UFG’s The Elder Scrolls Online Preview Part 2!
The Elder Scrolls Online is shaping up to be a worthy time-sink. That is, I can see people developing a habit of playing into the wee hours of the morning just before calling in sick – someone has to level up their High Elf for that difficult dungeon raid. TESO is just that entertaining. That said, my opinion was originally based on my experience with the main game. The PvP offerings hadn’t even been played…yet!
At the title above states, this is part two of my preview coverage. If you haven’t read the first part dealing with the PvE content, I’d recommend checking it out before reading on. In writing this, I assumed everyone was up to date on the combat system, game lore, etc.
With the Prince of Domination trying to merge Nirn and Oblivion together, you’d think Nirn’s inhabitants would learn to get along. At least until this major threat was averted. Unfortunately things didn’t work out that way, and even more chaos ensued. Not only did the three Alliances disagree on how to repel Molag Bal’s forces, they could not agree on who should rule Tamriel during these troubled times either. This is where the PvP comes in as an Alliance War forces gamers to take sides.
Your race determines what Alliance you’ll be a part of. The Dark Elves, Nords, and Argonians (a reptilian race) make up the Ebonheart Pact for instance. None of them are inherently evil – each group feels that their fight is justified for the betterment of Tamriel and/or their collection of races. And though each race has certain characteristics that synergize with certain classes, they can all take on any role the player wishes. Basically, your choice of race will be based on who you can relate to as opposed to particular advantages they may possess. Now the entirety of this mode takes place in Cyrodiil, the capital province of Tamriel. Being a key location, whichever group gains control of this region will have a serious advantage over the other two forces. This is simulated in a campaign or event – I’ll come back to these later.
Before you’re even allowed to travel to Cyrodiil, your character has to be at least level 10. To help out newer players who have just reached this requirement, their characters’ ability to inflict and receive damage is scaled up. This allows them to participate in the PvP action and actually be some use amongst higher leveled players. This power boost won’t allow them to reach level 50 any faster than in single player, but it does make them better suited to handle a fight. Normally three level tens would get wasted by a level 50. Here, they’d have a better chance of surviving or possibly winning the encounter. At the same time, the level 50 player won’t feel cheated as he or she will still have an obviously superior character.
Once in Cyrodiil, you’ll be greeted by a commanding officer who will fill you in on why it’s important to your Alliance to do this or that. After the conversation you’ll be free to take on a few tasks. Just like in the main part of the game, you can complete quests given by NPCs. The difference here is that these quests will directly impact your Alliance’s standing in the war.
For instance, you may be sent off to scout out a neutral location. Clearing out the monsters there would then allow you to raise your Alliance’s flag, capturing it for your faction. This helps in a couple of ways. For one, the area will automatically spawn level 50 NPC guards to patrol it., It also offers up a moderately safe place to run to when in danger as well as ideal places to put Forward Camps – an additional spawn point for members of your Alliance. Lastly, it will also provide resources to help in your war efforts. For example, capturing an iron mine may mean that steal weapons are now available in the local arms store. Now please note that the version of the game I played didn’t directly utilize resources as I have described here, but this type of resource-based advantage was more or less hinted at.
There are other places to capture as well; but the major places to occupy are the Keeps. Instead of being a tower of sorts that dwells within castle walls, the Keeps here are treated like castles themselves; large fortified structures with their own towers, NPC guards, etc. Capturing a Keep in Cyrodiil requires a coordinated attack by a team of players. If successful, the team will have gained more resources, another place to spawn, a region protected by NPC’s and ultimately advance across the map.
This is where the majority of the action comes from. At any given time, players from all three factions can clash for a chance at capturing strategic points in Cyrodiil. Large scale war erupts when this happens turning this action MMO to something more akin to Battlefield. Players trying to take a Keep will set up giant siege weapons like fireball-launching catapults or battering rams to bash in the front gate. The defending faction will scramble around to repair gates, frantically align themselves in towers to rain arrows and magic spells at the attacking enemies below, or rush out a side gate to meet their adversaries head on. Some might even make use of molten oil to deter the players positioned at the battering rams from continuing their assault. And naturally there would be bodies flying left and right as the fight continued – awesomely chaotic would be the best way to describe it!
Going back to the campaign/events, the way ZeniMax chose to simulate the war was by having week or month-long periods where the factions would fight over Cyrodiil. At the end of the event the winning Alliance (assumedly the one that controlled the most places of interest) would be honored before the whole thing started over. I’m not sure how the campaigns will change in the future, but this is one way to keep the PvP going before new content is added. It’s a good way to balance things between the factions by constantly restarting the war; the last thing you’d want is to lose because other players aren’t meeting online, given the other Alliances the advantage.
Battling for different places was fun, especially if you had a well-organized group to play with. That said, just running around and adventuring was fun too. For instance, a friend and I would go and spy on rival keeps letting everyone in the zone know exactly what they were doing. It was refreshingly entertaining because it wasn’t a scripted scenario. We weren’t told to sneak into dangerous territory before reporting back to an NPC. Instead, this was something we just felt like doing. Not only that, it was exciting to know that if a rival player spotted us that it was a real fight. Running away or hiding wouldn’t stop them from looking for us as would be the case with an AI controlled opponent. Also, these skirmishes were often unpredictable, but in an exciting way; one person literally transformed into a werewolf and pounced on my friend! It took everything we had to down the player before fleeing for our lives in case there were others like him lurking around. Like I said, it was exciting.
Just like with the first part of the preview, my aim isn’t to cover everything this mode has to offer. It’s really to “preview” some of what gamers can look forward to. Of course, there are balancing issues as well as glitches and such. But nothing ZeniMax can’t fix before the game ships – some of which have already been addressed. Again, a more focused review will come later. What I can say at this point, is that I’ve very much enjoyed my time in TESO and hope to be able to play more when it launches in April!
