Is ESO Worth Playing 2021? The answer to this question is – Yes! Lucky Ghost has played ESO for years. In this video, he will lay out the game's strengths and weaknesses so that you can decide if Elder Scrolls Online is the right MMO for you in 2021. If you are new to this game, then MmoGah can be your best friend because our cheap ESO gold allows you to skip the grind and catch up with veterans.
Solo Content
How important is Solo content in ESO? Is it fun? How much time do you spend soloing in ESO? That's up to you, and it's a theme that will trend through all of the ESO topics.
ESO is a Sandbox, and it's an open world in which you can do whatever you want. It is not an MMO that holds your hand through the content, forcing you to go from A to B before you're allowed to enter dungeon C. ESO is very different and maybe even overwhelming at first as you try to decide what to do next.
Every time I tell a new player there are a dozen things they can do to continue progressing their character, they can become overwhelmed. But fear not. This is one of the strengths that will become one of the things you love most after this first moment of indecision. It allows you to spend more time doing the things you enjoy instead of doing the things the game is telling you to do.
Is the solo content fun? The solo content is some of the best solo content in any MMO I've ever played, especially at the early levels. Do you know how most MMOs' quests are just a series of fetch quests? Go kill ten of these, and then come back. Go pick up ten of these, and then come back. ESO's quests are not that. You will never have a fetch quest. Instead, you'll have a very story-driven quest much more akin to those you experience in Elder Scrolls Online.
The quests will often have a full story, and it will need your help getting things sorted out. They are entirely voice-acted so that you won't need to sit there reading walls of text as you engage with the questing experience. ESO's quests are the best in any MMO I've played to date.
What are their downsides? For a veteran player, the quests are quite trivial, both in their rewards and their difficulty. Since you can quest in any zone at level 10 or 810, the game tries to scale you accordingly. But the truth is, at 810, these quests are a little bit easy. The story behind them is still amazing, and I still run through every single one when they're added to the game just to soak up the lore, but I probably wouldn't describe them as a good challenge for my late-stage characters. I think ZOS is very aware of this issue, and I hope they plan to address it. But until they do, players looking for a challenge will have the rest of the game to keep them occupied.
Solo Arenas
In Maelstrom Arena, you have to fend off waves of enemies and finally take down a boss at the end. In Vateshran Hollows, you must traverse and explore a large dungeon-like zone with varying paths and approaches. Both of these can be set to Veteran difficulty for fun and incredibly challenging experience. Not only that, some fantastic gear can be found within.
Group Content
One of ESO's strengths is its group content. Forming up a group with friends I've met in the game to take down a Dungeon or some kind of Raid is always a good time, and Elder Scrolls Online has a ton of this type of content. ESO adds one new Trial or Raid and four new Dungeons every year, constantly giving your fresh content to run with friends.
Dungeons are completed with groups of four, and Trials are completed with groups of twelve. The great thing about Dungeons and Trials is that they have three different difficulty levels. You can run the Dungeons and Trials in normal difficulty, which is your beginner-friendly, stress-free romp through the content. After that, you can run it on Veteran difficulty, which can sometimes be an incredible challenge depending on the content. After the Veteran has been conquered, there is the third difficulty – Hard Mode, in which the mistakes you make result in the deaths of you and your party.
The end-game Trials on the hardest difficulty will require you to master your class and your role, and as a result, provide an immense feeling of accomplishment once you've defeated them. There are currently 34 Dungeons and 9 Trials in ESO, with more being added every year, and each one drops its own different sets of gear.
PvP
ESO has three forms of Player vs. Player content. You have the massive Open World battles that take place in Cyrodiil, where you can see battles with dozens versus dozens of players on each side, trying to take control of a castle keep.
Then you have the much more intimate and small-scale battles in the Battlegrounds, where three teams of four battle it out to see who can get the most kills or capture the most flags.
