The Elder Scrolls Online

An amazing game .. incredible variety of different activities, meet great people. Highly recommend ESO for more seniors to play .. at 70 i find it keeps my mind active, however it gets addictive.
I would like to see more consideration of Seniors regarding cost though. ESO Plus is an absolute must but the monthly cost is getting difficult to handle.

Gamble's ESO REVIEW
After spending over 4000 hours i feel its time to voice my personal opinion about the game.
My Own Experience
I first started The Elder Scrolls online when the Vvardenfell DLC released roughly Mid June 2017, after years of playing other different types of games i decided i needed my MMORPG fix again. I was not sure what to expect but i knew i was a fan of The Elder Scrolls Universe, playing most the previous games in the series and being a big fan of the lore so i decided to give the online version a chance.
I purchased the normal game standard edition which is the base game. To buy the DLC for the game there are a few options such as straight up buy the DLC which will cost you crowns (they do sometimes have offers for these) or you can buy into their ESO+ subscription. From a fresh point of view, i was thinking "do i really want to pay more money after just buying the game". After asking a few of my friends who had played the game before i did more digging and found out it was HIGHLY BENEFICIAL, you get a lot of perks such as:
Access to all current and future DLC's
Unlimited crafting bag (Go nuts and pick up everything!)
Double Bank Space
10% more gold/xp
HINT
I would recommend you buy the base game first, see if you enjoy the game and if you think you will play the game longer buy ESO+ honestly that crafting bag is life, a lot of people from my experience say "i cant live without this anymore". and the fact that you get access to all the DLC content is just fantastic.
Factions in the game
Before playing the game i did some research to find out the best race and class to choose for each role. Like other games i played i wanted to see what each class had to offer e.g. which class did the most dps, who was the best healer or the most beefy tank. When picking a race you are also choosing a certain faction depending where that race comes from in the world, which is one of 3:
Daggerfall Covenant (Blue)
Ebonheart Pact (Red)
Aldmeri Dominion ( Yellow)

HINT
Now a days there is an option to buy "any race any faction bundle" which some people might see as annoying and an excuse for the devs to take more of your money. However this is mainly aimed at open world pvp, so unless you are going to pvp a lot or want to be in the same faction as your friends, pick any race which you find appealing. There is always the option to make another character of the same faction to play with friends.
Classes currently in the game
I remember the first Character i ever made was a Warden, As the DLC had just released and not many people had played it i thought it would be good fun. Later down the line however i learnt the hard way the bear can be annoying. There is a way to control your bear so it doesn't randomly pull mobs in trials or the boss at the end. I remember doing this many times :D but i was never told and it was never obvious there was a button to press for your bear companion to be non hostile.
Many of the classes tool-kits have been changed which has lead to them getting buffed and nerfed either many times or a few times. Honestly sometimes it feels like the devs are unsure how to balance some of the skills in the class. They either go from one extreme to making it powerful or not very useful and weak. Saying that now a days if you wanted to play, there are so many different sets to wear in the game to help you out, if you want more damage or need better sustain. Please see the list below of the current classes in the game so far.
Templar
Sorcerer
Dragonknight
Nightblade
Warden (Crown Store)
Necromancer (Crown Store)

Races currently in the game
I enjoyed the customisation different races, you get given lots of choices to make your characters look unique and different. E.g a fat male Wood Elf dressed as a belly dancer, or a fancy Orc with a moustache. Please see the list below for current races in the game
Breton
Redguard
Orc
Nord
Argonian
Dark Elf
Khajiit
Wood Elf
High Elf
Imperial (Crown Store)

