ELDER SCROLLS ONLINE FREE TO PLAY LAUCH PATCH

It's thus a shame that the trials, while fun enough, serve as a poster child for the issues Elder Scrolls Online faces every time it tries to deliver a non-standard MMO experience. It was one of the first signs that ZeniMax might know what it's doing with late-game content, after all.

ELDER SCROLLS ONLINE FREE TO PLAY LAUCH PATCH

The Craglorn patch back in May added an 'adventure zone' dedicated to group content, whether it be dynamic events and world bosses, public dungeons that required other players to complete, or two new 12-player 'trials' that filled in the need for raid-like encounters. I'd spend the majority of the veteran leveling process in the dungeons if I could, but poor XP for repeated runthroughs and boss loot that's easily salable in guild stores diminish some of the appeal.Д«ut for weeks after launch, those dungeons constituted the end game experience aside from faction battles in the PvP zone of Cyrodiil (and why, ZeniMax is there no world PvP?). Here the depth of ESO's combat best reveals itself, and the resulting challenges reveal weaknesses in builds that weren'tapparent when bulldozing through the core 1-50 content. The dungeons found in veteran ranks alone are worth the effort it takes to reach them, as some of the encounters resemble mini-raids that demand at least a modicum of coordination and cooperation among random players. If you can stick it out to Veteran Rank, Elder Scrolls Online's end game shows promise. MMOs seldom take you from the high note of battling a fiend like a daedric lord to knocking you back to the beginning in the style of an action RPG like Path of Exile, but ESO insists on making you play through the leveling content of the other two factions before you reach the true level cap of Veteran Rank 12.

In ESO, it's more like starting another lap.

Reaching the level cap in most of its competitors resembles crossing a finish line of sorts, granting access to better loot through high-level dungeons and raids as a reward. MMORPGs depend on the lively interactions and coordinated group efforts that greeted me upon my return, and ESO inexplicably holds this aspect of its experience at a distance. ZeniMax has shown some competence so far in delivering an end game that its loyal players want to play, but now the question is whether it can overcome lingering issues with balance, fresh content, and a tedious leveling experience beyond the level cap. The pieces, it seems, are in place to get back on track after a rocky start. I needed that it gave me hope that the roughly 400 hours I've spent with the game to date weren't for naught, and that other players shared the same begrudging affection for it as I do. I logged in to find almost every player at Veteran Rank 12 rushing to complete one of the new 'Trials,' and they bugged me about why I hadn't been logging in as though all the factors above weren't into play.

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