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I found all this a bit tiresome back in vanilla ESO, but it seems to have improved significantly since then the quests I encountered in ESO: Morrowind were memorable and worthwhile.
#THE ELDER SCROLLS MORROWIND FULL#
It’s got full voice acting, some great writing, and NPCs that would feel perfectly at home in any of the core Elder Scrolls games. Most non-endgame MMO content is absolutely rubbish, to the point where some people describe filler open-world crap as “MMO quests”. So if you want more Elder Scrolls right now, ESO is your best bet – and, honestly, it’s a better one than it gets credit for. It will also be a long time before we get another core Elder Scrolls game. This is important because it’s extremely unlikely Bethesda will ever remake Morrowind – or indeed any of the older Elder Scrolls games (the only reason we have Skyrim Special Edition is because Bethesda used Skyrim to develop a new generation engine to power Fallout 4). ESO isn’t like that.Īlthough the word put my back up, Firor’s comments did make it clear that Zenimax Online is determined and delighted to cater to “casual” solo players as well as those MMO veterans who locust through the quest content to get to the endgame, where their idea of real fun begins – veteran dungeons, Trials (raids), PvP, collecting the best gear – and also to everyone else in between. Most non-endgame MMO content is absolutely rubbish. If you want more Elder Scrolls right now, ESO is your best bet – and, honestly, it’s a better one than it gets credit for. She pores over the lore, explores each location at a crawl, and peers into every last nook and cranny, uncovering everything, and tackling Tier 2 bosses on her lonesome. She’d racked up over 220 hours at last count, according to Steam. I have a friend who plays The Elder Scrolls Online as a solo. Nowhere was this more obvious than when he described solo players as “casuals”. Firor is an MMO veteran, one of the founders of Mythic and a lead creative on the legendary Dark Age of Camelot – so he naturally tends to speak to the hardcore MMO audience first, and everyone else second. I still don’t like MMOs and all the mansions in the world won’t change that, but I do think it’s worth your popping that ESO disc back in and taking another look, which is something I never thought I’d say.īefore I even sat down to play ESO: Morrowind, I spoke to game director Matt Firor over Skype. It’s no wonder Bethesda is pushing the MMO on all fronts now that it has Morrowind as an excuse: it’s got a product it’s proud of, that plenty of people enjoy, but it’s battling uphill to get a slice of its core fans to even look at the blessed thing. Only the lure of a private chef and a house once featured in a 12 page Vogue spread got me to revisit my ideas, and I like The Elder Scrolls. This is not a fair assessment of The Elder Scrolls Online as it exists in May 2017, let alone when the doors open on the Morrowind content next week, but it’s a common one. “Don’t leverage our nostalgia for your dodgy World of Warcraft knock off.” “Give us a proper Morrowind remake,” I might have said.
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The news of the Morrowind expansion brought nothing but scorn from me. Probably because of attitudes like mine: I love The Elder Scrolls, but I don’t like MMOs and I didn’t enjoy ESO at release. So why is the publisher marketing the heck out of ESO right now, and why had it brought a handful of press – and after we’d been bussed out, a follow up troop of influencers – on a sumptuous getaway, at what must have been breathtaking expense? No, of course not: if it were, Bethesda would already have trashed it this is a cutthroat business. Surely The Elder Scrolls Online can’t be so far onto the rocks that this sort of luxurious excess is necessary? “Did you have to use up the ANZ budget before the end of the financial year or what,” I asked a Bethesda staffer.
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A full disclosure of the many delightful and expensive things that occurred during my little vacation would take tens of thousands of words and embarrass us all. I went, I admit it – I am not made of stone – and it was over the top fancy. If you can get past the MMO wrapper – which Zenimax Online to its credit has made as inessential as possible – there is a pretty fun Elder Scrolls game in ESO. Perhaps Bethesda overheard, because when I totally ignored the unsolicited expansion early access key I was sent, the publisher upped the ante by inviting me to stay in a great big fuck off mansion in the country to be wined and dined out of what little sense I possess – and incidentally play a little ESO: Morrowind. I once joked that you’d have to pay me to play The Elder Scrolls Online again. Morrowind is a great excuse to give Elder Scrolls Online another look, and maybe finally forgive it for being an MMO.