Elder Scrolls Online: Beta is as Beta does
This past weekend, I had a small opportunity to try out Bethesda’s new MMO, Elder Scrolls Online. I say small opportunity because not only was the beta only open for the weekend, but also because the game itself was a whopping 21GB and took 36h to download. BUT, late Saturday night, it was finally installed and having been quite addicted to Skyrim and Bethesda’s other award-winning series, Fallout, I was excited to get into the game.
Character creation was fairly standard. I was able to complete my high elf in record time (45 min) and the first thing the game tells me is… I’m dead? Apparently my character was killed in a ritual sacrifice and my soul is trapped in Oblivion. I like this! Not many games start out with you dead, working to get back to the land of the living as a first quest. Not only that, but my heart was aflutter when the second person I meet on my quest is voiced by Jennifer Hale. This woman is in everything I know and love (Star Wars KOTOR, Mercenaries, Mass Effect, Avengers EMH to name a few.)
I’m starting to really get into this game. Visually it’s awesome, along the lines of Guild Wars 2, but better. It still has a very similar feel as when I played Skyrim but with the obvious changes an MMO requires. Of course, when leveling there are stats to put into skills, but it was nice to see that like Skyrim, item proficiency increased with the actual use of items (you only get better with your sword if you use it). All of this was great, but it set me up to be even more disappointed by how glitchy the game was.
Now I understand that this is a beta release, and things are bound to have some issues, but this was probably one of the most frustrating games I’ve played in beta. Some of the more rage inducing examples are;
- Quest items/characters that disappear, never to be seen again, but are required to complete the quest.
- Exiting conversations with NPCs, only to keep staring at them. (only fix was log out/log in)
- ZOMG the lag. And I know that wasn’t just me, cause I would see reference to it in the chat logs.
If this beta test was successful, and they can work out these MAJOR kinks, this game has some really great potential. I’m really hoping they do, because I would love to explore the rest of Tamriel and even see if I can find my old hunting grounds in the Skyrim region near Riften.
