{"id":1227,"date":"2014-03-03T15:36:51","date_gmt":"2014-03-03T23:36:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alternateimage.net\/15minutesofwow\/?p=1227"},"modified":"2014-03-03T15:36:51","modified_gmt":"2014-03-03T23:36:51","slug":"the-state-of-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alternateimage.net\/gaming\/2014\/03\/03\/the-state-of-things\/","title":{"rendered":"The State of Things"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/alternateimage.net\/15minutesofwow\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/301506.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-1222\" alt=\"301506\" src=\"http:\/\/alternateimage.net\/15minutesofwow\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/301506-1024x640.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"400\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m not going to lie. My hopes for ESO are incredibly high. I love the MMO concept; the persistent, massive world; the social environment inside a game, but I\u2019m running out of something to play. I\u2019m a long time\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/us.battle.net\/wow\/en\/\" target=\"_blank\">World of Warcraft<\/a>\u00a0player and it\u2019s a great game, but\u2026 Oh, it\u2019s such a but. The game is old. And I don\u2019t just mean that the graphics engine is primarily 10 years old (which, honestly does get to me occasionally). The game is tired. It\u2019s worn out. We\u2019re on episode two hundred and whatever of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.dragonballz.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Dragon Ball Z<\/a>\u00a0and while we keep getting new bosses it\u2019s all the same. The interface and features are the best \u2013 there\u2019s no arguing that. No other MMO out there matches the quality-of-game improvements that have happened over the years. But you can only polish the same gem so much. It\u2019s still the same. This is where WoW finds itself, it\u2019s the most polished MMO (excluding graphics) but it\u2019s lacking something new to drive interest. So, what else to turn to?\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/tera.enmasse.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">TERA\u00a0<\/a>looks great but the only unique part (live action combat) feels more gimmicky than a feature.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thesecretworld.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Secret World<\/a>\u00a0has basically the coolest premise out there, but the simple -fun- of game play is so much lower. A friend of mine described\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.swtor.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Knights of the Old Republic<\/a>\u00a0game play as exactly like WoW from 5 years ago. But look\u2026 on the horizon is a game that promises to exceed all of them.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Now, it may seem like I\u2019m building ESO up too high, that my expectations could never be reached. But, I\u2019d like to think I\u2019m not reaching too far. I don\u2019t need the game to be \u201cbetter\u201d than WoW, if the game play, interface and features were equal to, I\u2019d be totally content \u2013 because it would still be different. ESO doesn\u2019t have this massive pile of buttons to push, yielding choices as to what to use instead of the \u201cuse everything\u201d necessity in WoW. The combat is still somewhat positional based more than just stacking a certain rating to hit or dodge. It\u2019s also a different world. The monsters are different and the player characters are different. Just not seeing a bunch of Taurens with cow names would be a start. I\u2019ve been in this old World for years now, I want to explore a new one.<\/p>\n<p>So far, it actually seems like ESO is matching the competition in terms of features. We have extensive crafting, dungeon finder, PVP, gear customization. The\u00a0<a title=\"Character Customization in the Beta\" href=\"http:\/\/alternateimage.net\/elderscrollsonline\/2014\/03\/01\/character-customization-in-the-beta\/\" target=\"_blank\">character cre<\/a><a title=\"Character Customization in the Beta\" href=\"http:\/\/alternateimage.net\/elderscrollsonline\/2014\/03\/01\/character-customization-in-the-beta\/\" target=\"_blank\">ation options<\/a>\u00a0are far superior to most options out there. The graphics are top tier. Questing is fun \u2013 without too many kill x collect y as is the standard MMO formula. It is poised to be everything I\u2019ve been hoping for. \u00a0Then why do I feel like something is missing? Or maybe, it\u2019s not that something is missing is that it\u2019s still too familiar. I know the zone and level limit of the beta plays a factor here. I\u2019ve gone through each factions starting zone (well, only part of the Dominions). Only being able to play the low levels without the promise of continuing that character. One of the reasons I love MMO\u2019s is because the game never ends, the character never dies, so to speak. Which makes a beta a let down since all of my characters die at launch, their progress wasted in a way. I still have hope that is just the conditions of the current state of things that leads me to doubt. I\u2019ll just have to see how things go. It\u2019s a beautiful game and they\u2019re doing an amazing job creating an MMO version of Skyrim (which I declared should happen from the launch of that game).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m not going to lie. My hopes for ESO are incredibly high. I love the MMO concept; the persistent, massive world; the social environment inside<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[142,203,227,236,294,312,368,373,496,559,669,760,789,811,835,845,864,958],"class_list":["post-1227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elder-scrolls-2","tag-beta","tag-character-customization","tag-crafting","tag-daedra","tag-elder-scrolls-online","tag-eso","tag-fun","tag-game","tag-knights-of-the-old-republic","tag-mmo","tag-pvp","tag-secret-world","tag-skyrim","tag-state-of-the-game","tag-swtor","tag-tera","tag-tired","tag-wow"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The State of Things - Alternate Image Gaming<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/alternateimage.net\/gaming\/2014\/03\/03\/the-state-of-things\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The State of Things - Alternate Image Gaming\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I\u2019m not going to lie. 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