User blog:Madman97/You know what really grinds my Wabbajack's? S4E3: Quests in ESO

When I'm not inciting political upheaval and half complaing half trolling the population of this wikia, I have obligations to fulfill when I need to complete a certain rant quota. Well, I hope you all enjoyed a happy fourth of July you American swine (I live in Connecticut), and I hope you have had a nice time off, but now I am back and I mean business. And by business, I mean huge f*cking rant about something that is trivial when compared to the everyday grind of life, especially when put to context in a third world country like Sudan, Argentina, or Texas. (Sniff) God bless those bloody f*cking Americans. Also, Guy Fox Day is waaaaay better. I'm sorry, I've been watching Filthy Frank. "It's all fun and games until somebody dies...then it's f*cking hilarious." Ok, I'm done, let's get started.

I, for some dumb reason, requested from one of my friends if I could pick up where I left off when I last played the Elder Scrolls Online to further the story so I could somehow go beyond the sh*t in the beginning that makes the game extremely unappealing so I actually started doing quests. One of the big problems of ESO is that it invites comparisons to Skyrim, and while I should of known that since Bethesda wasn't behind the wheel on this one, I went in expecting ESO to be Skyrim with multiplayer. I did a rant on that somewhere that said there should be some form of multiplayer but that was half serious and the first rant I did for this season was why multiplayer was a sh*tty idea. Especially since Skyrim solidified itself into the hall of fame for single player RPG's. The quest system in Skyrim did put the pointer where you were supposed to go and they NPC giving you the quest did little more thn nudge you out the door, but the great thing about it was that you didn't have to do it immediatly, which is odd because I feel Alduin should have won years before we ever got to him because we were d*cking around with Ma'iq, J'zargo, and a f*ckton of butterflies. You would think that the dragon crisis should have a sense of urgency, but other than that, it worked extremely well. The quest system allowed us to embark on our quests our own way and in our own time, changing the gameplay every playthrough and making no two players exactly the same. But like I said, one of the big problems with ESO is that it will be compared with Skyrim, and when you hold the two up against each other, your face will visibly start to contort in dissapointment as you see just how crappy of a job Zenimax did. I may be overreacting about this, but I feel like the quest system in ESO sucks. Let me explain further.

While you were given some freedom in Skyrim and was encouraged to explore, in ESO you hardly venture very far from the person or thing that gave you the quest, limting you to the immediate area. Not to mention that the quests are unspectacular sometimes. Like going through an Oblivion gate to shut it down and immediatly arriving at the evil ball thing which I can't remember the name. Plus, exploration is further hindered because of the fact that the main quest going uncompleted keeps all the borders locked to you and does not allow you to venture beyond your starting area. You're a Nord and want to see this games take on Skyrm? Wait, you havn't really gotten to the main quest yet? Tough Sh*t. I'm sorry to say it, but this game is no Skyrim, and I tore all the problems that game had up in three whole seasons. Imagine how many episodes I'll get out of this!

That's a double edged sword. While I enjoy writing very much and creating blogs for the enjoyment of the audience, it pains me to see that the topics that I will use in the coming episodes are so apparent that it will keep me so busy. At least in Skyrim it took a little digging to find every single problem with it, bugs and all. Here, the problems can be spotted by a two year old, a dissapointing achievement gained by Zenimax, especially for a title that held such promise. Massive changes are unlikely in the PC version at this point besides maybe improving a couple systems or making DLC's, so it may be safe to say that the Elder Scrolls Online will not be worth picking up come console release. However, the game is still relatively young, and I will hold out a little longer to see if Zenimax can get their affairs together and start improving the system. There is a great game waiting there, but it needs a little fine tuning. And speaking of fine tuning, next episode, we're going to talk about something that REALLY should have been fine tuned. Stay Ranty everyone.