The Dissapointment of the ESO AMA

The devs for ESO held an 'Ask Me Anything' on the reddit. I gave it a quick read and wish I hadn't. Here's what I got out of it.

They had originally intended that you would be able to flag yourself with certain tags such as 'Roleplayer', which would help place like people together within the Megaserver, to make up for the lack of individual servers. Not only is this not going in to launch, it is no longer on the table. Ouch. Like Guild Wars 2 it is going to be impossible to foster an RP environment, something that's a major draw to me. Roleplaying is how I like to spend my downtime, or just hang out in game when not focused on PVP or questing.

No plans for speech bubbles. Ouch... I'm not good at following chat boxes, that mess of text is hard to read when focused on where your running or the troll smashing your face. What RP I would be able to find is also hurt now as I try to read the lines of a specific person in the ocean of global and guild chat channels.

No plans for dueling, WHAT!? If you want to be a PVP game, this should be in. 'We want to keep the pvp between alliances' is fine, but duels are how my friends and I test builds and train each other. Even in Smite, we often play 1v1 joust challenges to try things out.

You can be in five guilds (cool!), they are tied to your account, not your character (not cool). In WoW, I have no one on my Real ID who isn't a personal friend, because sometimes I just want to relax after to work on an alt and not be bothered.  I like grouping with guild mates to rp, to do the occasional dungeon and almost always to pvp, but sometimes, I just want to quest, and not explain myself as to why alone.

These things are a big deal for me, The Elder Scrolls is a roleplaying series, but apparently they want little to do with the RP community. Things can always change, but overall today left a sour taste in my mouth about the game. I really liked Guild Wars 2 when it first came out. Played constantly until about level 40, but the lack of RP caused me to grow board because I had nothing to do unless I was working on the quests. Some of my favorite WoW memories involve sitting in the bar in Brill pre-cataclysm.

But perhaps I'm just not the demographic anymore. The MMORPG has forgotten what the RPG meant, too often it's all about progressing content or esport pvp over the actual experience of the game and world.

I'm still going to play you ESO, but now I have to wonder.... for how long?

-McJigg

Edit: I have already been corrected, seems RP flagging is still somewhat on the table. (phew!). So is mentoring which is another feature I think should be in all MMOs.