Going to be clear and concise, this is not the typical Elder Scrolls game that you are probably expecting.

It's different.
It has the same feel and tone, but it lacks in immersion.
The gameplay is bland, the characters are forgettable, the graphics are decent.
It's your typical MMO.

I really want to enjoy this game though.

I've played thousands of hours on the ES series and ESo somewhat fixes what has been lacking. However, it has forgotten what made Elder Scrolls what it is.

I wanted to like this game, I wanted to play this game. Sadly it's just another mindless MMO, the quests are just painful. The empty rewards for completing missions and minor xp boost could not fill the void for that RPG feeling. Just a waste of money. I would much rather have Skyrim into a 2 or 3 player local server and companion with my friends.

I personally think its a good game in the sense that the idea is there But it has flaws. Since it is A kinda sloppy review and A sloppy game. Do not take this Review harshly. Its a Decently good game if it were Free to play. The amount of money you put into this game is not worth the Game itself. I would say it is a decent game but It had hard expectations due to The Legendary Elder Scrolls past games. It may have had a better chance and maybe more of its own thing if it was not Considered Elder Scrolls. If you get this game DO NOT expect it to be Just as good. Its different in its own way with different battle styles and different feeling to it. If you dont like using large amounts of money and regretting it. Its not for you. Would say 4/10 and if it were free 6/10. I am going to keep playing and for later updates I will figure out my permentant opinion then. I just think this game has large potential but Just hasnt used it yet. Hopefully it changes in the future. I could see this game being a 8/10 or 9/10 With the right work and right progress.

with the vast amount of time ive spent playing this game i feel that it has become empty,its essentially grinding until you get a good level for 15 dollars a month to then get your ♥♥♥ kicked in pvp because the build wasnt good enough,etc dont waste your money like i did

I do not recommend this game. It isn't because I don't like the game itself, because I do. It's because the game is broken on Steam and no effort is being made to fix it.

The game's launcher seems to be from the stone age. 98% of the time that I open the launcher, it gets stuck on the "loading" screen. When I try to close it, it will then show me the main launcher screen (news, menus etc) but the game will be stuck on "initializing". I have to force quit every time. To actually get the launcher to work, I need to launch the game, over, and over again. Eventually it will work, and go straight to the main screen, with the play button.

This is nothing to do with my internet connection. My other friends that own this game, have the exact same problem. (One of them is on high speed internet). In fact, because we couldn't figure out how to get it to work, we all downloaded the entire game for a second time, thinking that the files were corrupt. (Steam also failed to verify all the files correctly which didn't help our confusion). It's almost like the launcher only bothers to attempt connection to their servers once, and if it doesn't make it, then it just dies and doesn't bother to attempt a reconnection.

The other issue I have, is the Steam integration. It feels like they just rushed to get this game onto Steam and didn't bother to check if anything actually worked properly. ESO screenshots upload as 'private', therefore not appearing on your activity feed. This game does not appear on your profile page as 'recently played' or on the forums page as 'recently viewed'. The game play hours are not reflected in the total number of game play hours on our profiles. These issues are affecting multiple people, the forum is full of threads but no response from the devs at all.

I have already cancelled my subscription. Unfortunately the remainder of my thirty days subscription will be spent trying to get the game to launch...

Review updated July 31, 2014:

HIGHLY RECOMMEND Elder Scrolls Online, but do not recommend buying it on Steam.

A Steam bug had prevented me from accessing the game immediately after purchase, and Steam had extremely poor customer service. I highly recommend buying the game directly from The ESO website, and NOT on Steam. Cut out this awful middle man, save yourself some grief. Zenimax Online's customer service got back to me within 2 hours of filing a ticket. Steam never got back to my ticket at all.

As for the game itself? Two thumbs way up. I had played in the beta, got bored after 30 minutes, never touched it since. I came back after reading up on all the things they had fixed, along with incoming features. Suffice to say, this is the best MMO I've played in years.

