Ragar ventures into the world of Tamriel to give his impressions of Zenimax Online's upcoming MMO

I Was Expecting More M In My MMO

When TESO was originally announced, many Elder Scrolls fans probably had a picture of Skyrim in their heads, but with other players questing alongside them. It's certainly an appealing picture and there's enough variety in weapon/armor/class builds to support the concept of a party of adventurers delving into a dungeon, each with different strengths and weaknesses. The few experiences I had with group encounters in TESO were more enjoyable for me than solo adventuring; I was able to see skills from other specializations in action, plus it gave me the chance to heal with my restoration staff and Templar skills, which I'd been wanting to do since I started my character. So if I enjoyed healing other people, why the snarky section title? It's because most of the time I was playing TESO, I honestly forgot that there were other people playing.

I can count on one hand the number of times I ran into other players while questing. I saw a random two-handed fighter in a mine that I just followed around and healed, and there was also a named monster of some kind that I was asked if I wanted to help kill. Those moments were great and I thought the impromptu group synergy played quite well, even if I have no idea what the Reaction skills I was activating did because there was never a tooltip as far as I could tell. The rest of the time though? I may as well have been playing Skyrim for how many people I saw while questing. In an attempt to force some group gameplay, I went into one of their public dungeons: instances open to everyone where encounters supposedly scaled with the number of players in the area. Given the close proximity to a town such that it showed up on a map and how it was one of the first areas available as a group-focused instance, I figured this was a safe bet. Two to three hours later, I'd soloed my way through the entire area having only briefly seen a glimpse of another player before they ran off somewhere else. It’s a shame too, because having them around might have meant I would have cleared the final boss - trying to solo him at level 9 didn't work out so well the eight times I tried it before giving up.

Now before anyone chimes in with "it's beta so there aren't as many people playing", that's only part of the problem. I fully acknowledge that when the game actually launches, the countryside will be littered with adventurers of all kinds to help things feel more alive. In addition there is supposedly a group finder tool to bring people together, but there are still two major issues with making this MMO feel distinctly offline, the models for weapons/armor and the UI.

I'll be talking a bit more about equipment styles later in the crafting section, but the simple description is that all of your armor and weapons follow a design aesthetic determined by your race - an Iron Helmet forged in the Nord style will look different than one made in the Dunmer style. Now in theory this adds some distinction later on because you'll have access to multiple racial styles as you level and can keep a common theme if one race's style is to your liking. Early on though, it means a lot of looking the same as everyone else, since everyone will only have their starting racial style and that will look the same as the armor worn by all of the NPCs in town. Place a Nord player in equipment from a Nord-themed area next to an NPC in the same tier of armor and they'll be hard to tell apart at a glance. This is a self-correcting problem as players level, gain access to new crafting styles and better equipment, but it is a little off-putting at first, especially when combined with the UI.

The UI is actually my main issue with TESO's MMO feel. It's designed to mimic the appearance of Skyrim's UI: extremely minimalistic with most information hidden behind nested menus, leaving only a compass with markers and bars to show your Health, Magicka and Stamina. The only other part that shows up is the chat log when people are talking; if things are quiet, this window fades away until a new message shows up. While I can see including this as an optional toggle and I see the appeal for console players, it doesn't help the game's MMO feel any when there's no indication that other people exist.

Even when you're near other players, it's not always perfectly evident. In most other MMOs we're accustomed to seeing nameplates or some indication that this collection of pixels is run by a human rather than the computer. With TESO those indicators are much more subtle. When your cursor is hovering over another player, you'll see a health bar and name near your compass like you do with NPCs but there will also be a small number off to the side which indicates their level. In addition, if you're close enough, you'll see a different interaction prompt than NPCs give; it'll be "Hold F to Interact" rather than "E - Talk". This means if I'm right on top of them, I can figure out quickly if they're a person. Beyond that though, it's not quickly apparent who's who in a crowd.

Cyrodiil: Somehow You Got Me to PvP

Now that we've gotten the major stuff out of the way, let's move on to a few areas of the game I rather enjoyed, PvP being the most surprising of all. I never thought I would say that about an MMO. In general I avoid PvP like the plague; Arena Seasons 1 and 2 in World of Warcraft killed off my interest. However, since I really just wanted to heal people and there was a server message this past weekend about trying to stress test Cyrodiil, I decided to queue up and try it out.

