Elder Scrolls Online (PC) Beta - Part 3 - Guest Post

Welcome to the final part of an epic early look at the latest Elder Scrolls game, where guest poster Jihaus reveals his experience of the game from a MMO player's point of view. I explained why we're both writing about the same game in back in part 1, and if you want to see the game from the perspective of an Elder Scrolls fan, you might want to read what I thought about it in part 2 as well.

Today we get to take a different look at the beta of the upcoming Elder Scrolls Online, because this is going to be the first Elder Scrolls game I'll have played in my life. I have a passing knowledge of the series from various friends, but otherwise the series is new to me. I have however played other MMORPGS, with World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV clocking the most hours, so that's the perspective I'll be coming from.

This being an MMORPG it's a slow burn experience, so you'll be seeing a lot more time compression in this article than you're used to from SAG. Ray and I played this beta for about three days, which for an MMO is actually not far in at all.

We begin of course by logging in, which comes after the lengthy installation and setup that precedes most any MMORPG. I'm greeted by a short placeholder video that consists of text on a slideshow that tells me that my character is some poor schmoe who gets taken to an underground ritual site and carved up, and then wakes up without a soul in Oblivion, which as far as I know is hell. Then we get to see what our soulless protagonist looks like.

(Click the screenshots to view the 1024x786 resolution originals.)

Elder Scrolls Online (PC) Beta - Part 2

Congratulations, you have chosen to read part 2 of Super Adventure's epic three part Elder Scrolls Online beta event, where I take a look at the game myself. I wasted a page explaining why ESO is getting so many pages page back in part 1 and you can read an alternative view of the game from MMO fan Jihaus in part 3.

To be honest I'm kind of dreading the game. Part of it is that I'm very fond of Elder Scrolls and I don't want to play a shoddy MMO imposter dressed up in its mythology developed by a new developer who doesn't quite get the point. But also I don't much like the idea of being forced to co-ordinate with complete strangers just to make it through dungeons.

In fact the whole idea of being forced to be online for the whole game really puts me off, because I don't really want my embarrassing attempts at figuring out basic things for the first time to be on full display to crowds of people. But then I basically do that twice a week for this website so I should just get over it and play the game already. I mean it took forever to download all 30GB of it so I might as well.

(Click the images to expand them to an exotic 1265x786 resolution. Not what I set it to, but it'll do.)

Elder Scrolls Online (PC) Beta - Part 1

Today's B game is... the Elder Scrolls Online Beta! Yeah it's a stretch, but when I was offered a chance to play it I had to take it. Only a fool would let opportunity slip by just because it's alphabetically inconvenient.

I'm pretty sure that one of the M's in MMO stands for multiplayer, so I'll be joining up with a friend on this one. Not only are we going to be playing together, but we're each writing up our own opinions on it as well. He knows nothing about Elder Scrolls and I know nothing about MMOs, so between us we've got every angle covered.

So you've got two full articles here to choose from this time, from two different perspectives:

Ray Hardgrit plays the Elder Scrolls Online Beta.
I'm coming into this as basically a total MMO newbie and one of last people left on Earth who hasn't played World of Warcraft, though I'm very fond of the Elder Scrolls series. I've played all the PC and console games from Arena to Skyrim (yes even Battlespire), and I'll be comparing Elder Scrolls Online to them constantly.

Jihaus plays the Elder Scrolls Online Beta.
The guy has never touched an Elder Scrolls game and wouldn't know the difference between a Dunmer and a Dwemer, but he knows his shit when it comes to MMOs and will be able to analyse how Elder Scrolls Online measures up to the competition.

Pick the one that sounds the most interesting to you, or read them both if you feel like it. Then leave comments! Amazing, witty, inspiring comments.

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn (PC) - Guest Post

I don't generally play multiplayer games for Super Adventures, as I just don't feel like they're a good fit for the site. But Jihaus here plays what he damn well pleases and today he's taking on the latest MMO to steal a numbered slot in the Final Fantasy line: Final Fantasy 14: Online 2: A Realm Reborn.

Ray was hitting a bunch of Final Fantasy games recently and I figured it'd be a good time to jump back into Final Fantasy XIV. I'm relatively familiar with the game from the short time I played the beta earlier this year but this time I have a chance to start over with it and really analyze it.

This will be the first MMORPG post of Super Adventures in Gaming so some may be wondering how this is going to work, being that MMORPGs are long, drawn out affairs in which it takes a lot longer to do things compared to offline games. The answer to that is, about the same, I'll just be compressing the timeline a bit here so this will seem a lot faster than the game really is.

As a bit of backstory, we're actually playing A Realm Reborn, not the original FFXIV Online released in 2010, which was apparently such a critical flop that Square Enix shut down the servers and redid the game, rereleasing it 3 years later in this newer, improved package. I haven't played the original so I can't compare, but I'd say I'm familiar enough with MMORPG mechanics to give this a fair shake.

Of course you run into the most horrible of MMO roadblocks before getting here: installing the game, and waiting for it to update EVERYTHING, a process I let run overnight as the ETA was in the thousands of minutes at first. Once that was over, I was able to just use the same account I had and proceed.