HINT
Honestly unless you want to min/max your character, you don't really have to worry about choosing which race and class to play. Now a days there isn't too much different between all the races. Other then that just have fun! Try out many classes and see which suits your play style.
What is there to do in the game?
When first playing I was not sure what to expect but i knew that i wanted to have fun and see all the different things the game offered such as:
Map zones (Questing, Fishing, Skyshards, Dolmens)
PVP (Battlegrounds, Imperial city, Cyrodiil)
Trials (12 player content)
Guilds (Trials, progression, trading, Roleplaying, causal)
Dueling (Tournaments)
Housing (Competitons)
Achievement hunting
Arena's ( 4 player content and single player content)
In-Game Events
Dungeons (4 player content, normal and vet)
Positives
Lots of helpful and friendly guilds, there are so many guilds in the game you could almost go as far to call them small communities, usually in a guild if you need help or are unsure they will answer any questions you have about the game.
Progression guilds, are great if you want to get into the end game content, unlike other guilds that require x amount of dps, progression guilds normally don't have such a high benchmark and love to help train new people, give advise and explain the mechanics of tougher content.
You never know when you will make friends, the amount of times i have been doing something random and then i just become good friends with a person is crazy, A lot of people are nice and are willing to help if you have any questions.
So much lore in the game to explore, as the game takes place in the past you can see what the world used to be like.
Negatives
FPS seems to be an issue when pvping in open world e.g. you run into so many loading screens, or come against so many players that your PC cant keep up and your skill bar doesn't work.
When trying to get into a dungeon, that can be quite the experience, sometimes even with a full group the finder doesn't seem to work, people can leave randomly halfway through a dungeon, they can just be rude and run most the dungeon and skip bosses. PUG AT YOUR OWN RISK! that's right your heard me, when trying to randomly enter a vet dlc dungeon yikes. It is honestly like gambling with your time, you will either get a really good group, or a terrible group of people who get mad, blame others and leave.
Dry End game content, sadly this isn't the most challenging game of all time. When you get later into the game with more experience and understand the mechanics from the dungeons, you lose that sense of its a challenge. The same can go for trials, with all the top end raiding guilds out there, they go and smash so many of these trials in record times each patch.
Steam Login issues, sometimes after a long maintenance you find that some people are able to login fine but people who brought the game on Steam have to wait hours more to play the game.
Overall
I have really enjoyed my time playing this game, from the social aspect i have met so many people in different guilds, who have become good real life friends. Sometimes in guilds they run so many events like, make the ugliest outfit, dungeon races, fishing together in a group of 20+ or just dress the same as a guild and bombard a town by dancing everywhere. I WOULD RECOMMEND this game if you want to be part of a good community, who loves the ESO lore and wants to have fun, there are honestly so many guilds out there which offer a lot!
Happy Adventuring! Hope to see you in the game :)

I originally pre-ordered this game back in 2014. I found it to some-what fun but other titles at the time were far more interesting to me and ended up side-tracking me from playing ESO.
I had stopped playing the game all together, and did not return.
I recently read that the game had been revamped for 2020 offering many more features, and changes.
I have now played a character from the start in 2020 and leveled that character to max level, here is my honest review:
PROS:
-Great scenery, graphics are great, character models look awesome.
-Excellent exploration, seriously, you will find yourself just running around looking at interesting things from time to time.
-Fun combat, controls flow nicely. Also cool to see an MMO that can be played on controller.
-Character building is very unique in this and allows the creator of the character to really build a very unique feeling class. This allows for quite a diversity in game-play.
-PVP Game mode is very fun. Definitely has a learning curve, but once you figure it out, the PVP is very unique and offers a lot of replay-ability.
-In game purchases are available but none of them are a pay to win option. (The in-game purchases are mostly stuff like costumes or cosmetic changes.)
-There are some nostalgic elements in this game that remind me of previous single player Elder Scrolls titles.
CONS:
-The questing is interesting, but can become repetitive and chore-like. (As is per normal of an MMO)
-Alot of the quests share some overly similar story-lines. However, I do also understand this is an MMO with tons of quests in it.
-The dungeons do get better towards the higher character levels, but at first they offer zero challenge and are fairly boring. I found myself just kind of running around, using random abilities with no serious sense of direction.
-First person game-play is neat to offer, but is never used. There is seriously no point in using it.
-There can be a few moments when playing where you can get stuck on terrain or find it hard to jump up on top of something, which can be minorly annoying.
-Group queuing for PVP is currently removed, which in my opinion takes away from the PVP experience.
Overall I would recommend this game if you're a fan of MMOs and of course a fan of the Elder Scrolls games.
This game does have an Elder Scrolls feel to it, the environment and game-play does feel like Tamriel.
If you're going to compare this game to World of Warcraft, you won't like it. It has a very different play style, however I do believe that ESO has a refreshing feel to it.
The developers appear to still care about the game as well, being that content is regularly added to keep the game interesting.
TLDR: Game is good, give it a go.

