Ah, ESO. Well, let me offer some reasons that I think this game is lackluster at best, and offers absolutely nothing to the MMO community, and even less to the TES community. This may not be something you agree with, and that's fine, but listen to my reasons. You may not weigh the same things with the same weight I do, and that can result in you still enjoying or liking the game, while I do not. For readers who have never played ESO's beta, or looked into the game's design philosophy, then consider how much these considerations are important to you.
Note, I start each paragraph from here on out with a brief phrase indicating what it is the paragraph is about.
This is very long, but it focuses not on the payment model, but entirely upon gameplay, playstyle, and character progression. Don't read this if you don't want to read a very long, thought out critique of ESO as a game.
ESO v. WoW (Playstyle): Allow me to begin at the root that I hear many people shout, "this game is like WoW". This is not exactly true. In World of Warcraft, you are given 12-36 buttons that vary in function, which you use to survive and win in combat. This is not what ESO gives you. What you get with ESO is a combination of 6 possible abilities, one of which is an "ultimate", a very popular set up in more modern MMOs. In addition to these 6 possible abilities, you replace the auto-attack function with a left-click to attack, or hold left click to charge attack.
ESO v. WoW (Gameplay): This is fundamentally different playstyle, by which I mean the way that the player inputs their actions into the game world. However, what remains unchanged from the WoW structure is the gameplay, by which I refer to the way the world reacts and gives you things to act upon. Take an Orc Warrior in World of Warcraft, and as this Orc Warrior, you spawn into the Valley of Trials. From there, you do X number of quests, and then leave the Valley and move on to Sen'jin Village. Once you do X number of quests there, you move on to Razor Hill... And then the Barrens. By and large, these quests are brief parts of a greater whole.
WoW Gameplay, the Themepark: The WoW Style of This is the "themepark" model many refer to, as once you leave Sen'jin Village, you never have a reason to return there. EverQuest, prior to this, had an interconnected style, in which you would constantly double back upon yourself while exploring the world, to see things you have seen before, but new places within those same places (think about being a newb in Oasis, seeing the spectres, and returning there 20-25 levels later to kill them yourself). In this style, ESO is no innovation. It provides the same basic quest structure that WoW has made a standard in so many games. Even the more innovative MMOs out there do not offer a difference upon this system. You do quests, you exhaust the quests in that area, and then you move on to the next place to exhaust that. Instead of wandering around and exploring a world, you're being guided on a tour of the world, as a consumer, rather than just an explorer.
TES Gameplay, Questing in Skyrim: Now, this is what MMO players are likely used to, so this may be an issue to those of us (myself included) who abhor this style of gameplay, but TES fans are surely to find this the most atrocious. Take Skyrim, often considered one of the easiest of the TES games. Quests consume time. You get a quest escaping Helgen, and it guides you to Riverwood, which guides you to Whiterun. A good bit of time passes in this section. Next, you get the quest to go and find The Dragonstone. So you prepare, you get gold together, you buy what you need, you head out, run across the fields, fight a few things on the way for your safety, climb up the kills, get ambushed by bandits, break into Bleak Falls Barrow, ambush bandits, and on the way in, you find a guy wrapped up in spider webs. You free him, and he runs for it, and you chase him, kill him, and find a claw. What is this claw? What is it for? Does the game tell you? No. You pick up the guy's journal, and the claw, and continue onward in your quest. You get to a locked door after fighting through a few more puzzles and challenges, and you read the journal to break the puzzle of the golden claw, get inside the tomb, kill the top Draugr, and while doing so, you get imbued with the power of the Unrelenting Shout, as well as The Dragonstone.
ESO Gameplay, Questing in Skyrim: That is a quest in The Elder Scrolls. This is not what a quest feels like in ESO. One of the first quests I got as a Nord was to head north and find a guy. My compass pointed me to him, and I completed the quest, and got some cash. I then got a new quest to infiltrate bandits, and collect 3 pages. I did so in about 2 minutes, and completed the quest, got some cash. I then got a quest to go to the mine entrance, which took maybe 10 seconds. I completed that quest, got more cash, and went into the mine and killed something. I complete the quest, get some cash, and then went into an Oblivion Stone, kill two people, get teleported out, and complete a quest, and get some cash. And then I get a quest to go back out of the mine... Etc. You see what I mean. This isn't one grand adventure that you're embarking on. You are doing small iddy bitty things that do not equate to what a "Quest" is. This is what WoW questing is like, not what TES questing is traditionally like. Note, what I describe was delivered as the main quest, not a miscellaneous quest (as I have noticed some people say that the misc quests in Skyrim are also brief, but this isn't misc in ESO). Questing isn't as cumbersome, it isn't as epic, it isn't as rewarding, or as meaningful as it is to TES, or even EQ players who know what questing for something feels like in an Arthurian style.
