

[one-armed dwarf]

I don't understand the meaning of that message but as a MMO player I can't think of much that would annoy me more than a business deal ending support for a platform I'm playing on or threatening to fragment the community in any way. 

 

Don't get between a MMO fiend and their 'content'. It's like a dog and a bone.

[Sly Reflex]

There's a new DLC for this today. I've not got it yet, since I already have enough to play in this game before I get to that stuff.

 

I actually started a Necromancer that I'm playing and streaming with on a Sunday for a few hours. No pressure or anything like that, just a very laid back session.

 

The thing with this game is it's really easy to just keep making characters and going into content that you've not seen before. My roster is full of them. While I intend to play and stream the content in order, I'm coming very close to hitting the level cap of 50 with the first character I started playing solo with before my crew jumped in with me. Since I play daily if only to do the writs, and I have this character so close to the cap, I've decided to go adventuring with him to try and max him out and also if he's levelled he earns more gold from writs.

 

The questing and fighting is so enjoyable. The class I'm just pissing about on is a Sorcerer, which doesn't really mean much in the grand scheme of things in ESO since you can tank, dps or heal in various ways depending on how you build your character. It really is a weird way to go about it, but it makes sense if you've played. But yeah, just the traversing and questing feels so much nicer than any other MMO I've played that I couldn't really see myself going anywhere else.

 

The combat especially feels very hands on. There's none of this you have a percentage to hit or they have a percentage to hit you. If you get hit, you get hit. It's very action based compared to anything else I've played of this ilk. Sure it's still got cooldowns for skills and there's a lot of numbers flying about, it's a complete fusion of action and stats.

 

Earlier this year I watched people playing WoW just for sheer nostalgia, but there's no way I could play that now. I thought maybe it was just a vanilla thing, but I watched a lot of retail as well and it basically boiled down to standing there and doing a rotation, it's pretty boring, I just cannot see myself being subject to that.

 

Generally the quests are pretty good as well as far as they go for an MMO. Obviously it's not up to something akin to The Witcher's storylines, but for what they are they'e enjoyable. The thing with these stories, especially the one sin the vanilla part of the games shows you what shits the other factions can be, or even races within your own factions. It gets worse when you finish a faction and go for Cadwell's Silver and Cadwell's Gold because you get to see what war crimes you've committed against your rival factions. I've not played much of the Aldmeri Dominion (this is an older version of the Elf Nazi's in Skyrim), but I know they're as big of a cunt as you can probably get even back then. I hate the Altmer so much, the bunch of cocksuckers.

 

What I do really like about this game is that each area has its own sets. The new update has a "sticker book" so you only have to get the drop once, then it goes into your collection and then you can craft it yourself if you have the skill to do so. In general it does loot really well, clearly a lot of thought has gone into how they've dealt with it. Generally the sets  have a perk for 5 items worn, but sometimes it's a nice idea to wear a mix set with a monster set to get maximum benefits. There's so many sets as well that you can always find something cool to piss about with. My only complete build is a Nord Dragon Knight tank, I have the Ebon set, but I had a few sets before this. I think the nice thing is a lot of the old sets are just as prevalent as the new sets, reminds me of Rainbow 6 Siege a bit on how the new operators mix it up a bit, but people have their favourites. Seems to be a bit of power creep, but they tend to knock it on the head when it's really noticeable.

 

One of the things that I really like about this game is that once you hit level cap of 50, you go into earning champion points which are account wide, but can be spent per toon. Current cap for champion points is 810, but you can get a lot of mileage with incremental increases and perks on top of these that unlock when you meet a set amount of points invested. If you're familiar with TES constellations you'll know the Warrior, the Mage and the Thief. They have constellations within them and they give you perks that you would expect them to. Once you spend enough points in the Thief, you get a perk that grants you extra gold on any chests you open. The thing with these level ups is they're so incremental that I like to spend a few points at a time so I feel the benefit of it. They are very noticeable once you start stacking them though, especially when you're doing single player stuff, you can melt shit with a few hits.

