Human party members in 'The Elder Scrolls Online'

In some cases, MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) can find themselves getting off on the wrong foot as the development team behind them seeks to iron out unforeseen kinks such as bugs in quests, PvP matchmaking and the way that the game’s servers cope under the strain of thousands of players. For the most part these things are unavoidable and due to the breadth and scope of some MMOs - it’s in their very nature to experience these hurdles. Despite already receiving several patches and updates, The Elder Scrolls Online seems to be suffering from this same early launch ailment with some particularly negative reviews being published. Matt Firor, the Director of The Elder Scrolls Online, has responded to the negativity in a new blog post on the game’s official website.

Many of the reviews that have offered criticisms of the game have cited two key problems; quest gameplay and settings. With quests, some reviewers point to a fundamental problem with the way that many quests are put together as tasks requiring players to do things like put out fires surrounding a building, but that results in dozens of players vying for the same flames to distinguish, sometimes seeing over 20 people fight over themselves waiting for the flames to respawn. The same goes for bosses in dungeons, and various other tasks - tasks that are also a bit of a grind. Other critics have point the finger at The Elder Scrolls Online’s locations and the three factions in the game — the Ebonheart Pact, the Daggerfall Covenant and the Aldmeri Dominion — explaining that due to the way that the quests are located, you’ll very much find yourself revisiting the same sorts of places with the same sort of designs and textures according to which faction you aligned with.

This is not however, the sort of criticism that Firor addressed, instead pointing out that “some of the negativity in reviews comes from bugs.” It’s true that bugs are an issue in the game — as they are with many an MMO — which is why he also revealed the dev team’s plan for fixing them:

“As you can see, we’re hard at work addressing them and will keep rolling out fixes. The important thing for you, the community, to know is that we’re looking at ALL the feedback (from critics and from players), we’re addressing any shortcomings, and we’ll continue to do so. This game will get better and better every week.”

While there are plenty of elements that reviewers have disliked about The Elder Scrolls Online that seem to be systematic (and therefore unfixable without a significant overhaul), Firor adds that for Bethesda and ZeniMax a “true measure of ESO is what players in the game think” and that as a result they are “starting up several community programs that put you in the spotlight and ask you to submit your builds, guilds, screenshots, and more–the chronicles of your life in Tamriel–for us to share.

The community aspect of the new title will be one of the plus points in any review of the game so despite “scores ranging from 90s to 50s,” as Firor says, the fact that players will “find that watching videos and reading stories by other players about the fun and interesting things they’ve done in-game will lead you in a different direction to try new things” the negative points may not be such a hindrance as some would think.

Are you satisfied with the MMO take on The Elder Scrolls brand? Are the complaints valid? What's missing, if anything, from the game and what would you change?

We currently have two Game Ranters playing through The Elder Scrolls Online and since it's such a large game, our review is still in the works, so stick around for more TESO in the coming days and weeks!

Source: The Elder Scrolls Online Blog