I just picked this up for half off on steam. I've never played an MMO before but I've played the hell out of the other Elder Scrolls games.

I'm wondering if it's possible to summon skeletons or other creepy things as a character? Can you be a necromancer?

I don't necessarily want to be an evil character, but I do want to be a character that's into the darker side of life in Tamriel.

Anyone playing this that rolls that way? Or anyone into heavy metal?

I just picked it up off Steam during the sale too. I've played a bunch of MMOs before, and ultimately never been very satisfied with any of them. I expect ESO will be the same way, but if I get 40-50 hours of fun out of it before getting turned off by it, I'd consider my money well spent.

I've put in about 5 hours so far, and my main opinions are that the game seems really big; its very pretty; what is DLC content is not well-surfaced; and the map is terrible.

I'm a bit tempted to pick this up! I heard some good things about it after the usual post-launch rough patch. My main concern after playing WoW is whether there's good mod support.

Although I think you were asking about here specifically, in general I think the game is doing OK. People seem to like it a lot more now that at launch.

They've got a big expansion coming out at the start of June so that will probably see the normal MMO influx of players too. And the fact that they were willing to make that big expansion indicates that it's probably doing just fine.

@rorie: PC def has good mod support, and like WoW I used a mod-self installer, similar to the curse tool when I played on PC.

Switched to PS4 as of One Tamriel and it's still a fun time! They've really turned around a game that had a horrible year one, and I'm glad they seem to want to keep improving it! Morrowind is my favorite game of all time so any chance to go explore that landscape again has me on board!

Helps Amazon had a deal (which almost seems like a pricing error) on the PS4 Collector's edition for 30 bucks flat, normally 100. If that price holds I'll be getting the expansion and all those goodies cheaper then just buying the expansion.

I was, for a littlebit

@satiros: Yep, you can totally spec into a summoner class.

Just grabbed this during the Humble Store sale, anyone still playing and is there an active GB guild?

I started playing again a few months ago to get a character ready for the Morrowind expansion and it's a lot of fun.

They've made a lot of quality-of-life improvements, and I've been genuinely impressed by the way they've adapted the game to player feedback. It's hard to explain succinctly (as if I'm ever succinct), but they've made changes that I never knew I wanted in games and now want to see in other titles.

Just a short list:

1. Subscribers now get a "crafting bag" feature shared among all characters. Basically, you pick up a crafting reagent anywhere in the world on any character, and it immediately warps into the shared "bag." When you go to a crafting station with any of your avatars, you can use the ingredients in the bag to make stuff. No fuss. No running to a crafting station, figuring out what you need, running to the reagent bank, pulling out the stuff you need, running back to the crafting station, realizing you forgot the bloodstone, and trudging back to the bank feeling peeved. Oh, and the bag has unlimited storage capacity. It's crafting heaven.

2. Crafted-sets are actually useful and viable, which is surprising and great. In most MMOs, crafted armor is stop-gap gear until you can do heroic dungeons to start the end-game gear grind. I'm very happy that Elder Scrolls Online adheres more to the formula of its single player siblings.

3. Speaking of end-game gear grind, it's very subdued and... I'm not sure there even is one. The game has a Diablo 3 paragon system called "Champion Points" that are shared by all your characters and give you passive bonuses with each point spent. The best gear in the game requires Champion Point 160, which is really easy to obtain. Once you're at that rank... you can just craft CP 160 gear and then improve it up the Diablo-esque rarity ranks (grey to green to blue to purple to yellow).

Come to think of it, this system is probably what makes crafting sets so viable. You're not going to be getting CP 180 gear for veteran dungeons, CP 200 gear for raids, CP 220 for heroic raids, and so on... the cap is CP 160 for all max level gear. What you're running dungeons or trials for are to get either crafting motifs (appearances for your crafted gear) or gear sets exclusive to these places that have set bonuses pertinent to your particular build.

But... you can also build a perfectly awesome character with a great end-game suit and never step foot in a dungeon. ESO isn't tiered like World of Warcraft, where I was never anything more than a "Looking For Raid scrub" because I wasn't willing to regiment my life around a guild's raid schedule. I can play ESO whenever I want and still be an equal, which is such an odd thing to be grateful for. MMOs are weird.

4. The game world is level scaled, but in a very smart and elegant way. Effectively, all zones and enemies in the game are CP 160. When you make a level 1 character, it is scaled to CP 160 and set loose. You can do any zone you want whenever you want and get relevant XP and rewards. You won't have the armor set bonuses or abilities of an actual CP 160, of course... but you're no slouch. As you gain levels, the scaling on you diminishes until you're CP 160 and don't need it anymore. The whole system is kind of fun. I normally hate level scaling, but they strike a really nice balance here.

The system also means that if a zone has a particular gear set you like the bonuses on... you can come back at CP 160, run some repeatable dolmens, and get that set. I love it, and again... this is probably one of the things that has opened up the end game. Like that spriggan set from Bangkorai that gives you stamina bonuses, weapon damage, and a five piece set bonus that dramatically increases your weapon penetration stat? Go back to Bangkorai at CP 160, run some dolmens, and eventually you'll have five purple pieces of that suit to wear once more (and if those pieces are armor, you can use crafting items to improve them to yellow legendary status. I wish you could do the same for rings and amulets, but no there's no jewel-crafting system yet).

Oh, and crafting reagent nodes in the world scale to your crafting skills... which I never knew I wanted until this game. In World of Warcraft, I'd have to go back to level 10 to 20 zones to find suitable alchemy ingredients on my level 100 druid (he switched to potion making late in life). It... sucked. In this game, every zone has alchemical reagents I can use. It's liberating in a very nerdy way. :-P

I could go on and on. I really like this game. I think it's my favorite MMO that I've ever played. They've really done a great job here.

I just started playing this a few weeks ago and I'm really enjoying the versatility of building your character and choosing how to level. Pvp so far has been hectic and awesome with loads of people defending or attacking strongholds and stuff in what felt to me to be in an organic way. I'm only about 15 hours in but I'm having a lot of fun, just hoping the negative feedback that the changes soon to happen are either fixed or not as bad as the long time community seem to be saying they are.

Imo, the best MMO at the moment. Add me - Aiomon.

@aiomon: are you in the GB guild or is that dead now?

I played it when it came out and I wasn't that into it. I started playing a little bit a few weeks ago and liked it a lot more, but I haven't had the time to play more than an hour or two a week.

I still play off and on. Haven't played recently due to school, but I don't start my internship until the 15th, so I may jump on again.

Actually, I just re-installed this and made a new character last night. Made a rogue like character. Stabbing lots of dudes in their back. Its a pretty okay time.