A good game

While ESO has it's issues (what game doesn't), I agree that it's a good game and the devs are in touch with the players a lot more than they are here. And they also put out content much faster than here. Their latest expansion is coming out in May for PC, so I'll probably end up playing it again until something else catches my eye. I already have 8 maxed characters and the AvA can be fun. Maybe it'll be able to hold my attention for a while at least.

to a degree. your character is not voiced and not every quest offers you options, but there are quite a few who allow you do decide how to progress your quest. there are no morality points, just options on whether you let someone live, or die, arrest them or cover up for them, help, or intimidate them into helping you, etc. returning characters remember you when you do quests in later zones and run into them again (there are quite a few recurring characters) while your personal story is basically the same for every character, there are 3 distinct alliance stories. think planetary stories.

I will never claim that someone trying it - would like it, guaranteed. absolutely not. its not a game for everyone anymore than SWTOR is.

combat is very different from swtor, setting and tone is also very different. but... it IS a very story and character rich game. and if you are into strongholds - housing is pretty amazing. expensive (mostly in game gold - at say about.. 90% of it, though there is an option to pay real life money and some things are real life money exclusive), but a lot more flexible then swtor's strongholds. no hooks. you can build your own buildings or giant statues, combine items etc.

I find it to be a great fun, personaly. and honestly, I have found story arcs to be equal to those of original swtor stories, and unlike swtors expansion where quality of storytelling just kept going downhill (and if we are going to talk about cheese, don't even get me started on alliance version of MAKEB, among other things) - ESO stories, IMO are getting better with each new addition.

Thanks for the info. I have a friend who plays this and asked me once or twice if I'd like to try it out, but I believe it's pay-to-play(?) and I'm really hesitant on buying games I'm note sure I'll like... SWTOR was the first MMORPG I ever played, and I really enjoy getting to pick what my character says and does (and the voice over!). I already tried Neverwinter Online for a month or two, but quit it pretty quickly due to bad quality of story and because I felt I was controlling a bunch of pixels, not a character. I don't really self-insert, and I don't think I could even if I wanted to, so I need to feel that the PC is a character, not just a blank slate.

Anyway, I might look into ESO sometime. I guess it depends on how much I can choose when it comes to my character's actions, what kind of story it is (to me, there's a huge difference between being equal to, let's say, trooper story and Imperial Agent story) and what the combat is like.

They're doing a free week right now (through Mar 27) if you want to check it out at no cost. Here's the link for it.

as posted above, there is a free trial going on right now, so might as well give it a go for me, i cannot help BUT start roleplaying my characters. there is enough within the quests, for me, to get a feel for my character personalities and lore helps with the rest (for instance - normally you are limited which race you can play with which alliance, but I have ability to play any alliance with any race unlocked, so part of the role playing process is figuring out why is a world would orcimer be part of altmeri dominion, for instance and that helps a lot with a feel for character as well).

I cannot say whether you will like the story as much as I do, becasue to be honest, I love both trooper and agent stories for different reasons (the only story I didn't enjoy in SWTOR was that of jedi knight, it just felt so.... generic and dull to me, yeah, I know weirdo, especially since I adored the Consular story)

combat is.... hard to get used to. if you played neverwinter, you kind might get a hint of it. its more action oriented, while you have acess to a LOT of abilities eventually, you only get to actively use 12 of them after you hit lvl 15. if you ever tried GW2, ESO combat is probably closest to that with a dash of Neverwinter thrown in. its action oriented, you can dodge, sprint, roll (and should) while still attacking.

and this is the most difficult and may be a deal breaker. no sticky targeting. you have to aim at what you want to hit, or you don't hit it. its very similar with healing, you don't get to select your heal targets - you have to aim most things in a direction of players you want to heal. its faster paced than swtor because of it.

but in any case, how invested you are into the world and the lore - WILL dictate just how much you enjoy it. I also enjoyed Neverwinter story up to a point where they turned it into a daily grind, and then I quit. but I'm fairly interested in dungeons and Dragons. i ADORE ESO, but it helps a lot that I very much enjoy the lore of Elder scrolls in general and there is PLENTY of that in ESO. big draw of SWTOR WAS that its star wars. I would not have been nearly as invested into it, had it been set in a different universe. might enjoy the stories still, but it wouldn't have been a game that I played for 5 years continuously, before mostly moving on and still come back to every once in a while, despite the stories IMO going REALLY downhill for the last few years.

so... yeah, I mean... I would say with it being free trial week right now - i'd give it a try. if you don't like it? that's cool too. different stories and games are for different people and that's as it should be, life would be really boring if there was no variety to it :P.

P.S. if you want to be able to use intimidate or persuade options - at the earliest opportunity, you should join the fighters and mages guild respectively. those are abilities from these specific skill lines and available to learn once you unlock them. although... a lot of times its actualy more fun and better story/outcome if you do NOT use one of those options. it honestly depends on the quest like there was one quest where I very much regretted using intimidate option, as it resulted in a death of a character. death that could have been prevented had I allowed quest giver to convince me to complete the quest the hard way. then again... if fit with my own characters state of mind at the time so... it was more of a me, the player that kinda regretted that choice :P

I tried that. Too much fighting with my firewall. Um. Not the piece of carp that Windows or even my AV thinks is a firewall, but a proper commercial UTM/IPS firewall(0). I had to configure a special alarm policy to get it to even download, and even then it wouldn't allow me to log in to the game.(1) I applied the last line of an XKCD cartoon to it. (Also not doing anything with a game that (a) requires Admin access and (b) doesn't do what it takes to get an automatic UAC query and (c) fails miserably to update itself as a result.)

Shame, because I enjoyed (way far back in the day, although it didn't age well) Elder Scrolls: Arena.

(0) Loaner from work. "Work" is a company that makes such things, and the box under my desk at home contains code I wrote.

(1) Strongly indicative of incompetent morons in charge of the game's netcode.

Next suggestion?

as someone who have never used commercial firewalls and as such, have no idea what they require, etc. i have no reccomendation. my own install doesn't require admin access :/ it just.. works. and I have installed the game from scratch recently on a new laptop. is it an issue with a firewall? game? no idea. not my area of expertise. I just know that it works perfectly fine for me and I enjoy playing it.

I mean... maybe try secret world legends? they are about to release new story chapter, the game in general is actual genuine f2p. there are some limitations vs subscription, but its mostly of the "you get less currency, fast travel has costs rather then being free and you can repeat missions every 3 days, instead of every 8 hours" sort of thing. and stories are good. there are almost no choices in quests, so you cannot really role play your character through quests, but if you just want some nice stories and pretty good cutscenes and engaging characters - it works.

IMO they have for the most part improved combat vs original secret world.

Ugh, no, not at all. It wasn't great before, but it is more not-great in SWL than TSW. (My opinion, having played both.)

well have to agree to disagree then. because I never got past Kingsmouth in original game, but I finished Tokyo and can't wait for Morninglight chapter in SWL.

original was far too punishing early on. maker help you if you made one or 2 wrong choices, you were stuck grinding repeatable quests for ap before you could get anywhere.

I might be having same issues... Or similiar. I decided to try it out, and after downloading it from steam, I first got stuck on a screen that just said "updating". Closed everything to check if I could see firewall doing something stupid, didn't see anything, and decided to try to run the launcher again. This time I got a proper launcher screen, but it gave me some notification that some file cannot be found, and soon after that, error 102 and told me to contact customer service. :/

I googled how to fix error 102, and using the repair tool and rebooting my internet seem to be possible fixes... Currently running the repair program, but I have a bad feeling about this.