The third and final form of PvP is Imperial City Sewers, which falls somewhere between the previous two with battles ranging from 1v1 to 10v10. PvP in ESO allows for an insanely wide variety of builds and has a very high skill ceiling. It is not uncommon to see one player battling it out against five or ten successfully.
If ESO has one flaw, it's the server's ability to handle the load of the large-scale battles in Cyrodiil. For years, the servers have struggled to keep up, and it's not uncommon to see the server struggling during peak hours. If you want to play ESO solely for the Cyrodiil experience, just be aware of this issue. But, to be fair, outside of the peak hours in Cyrodiil, the game runs great. I've had no problems in lower-pop Cyrodiil campaigns, nor have I had performance problems in Imperial City Sewers or the Battlegrounds.
Combat
Combat is, without a doubt, one of ESO's strengths. It's fast-paced, fluid, and incredibly strategic. Some of your character's growth comes from levels and gear. Every character has tons of different skill lines and passives they can choose to invest in and create a truly unique character to play around as.
Of course, not every combination is a winner, but there's also fun in trying to find the ones that are. That's something I spend a ton of time doing. Thus, if you want to skip the trial and error and try builds that have been proven and tested, be sure to check out my build guides.
In Elder Scrolls Online, any class can be a Tank, Healer, or Damage Dealer, which means you can easily turn a Sorcerer into any one of the three roles. Or, you can create a hybrid of all three to create an unstoppable solo machine. However you choose to play Elder Scrolls Online, the Combat will be dynamic and fun, and it is a large part of why I love this game.
Cosmetic Customization
One thing that is always important to me in an MMO is Character Customization. I want my character to look unique. But above all, I want it to look badass. What I love is not necessarily what you love, and this is another area where ESO shines.
There are so many ways to customize everything about your character. You can change the color of your armor. You can even change the style of your armor and how it looks. But, you can go beyond that and change your character's personality and even your character's skin. The amount of customization is nearly unlimited, allowing you to create a character that you will love.
Housing
Elder Scrolls Online housing is among the best of any MMO. You can create anything you want. I've seen players create giant houses from a plot of land. I've also seen players create mazes and obstacle courses in their houses. You can put Crafting stations, other NPCs, and anything you can think of in your house. You can also put Parse Dummies there. The options are almost limitless, and for some players, this is all they do every day when they sign into Elder Scrolls Online.
Population Health
All of those sound good, but none of it matters if no one plays the game. If you can't find a Dungeon group or a Trial group, it doesn't matter how good the Dungeons, the Trials, and the Combat are.
Fortunately, ESO's population is incredibly healthy. The game continues to draw tons of new players every year. You can't go anywhere in this game without running into a ton of other players. Every town and city in Elder Scrolls Online has players running around it. The game grew more in 2020 than any year since its launch.
Class Setup
The last thing I'm going to touch on is the class setup. In Elder Scrolls Online, there are six Classes.
Dragonknights: these skillful masters-at-arms use the ancient Akaviri martial arts tradition of battle-spirit and wield fearsome magic that pounds, shatters, and physically alters the world around them.
Sorcerers: they can use conjuration and destruction spells to hurl lightning bolts and create shock fields, wield dark magic to snare and stun, and summon Daedric combat followers from Oblivion to assist them.
Nightblades: they are adventurers and opportunists with a gift for getting in and out of trouble. Relying variously on stealth, blades, and speed, they thrive on conflict and misfortune, trusting to their luck and cunning to survive.
Templar: these traveling knights call upon the power of light and the burning sun to deal massive Damage to their enemies while restoring Health, Magicka, and Stamina to their allies.
Warden: they are defenders of the Green, master storytellers whose nature tales become magical reality. They wield frost spells against enemies and summon animals to aid them.
Necromancer: they are maters of death. Necromancers can call upon corpses to serve as undead thralls and weave ghastly spells to harm and heal.
