By ALEX PECHA
Staff Writer
When The Elder Scrolls Online was announced, it was met with a lot of trepidation. The Elder Scrolls series, created by Bethesda, had a pedigree of 5 games that were entirely single player and there wasn’t the largest outcry for that to change. However, Zenimax Online (an offshoot of Zenimax and not, as is commonly thought, an actual part of the Bethesda) decided that they had to fill a niche no one was looking for and went about making an Elder Scrolls MMO.
As previously stated, the world looked at the announcement of The Elder Scrolls Online with a mix of confusion and apathy. As time passed, however, the public slowly changed its mind until there was a lot of hype surrounding the game. I was among that hype; I even got to try out the beta a few times before release. I was convinced this game was going to be great, and it is, at least when it works.
As you may or may not have noticed, our school has had some internet troubles this year, and this became a big problem when it came to playing The Elder Scrolls Online. Every time I tried to login to the game it would kick me back to the login screen. This process repeated several times before I gave up. I finally did get to play the game though…when I went home for a weekend.
I managed to shove in about 5 hours while I was home, and I can say this from those 5 hours: I want more, so much more. The game just feels like the Elder Scrolls series should. From the amazing intro music, to the story, the setting, the art, everything just bleeds Elder Scrolls.
You start the game as a prisoner, as is the tradition of the Elder Scrolls series. The twist this time is that you’re already dead and in a plane of Oblivion (they had to one-up Skyrim’s attempt to cut off your head). You quickly escape, however, to return to the living world and find yourself embroiled in a plot to destroy the world as we know it by the Daedric Lord Molag Bal.
The story as far as I got into it was pretty standard Elder Scrolls fare. There are Daedric lords, evil armies, conniving higher powers, celebrity voice actors being underused; all of the stuff you’d expect of an Elder Scrolls story.
Gameplay-wise, the game uses a small action bar similar to other MMOs. However, this is a very small number and the game relies more on active blocking and exploiting enemies than mashing buttons in a sequence.
Like Skyrim, the amount of blocking, dodging, and slicing you can do or take is based on your three main pools of energy: Health, Stamina, and Magicka. You select one of the three when you level up to enhance and build your character. You then select skills, which give you new abilities as well as make you better at certain roles and unlocking new character options.
There are so many skills in this game that it’s almost overwhelming. You start with your racial skill tree, then there’s the soul magic tree, the Alliance tree, the three trees based on your class, all of the trees based on the weapon and armor you use, plus any other skill trees you can discover from joining guilds or just talking to people; there are just so many skills! Simply thinking about it makes me want to jump back into the game and try out more and more skills. This game has given me an addiction to trying out skills.
Then of course there is the meat and bones of an Elder Scrolls game: exploration. The Elder Scrolls Online didn’t skip out on this aspect of the series.
You can discover dungeons, quests, and the mysterious skyshards, which give you a skill point for every three you find.
Of course, you can also explore and find more resources for crafting, which is a huge part of the game.
I never like crafting in MMOs. I always find it boring and inorganic. The Elder Scrolls Online is different, though; you’re introduced to the crafting skills early on and can make basic items in each one from the get go without paying for skill training or other stupid ideas MMOs throw at you.
I personally decked out my new character in Imperial style heavy armor, allowing me to make my guy look like I wanted him to as early as level 5. You craft the armor by first finding the raw resources, then turning those resources into metal you can use, then finally crafting it to look like one of the many racial styles.
However, you can also upgrade existing items, research ways to make items better, and so many other things I haven’t even discovered yet. This is only one of the many crafting skills.
Finally, there’s PVP. Sadly, I can’t say much about PVP, as you have to be level 10 to access the PVP zone Cyrodill (the setting of the fourth game in the series). I managed to briefly partake during the beta and I can say that it looks promising, but sadly I can’t get closer to it yet, no matter how much I want to.
If I have a complaint right now, it’s the fact that like other MMOs before it, The Elder Scrolls Online is asking for 15 bucks a month on top of the original asking price of the game. I wouldn’t find this as bad if I could actually play the game, but as I said, our internet issues make the game currently unplayable.
I didn’t get enough of The Elder Scrolls Online, but what small taste I got just leaves me salivating for more. I want to explore more, I want to craft more, I want to try and partake in PVP. There’s so much of The Elder Scrolls Online that I want to get into, but can’t because of our school’s internet.
As of the time of writing, ITS is working to try and find some small solution to this problem, but I have no idea how long it’ll take. I can only hope it happens soon, because I desperately want to jump back into The Elder Scrolls Online.