Is this game, like, multiplayer Skyrim? No.
Is this game Skyrim 2? No.
Can I heal mid-battle by shoving 50 cheese wheels in my mouth and then unpausing? No.
So what is this game?
This game is an MMORPG. It has the story elements that are familiar to Elder Scrolls fans, but the format is similar to that of any MMORPG. There is a lot of content you can play solo, but there is also content that can or must be done in groups.
Story: Depends on the zone, can range from 4/10 to 9/10.
Quest Design: Depends on the quest and on play style. Can be a 9/10 if you're interested in the lore, but if you're more interested in skipping any and all relevant dialogue and just doing tasks, it can get dull.
Content: 11/10, I am 800 hours in and I have about 30%-40% more content left in the game in terms of quests and areas alone, not including dungeons and trials.
Graphics: 9/10, the fantasy style means that the game ages well despite being 2014.
Difficulty: 3/10 to 9/10. (Easy to learn, difficult to master.)
Combat: 6/10. It's average, nothing too insane but not horrible either.
UI: 5/10 in its base form, but can be raised much higher with addons on PC.
Price: Low. It goes on sale often, and if you get the non-upgrade edition of the newest expansion (Greymoor at the time of this writing), you get all of the past major DLCs as well, so you don't need to play catch-up. Unlike what others may claim, subscription is not required. You can get the subscription if you want to try out the DLC or if you are a hard-core player or interested in doing major crafting. However, if you are just a casual once-in-a-while player, there is no need to buy the subscription. This also means that if you are about to have a busy time irl, you can pause your subscription without being locked out of the game if you still want to plat occasionally but not enough to warrant it.
Yes, there are crown crates and a crown store and stuff that does cost real money in most cases. No, you can't collect everything in the game, even if you toss a Jeff Bezos salary at it. And that's part of the beauty of it -- no two people have the exact same stuff. Besides, all of the things that people cry are super expensive or in the crown crates? It's all cosmetic!!! I really don't see why people are losing their ***es over it when they're the ones willingly paying stupid amounts of money for minor cosmetic changes.
You can play the game 100% without ever needing to get anything from the crown store or paying any more for it. This ain't World of Warcraft, people,
At $10 on sale for base game, it's worth at least a try.

In Brief:
Pros
+ Huge expansive open world
+ Fully voice acted
+ Builds on the Elder Scrolls universe
+ Active player base
Cons
- Some dislike the combat (varies per person)
- Issues with server performance, especially with PVP
- Hefty file size
Skip to the bottom for my final thoughts
Breakdown:
Introduction
With the latest expansion Greymoor on the horizon, I thought I'd write my review for The Elder Scrolls Online a few months in advance for new players who may be interested in the game currently. It's best to get a head start before the content drops!
Gameplay
The Elder Scrolls Online, which I shall refer to as ESO, is a popular open-world MMORPG developed by ZeniMax Online Studios, and allows its players to explore a vast amount of Nirn during an unfamiliar time period in the Elder Scrolls universe.
Play as you see fit
One of the best features of ESO which I highly commend is its easy accessibility to all players. That isn't to say that the game is easy - rather, it doesn't punish new players for mistakes they may make in the early stages of the game. Trust me, I myself made countless mistakes across a few characters before really getting a foothold. The learning curve may be a bit steep, but the early stages aren't absolutely brutal on new players. Feel free to put your character points into whatever you deem fit - you can always respec your points cheaply later on when it really matters.
I'm not the best person to go to in terms of advice for beginners; there are plenty of in-depth beginner guides that can help you off your feet. But if you like going in blind as I did, know that it's never too late to follow a build. Furthermore, ESO is available to play in two main ways, PVE (player vs environment) and PVP (player vs player). I personally stick to the PVE aspects of the game, notably dungeons, delves and questing. I haven't quite gotten to the raids yet.
Choose your role (Damage Dealer, Tank or Healer), set up your skill bar and prepare for battle. I've heard mixed reviews of ESO's combat system, but I personally have no problems with it and enjoy combat. Furthermore, there are currently six playable classes (four of which are available for free with the base game), ten races (nine of which are available for free with the base game), and thousands of unique viable builds to choose from for your gaming pleasure.