The questing is fully voiced, and the quests are actually fun and interesting, with lots of lore built in. I have to say, it actually really does remind me of playing through an actual Elder Scrolls game! If you take your time to actually enjoy it like you would, say, Skyrim, then you will definitely get that Elder Scrolls experience. It won't be the same, of course, as it's a distilled version mixed with cleverly implemented MMO elements, but it's a great experience nonetheless. I appreciate the developers' efforts to make the levelling fun, and their great execution of the flexibility in skills and builds (two-handler wielding heavy armour battlemage? Yep, it's viable!)

I highly recommend buying the game, and giving it a chance. After a few hours, you'll find yourself drawn in if you allow yourself to enjoy the game - read things, listen, explore, have fun.

I'e been a fan of TES since finding Morrowind in around 2002, and have been actively playing each installment consistently since then, minus of course the mobile titles.

This is just a shame, the "one huge server" thing doesnt work at all, it's impossible to find people to speak to as most of the time the zone and world chat is like the Tower of Babel, the zone phasing is pointless and serves nothing than to separate you from friends you want to play with.

The game plays like an unresponsive Morrowind, without the charm. The skills in game don't seem to have a decent GCD and you can't "queue" skills to be used in succession, while normally this would be fine in a single player game, in an online game with latency, it's important to have some leeway with timing.

Multiple times I found the music and ambient sounds just stopping for no reason, I found an Argonian blacksmith with the soundbank of an Orc blacksmith and occasionally my weapon wouldnt make any sound whatsoever when in use, not great for a bow user, especially when half of the time my arrows didn't even appear after being shot.

Further to this, the game would often just fail to load an area and I'd be looking at an empty camp for 30 seconds while the game tried to remember who to pop in there, i'd load into an area only to be attacked by enemies that hadn't even rendered on screen yet.

Not to mention missing models in game that are just placeholders of a big red box that says "MISSING" 3 times down either side, way to break immersion by just not including all resources in the initial download, no Zenimax, i'm not going to trawl your support forum looking for files to drop into my directory.

Honestly, if you can bring yourself to download this, which is (I believe) currently one of if not "the" biggest download on Steam right now, then try it just to make sure you don't like it, sort of like you would with pegging or dripping chilli sauce onto your eyeball, just make sure you cancel your subscription before you're charged.

Having said that, if my £50 helps to develop Fallout 4 or TESVI then I can let it slide.

Treat this like you treated Redguard, it just never happened, and we shall never speak of it again.

(FOREWARD)
Now that i've reached the endgame and spent quite sometime with this game i wanted to leave a review. Most reviews that i've read are from people who either didn't even hit level ten or spent 40 hours thinking they could speed level through the game and found it impossible. Also to really understand this game you have to completely cut it away from the main series games. THIS IS NOT AN ELDER SCROLLS GAME. It is an MMO game with an elder scrolls theme and overtone. Also in the time since launch this game has drastically evolved. a substantial patch is added nearly every month with new content, systems, and fixes.

(REVIEW)

Graphics- I'll start with the obvious. The graphics in ESO are gorgeous. You can really see the hard work that went into making tamriel a truly breathtaking world. From The snow in Eastmarch and The Swamps in Shadowfen to the A'likr Desert each environment was crafted in a way that makes you want to see whats next for your journey.

Game World- While on the subject of the Environments the scope of Tamriel is insane. It is easily one of the largest Game world i have ever seen. Also the difference between zones is quite drastic. Sure you might see similer buildings in the same zone but that is to be expected in a game of this size.

Character Creation/Development- The Character creation in ESO is probably the most robust and fluid system i've seen in an mmo to date. You have 3 alliances each with 3 races (And imperial as the tenth for an upgrade fee) and the choice between 4 classes. The thing that sets ESO apart is the fact that these classes are not constarined whatsoever. You Want a Sorcerer with medium armor that wields two swords? go for it. Every class can use any type of armor or weapon the want with out specializing in any. The only constriction your class sets on use is the specific skill line you will use.

Skills- Logically the next step is skills. In the game you don't have a typical mmo skill tree. There are an assortment of skill lines including class, weapon, armor, racial, world, guild, and crafting skills. You literally have hundreds of options for where to invest your skills. some being active hot key skills for combat and others being passives to buff your stats. This system gives you more freedom then any previous mmo i've played.

