Elder Scrolls Online closed beta weekend goes live

ZeniMax Online Studios have launched their fifth closed beta event for The Elder Scrolls Online, which launches on April 4, 2014.

[TheSaint]

Are they allowing people to upload videos of this?

[fudgenasty21]

no. i had to agree to a NDA. not allowed to say anything to anyone.

[TheSaint]

That's a shame, thanks for letting us know.

[Volkama]

And the beta plasters your account name all over the screen just to be sure. It's quite distracting at times!

[pompombrum]

^^^ Lol, I actually thought it was a bug.. to think they'd go that far to stop people uploading videos, it's less than three months from launch, that sort of secrecy just begs to stir up unnecessary controversy.

[NeoTribe]

Well, does it suck?

[Volkama]

@Neotribe not sure yet. Character customisation seems decent, the world is quite Elder Scrolls-y and the production values are strong.

Combat hasn't really opened up for me yet but so far it feels a bit washy. The style demands collision detection, but it's not there and running through enemies just takes all weight and impact out of it.

It also isn't pretty enough. It's unmodded skyrim-nice, but my 6950 can run it on ultra so there is plenty of room for improvement. I'm optimistic that they just haven't got the highest quality textures in yet, that'll make a big difference.

It's good enough that I'll buy it, but I don't know if i'll be able to settle into the combat.

[JaredH]

Your not allowed to but a few hours after it went live there were tens of streams of it on twitch. I don`t know if any are still running though since twitch and Zenimax were apparently taking them down quickly. I got in the beta so I didn't watch any anyway. The support twitter for twitch told people they weren't allowed to.

[--bienio--]

Try yesterday for few hours and unistall straight after i finish. Im not gonna buy this game no way, there is no chance I prefere to wait for TES 6 ,btw skyrim just now install with mods..😃

[pandehz]

Played it for quite a bit last night.

Quite fun to be honest. Will have to play a lot more to get a better feel of it. For now all I can say is it plays out quite like Skyrim in many ways with the feel of and look of Morrowind. Starting area will definitely make you feel that right away. Still not entirely convinced on it. Nuff said NDA hovering behind me.

[pompombrum]

Agreed, it feels a lot like a slightly watered down Elder Scrolls game. I'm not convinced yet that it's going to be something I want to invest months in like their subscription fee would want, but I'll most definitely buy it as I'll get my money's worth in the first month alone.

[bc_jeffro]

plays nice looks great quite impressed
i cant think of any complaints at the moment

[extermin8or]

Its alright, feels like it wants to be an elderscrolls game and wants to be an mmo. But doesnt quite hit the heights of the good ones of either genre. It feels too single player generally and the quests arent as good as in traditional ES. I've not seen one community event and no im not in either starting area. I'd thought the maps would open up one realm at a time but its looking more likely to be made up of smaller proxy maps of say a city and its local area. Im in hammerfell atm but once/if I can make it to places like cyrodiil and skyrim this will be dissapointong. If it was like gw2 (an mmo I suspect will be far surpior to the finished product of ESO) then I'd consider it a worthy buy but £60 AND £8.99 a month.... hahahhahahahahaha NO they are takong the piss right? Unless something very drastic happens between now and april.

[KrisButtar]

I always found the biggest draw to an ES game was the ability to go anywhere right from the start but because of PvP your locked out of areas that are not in your alliance.

For example if I'm a High Elf I can't go sight seeing in Skyrim or Morrowind until I reach level 50(or the plus plus thing they talked about)which are the 1st places I would like to visit seeing as I played those games.

Why does your race choose what alliance you are? as it shouldn't really matter because as any countrymen you are able to support your nation or be a traitor and it would follow a more ES game if you were given the chance to choose a side. (Stormcloaks vs Imperials.) I'm not sure why they would limit/restrict us like this.

"Skyrim with friends" they say, We would all be separated and on different alliances because of race which doesn't seem like fun. We could care less about what alliance we are on when we all would have played and picked the same alliance. The other choice is to play as race we don't want to so we can play together. Playing a game with a character you don't want to play is not much fun. Isn't the idea of a MMO to play with your friends?

When I 1st heard about this game I was sold..actually I would have gladly paid the subscription fee then, but as I find out more and more, the less interested I become.

[1886afc]

This blows!I have an invite but, I don't receive my 290 until Monday.

[Passenger]

I think it´s awesome :O Although my first reaction was "meh.. online sux" it really plays well like Skyrim. Hell, even some subquests are epic xD But I prefer to play on my own rather than joining groups, dunno if it´s good or not.