Puts the Massive in Massively Multiplayer
One of my biggest gripes with ESO, that is also simultaneously one of my favourite features of the game, is its ridiculously massive world that is incredibly easy to get lost in. But with great power (huge 3D world with nice models, fully voice-acted characters, etcetera) comes great responsibility - in the form of 100-odd gigabytes on my hard drive. You read that right: over 100 glorious gigabytes of disk usage.
On the other hand, ESO is also massively multiplayer in the sense that it is still very much alive. Unfortunately, the game isn't cross-platform, but on NA PC you still see other adventurers *mostly* wherever you go. The community is also *mostly* friendly, with many guilds waiting to welcome you in with open arms. By the way, you can be a member of up to FIVE different guilds, so there's really no excuse not to make some friends.
If you're the type of player who likes playing through content by yourself, don't worry. You're not alone. You can play through the majority of ESO's content, sans high-tier PVE challenges.
Story
In my humble opinion, ESO is one of the best MMORPG story content-wise. I used to be the type of player who would skip through dialogue and cutscenes to get straight to the combat. Eventually, though, I started taking the time to listen to the fully voice-acted dialogue. Some quests are certainly better than others, but overall the quests are of good quality. I highly recommend you level your main character through questing rather than grinding. Not only do you get to experience the quest, but you can also get unique rewards and lots of XP.
Audio and Visuals
ESO is a great looking game and is again one of the best MMORPGs visual-wise in my opinion. I'll admit, there are definitely some meshes that look better than others (outlier examples), but for the most part, the game looks great. I really enjoy riding on my mount from point-to-point rather than just teleporting. The better rig you have, the better the game looks. The soundtrack is also superb, and as I've mentioned, the dialogue is fully voice acted.
Value
In terms of the base game, which frequently goes on sale, there are hundreds of hours of content available with no other purchases, microtransactions or otherwise.
The Business Model
On the other hand, there is also a plethora of paid DLCs, expansions, and microtransactions available in ESO's Crown store. The game's premium currency, Crowns, can be traded among players in the form of gifting items in exchange for gold. This is often done through middlemen and can be risky. ZeniMax offers no other form of currency exchange. There also exists a paid membership, ESO Plus, which is not required for the base game, that grants subscribers unlimited access to all DLC (excluding new expansions), a number of crowns and other benefits.
Again, the aforementioned microtransactions are not at all necessary for hundreds of hours of enjoyment, but I myself have made purchases on the Crown store and am currently an active ESO+ subscriber.
Bugs/Issues
In the actual game itself, you don't run into issues all too often. I experience the occasional crash, but this may not necessarily be due to ESO. Regarding server performance, however, much of the community have raised complaints about the poor performance of the games servers and matchmaking capabilities specifically. This problem mostly applies to those interested in PVP, however, problems do exist with the Dungeon Finder (hit-or-miss queue times).
In general PVE play, especially if you're sticking with the overworld content, you shouldn't experience many problems. If necessary, restart your game every few hours to keep the memory usage low.
Performance
My computer (see below) has no problems running ESO at high settings, however, I acknowledge that for lower-end rigs you may encounter difficulty in running the game. Make sure to check the minimum specifications, and if your PC has equivalent or better parts. The in-game settings menu allows you to customize the graphics settings to suit your needs.
CPU: i7-8750
GPU: GTX 1060
RAM: 16GB DDR4
In Closing:
Greymoor is coming.
The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited is one of the best MMORPGs currently available on Steam. Play how you want in the game's expansive world, against other players or enemies, and prepare yourself for the Dark Heart of Skyrim.
Rating: Good
Click here to view my complete rating chart, and what this rating means.
If you liked this review and want to see more, check out our Steam Curator Page, SirAlexander's Review Club. Thanks!