Crafting- As an avid crafter i absolutely love the crafting system. A player is'nt confined to any one profession. I can use my blacksmithing skill to craft my weapons and armor, my woodworking skill to craft my shields, and my enchanting skill to craft runes to enchant my weapons and armor. Also the system is quite robust. You earn experience in your crafting skills by crafting(obviously), Deconstructing(which gives you materials as well), Improving items, and researching(which gives you traits). On weapons and armor you can research about 20 different traits which you can then use in your crafting recipes to recieves buff from increasing attack and defense to adding critical chance or increasing skill line experience.

Questing- Questing is one thing most people are uninformed about. Some reviews make it out to be bland basic quests. In fact it is the opposite. Gone are the collect 10 of this for no reason and kill 20 of these because i'm bored quests. Sure some quests have those aspects but every quest has a story. You might be setting up a ritual to stop a nechromancer or finding out who killed a local merchant or helping soldiers take control of a fort. every quest has some reasoning that makes it interesting and makes you want to know what happens. also many quests can completely change whats happening in an area.

Economy- This is one point that has really annoyed me. Many people are calling for a public auction house but the fact of the matter is that in a game like this Thats impossible. Eso is not based on servers. There are 2 Mega servers. With the immense population of a mega server an auction house would become bogged down with high level items which would lower the value and in turn ruin the reward of earning top tier gear. The way it is set up with guild stores makes it much more accessable. Also with the last update guild merchants have been added so that you can buy items from other guilds members. most large cities have a handful of guild merchants that will have completely different wares to choose from which helps keep the value of items.

Pvp- I am not much of a pvp player so i don't have much sway on it. but from what other players have told me it is better at higher levels and always more fun in a group.

Endgame- Now that i have Passed the level cap of 50 and entered the veteran rank system it really adds a lot to the game. After beating your factions story and the main story you are able to play through every quest from the other factions scaled up to your level. The content gets much harder but also much more rewarding. I am Only veteran Rank 1 out of 14 after update 4 released today But i will Update as i move forward.

So all in all The Elder Scrolls Online has been a wonderful Journey for me. If you go into it expecting to play skyrim you probably will not enjoy it but if you go into it looking at it as an MMO its a very rewarding experience. PLAY THIS GAME!

SCORE- 8/10

(p.s. I've played this game for almost 140 hours as of this review. if your going to take anyones word for how the games is don't listen to the guy with under 10 hours. It took me 120 hours to hit level 50. I might be subjective in my review but at least let my experience speak for me and anyone else with substantial time in the game. It gets better every update!)

Boy o boy, Elder Scrolls Online where do I start? This is my first review out of my 4 years on Steam which says a lot.
This game is ♥♥♥♥ point, blank, period, to carry the elder scrolls name anyway.

What I hate:
1. I hate when you get into a quest you think it will be med long and then you kill one monster and beat it. As soon as you though you were about to get into a badass quest line its done in a flash.
2. what the ♥♥♥♥ is up with this 1 gold drop from all monsters and some bosses might drop 2.
3. When you travel you find nice buildings and such but most of the time there empty no bandits or anything like that just a nice building.
4.You stop caring about whatever the quest givers are talking about once you find out they end quick and take no real effort to complete. So you skip all chats.
5. Makes you want play skyrim because you feel like something is just missing.

In the end I think of this game as Skyrim sandbox, before they put all the badass Elder scrolls stuff we know and love in. Its like they built the world with some quest givers and was like lets test it out before adding all the good stuff in.

I do like the fighting which sort of sticks to the roots, heavy attacks do not take away from stamina which I though was weird. But over all its good.

All in all I bought it when it was on sale for $29 so I'm not to upset but please skip this game if you are a true elder scrolls fan you will only find heart break here.

Game feels dated even tho its pretty new. It plays "Like" a action combat game like tera. But is often really clunky and unresponsive. The class system lets you wear any items any class anyway you want. But realistically, If you want to be a dps caster... use a staff. and use cloth armor.. it just works better.. So it "Feels" like you can do whatever you want. But realistically to be any good you should play the cookie cutter way.

