The Elder Scrolls Online First Impressions and Review in Progress

If you’re wondering where our review for The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited is, you’re going to have to wait a little longer. This game is an MMO, which means that a proper review can only be done when the servers are fully open. As such, we didn’t get our review code for the game until the day before release, and even still, the servers wouldn’t allow us into Tamriel until the game officially released. Well, kind of. See, I waited until midnight EST on release day and then began my three-hour failed quest to get into the game. 

Later on Tuesday, I did manage to finally get in, create a character and begin playing. The character creation is expansive and allows you to have up to eight characters created on your profile. This means that you can try out a variety of different races, classes, and factions, without feeling stuck in one area. Do you want to join the Ebonheart Pact but most of your friends are playing in the Daggerfall Covenant? You can create both characters and easily log into whichever one you want to play. 

Our review will not be coming until after E3 is over because I don’t feel that I have played nearly enough to justify writing my thoughts on the game. Add to this the server boots and wait times as the servers have been getting slammed with high demand, and my experience has failed to materialize in the four days that I have had to play so far. Regardless, I don’t feel that four days with an MMO is nearly enough time to grasp the scope of the experience and deliver justice to a review. I’ll be out at E3 all of next week, but I’m hoping I can get enough time with The Elder Scrolls Online in the week following that I can write a review worthy of the Emperor of Tamriel. 

So What’s It Like?

So far? A lot of fun. If you are a fan of The Elder Scrolls, this game is virtually an Elder Scrolls game with other living players in the world around you. You can swap from first person to third person on the fly, and the view change alone vastly changes the feel of the experience. Want to go for a more Elder Scrolls feel? You’ll want to stick to first person then. Aching for that MMO experience? Third person seems to bring that on more. 

Quests are instanced to each player, so people in your group completing requirements for quests will not necessarily complete them for you, however enemies are not. If other players are around, then can help you defeat your bosses and vice-versa. From my experience so far, the game has been largely solo focused, though this may be because I have yet to take on any group dungeons or the game’s PvP challenges. It seems like the main and secondary quests are more built for solo play, whereas the endgame content is designed for groups to raid against bosses and other players. 

Guilds offer a great system of trade and item management between players, and the couple of guilds that I am a part of have already helped each other out immensely as we’ve got assigned blacksmiths, woodworkers, clothiers, provisioners, etc. As a side note, if you would like to join the official PlayStation LifeStyle guild, leave your PSN ID here and we’ll get an invite to you. 

My one big problem thus far is the lack of solid training on how everything works — most specifically the crafting system — once you get out into the open world. No, I don’t want the game to hold my hand, and yeah, my group may already have these roles chosen by different people, but even learning just a little bit about these through a couple of story quests so that the players can decide if they want to pursue them more or not would be helpful. 

Review Incoming

Fortunately I’ve got a good group of friends to play the game with, people who have researched many aspects of the game and who can help me experience that endgame content. As long as the servers are working a little bit better the week following E3, you can expect a review to be put out soon after, when I’m sure that I’ve gotten the full Elder Scrolls Online experience. Until then, let’s hit pause, and enjoy E3.