Decent game, I didn't play a lot of it myself though. Just know that once the steam download is done and you open it, it has its own launcher for the game. In the launcher there is another download you have to do that is a decent size. Also just sitting in the launcher increases game time for ESO. So if your download speed isn't crazy good, and you find you don't like the game after it, then you won't be able to refund it. So I would suggest to watch some videos on it first before buying it.

What we have here is a bit of a mess. Which is a shame as underneath that mess there is a good game, not a great game but not a dud either. The problem is that its been updated and had DLC added without much (or perhaps any) care in making that mesh with what's there already. Crashes occasionally too.
So mess first. If this does not matter to you then this could be the game for you. It is fun, I like it, but…
Where you start will depend on if you have purchased any of the DLC with the game as part of a pack. For example if you get Elsweyr and Morrowind then you will start in one of those areas, rather than where the main quest kicks off. This would not be so much of an issue if the DLC did not happen after the events of the main quest and there weren’t massive spoilers relating to main quest characters in the DLC. Morrowind is more or less self contained, but Elsweyr isn’t and several main quest characters turn up there, with one in particular having a colossal spoiler.
Soo... Just avoid the DLC areas right? Except unless you do a ‘net search you have no idea where the main quest starts, or how to start it. Its a big game with a big map and you have to do one tiny specific thing to start the main quest – actually you have to do two. If you’ve played it; think of the trigger for those darn Oblivion gates in Oblivion as an example. Even when you are in the main quest you still hit Back-to-the-Future moments with NPCs who cannot possibly be wondering around - as for example they are nailed to a wall in a prison cell somewhere - coming up to you and offering you quests. Or the same NPC being in 3 different places at once in the same quest or NPCs just apparently warping around the place to talk to you and yet still being in other places and also being in the DLC while they are nailed to a wall in a prison cell so yeh its a bit of a mess.
There are free prologue quests which lead into the DLC, but one will break the main quest completely if you start it. You have to abandon the prologue quest to start the main one up again – if you are lucky. It didn’t work for me so I had to complete the 1st part of the prologue and then abandon subsequent one to get the main quest back. However unless you start wondering why a particular NPC hasn’t pestered you for ages and then ‘net searched (again) you’d never know there was a problem. Oh the quest you need to abandon is demon weapon which is the prologue to Elsweyr.
Then there are places where the devs just didn’t think things though. I had one quest where you had to rescue some folk and one of them also wanted me to find something. Having rescued them and found the thing I then discovered I could not talk to the NPC who wanted the thing as all the folk I rescued were in the way.
The map is split into PVE (most of it but you can challenge players) and PVP (Cyrodiil). Now I don’t tend to PVP but had to visit Cyrodiil to find something. It was not fun. Whether it was my internet playing up at just that time or what I don’t know but I kept getting micro loading screens as I wondered around the map – not a problem in other areas. As a result when I did bump into another player I was instantly cheesed (like being creamed, but with a more piquant aftertaste) as I micro-loading screened. OK I would probably have died anyway but it didn’t help.
Finally there is the game’s history. When launched you picked a faction and could only play in that faction's area and Cyrodiil. Then the PVE map was opened up so you can play anywhere – your main quest just starts in your faction’s area but you can quest anywhere on the map. Except… The quests were not updated, so as a result you now fight your own faction’s NPCs in some areas of the map. I’m not sure how this could have been fixed, but given so little else has been, I’m not surprised. A little note here added after I completed a rather long quest - don't read unless you want a spoiler. This is explained once you have completed the main quest, why you can wander into the other factions areas and not get smashed to a pulp by the guards when you do. Except you can now do this anyway before you complete the main quest. So yeh...
So can you ignore the above? Well mostly. Its annoying and immersion breaking so if that’s important to you look elsewhere. If it isn’t then don’t look Elsweyr until you’ve done the main quest. As a game the graphics are good, not 2020 quality but fine for an MMO. Rain stays outside buildings, even if people don’t get wet and it doesn’t splash on water. Fog is suitably murky, spells flashy - perhaps too flashy if you play 1st person - and the animals (not so much the horses) look and move fairly realistically - as do the bipeds. well as realistically as giant winged demons might. The voice acting ranges from the usual bored person saying words to very good – particularly the majority of the Khajiit (cat people) NPCs. Some of the side quests made me smile and although the main quest is very linier, the other map quests can be completed in any order – just don’t expect the timeline to make a lot of sense if you do. NPCs generally do not know they have spoken to you before and will happily tell you their life story again. Equally sometimes the devs will assume that you have spoken to someone before and the NPC will leave out some info resulting in wtf moments.
Just to round on the DLC again. The DLC chapters (Morrowind, Elsewyr etc) sort of follow on from each other. For example there’s Morrowind, the Clockwork city and then (no you have to buy the Clockwork city from the in game store you cannot get it as part of a Steam pack - no I don't know why either) Summerset.
Quests tend to be hack-and-slash with puzzles in a few (not very many at all). If you like a puzzler and less action then this may not be the game for you. Also most crooked NPCs are obviously crooked - not much need for the Spidey sense here.
For an mmo the NPC combat is not bad, its fairly fluid while not being a brawler, and you are not nailed to the ground while you do a special move. Can’t comment on PVP. Some mechanics feel a bit pay to win. Although you buy the game you don’t need a subscription. If you go for one then you get all the DLC unlocked, plus a crafting bag – which holds all the crafting materials and makes inventory management less of the PINTA it can be. If you decide to buy bits over time, say you don’t play enough to make a sub worth it then you can get DLC from the in-game store as well as other stuff. The game and DLC (from the in game store) is sometimes on sale as well.
Aside from DLC most in-game store stuff is cosmetic, hats, pets, mounts (you get a free horse just by levelling) etc. But there are potions and food which might appear pay-to-win as they buff your char for longer and easier than crafting them or finding them. I don’t mind this, the devs have to eat after all, but you might. You also get a daily gift just by logging on which is generally a random store based buff.
The DLC can be expensive - especially the DLC dungeons, which might put you off and while I don’t PVP, a lot of the PVP community doesn’t sound happy. So if PVP is important then this may not be your game. Read reviews from PVP players and then decide.
There is grind, particularly if you want to progress in the mage’s guild and in crafting where you not only have to hunt for the materials, styles, recipes etc but also have to wait increasingly long times to research new buffs for amour etc. Jewellery is completely locked out without the Summerset DLC and the crown store has instant research scrolls (some of which drop in the daily gift and as part of levelling) that reduce this research by a day. That's a day real time – not game time. Yes sometimes you have to wait a loong time.
Its not a bad game, bits are very good and I like it. However I can only recommended if consistent story telling is not that important to you.