Been playing this for the last few years. Helped me get through lockdown!
It’s been around for long enough that there is absolutely loads of content. I love that there are several different ways to play, too. I love housing and decorating, but there’s casual questing, end game content, PVP, crafting… It’s fun!
I don’t know if we’re permitted to post links that that here, so I won’t. But if you go to the Epic Games store, it’s free through 27 July.
Happy questing!
If anyone’s on the fence, its definitely worth your time to check out.
Question is if it works Linux :)
I can’t speak for the EGS version, but the game itself works fairly well.
Yeah it works. Well at least the last time I tried which was a few years ago but I imagine it still works fine.
I run it through Steam as a “non-Steam” game via Proton and have also run it with Lutris. It runs on both 100% fine, if not even better than Windows. In fact, this game running great has convinced me to finally drop my dual boot!
I know it shifted from a subscription model to a paid DLC one. Do you actually need to buy some DLCs to get an enjoyable experience out of this? Do you only need the endgame stuff once you get there, like buying the latest WoW expansion? How does this model actually work for chill players?
You can do probably 60-70% of the game just with base version. You won’t be hamstrung by missing meta sets or content. Even then, DLC sets that can be crafted can still be obtained by having someone else craft the for you, or by having access to tables via a guildmate (like 95% sure it works that way, if not, you just need the 3rd party crafter). You’ll obviously miss the new zones, dungeons, trials, and skill lines, but you’ll still get over a hundred of hours of content.
You can absolutely play this casually. The base game stuff is pretty easy in comparison to how it was, with power creep and such, but it’s, at worst, a good, long introduction to the game systems to better gauge your future interest.
If you subscribe and get ESO+, you get ‘…Access to all DLC game packs available in the Crown Store for the duration of membership’. That does not include the latest chapter; right now that’s Necrom. There’s a new one each year, so you’ll be able to play Necrom next year with a membership if you don’t want to buy it outright.
They do a good job of making the membership very appealing, I have to say. Increased bank space, double the slots for furnishings in your houses, and a bottomless crafting bag, for ex. But they are not obnoxious about it like, say, Neverwinter Nights is.
I left right before High Isle came out, but nothing I’ve tried since has really caught my attention the same way. Even GW2, as awesome as it is, and as many QoL features it has that I deeply missed in ESO, just… isn’t the same.
Did they ever get the Champion Points re-worked into something that doesn’t suck? I hate the way the green constellations worked, particularly; whose idea was it to say “Nobody harvests, chest-hunts, fishes, and searches for crafting recipes at the same time, so obviously it’s silly to let players equip all those bonuses at once”??
Even if not, I think I might drop Netflix and re-up my subscription. If just to remind me why I left, maybe?
As someone who played GW2 a ton; what does it have that ESO doesn’t? Just curious.
Getting access to all the weapon skills is so much faster, which makes trying out new builds a thousand times easier.
Not having to find and speak to the quest giver before I can do the quest is great. I like just having to get into their radius without having to track them down before and after.
I’m a big explorer, so I really appreciate the rewards for exploring the maps (and the compass pointing me towards the things I missed).
The jumping puzzles are amazing.
The free mount not being a boring-ass horse is pretty cool. Mounts having different abilities is also cool. Not having to spend 120 real days upgrading your mounts is really nice.
Getting experience from harvesting and crafting. Not having to spend real-time months researching things to craft them.
Underwater exploration. Yeah, underwater combat is kind of a pain, but it’s still cool to have the option.
The directed story mode complete with boss fights in instances that can be done solo.
Classes are all totally different from each other; there are no “meta” skills for a specific role no matter what class you’re playing (eg, unstable wall, aggressive warhorn).
Enough skill points in the game to learn every skill and every specialization, along with the ability to switch builds on the fly just whenever (without having to go back to a shrine and pay to do it).
I’m not sure how I feel about having a centralized auction house. A lot of my endgame in ESO was shopping and flipping valuable things from one trader to another, but I have to admit it’s really handy to just be able to go buy a bunch of crafting materials in any city for the lowest available price.
Like, I could just keep going; there are so many things, both little and big, that I love about GW2. But for some reason, I just can’t get into it. Maybe it’s that it levels me up so fast that I don’t get to really enjoy the view and learn the class. Maybe it’s because the elite specializations change the class so dramatically that most of what I did learn during leveling is immediately obsolete at 80. Maybe it’s because the combat feels kind of clunky due to being a weird hybrid of action combat and tab targeting. Maybe it’s how complicated the buff system is, that I can’t really wrap my brain around all the different boons and when I need them. None of those are really big deals, just quirks of the game that make it unique, like all games have. But it’s not doing the same thing that ESO did for me.
Yo! I love guild wars 2, if there’s anything I can offer to help you click with the game? Or answer any questions for you? Regarding tab targeting vs action, really you can play it almost entirely like one or the other and you don’t need to interact with the other system if you don’t want to. And I’m happy to give you a breakdown of boons, hopefully it’s not as complex as it seems as first blush? But I love helping people click with the game because it took me a while and I’m glad I finally stuck so I’d love to pay it forward
I can’t speak on that specific timeline, but CP has had a pretty large makeover recently. You still only have 4 slottable abilities, but quite a few have moved to passive status. Unsure if the ones you reference specifically are though, green tree is usually a throwaway tree for me.
Can really recommend if you like a story-driven MMORPG with a nice amount of different builds and lots of achievement hunting and stuff to do. It’s gotten lots of addons by now and basically you can roam all around Tamriel.
