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Vendek
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re: ESO

So, anyone want to try the Elder Scrolls Online beta this weekend? I have been in the last three. This time they sent an extra beta code to give to a friend so they can try it also. If anyone would like the code just let me know and I can email it to you.
Rimbli
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re: ESO

Let me know too, I have an extra also.


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Kiralynn
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re: ESO

If you were invited to a previous Beta weekend, can you get into this one, too?


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Rimbli
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re: ESO

Don't know, I just got an email today about the beta invite


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Craicwyth
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re: ESO

Kiralynn of Rohan wrote:
If you were invited to a previous Beta weekend, can you get into this one, too?


It looks like it; I was in the last beta weekend, but got a key for this test (as well as one to give away.)


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Nardenir
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re: ESO

I got an extra key also, if anyone would like it, i guess you can reply to this post? I think thats makes 3 extra keys to give away.
Kiralynn
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I don't have a key, but perhaps one will show up in my email box before Sunday.


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Andeon
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re: ESO

looks like I got one too, so yes, if anyone would like to try out the codes, lets hand those suckers out!

I'll probably spend this weekend on ESO until I either fall in love with it, or get tired of it - I only got to play about 4 hours of the last one, as I spent most of the weekend moving into my new place, but this weekend should be all mine!


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Tearna Quickfoot
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re: ESO

If you were in a previous Beta, you can access this one too. You don't need a new key. Your old one is still in effect. This is a stress test so they've invited everyone back.

And you should go ahead and open the launcher and let it install the updates. Mine didn't take long at all this evening and hopefully that was all there is. hehe

I had an extra key, but already gave it away. However, last Beta weekend they had... there was a web site you could go and get a key. Maybe they will have one this time too.


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Bittercress
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re: ESO

Believe TenTonHammer has them.
Lindorieh
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re: ESO

How are people liking this? Has it improved at all during the Beta?


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Tearna Quickfoot
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Well, this last Beta was another stress test working on loading times and log-in queues, so they didn't update quests, NPCs, etc. and all the bugs that were there before were still there.

However, log-in queues and loading times were drastically improved. Previous beta, I waited anywhere from 5 mins to 20 minutes in log-in queues and often as long as 5 minutes on loading screens moving from one area in game to another. This time round, the longest I ever waited was about 1-2 minutes for some loading screen on Sunday afternoon and lots of folks were complaining about lag and loading times asking for the servers to be restarted. hehe

I played in a new area (Skyrim) as a Nord this time and it seemed to have less quest bugs than other starting areas I had tried previously. The one major quest bug I did find was easily overcome logging off that character (not out of game) and back in again, though I did have to do that several different times during the quest string to get the quest to advance. But that did work. In other starting areas I tried, bosses/NPCs critical to the quest failed to spawn or they were there but were unresponsive and no amount of relogging fixed them for me.

So, hopefully the next beta in a few weeks will have some bug fixes and not just another stress test since this one seemed to go so much better. :)

As for how I liked it... I liked it a lot! The landscape is gorgeous and sunrises and sunsets can be breathtaking. As much as I love LOTRO landscaping... and they were the first to introduce excellence in the landscape as far as I know, ESO has taken it up a notch and it feels even more realistic. I could spend all my time just wandering about exploring, picking flowers/herbs and did spend a lot of time doing that while hunting for chests to open. hehe

I like their quests and even though some are still a variety of "kill 6 of this" they have built in very good reasons for doing so and most of it isn't the kill 6 of these variety. Most generally, it is go find someone who has been missing for awhile, or we have a rat problem with the crops. Figure out a way to get rid of the rats, but you can't just kill them (and I forget the reason why.. something with the inspectors who are there.. inspecting). I love landscape questing and had a delightful time. I did not do any dungeons. I did some instances that I could not have done alone, but there were lots of other players there and we did it together (without grouping -- ESO has tagging just like LOTRO now has). But not a real dungeon.

Then again I also barely got out of the basic starting area (Archet type area though bigger and more involved than Archet). I have one character I got up to the 2nd territory some beta's back, but she ran into a lot of bugged quests and what was available for her to do was way above her level and it was very hard for her to do. Plus, her weapon was very wimpy for her level. I found lots of armor in chests for her, but few weapons. Learning to pick locks and open chests is vital in ESO as that is generally where I found all my green items and 1 blue.