The important thing to know about classes in Elder Scrolls Online is that you can make a Sorcerer. That Sorcerer can be the group's Healer, Tank, or Damage Dealer, depending on how you spec the character. You can build a Dragonknight, and it can be a Tank, a Damage Dealer, or a Healer. It's up to you. It depends on how you build the character what it ends up being.
Likewise, there are ten Races in Elder Scrolls Online, and each of the races has passives that allow them to fill certain roles in the game better:
• Breton, Orc, Redguard are all members of the Daggerfall Covenant.
• High Elf, Wood Elf, and Khajiit are members of the Aldmeri Dominion.
• Argonians, Dark Elf, and Nord are members of the Ebonheart Pact.
• The Imperial race is an optional tenth that you can purchase in the Crown Store.
Skills and Passives
Every class has access to three different skill lines for their class, and each of those skill lines has an ability that can be morphed once it's leveled up. Therefore, every ability can level up then morph into two different abilities. Beyond that, each of these skill lines has a bunch of passives that you can invest in.
After that, you've got weapon skill lines. You can level up two-handed weapons then equip certain skills associated with those types of weapons. You could also equip a one-hand and shield and level up those abilities, morph them, and level up the passives. Same for dual wield, bow, and so on. In Elder Scrolls Online, Armor even has its own set of passives and abilities that you can unlock.
There are a ton of Guilds that you can unlock and get various skills, morphs, and tons more passives. Your race has a bunch of passives. Beyond that, there are crafting passives that you can level up as well. As you can see, there are a ton of options for making your character truly your own and making it something that nobody else has made, and it's one of the most fun parts about playing Elder Scrolls Online.
As for the gear, you have access to seven pieces of armor on your body. Three pieces of jewelry, front-bar weapons, and back-bar weapons. Typically, what players do is look for various sets to combine and create awesome builds.
Your class does not determine what weapon you use. Thus, you can be a Sorcerer, wielding a sword, or you can be a Sorcerer, wielding a staff. The decision is yours, and no matter what you choose, you can do all of the content in the game.
ESO's Future
How does the future of the game look? Are the Devs supporting the game? Or, are they letting it languish? The answer to this can be seen if we look at everything that was added within the last year alone. There were four new Dungeons and one new Raid, like always. On top of this, there were two new Zones. Then, they added the Antiquities system, which allows you to dig up impressive furnishings and even Mythic gear.
Mythic items in ESO are one-piece set items that you can build an entire character around. They severely alter stats like Damage, Movement Speed, and even Resource Regeneration. But my personal favorite is the Ring of the Pale Order. This ring returns the Damage I do to enemies back to me as Health. This insane life-stealing passive makes my solo character so fun to play when combined with the right combination of offensive abilities. It has completely changed the way I play my characters and how I survive enemy encounters.
They also added Quality of Life into the game, which the community has been asking for. Can you imagine Devs that listen to their community? ESO has that. It's so rare and magical when it happens, and you can see it happening in the Elder Scrolls Online. Inventory problems were resolved, currency capacity was increased, and some of the best add-ons were added into the game so that we didn't need to download and update them every patch. The Devs are supporting the game with big new content added every single quarter.
This year, you will see the expansion content – the Gates of Oblivion. We are expecting new Dungeons, new Zones, and a new Raid like usual. I'm also hoping for a new Class. How will ZOS surprise us this time? What are they going to add that we've all been asking for? What are they going to add that we didn't even know we wanted? This is what ZOS does every year. The Devs absolutely support the game, and they are very passionate about it.
In summary, if you love MMOs or Elder Scrolls games, you should give ESO a try. It pulls you in and provides a world you can get lost in. It's amazing, massive, and loads of fun.
If you found this video helpful, be sure to like and subscribe to Lucky Ghost's channel for more MMO content. For more news and guides, please bookmark our ESO news page on MmoGah – the best place to buy ESO gold and ESO Power Leveling service.
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