If you've ever tried out WvWvW in Guild Wars 2, then Cyrodiil's three-way conflict should be very familiar to you. Each Alliance has their starting area with surrounding keeps, lumberyards, mines, etc. When a campaign starts, the players for the three Alliances have a set amount of time (two days for our test – three months at launch according to their December Q&A) to vie for control of the map. During that time players will assault the various keeps and resources controlled by their opponents, both for Alliance points, to determine which faction wins in the end, and also for the side benefits each of those locations provides the controlling faction. Keeps provide Alliance-wide bonuses in PvP and PvE to the controlling faction, as well as granting additional fast travel points for crossing the large map quickly. Controlling the keeps can also provide your Alliance with access to the powerful Emperor title. The player with the highest Alliance points while their Alliance controls all of the keeps around the Imperial City will be crowned Emperor, granting them access to a new Emperor-only skill line which allows them to make siege weapons more effective, knock down walls quicker and various voice of the Emperor commands. Should the newly crowned Emperor be killed, log out or switch zones, they will be dethroned: they will keep their skill line but their powers will be greatly diminished.

So if these keeps are so important, what’s involved in assaulting one? The walls and gates of every keep are completely destructible, allowing you to bash your way into a keep and claim it as your own. Various siege weapons are available to anyone willing to spend the Alliance points to purchase them, providing a multitude of different methods to break into keeps or giving defenders additional ways to strike down the attackers. Should the walls fall and the attacking army manage to hold both banners within the keep walls, the keep will switch hands and the victors will reap the benefits of their new resource as long as they can defend it from the other two Alliances. Of course now the victors face a new problem: broken keep walls/doors.

Anything that was broken during the siege will remain broken until repaired by the keep’s owners. Quartermasters will offer players masonry and woodworking kits to repair the damage done during the battle, but this takes time, Alliance points and players that could be assaulting other keeps. If the new owners wish to speed things up as well as improve their odds of keeping said keep, they should look to the nearby resources. The lumber mills, farms and mines surrounding each keep provide bonuses to their associated keep. Lumber mills and mines increase the durability of keep doors and walls as well as providing them with a source of passive damage repair, while farms will bolster the strength and toughness of your guards. These keeps also provide additional NPC patrols in their vicinity, putting more opponents between your keep and the other two Alliances eyeing your territory. There are a few other areas of Cyrodiil PvP that I haven’t touched upon, but that gives you the basic gist of how things go: players try to capture important spots for points and whoever has the most points in the end wins, plus a few minor details. Let’s get into the actual gameplay.

That earlier comparison to GW2’s WvWvW was pretty much spot-on for how Cyrodiil plays out. The early game involves mostly large groups running in zerg squads and throwing themselves and their siege weapons at keep walls until they fall down, capturing the point while slaying all within, then moving on to the next point while a few stragglers stay behind to get the keep repaired enough to hold off the next zerg until your group makes it back around. There was certainly enough room for small strike teams to work well, given all of the side resources to capture, keeps to defend from within and other objectives. Personally I stuck with the zerg since it gave me the chance to use those AoE healing spells I’d been sitting on for six or seven levels. Aside from the occasional lag spike/disconnect while they were trying to break the server, things went pretty smoothly as a healer in Cyrodiil. It was pretty much what I would have wanted out of GW2’s WvWvW, but couldn’t have due to their stance on dedicated healers. If I would have had more time with the game that day, I probably would have stuck around long enough to try for some of the PvP skills; the Assault skills weren’t of interest to me, but the Support skills would have been nice to fill in the gaps in my healing skillset.

So how does TESO’s PvP stand up to other MMOs? I enjoyed my time in Cyrodiil and it’s probably the only MMO I can think of in ages where I wasn’t doing everything in my power to get out of there as quickly as possible. Given that you can level through PvP, I can see quite a few players getting to level 10 and just living in Cyrodiil. I wouldn’t do this personally, but I can easily understand why others would. For me, I need to see story while I level, which isn’t PvP’s primary focus, plus Cyrodiil didn’t provide me with the resources for the other part of TESO I enjoyed: crafting.