Population-
This game is dieing, and with the release of the new Wow expansion. It might as well have a fork in it. Game is fairly empty. Battleground is HUUGGEEE which would be awesome if thousands of people where playing. But theres only maybe 200 people n the BG area at a time. So its to spread out and never ending.

This game could be amazing with ALOT of more work to it. But in its current state its a failure. And the majority of players know it. With the ever decreasing amount of players I cant see this one lasting.

Fans of Elder Scrolls avoid this game
Fans of MMORPG looking for something new. Avoid this game

Yeah! I'll write a review. I have never been able to play it. Many times I have attempted to sign in & all I get is 'wrong information' answer. Changed the password about 6 times. Same crap. Also the long ID code has stopped working. $40 wasted on something I can't touch. Steam can take this lousy game & shove it!

I love it when a plan comes together...
Here, it, did not.
So much of this game is great; but once you scratch past that, you're left with an empty, world, that is far, far, faaaar less than Skyrim. One thing this game cannot be accused of, is overstretching itself, more's the pity.

When Oblivion came out, people expected Morrowind 2.0
When Skyrim came out, people expected Oblivion 2.0
When ESO came out, people expected Skyrim 2.0

I would say that ESO is more like Oblivion: Online
I mean that as a good thing, as Oblivion was my favourite Elder Scrolls.

ESO adopted and improved the best Lockpicking minigame from Oblivion.
ESO's Racial and Architectural diversity is a lot like Oblivion's. Its not a gaggle of Nords and Dunmer like Skyrim or Morrowind.
ESO abandoned Skyrim's equipable and underpowered magic system in favour of a hotkey system, meaning you can fight with a greatsword or Bow and still use magic, just like in Oblivion.
The main plot of Oblivion was basically rebooted in ESO, I would argue, more effectively so.
Molag Bal is a better villian to attempt to take over Tamriel than Mehrunes Dagon was in Oblivion.
In my opinion, Anchors are more intimidating than Gates.

The graphics are amazing, you can revisit Skyrim, Cyrodiil, or Morrowind without commiting to one Province's climate.
The voice acting is phenomenal. Every single character is voiced. You won't only be hearing the same three people putting on accents to sound like Nords or Khajiit, you will hear iconic voices like John Cleese, Bill Nighy, Michael Gambon, Malcolm Mcdowell, Alfred Molina, and another 70 professional voice actors. I am spoiled after playing this game, I can barely read my own review without expecting to hear Dumbledore or Doc Oc telling me about how I'm the chosen one.

Which brings me to my next point, all of the "Main Quest" missions where you encounter characters who interact with your personal progress are Single Player Instances. So you WILL NOT see other players talking to the Prophet. As far as you know, you are the only "Souless One", just like you thought you were the only "Dovahkiin", "Champion of Cyrodiil", or "Nerevarine". Also, the entire world is instanced in a way that prevents you from seeing players who have saved a city from destruction until you, yourself, have also saved the city.

Most importantly, an Online Elder Scrolls is constantly being updated and patched. Overpowered exploits and glitches are fixed on an ongoing basis, you can't cheat your way through the game like you could in Morrowind or Oblivion. No more rushed questlines leading to plot holes and half-baked concepts, like in Skyrim.

It's not Skyrim 2.0,
It's Better.

You really have to see this as a standalone MMO; rather than another Elder Scrolls installment.
Amazing graphics & soundtrack.

First things, first. I did beta test The Elder Scrolls Online, and did not overly care for the game then. However, I figured I'd give it another go when it finally went on sale. BIG MISTAKE.

While the game is absolutely beautiful and has an amazing soundtrack, this is not enough to pull this game out of the gutter. I went into this knowing full well that this was not "Skyrim". Having played MMORPGs for 15+ years now, I was looking forward to the adaptation of the elder scrolls universe into MMO format. With all the MMOs that have come and gone, you'd think the newer ones would have noticed what companies did right, and what they did wrong. Zenimax Online is clueless, utterly clueless.

