Ragar ventures into the world of Tamriel to give his impressions of Zenimax Online's upcoming MMO

There are now less than two months to go before the official release date for Zenimax Online's newest edition to the Elder Scrolls franchise, The Elder Scrolls Online. After five single-player only games, TESO is the series' first game to not only include multiplayer (without a third-party mod), but also the studio's first entry into the MMO market. Many of us here at ZAM, myself included, are big fans of the Elder Scrolls series, with hours upon hours put into Skyrim alone. The question that remains is whether Zenimax can carry over the appeal of the single-player games and put it into an MMO that appeals to both fans of the Elder Scrolls series and veteran MMO players?

Over the past few weeks I've had the chance to sit down with the game and see more than the stress test weekends would allow. While there is still much more to the game than I was able to experience, I've seen enough that I can give my early impressions of the game.

The Origins of a Hero

When you start TESO you can choose a race from one of the many options traditionally available in the Elder Scrolls series. In addition to determining appearance, some NPC dialogue changes, starting crafting style (more on this later) and racial skill lines, your choice of race also determines which of the three Alliances you'll be playing first on your journey through Tamriel. Your choices are the Aldmeri Dominion (Altmer/Bosmer/Khajiit), the Daggerfall Covenant (Breton/Redguard/Orc) and the Ebonheart Pact (Nord/Dunmer/Argonian). These restrictions can be avoided if you pre-purchase the game, as that comes with the Explorers Pack, allowing players the ability to join any alliance as any race. There's also the option of playing as an Imperial, for those of you looking to buy the Imperial Edition of the game.

Once you've finished selecting your race and customized your appearance, it's then time to choose your class. While TESO's skill system is a deck-style one where all players can use all equipment and its associated skills, your class does provide you with some options to make your character different from others. My character with his heavy armor and two-handed weapon may have the same weapon skills as an equivalent player with the same equipment and skill levels, but depending on our class choices, we may have very different action bars. For this beta character I chose the Templar class. There are DPS skill lines for the Templar class, but I chose it for the healing abilities. Going into the beta, I didn't know if I would make it to any dungeons to try tanking, but a healer should always be useful, right? With that last decision made, it was time for Ragar Kegdrainer, Nord Adventurer, to make his way into Tamriel for glory and fortune.

I'll try and get through the opening in as spoiler-free a manner as possible. You begin the game as you're being freed from a prison in Coldharbour. The woman leading the prison break asks for your help in freeing someone she came in to the prison with and escape back to Tamriel. This prison break scenario serves as your tutorial for TESO's controls and gameplay mechanics, from stealth and item interaction to weapon options and skills. Near the beginning you'll choose a starter weapon to defend yourself during the prison break; you'll find others as you move towards freedom, providing you some relief in case the weapon you chose originally (or its skill options) doesn't fit your playstyle. Eventually you find a way out of Coldharbour with the other prisoner you were asked to rescue. You then begin the faction-specific part of your story as you appear in a starting town for your Alliance, brimming with quests to take, NPCs to chat with, boxes to loot and more.

Enough with the Story - How's the Gameplay?

So now that you've got an idea how the game starts, let's talk about actually playing it. Combat in TESO is fairly simple: you have left mouse for attack, holding down left mouse for power attacks, right mouse for blocks, an interrupt by hitting left and right mouse together, and finally your action bar abilities. These five slots, along with your one slot for Ultimate abilities (powerful moves that you charge up with every attack/heal in combat), are where you assign your various class abilities and weapon skills for whatever you're wielding at the time. Once you hit level 15 you'll gain access to weapon swapping and have a second set of five abilities to flip between for a total of ten active skills. Until you get to that point though, you'll only have those five slots to play with as you make your way to 15.

Personally I found that having only five active skills available somewhat restrictive, but in general it works with the variety you can effectively use with a given weapon. Since there are only five active skills for each weapon style and for each of your class skill paths, it's a much less daunting decision for each of those slots, as you can pare down your options to fit your role at the time. I do believe that adding an extra slot or two would be a beneficial change though, especially when you start factoring in extra skills from the dungeon-clearing Undaunted line, the Mages and Fighters Guild lines, and both of the PvP skill lines from Cyrodiil. Sure, you could put those other skills on your second weapon bar, but what if you had skills for that weapon that you needed? Considering how expensive all of the skills in TESO are, it's not like it would bump up the power curve substantially.

That one was actually my major issue with the combat since it felt like 80% of what I was doing was power attacks until I had enough Stamina for an attack or enough Magicka to heal. This one I'm reluctant to call a major problem just yet because it's difficult to judge resource generation at low level without properly balanced equipment sets, but from what I've seen, I felt resource starved most of the time. For my two-handed weapon skill set, I would use Critical Charge to move into combat, either Cleave for AoE groups or Uppercut/Reverse Slash for solo mobs, and then it was power attacks until one of my attacks lit up. The Templar heals on my bar were mostly to keep me alive, but part of it was also just to give me another button to hit.

Going back to the skill system, there are a few other areas I need to cover: Passive Skills, Skill Points and Skill Morphing. Passive Skills are what you would expect in a talent tree for other MMOs—reduced cost of two-handed weapon feats, increased healing with your Templar skills, restoring Magicka on kills with destruction staves, etc. Each rank in these Passive Skills takes a skill point just like their Active Skill counterparts, but no slotting is required—these bonuses will always be in effect, provided you meet any weapon/skill restrictions listed. Of course, this means you have to spend your skill point on something other than a new button to press, which at low level does feel a tad excessive given how slowly points come early on. While leveling, barring the odd skill point from a quest reward, the only points you'll get are one every time you level up and one with every third Skyshard (hidden interactive items scattered across all zones). That slow income of skill points needs to be split between all of the weapon skill lines you want to try, all the passives you think will help, any guild/race/story/PvP skills you'd like, as well as any Skill Morphing you'd like to do.

While you adventure in Tamriel, your overall character level isn't the only thing that levels up. Your armor and weapon skill lines level up, providing you with access to more advanced techniques, new ranks for Passive Skills and more. In addition your Active Skills within those lines will level up, becoming slightly stronger. Eventually these skills will reach a threshold where they can no longer level up until they've been Morphed. When you spend a skill point to Morph an Active Skill, you're given the opportunity to choose one of two options to replace your original skill. These replacement skills, each with a different name, have the same base ability as the original but each adds a new trait. Let's use Cleave as an example since it's a pretty standard ability - one swing to hit multiple targets in range. When the time came to Morph my Cleave, the two options I was given would either add a chance to inflict a bleed on each of those targets or a guaranteed damage shield on myself that grew stronger with each target the Cleave struck. Both of these Morphs were quite useful options (that damage shield helped stretch out my Magicka reserves for those really ugly large pack pulls), but they presented the player with a definite choice in how they wanted to play their character. Assuming these Morph decisions can be changed later on to stick with TESO's theme of allowing players to try unconventional builds, I think it's a good way to inject a little more variability into their skill system to make cookie cutter builds less appealing. It won't prevent them, but it'll help encourage players to stand out from the players around them.