 

A bit of trivia is I've played this game every single day since I installed it. Even if it's just to log in to collect the daily reward. I don't know how long I can keep this up for, but I'm going to try and run through into January so I can say I've played a game every single day for a year. I've never done this before, and I'll likely never have the persistence or concentration to do it again.

[Sly Reflex]

So we've a new expansion coming soon. You can watch them announce it over on Twitch at 10pm on the 26th. If your accounts are linked you'll get some crate drops as well, if that's you thing. One of them will have a pet in it.

 

If you've not seen the announcement already it shows one of the main cast from Orsinium in Oblivion. What it doesn't show is anything else, so we have no idea where it'll be set other than the planes of Oblivion. I am sort of hoping we see more Ebonheart Pact or Daggerfall areas, since we've already had big adventures in the Aldmeri Dominion. Not that it matters, that war I think is done outside the PvP.

 

They could shock us all and place it in Cyrodiil and reclaim all that area in the centre of the map that is usually for the PvP war, but I can't see it. I am sort of expecting them to go to the top end of Black Marsh maybe next to where Murkmire is to fill out that part of the map. I'm guessing the north west of the map won't see any more DLC since it's already filled in quite a bit. I'm not sure what they'd do if they did, maybe the smaller areas will be padded out with the planes. I can't see Eveli, the character that featured in Orsinium staying put in that area though, I reckon she'd get caught up somewhere else travelling Tamriel.

 

I wonder what feature they'll sling in with this as well. Maybe another class? Another crafting profession? I really like the Antiquities they did that was added to the rest of the game retroactively so people had to go all over the world searching for the stuff, it made areas that were usually dead a bit more populated.

 

I guess we'll find out in a week. I'm intrigued to see where they're going.

[Sly Reflex]

So they got the next lot of DLC rolling, although Blackwood isn't out yet, the dungeons that lead into it are. I won't be playing them for a long time, so whatever.

 

What does effect me are the Champion Point changes, which shortens to CP, a term I hate using but whatever. That's that they named it.

 

CP are levels you gain after you hit the level cap of 50 and apply to all of your characters. So even though my CP level is in the 400's, if I start a new character, even though they're a level 1, I can still use the CP to build them up as well.

 

Well it's undergone a complete overhaul, for the better as far as I can see it. If you played Skyrim you'll be familiar with the constellations of the Warrior, Thief and Mage. It's that. These have been altered so instead of perks and minor increments that help in the mana, health and stamina, they've altered it so now you have an offence, a defence and also a do what the fuck you like doing tree. From what I can see it's avoided falling into ones that you must have, the way that the old CP worked you ended up spending so many points in certain areas since it was either mandatory, or there were nowhere better to spend you points, whereas now each offence and defence build is going to be different, or at least different to a degree, I think it might settle down a bit once people find where mana builds should be focusing, where stam builds should be focusing and all that jazz.

 

The lifestyle tree will probably work out the same for each toon though, unless you're one of those people that have wildly varying playstyles outside of combat.

 

The weird thing is before you would get a point in each tree every three level ups, so you'd get a thief point, a warrior point then a mage point. In effect you're being abble to buff your damage or defence with each level up, but since the green tree no longer does that they've just taken a rough estimate of what you would be getting and applied it to your character for free, which is nice. It's really noticeable as well doing solo content, I usually really struggle with my tank, but I was cutting stuff down a bit quicker than usual, something which will go smoother once I have invested all the points.

 

I say this because they wiped pretty much everything. You get to keep your loot and attributes, but all the skills and CP was wiped down and points refunded. So I had something like 300 or so skill points to invest, as well as 400+ CP points. The cap raised from 810CP to something like 3500cp too. For some today has just been about looking at the damn CP screen and maybe testing DPS against target dummies to see what perks give them the most bang for their buck.

 

Decent update though, if a load of work to resort everything.