Doom and Gloom

In the past few weeks, I've talked about The Elder Scrolls Online. Unfortunately I've come to the decision that I won't be playing it after all.

First off, some of the info I got from the official ESO site has proven to be somewhat erroneous. The classes are far more restrictive than I was led to believe, as an example.

There are some other reasons why I won't be playing this as well, most of which are tiny, like the banking system, but the main issues are:

1. You only get one quickbar, and it's five boxes wide! In other words, you can have five measly abilities available at any time. I had hoped this was due to beta issues, but the Devs have openly stated that they want you to have to think about your set up for each fight. Regular mobs aren't of course a problem, but to have to go into the skill page and reset and fiddle all the time, is in my opinion a deal breaker. At level 8, this was already a hassle.
2. ESO doesn't really feel like a “proper” Elder Scrolls game to me. Perhaps I'm making too big a deal of this, but I felt less like a hero the further I played.

I had such high hopes for this game, and I so want to like it, but I can't. Maybe in the future, we'll see.

In other game news, Wolfenstein The New Order has been pushed back a bit, but it seems to be out in May this year. And following on this is a new Doom game as well! Here's hoping it's better than Doom 4, which I didn't even get close to finishing.

I also took a look at the upcoming Age of Wonders III, and it made me very sad indeed. I've loved this series since AoW I, back in 2000, but I won't be touching this game with a 20' pole. Not only do I find the graphics muddled and badly disproportionate, but they've eliminated all my favorite races. Gone are the Frostlings, Tigrans, Undead and Dark Elves.

I get the Dark Elves though, since they and the Wood Elves have re-merged into the High Elves. Fine.

But the Tigrans “just left”, the Frostlings “were wiped out” and the Undead...are now just some cursed Archons that anyone can get. Either they didn't want to bother with these races, or they are looking to sell DLC, take your pick.

I spent the better part of a day researching this game, and I don't know what the Devs are thinking. In any case, this is not a game for me. I'm sticking to Age of Wonders 2: Shadow Magic.

I could go on, but I'm not going to bother you with my vitriol.

But to end on a positive note, I started playing Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, and it is amazing! Truly awesome, if you liked AC 2 get this!

That's all for me this gloomy week!

True Meanings

This past weekend I was fortunate enough to be invited to participate in an Elder Scrolls Online beta test.

As soon as I saw my invite I thought to myself “Aha, this will make for an interesting blog post”. Unfortunately the NDA is still in effect, and since I'm not fluent in legalese, I decided to err on the side of caution and say the only thing I know I'm allowed to say about the game:

I like it!

That's all I'm going to say to avoid any misunderstandings. But to leave this post at that wouldn't be very interesting, so I decided to mull over a couple of interesting other potential misunderstandings while I'm on the subject.

First up is a word that's often misused due to a slight misunderstanding. Evacuate. Way too often the word is used like this: The people in the boat were evacuated. This is wrong. Very wrong. The sentence should read: The boat was evacuated. You see, to evacuate is to empty something out, and to empty out people, is to give them enemas.

You can evacuate almost anything, boats, elevators, houses etc, and in so doing, the people do leave the premises. You just don't want to the fire brigade to evacuate you in the middle of a fire...

Next up is a common and fairly well known misunderstanding. Big Ben. This is not the name of the clock tower, but the name of the great bell inside the tower. The tower itself was up until 2012 simply called... the clock tower. Or the Parliament Tower.

During the jubilee in 2012 however, it was renamed The Elizabeth Tower in honor of Queen Elizabeth II.

Still most people will continue to call the whole shebang Big Ben, and to be fair, who cares? As long as everyone knows what their talking about.

And now I'm going to end with a tasty treat. How many of you have ever eaten a Danish? No not a person from Denmark, but the pastry.

Interestingly enough, they're not really Danish at all, but Austrian, Viennese in fact. But they quickly became very popular in the Nordic countries, and here they are in fact called wienerbröd (Viennese bread). They're known in the English speaking world as danish because they were made popular by Danish immigrant bakers in the early 20^th century. So now you know what you're eating when you are gobbling down those tasty flaky treats covered in jam.

That's it for this week. I hope have a good one!

Elder Scrolls Online

I have been aware of Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) for some time now. But when it comes to money, I like to be cautious. Games are expensive if you buy them at or just after release, so unless you like wasting cash, it pays off to do some research before buying.

Now with ESO, I've been doubly apprehensive. I love the Elder Scrolls, even though I got to the party late, as it were. I missed Morrowind, not to mention the ones before that, so I jumped on the train in Oblivion town. This was in the days before Steam, so I have no idea how long I played it, but it was a long time. If I had to guess, I'd say about 400 hours or so, and Skyrim is now at the 490 hour mark. I'm not saying this to brag, but to illustrate my caution regarding ESO.

You see, it's always scary when a game line you love makes the transition to an MMO. Many features can't be translated into the MMO-sphere, the game stops being all about your character, mechanics change, I could go on but I'm sure you get the idea. I've been terrified that ESO would turn out to be just another World of Warcraft clone.

Yesterday however, I sat down and watched some development videos, and I was blown away! Bethesda Softworks have done an excellent job. Unlike The Old Republic, I'm not in the beta for ESO, so naturally I have no hard, first hand facts. Besides if I did, I couldn't blog about it. The NDA is still in effect. The following observations are all based on the videos Bethesda has released.

One of the core points in both Oblivion an Skyrim is the freedom to pick up a weapon and learn how to use it through fighting. The same goes for all skills, spells and gear. If you want to play a necromancer, the games don't serve you the skills on a plate. You have to go out and figure out how to be the best necromancer you can be.

Now, MMO's are notoriously rigid in their classes in order to keep everything balanced and “fair” (and they never are). But it seems ESO will grant you the freedom to go the way you want when you want.

Sure there are four starting classes, but they are there to help you in the direction you want to go. Not to stop you from doing something, but to help you.

You could start as an assassin, train up some spells, then strap on heavy armor and become a battlemage, eventually transitioning into a full time mage, all on one character. This is revolutionary in this bloggers experience.

How many times have you been playing a character in an MMO, seen another player, and thought “Man, I wish I could do that, but I don't feel like re-rolling”? I have, and more than once. Of course in my case, I'm an Altoholic, so I love rolling new characters anyway. But this is still an awesome feature.

And speaking of character creation, take a look at the creation options. An incredible amount of alternatives, including height differences, separate hip and shoulder widths etc etc. I love it!

And finally, a game where you can learn all the crafting skills on one character should you choose to do so. Simply wonderful. I for one am going to pre order this game, and that's something I almost never do.

Finally I love the fact that there are three factions instead of the typical two. This should add a nice tension, particularly to PVP . Way too often, one side becomes irretrievably dominant in the PVP aspect, and that's a drag.

I'm looking forward to April 4^th a great deal now, and not just cause I'm sick of the winter time.

I was going to embed the relevant youtube videos here, but the sharing is disabled so here are the links:

Character creation: http://elderscrollsonline.com/en/media/videos/653

Gathering & Exploration: http://elderscrollsonline.com/en/media/videos/567

Character Progression: http://elderscrollsonline.com/en/media/videos/657

Good game y'all!