I made it to what I gather is the first real milestone in ones career in ESO, level 10.
And the poor guy whose xp got me there, dead on the floor
I do kind of like the little window you get at each level that shows you what that advancement has brought you. It has also been telling me what I would get should I make it to level 10 for the last few levels, which for me was the tell that this was a milestone… and not just because there was an achievement unlock. There was also a horse!
Also skill points, attribute points, and the dungeon finder
It took me a while to figure out how to get on the horse. Claiming it was okay, and specifying it as the default was easy enough, as I had only one mount. But actually being able to ride the horse?
Nothing in my online gaming history prepared me for simply using the “H” key to summon and dismiss your mount. It seems a bit obvious once you learn it, but stands apart from other titles in the genre where it is generally a button on the action bar. Then again, ESO eschews the action bar, so there is that.
Successfully on my horse
And that picture brings me to one of my observations about the game so far… which is how gray and dark things tend to be. I looked up what the day/night cycle was for ESO, and it is six hour turn over, which means there are four full day/night transitions every day.
Theoretically I ought to be playing in daylight about half the time I suppose, but somehow I always seem to be in the dark.
I think the fact that the game’s color palette goes so hard on the grays and blues… it has a bit of the problem that Rift had on that front of gray character models… that even the times around dusk and dawn feel dark. Add in how much time you spend underground during some of these quests and the world feels a bit dreary.
I went through the 50+ screen shots I had taken and found just one in-game picture that was in obvious daylight.
Whoa, colors!
Now, this may be bad timing on my part, older content not being as vibrant, or just having chosen the grayest possible path forward, but it does leave an impression. If you asked me to pick one word to describe ESO so far, I might choose “gray” with evidence to support it.
As for getting to level 10, it was not all that hard… which is fitting for what is essentially an intro to the game. It was, at times, a bit fast with me showing up at a location like a town, basically talking to two people, then being kidnapped and waking up in another dungeon… where they didn’t even bother to take my gear away.
There were only two minor hiccups along the way. One was a quest that I couldn’t figure out, though that was largely because I skipped over the quest text which told me what to do. I went to look up the quest online and found it on a wiki where it gave me bad and/or outdated information that sent me looking around for another quest that wasn’t there for a good 45 minutes until I went back to where I started and read the quest text.
I got the lockbox open eventually
Can’t blame that on the game, but it does say something about the ecosystem around the game I suppose.
The other hiccup came when I finished up a quest line, got the reward, and was dumped back in Stos M’kai without another quest in hand. I wandered around for a while looking for a likely suspect… somebody with that icon above their head… and did not have any luck. So, looking for something else to do, I decided to work on the map completion tasks, which is something it took me a while to notice. I didn’t have any more quests, but maybe I would find another skyshard of whatever.
The map options
In wandering around I crossed an invisible line, discovered a new location, and somebody with a quest came running straight at me.
Quest for you sir!
So, when in doubt look about I suppose.
The only other niggle I have is that I notice occasionally that, when fighting a mob, I will be too close to it and my attacks will all just swing harmlessly through it until I take a step back, and then blows begin to land. That I noticed this means I am getting feedback on my attacks, but it still looks/feels odd as my attack animation is slicing right through my target, it is just having no effect.
I am also a bit concerned about my haphazard picking of skills and application of attribute points. I seem to be doing okay with what I have picked, but it isn’t like this would be the first game where you could fatally gimp a character for later levels by making bad picks early on. We shall see. I suppose I could re-run these ten levels again on another character in less than half the time now that I am a bit more familiar with things… though the ten levels ended up being kind of a blur of places even at my initial pace, such that little stands out for me in hindsight. Too much gray I suppose.
Overall I’ve been a few places and seen a few things, some more interesting than others.
Like this guy… who is dark blue rather than gray I guess…
I am not super excited about things so far which brings out some mixed feelings. On the one hand, maybe I am not to “the good stuff” yet. On the other, the default MMO experience tends to be that the start is really compelling, then the mid-levels get dull, and not the other way around.
We’ll see. Potshot and Ula have both been working on their characters. So perhaps when we get together it will come together more so.
Finally, as a complete aside, I was interested to see that over on SteamDB that The Edler Scrolls: Skyrim was more popular than The Edler Scrolls Online.
SteamDB Data for Elder Scrolls titles
I know that not everybody plays ESO on Steam. But not everybody plays Skyrim there either… and, of course, Skyrim is probably the most popular title in the series. Not exactly an arrow to the knee for ESO, but something to ponder.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 