Having said all that, I am still on the fence as to whether I want to spend $60 on the software (I believe that is the cost of the lowest tier you can purchase) and pay a $15 subscription fee. The monthly fee isn't that big a deal... I waste more than that each month. It is that initial cost of the software that has me on the fence. But if the initial cost was only say $20, I'd do it without hesitation.

Okay, enough rattling from me! hehe


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Andeon
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re: ESO

I've gotten to play about 8 hours or so...my highest level character is a "nightblade" (think magic assassin essentially) level 7,which isn't much, but I'm happy to pass on my experience...

#1 - the best - Questing. I *love* the quest design in elder scrolls. Mechanically, they're not *terribly* unique, but the quest givers and the quest-based NPC's are such delightfully alive characters - in many cases, they not only tell you what they need done, but why, and their stories are all surprisingly innovative and unique to them, their surroundings, their histories, etc...

I have to admit, from a purely *having to play the game* standpoint, I've found the ESO questgivers to be such distinctive and interesting people that I've actually started to try to keep track of them

sadly, there are a LOT of people to keep track of, so that might not work - but if you *wanted* to keep track of a particular person, you could, because their story, and how they interact with the world and other people around them as well as their questlines, are distinctive enough that you can actually tell one from the other, which is a feature I cannot usually do in most MMO's

#2 - the good - Combat. Sadly, so far, combat hasn't been *challenging*, as I've been over-level most of the enemies I've encountered, but the actual mechanics of combat seem reasonably nice. I didn't play much with ranged weapons, which forum chat indicates is more than a little over-powered owing to auto-tracking for ranged weapons, but melee combat seemed...fun. It was reasonably active without being *too* fast (think slower than GW2, but vastly more active than LOTRO or WOW), the animations were reasonably fun, and the parry/block/dodge/attack/special-powers interface all made the game seem active without being so fast that I couldn't tell what was happening half the time (a problem I frequently run into in GW2)

#3 - also good - the world. While most of the maps I explored were still fairly small by elder-scrolls standards, they were very nicely designed, and they looked good. I'm not sure I was quite as blown away by the environments as some others, but they were definitely fun to move through and explore

#4 - graphics/visual-design - reasonably good. I think the *world* looks pretty good, and the character visual design is *reasonably* good, although, as with many games, a larger range of hairstyles and a better sense of lighting/coloring for the character design screen itself would be handy. More importantly, the visual design style is relatively clear and crisp - there are no hazes or color filters going on - the world is bright, or where it's dark, at least it's high-contrast dark, so the visuals are easily seen and distinct from one another.

Downside?...the animations felt really...awkward. Many of them basically felt too liquid-smooth to really be connected to the environment you were walking on - anyone that played Fallout3 in 3rd-person mode might know what I'm talking about. it was a minor thing, but it might throw some people off the way it did me.

#6 - character building/growth - hard to say. The actual mechanics for leveling up seemed nice. Every character has a bank of skills attached to all the armor and weapon types in the game. Each character also has a set of skills unique to their "race". Then, each character chooses a "class", which basically contains a set of skills that are unique to that type of class. Then, there are the guild skills (fighter's guild, mages guild, etc) which every character can access, although I don't know what the limits are as to how many guilds you can join, etc...

this means that EVERY character has all the weapon/armor skills, a racial skill selection, a class skill selection, and guild skill selections. As with almost all games, some skills are passive, many are active...

your *hotbar* is limited to a selection of 5 active skills, and one *ultimate*, which I never got to use. This means that your skill selection in any particular combat is somewhat limited...which makes it relatively painless not having to rummage through 20 skills, but can feel a little stale - however, you can switch skills in and out almost at will, so you can change the way your character focuses in relatively short order (just drag and drop)

there are lots of ways to earn skill points - but, as skill points not only add skills, but also passives for crafting and such, it is possible for you to spend your points in the wrong areas and gimp yourself early on.

