Between work and home life, it's been a busy couple of weeks. However, I have finally finished up the last of the three faction storylines for ESO, which means I've completed "Vanilla" Elder Scrolls Online.*
I have plenty of thoughts to unpack, but I figured I'd get something off my chest now: for a 3 faction MMO, I'd have expected the "enemy" of each faction to be equally represented in the faction storylines.
But it isn't.
This isn't exactly a spoiler, given that we're talking the 500 mile view, but the the factions and their "main" enemies are as follows:
That's not to say that the Daggerfall and Aldmeri questlines are inferior to the Ebonheart Pact's, because they're not. Each has their own theme about keeping an alliance together throughout difficult times, and with all three factions there are zone quests that definitely fall under the title of "tragedy". Still, with the Pact reduced to basically background noise on the other factions' storylines, I do wonder how this plays into PvP.
I've seen enough PvP over the years to know that if you don't get some good natural antagonism going between the factions it's going to be pretty hard for people to buy into the concept of PvP. With the Pact, you've got ample evidence of how bad the other two factions are, so there's little hold you back yelling "For the Pact!" heading into a PvP match. But with, say, Daggerfall, if you're up against Pact enemies, my reaction would be "Oh look, some pirates!" rather than "There's my hated enemy!"
There, I got that off my chest, and now I can investigate Craglorn prior to jumping into Morrowind.
*Somewhere in the middle of all this, I picked up the lead-in questlines for Morrowind, Summerset, and Murkmire. I finished Morrowind and Murkmire, but I've decided to complete Morrowind's story first before finishing Summerset's lead-in questline.
**If you get the reference, that is. Seriously, look it up; it's a great setting for D&D.
I have plenty of thoughts to unpack, but I figured I'd get something off my chest now: for a 3 faction MMO, I'd have expected the "enemy" of each faction to be equally represented in the faction storylines.
But it isn't.
This isn't exactly a spoiler, given that we're talking the 500 mile view, but the the factions and their "main" enemies are as follows:
- Ebonheart Pact: A lot of Daggerfall Covenant early on, a bit of Aldmeri Dominion, topped off with the Worm Cult.
- Daggerfall Covenant: A bit of Aldmeri Dominion early on, a lot of Daedric Cults and Ravenloft**, and the Imperials.
- Aldmeri Dominion: A lot of civil war, some Covenant interference, more Daedric Cults, and finally the Imperials.
Do you see what's missing?
The Ebonheart Pact is not noticed very much in the storylines for the other two factions. Oh, there's the occasional quest hub that has "Pact pirates" or something similar, but 90+% of those turned out to be House Telvanni, which isn't a signer of the Ebonheart Pact at all. There's really only one quest hub that stands out to me that the Pact itself are the bad guys, and that's about it.
That's not to say that the Daggerfall and Aldmeri questlines are inferior to the Ebonheart Pact's, because they're not. Each has their own theme about keeping an alliance together throughout difficult times, and with all three factions there are zone quests that definitely fall under the title of "tragedy". Still, with the Pact reduced to basically background noise on the other factions' storylines, I do wonder how this plays into PvP.
I've seen enough PvP over the years to know that if you don't get some good natural antagonism going between the factions it's going to be pretty hard for people to buy into the concept of PvP. With the Pact, you've got ample evidence of how bad the other two factions are, so there's little hold you back yelling "For the Pact!" heading into a PvP match. But with, say, Daggerfall, if you're up against Pact enemies, my reaction would be "Oh look, some pirates!" rather than "There's my hated enemy!"
There, I got that off my chest, and now I can investigate Craglorn prior to jumping into Morrowind.
*Somewhere in the middle of all this, I picked up the lead-in questlines for Morrowind, Summerset, and Murkmire. I finished Morrowind and Murkmire, but I've decided to complete Morrowind's story first before finishing Summerset's lead-in questline.
**If you get the reference, that is. Seriously, look it up; it's a great setting for D&D.
Out of curiosity, how long did it take you to do this? And did you do side quests too or just the main storyline?
ReplyDeleteOh boy... Let's see here...
DeleteThis is only for the toon I'm currently playing, which is my female Dunmer Nightblade, whom I started out by skipping Morrowind and going back to the Vanilla starting point for the Pact instead. Since my initial foray into ESO was with a Redguard Templar, I felt restarting with another toon would give me a better feel for the entire Vanilla experience.
As for methodology, I only moved on to another zone when I finished not only the solo quests but the Delves (solo oriented dungeons), the Dolmens, and found all of the Interesting Locales (the ones with the "eye" on the map keys.
With that out of the way, here's the breakdown:
Ebonheart Pact: Roughly Third Week of August to mid-November, so 3 months.
Daggerfall Covenant: Mid-November to End of December, 1.5 months.
Aldmeri Dominion: Beginning of January to Beginning of March, so 3 months.
At first Daggerfall sticks out, but given the vacation time built in due to the Thanksgiving (end of November) and Christmas (end of December) holidays, there were days when I played a lot more than an hour or two of ESO.
Additionally, you only play the "endgame" once, because all three faction stories lead to the same endgame, so there's the additional 2-3 zones that weren't in place for Daggerfall or Aldmeri. As you can guess, I didn't play Aldmeri Dominion quite as often as the other two --hence the three month time-- but I was also bombarded with other items at work and home, so it wasn't boredom by any stretch.
If you're fitting ESO into a regular schedule of logging in and actually playing an hour or two 3-5 days a week, you can expect 3 months of a completion date if you're playing your first faction all the way through to completion on the Vanilla campaign. (I believe the Morrowind and Summerset expacs add about 2-3 weeks to this estimate.) If you are looking at subsequent faction stories, it's likely around 2 months for completion with the same playing rate.
Now, you'll notice that my activities didn't include multiplayer activities such as group Delves, Public Dungeons, or Cyrodiil and other PvP activites. Other items missing were a lot of crafting activity or leveling up my mount; the former I wouldn't have minded, but bag space is a premium without an ESO Plus account, and the latter I didn't really bother with until a month or two ago because I preferred exploring on foot. Those activities will obviously add to your time spent in-game.
ESO isn't perfect by any means, just like any other MMO it has good points and bad points. But I do believe I prefer it --right now, anyway-- to GW2. The story is overall fairly good, with the "excessively buddy buddy with the faction leaders" part notwithstanding, and I had more "Oh Crap, what do I decide?" moments in ESO than in GW2 or Vanilla SWTOR, even though I realize that in general the choices you make only affect how certain people view you in-game versus having a true impact like found on a single player RPG. The best way I can describe it is if SWTOR had a lot more moments like that found in A-77 in the Trooper's storyline in SWTOR. There was one at a locale late in the Aldmeri Dominion's playthrough that I still wonder whether I made the right decision. And if a quest can make me think that a week or two later, that quest did its job.