The biggest problem is, the game does not know what it is trying to be. Sure, there are lots of people around, but it still feels like a single player game most of the time. The group finder tool used to put together random parties for dungeons is absurd, it does not check that the right classes are being put into a random group. Both attempts I had put me in a group without a healer, making the dungeon impossible to complete.

Selling items to other players is a hassle and a real throwback to older MMOs like Everquest. There is no public auction house like in most MMOs of the last decade. Instead, there are guild shops. Items are listed by members, and only available for purchase by other members, severely limiting a customer base. This in turn has people flooding the zone chats with their wares in hopes of finding a buyer.

The crafting system is decent, however VERY tedious. You would think that the most effective way to level up a craft would be to actually craft stuff right? Wrong, in ESO, you get by far the most exp by breaking items apart into their base ingrediants. This itself isn't a bad thing, however, the experience difference is so big, that it makes leveling through creating items feel like a waste of time. The crafting can not be automated like in most MMOs, so you are stuck sitting there tapping the "R" key every few seconds (just like in Skyrim).

The combat system is clunky at best for an MMO. Healing especially is hard to deal with. After my failed attempts to run a dungeon due to lack of healing, I created a healer and leveled it up enough to do the first dungeon. It was painful to say the least. There is no targeting someone and casting a heal spell on them. Almost all of the heal spells are area of effect based, and target seemingly random wounded allies. It does not prioritize the most wounded, and with target number limits, more often than not, the people who need healing the most, do not get it. There are some spells that are single target, however, targeting them is so much more diffficult with this combat system. Standing still is a no-no in this game, there are always lots of enemy abilities causing you to move. Casting a spell on another player requires facing them and having your reticule over them when you hit the button. If they are comstantly moving, it becomes very difficult to actually hit them with your spell. If they move right as you cast the spell, you instead cast it on yourself, wasting the resources it took to cast it.

Those of you that have played previous Elder Scrolls and Fallout games, will know that bugs were commonplace and usually left for the modders to fix. Apparently that philosophy carries over to the online version as well. The game is plagued by so many bugs, you would expect it to still be in beta. I personally experienced a bug that forced me to log out and back in if I killed an enemy using a specific ability. It left me unable to interact with anything because it thought I was still in combat. I skimmed through their customer support forums, lots of reported bugs, but I didn't find a single response from their customer service team.

My verdict, only play this game if you are interested in the lore, as there is tons of it. All quests and dialogues are voice acted, which is nice, however, all that voice acting does make the game file size insanely large. They also reuse previous voice actors. It felt a little odd hearing one of the commonly used voices from Skyrim in ESO. Even if you find this game on sale again, it is not worth it. Judging by the number of guilds full of people dying out due to inactivity, this game will go free to play or shut down completely within a year.

Mostly positive experience with this game.

+ Quality graphics that run well even on slightly older machines (like mine)
+ Very good tutorial systems to get you into the game quickly
+ Crafting missions (certifications) easily introduce you to each trade
+ Highly immersive story based missions that can change the game as you play
+ Weapon and ability skill system reminiscient of the single player ES games and well executed in the MMO environment

- Ran afoul of the crashing bug requiring the use of OpenGL drivers over D3D11, this caused a slight framerate drop
- UI add-ons are almost required to get the most out of the game*
-> *Examples include no built in mini-map, no built in spam (gold-seller) filtering, experience and resource (health, mana, stamina, ability) bars are not persistant and can often fail to appear when they would be useful.

To be fair the crashing bug, while persistant over several patches, seems to affect a minority of players and there has been some indication that the develpoment team is trying to find solutions. Unfortunately the solutions over the last couple of patches seem to help some players while creating problems for others.

While UI add-ons make the game easier they are by no means required and you can make your way through the game quite well without them.

Overall I would say this is an excellant game that has the potential for a reasonably long life as far as MMO's go provided the dev team can get it stabilised/optimised a little better.