each skill, in addition to having points you spend on it, also "level's up" with use - some level up faster if they're on your hotbar, others level up if you have equipped the piece of equipment that the skill relates to (i.e. heavy armor skill levels up if you're wearing a piece of heavy armor, bow skills level up if you have a bow equipped, and possible level faster if you have bow skills equipped on your hotbar, etc)

in otherwords, it's possible to run around with a bow, and have no bow skills equipped, but instead have all class skills or racial skills equipped - you'll still shoot with a bow as your attack button, but any skill you use will bypass the bow and use whatever weapon-like output that the class skill uses. Or, you can skip your class skills entirely, and just equip a sword and shield and have nothing but sword and shield skills on your hotbar. and you can switch back and forth between that and every other combination almost at will (I never actually tried changing my skills WHILE being attacked, but I think you can)

however, what to put points in, and when you can put points in it, can be very, very confusing.

#7 - crafting. ugh. wow. just...wow. Crazy. Time consuming...relatively interesting, but argh...

I won't say it's bad - but it's far too complex for me to cover - I only barely understand it. But, basically, crafting boils down to - non-instanced resource gathering (you compete with other people for resources that spawn in the environment), passive skills for better resource gathering and management that will use the same skill points you use for other character abilities, breaking down items you find that have special *traits* in order to learn those traits so that you can craft them PER ITEM (in other words, find the armor pen trait on a sword, break down that sword, research it, you still have to find an axe with armor pen and research the trait for that weapon, then a spear, etc, etc...) breaking down of items for resources, at least 6 different crafting trees (metal, wood, clothing, alchemy, food, magic runes), etc, etc...there's a LOT of crafting...a lot...

#5 - PVP - sorry, didn't try it. Heard interesting things...but as with all PVP, it's sounds like it's basically awesome or terrible mostly depending on the PVP'ers themselves

that's the best summary I can give at the moment - I may go into more detail later


there's another beta test coming up this weekend that might reveal more.


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Malornwyn
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re: ESO beta weekend

Daewath & I are currently playing this weekends ESO Beta and have been active during the last 3 beta test weekends. We enjoyed the game so much we decided to pre-order. The Beta has been a bit buggy which is to be expected. Most Beta's are and I'm happy to announce this is the first game where I did not fall through the floor or get stuck in graphics during the beta or had issues logging in. Biggest issues I've run into is having to /reloadui when interactions with NPC's break and NPC's not showing up for quests when a quest area is being spammed. To fix the awol NPC you can generally relog a few times or try later when less people are around. Hopefully these issues will be fixed when it goes live.

The graphics are gorgeous and the emotes are nicely done. The crafting system is more sophisticated than most MMO's and they have treasure maps! Treasure maps I say! There are mounts and pets, skyshards which you collect to gain extra attribute points, lore books to collect (some very nice stories if you actually read the books), general achievements and yes, this does include the good ole' favorite - fishing. FISHING!!!

So far I've tried a Nightblade Breton using a healing staff and siphoning skills in an attempt to make a thaumaturge like build which has been very fun to play. My first character was a High Elf mage, but I messed up a bit by spreading my skill points out a too liberally. Daewath also created a mage but stayed a bit more focused and found it to be very rewarding. He also enjoyed playing a 'Paladin' like Templar and is currently having fun with a Khajit Nightblade.

As Andeon mentioned above, the NPC dialogues are very notable. They did an excellent job developing personalities and story lines. Our favorite so far is Raz a very humble Khajit who will have you laughing your socks off.

It's a bit of a busy weekend for us, but if you find yourself on ESO and need some help or have any questions you can message either one of us. Daewath is @Aikanar and you can find me @Malornwyn.

Happy weekend to everyone wherever you may be!
Suncho
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re: ESO

I've been doing the beta, and this weekend I pre-ordered the imperial digital version. This gets you access to the pre-order explorer's pack, as well as the horse and other benefits from the imperial edition. If you're serious about playing ESO you might want to do the same; and the imperial edition is less than the latest best edition for Helm's Deep.

Need I say that I'm enjoying it...but I'm a Bethesda fan from way back - and I love the play and look and feel of Oblivion and Skyrim and this game is surprisingly similar - I had expected more changes in an MMO.
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