ESO Character Progression: A closely related subject is character progression, something that I think is terribly disappointing as far as a game is concerned. ESO gives you, at character creation, 4 generic classes, which give you access to a small, select number of class skills, as well as weapon skills, armor skills, and the like. But these are unique to your starting class. As you progress, you unlock more advanced classes, which are similar to D&D's "Prestige Classes". However, these are rigid classes. So, if you begin as a fighter style (I forget the lore based name they assign to it), you are always that, and then just expand upon that style. You cannot, as is classic to the TES experience, switch up what you do, or blend things to make unique classes.
TES Character Progression: Although TES games like Morrowind and Oblivion both had classes, the classes were nothing more than pre-designed synergistic combinations of abilities. You were able to customize, instead of selecting a class, to take different combinations of abilities that, even if they were not synergistic, they were fun for you to play. So you could take Marksmanship, Destruction, Heavy Armor, Stealth, and Acrobatics. Why not? Sure, Heavy Armor may not fit, but fuck, it's a game! Have fun! In Skyrim, the new approach was to not offer any classes, and instead just drop the player into situations with numerous different paths to take (use the bow, use magic, use sword and board, use two handed), and give the player the chance to go in any direction they want. This is the inherent TES experience. This is what ESO lacks entirely.
An Alternative Based On a Past MMO: The sad truth is that this signifies to me that Bethesda is simply attempting to imitate other MMOs, rather than trying to innovate. And even in imitating rather than innovating, they do not even imitate a system that works best for their fans. Think about the TES Skyrim progression. As you level, you gain perk points. These perk points are rare, and so you may level up by doing archery, but you spend your perks in 1 handed as that's your focus, but you've capped it. The way you allocate your perk points defines the strengths and weaknesses of your character, in conjunction with gear. This does not lend itself to a game that gives you limited options to select based on class, if you want to keep the essential TES Experience... A game has offered a system that offer a reasonably TES experience to players in a MMO environment, and that game was one that came about before WoW's dominance, and one that is pretty much only known for the progression system it offered: SWG.
SWG Progression: In SWG, you had 250 skill points. All players had these, and you can never truly consume them, only have them tied up. So how it worked was simple. You are a blank slate. You have starting "professions": artisan, entertainer, medic, scout, marksman, or brawler. So, what do you want to do? Artisan branches into Weaponsmithing, Armorsmithing, Architecture, and Droid Engineering. Entertainer into dancer, musician, and the like. Medic into Doctor. And so on, and so on. When you decide to take a starting profession, the skill "Novice <profession>" ties up X number of skill points (15), so you now have 235 left. As you do things pertaining to your profession, you gain experience in the different aspects of your profession. When you get enough, you can get trained, which consumes the experience, and ties up more skill points. The idea is that you can combine anything you want up to 250 skill points. So, you want to be a Commando/Architect? You take Brawler and Marksman to branch into Commando (not taking the full tree in either Brawler or Marksman, only those needed for Commando), take Novice Commando, and everything in Commando, as well as take Artisan, and everything to become an Architect. But lets say you decide you don't want to do it anymore, you don't like being an architect. You can surrender your Architect skills, get back your Skill Points, and reinvest them in new talents.
How ESO can benefit from SWG: Imagine Skyrim's talent system, but expanded. One in which you can have, at any one time, 50 perks from the talent trees. You can work your way up One Handed and Destruction, or Two Handed and Alteration, and distribute your points to take both full trees. Or you can spread them over a wide range of different trees, and take less from each. The only restrain is you cannot go over 50 perk points. Decide you don't want to go Two-Handed and Alteration, but want to go Alteration, Restoration, and Heavy Armor? Delete your perks, freeing yourself from the 50 cap, and reinvest the perks elsewhere. This would let you have a system that is still inherently TES, but versatile enough to be MMO capable.
Conclusion: But ESO ultimately feels lackluster if you're a gamer like me that has played pretty much every MMO that has ever come out, and has become weary of the stagnation in MMO innovation that came about due to WoW's success. If you're looking for something brand new, something shiny, something awesome, ESO is not it. If you are not like me, and you can still take a great deal of fun from questing themeparks, and limited structured progression systems, then you will be more than happy with ESO. As for me, my only hope is with EQN. No, it will not be EverQuest as we know it, and while it doesn't offer that innovative of a progression system (basically the same as TSW, GW2, and other pseudo-horizontal progression systems), it does offer the first real, interesting chance for dynamic gameplay that is driven by the "adventure" grind, rather than a creature grind (EQ1) or quest grind (WoW, ESO, EQ2). This is primarily due to the idea of having NPCs form their own camps, and work in a more dynamic way, than having a strict structure that is necessary in both creature grind and quest grinds, as this creates a more randomized experience in which players can make their own fun, rather than being guided. So, that's why EQN is pretty much my only hope beyond P1999. I had hopes ESO would innovate, but I have not seen that, and although I thought it was likely they wouldn't innovate, I am highly disappointed that they didn't imitate something better than the WoW gameplay structure, and a similar character progression structure that mine as well be the WoW class and talent system. It is ultimately very sad.