[Grimfan]

I really hate the quote system but I think without it we cannot really have a discussion so I'll just try.

Originally Posted by Uteunayr

Yes, but is Dark Magic 100% identical to what I could take under the fighter tree? If so, that sounds homogenized. It would be better if I had the option to take Dark Magic, or something under the fighter tree. Dark Magic may synergize well with melee, but it is the only way you can delve down that path, when fighter offers a number of others. So, if you want to be a heavy fighter/dabbler in conjuration, you're SOL. There are plenty of other styles just like this in which your shit out of luck, and jolly well fucked from the class system. This is common in many games, but other games don't come from the background of TES, which is one of vast RPG freedom in character development.

The idea is that each character class has three different trees that are magic only. These trees are generally divided into three different properties, one being really unique to a class and the other two having a little overlap from what I have seen. For instance, Dragon Knight gets a tree that probably makes it better tanks than the other three, but you could probably build a different kind of tank type without too much difficulty. But yeah, they're not identical.

You ignored the fact that a lot of important and potentially character defining skills are actually found in game rather than given to you in the beginning. Because of the limited skill slots, and because the passives sometimes work for out of class skills, the ones that you start with might not even be potentially important. This means that there are builds out there that might be some from the Mages Guild, your weapon, and maybe one from the werewolf as well, and you might have a completely different playstyle with a Destruction Staff than say someone that is a Sorcerer, uses a couple skills from the dark magic line, a couple from lightning etc.

The builds for the first few weeks are going to be unique and deep and you might not even know what your group mates or pvp enemies are doing even from their gear/weapon. That is unlike WoW where if you are a Druid, and you meet a Paladin in battle you already know within about two minutes what each is capable of.

Originally Posted by Uteunayr

WoW quests were off the main path areas. The questing is remarkably similar to what it is in WoW. Explain what it is that makes ESO questing distinctly different from WoW. It still works in a themepark structure, it still works based on pumping out massive quantities of quests quickly, rather than making them epic. You say you disagree, but with what? That there are few quests in the main hubs?

So there are two different major quest lines in TESO, and if you wanted to you could just go straight down them and progress too fast, this is especially apparent depending on which faction you choose because I only noticed this for the first time when I went Aldmeri Dominion and was level 7 in a level 12 area because I didn't explore enough. Anyway one questline is your main story quest which is the "Epic" quest of the Elder Scrolls branch, it doesn't end whenever you leave the beginning area, the Prophet keeps talking to you for a long time, and eventually I'm sure you take the fight to Molag Bal as they've talked about it being the first multi-group instance.

The second long story-line quest is the intrigue within your capital city, both of the factions that I tried had really long quest lines that while they did give you rewards from quests in the middle of them, they were really part of the same line.

So there's that, you were talking about how quests were just short do this and do that, but I think that those quests have really long and enduring storylines and are pretty memorable.

As far as normal questing being different from what is in World of Warcraft, I quit WoW when Cataclysm came out, so they might have changed their design philosophy, but the way that I remember it in WoW is that you literally went to a quest hub and gathered 5-6 quests and went out and started doing them. Sometimes, and only in the areas that the quests sent you, you might find another quest or an item that gave you a quest. If you were really lucky and they felt like doing something interesting you might find something silly you could do for an achievement.

This is the same design that Aion took, the same that Rift took, the same that Tera took, the same that TSW took for the most part, the same that GW2 took with the exception of their public quests, the same that... do you see what I'm saying? The idea is that they have areas already planned for you to go to and your content is along those areas.

Since you've only played the beginning area of TESO I will try to keep my knowledge limited to that to put some perspective in it for you. If you decide in the Skyrim area not to save all the people that are moving on to the next area with you, you can do that. You can actually advance at a very quick pace out of the tutorial/noob island. This is because the main story quest does not take you to the spider caves, it does not take you to many of the off path areas in the lands of Skyrim. You can advance to the next area (presumably to never come back) without ever doing 90% of the content on the noob island.

The further you move on, the more apparent it gets that you need to start exploring and instead of only sticking to the main path where the game sends you, you need to start going off the paths and into the mountains to explore. If you did this in WoW or Rift, you MIGHT get an achievement for getting to some high place and jumping off, if you do this in TESO you get rewarded with experience, gear, sometimes skill points, etc.

Anyway I already explained why I feel their system is different. We can agree to disagree if you'd like though, you're really combative and I don't really feel like making this a fight or whatever.

If you don't play the game I don't really care, but comparing it to WoW is really just wrong, it's about as far as it gets from the WoW quest system and it is about as close as you can get to making a Elder Scroll MMO without making it a gigantic sandbox like a lot of people would enjoy. I think that a sandbox would be good too, and yes it is a theme park MMO and I am sure I'll get bored with that eventually, but at least it has some promising systems in place to hopefully keep my interest for longer than the other games you listed up there.