I really don't know what to think of this game. It in some ways is good but at the end of the good stuff there allways seems to be a bad thing. It removes classic Elder Scroll features and replaces them with bad features. In my opinion this is a port that came first, it just feels to me like it was made for console. The classic Subscription fee has come into place but the game isn't good enough to HAVE a fee to play it. It has the classic Elder Scrolls combat with new features such as blocking is farless effective for some reason and they want you to do this new stupid dodge feature. I was always a player of previous Elder Scroll game as someone who runs into hails of arrows form bandits, have 4 or 5 of them crowd me taking them out with a single sweep of an axe, or crushing one with a warhammer. Sneaking around picking off people with a bow or crossbow, ♥♥♥♥ING ROLE PLAYING. The game goes from casual playing where level and gear really doesn't decide whether you can play the game or not to, a give us all your time and grind for hours or do one of our 40 minute quests that gives you 65 gold a ♥♥♥♥♥ly enchanted armour and little to no EXP. I know its a MMO now and that how it will stay but you killed a big game, You destroyed not only your company rep but all your previouse games to me, I play skyrim and its not the same, all I see is a £90 sub fee on top of a £60 game. I would NOT reccomend this game to anyone. I can see now you sittling there ♥♥♥♥ing up the new fallout game, I can see the ♥♥♥♥ING WORDS COMING OUT OF YOUR MOUTH TELLING THE DESIGNERS YOUR IDEA FOR A MMO FALLOUT GAME, If FO4 is a MMO...

I played the game for few hours already and compared it to the experience of the other releases (Oblivion, Skyrim )

+ The first impression was very good
+ Graphics and physics very good, even that some body-movements looked stupid
+ Gameplay good but the story not as good as the older releases that would pull you to continue
-- Price very expensive compared to the other releases of elder scrolls, even if you compare it other MMORPG in the market

Conclusion the game as a game it is very good as a MMORPG, but not as an Elder scrolls game it may have the look of Elder scrolls but its missing the feel. I wouldn't recommend it

I've been a huge fan of The Elder Scrolls game since I first played Morrowind at a friends house on his pc. I remember as a kid begging my parents to buy it for me once it was announced for Xbox. The world, the characters, and the stories that you could create were some of my most cherished gaming moments. I've continued to play each Elder Scrolls game thats been released since and probably know more about the lore of these games then I do actual world history. Now that I've had the chance to put a significant amount of time into ESO, I think I can fairly review it.

First of all, let me address the monthly fee. I think that it is beyond unfair to ask $15 a month plus the full retail price of the game. With the base price included, the game adds up to be about $250 for your first year. That is unacceptable for any game, regardless of the quality. There aren't any pay to win features of the game, but they still need to come up with a better model then this if they want people other then the most die-hard Elder Scrolls fans to play their MMO.

Let me just quick fire the rest of my negative opinions before moving on to the many positives of the game. It's hard to group quest when your friends disappear because they are at a different part of the quest then you. The horses in the game are overpriced beyond belief. I played for almost 100 hours with one character and still couldn't afford a damn horse. Not cool...not cool. Also, some of the zones in the game look very similar to other zones when they should not according to the lore. That one is a nerdy complaint, but it still sort of irked me.

Now for the positives. The game looks very pretty for an MMO. I liked most of the art style and had some moments when I was just running around where I had to just stop and enjoy the scenery. The one exception to this is Cyrodil (where all the pvp takes place). While I didn't spend much time there, it was huge space that was populated with almost nothing interesting to see. Other than that, the dungeons and the effects in the game are great.

The fact that everything is voice acted is another amazing feat in an MMO. I know that Bioware already did this with The Old Republic, but here it is done really well. It makes the quests feel like single player quests and makes the game a bit more immersive. Along with this, the quests are pretty good for an MMO. Compared to other games in the genre, ESO has great variety and made me wonder what cool thing I might stumble upon next.

The community was also pretty good for ESO (at least when I played over the summer). I ran into alot of cool people and most were willing to help out or just have dance-offs at least. This may be related to the fact that the game is subsription based, but I'd be willing to endure a few ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥s if it meant not taking out a small loan to access the game.

I think the game itself deserves to be played. The developers crafted a fun and beautiful game. I am conflicted though. Im not sure whether to recommend it or not. If you want to play something a little different than your standard MMO, give ESO a shot. However, be prepared to spend a lot of money on the game.

Interesting concept, poor execution.

Not recommended.