Hands-On Beta Impressions

02/13/2014

Check out these great articles and videos for a peek inside the ESO beta!

Last week, the press and some of our fansites took you into Tamriel to share their thoughts about the early levels of the ESO beta, focusing on PvE gameplay. We were excited to see all the articles and video coverage and the great new footage and screenshots. See for yourself—take a look at the links we’ve gathered here for you to find out more about ESO, and stay tuned: you’ll see some new PvP impressions soon!

Articles

Canadian Online Gamers – “It felt like running into an old friend, and it didn’t take long for me to utterly abandon the main quest line in favour of exploring – just how an Elder Scrolls game should be.”
Capsule Computers – “If it stays its course it will deliver excellent narrative, compelling voice work, and a beautiful, intriguing world to explore.”
CNet – “Designing a character is mini-game unto itself, and you have all the typical sliders, for everything from chin width to eyebrow height -- similar to the very deep character creation in the single-player Elder Scrolls games.”
Culture Mass – “ESO has the best visuals of any MMORPG I’ve seen, and it looks like Skyrim with some really good mods installed.”
EGM Now – “… I personally can’t wait to hop back in and play more…”
Elite Monster – “Overall, the developers of ESO did a marvelous job of balancing the expectations of MMO gamers while still introducing new concepts and maintaining the context and ambiance of the Elder Scrolls universe.”
Eurogamer – “The game's interface is clean, unobtrusive yet fully featured - not an easy trick to pull off for an MMO. It's great to see a proper 'looking for group' tool ready for launch, and there's mod support, too.”
Explosion – “Boasting impressive voice work, drop-dead gorgeous art, and a faithful translation of a beloved video game world, The Elder Scrolls Online is an addictive wormhole that can steal away hours of your life.”
Expert Reviews – “Crucially, TESO feels more like an RPG where your character plays a role in the story, rather than just being along from the ride as with other MMOs.”
Gameranx – “All the NPCs in the game that I encountered were voiced, and conversations and presentation are about what you would expect from an offline Elder Scrolls title.
Gamesradar – “The developers have mixed together MMO staples and popular elements from The Elder Scrolls games to create a very intriguing online RPG cocktail.”
Gametactics – “What I could gather from my time with the game is that it actually does a fair job of replicating the typical Elder Scrolls experience, to the point where one would hardly miss a beat going to this game straight from Skyrim.”
GameZone – “The Sorcerer skill sets were one of the most fun, at least in my gameplay experience, and allowed me to unleash a barrage of damage dealing spells upon enemies from a distance.”
IGN – “If my experiments with the gamepad yield any insight into what ZeniMax has planned for the console version, it's likely that it may have the best foundation for a console MMORPG to date.”
MMOGames – “I’ve barely scratched the surface of this vast world and hopefully I will be spending many years exploring it.”
MMORPG.com – “It’s all these little things that I continually discover about the game that are really driving my excitement for ESO’s release in April.”

PC.MMGN – “I'm not a huge MMO guy... The Elder Scrolls Online is poised to change all of that, by taking my admiration for the Elder Scrolls franchise, and my love of exploring rich fantasy settings, and combining it into something epic.”
PixelVolt – “…ESO offers us an opportunity to explore a much more detailed account of this period in Tamriel’s history—and if you’re as much of an Elder Scrolls fan as I am, that should promise to be quite exciting.”
Tamriel Foundry – “The crafting system that ZeniMax have redesigned (there was a previous iteration that was nowhere near as involved) is really special. Crafting enthusiasts will spend countless hours trying to research the variety of item traits and upgrade the quality of their existing equipment.”

TESO Elite – “The In my opinion, along with Elder Scrolls Online, we’ve finally gotten out of that WoW clone thing that plagued the MMO scene for a long while – the game feels fresh while keeping that familiar, strong Elder Scrolls taste many of us grew up with.”
The Controller Online – “After putting in a few hours with The Elder Scrolls Online, I can say that it absolutely feels like and Elder Scrolls game rather than an Elder Scrolls flavored MMO and that is a good thing.”
The Elder Scrolls Off the Record – “The Elder Scrolls Online has a life of its own and you can tell from the very beginning that this game is far more than just a game, it’s a labor of love.”

The Outhousers – “Crafting is full of options as well, with different types of crafting (woodworking, smithing, clothing, alchemy, etc.) and seems to offer a much deeper experience than what's been in previous Elder Scrolls games.”