The Escapist Magazine played TESO at E3. Click the link to find out what they had to say. Highlights below:
I've been a fan of Bethesda's Elder Scrolls universe since Daggerfall, and I love MMOs in addition to the single player RPGs the franchise is famous for. So I'm pretty much the exact demographic that should love The Elder Scrolls Online and based on an hour playing the game at the Bethesda booth at this E3, I'm ready for this sucker to come out. Even with the distractions of a faulty keyboard and the hullabaloo of E3 around me, I was so lost in its rich storytelling that I almost missed my next appointment.
The world is just as rich and detailed as Skyrim, but the area around the town of Daggerfall was more akin to Oblivion in its temperate vegetation. Squirrels and rabbits hopped along in the grass, and the trees on the rocky paths through the fields seemed lifelike. On the high-end PC I played it on, the graphics looked great, but there's no word on whether it will be just as good-looking on a middling or low end machine. Hopefully, the graphics scale well.
Hey, that's a cookfire. What happens if I ... Yep, hello crafting system. From what I had in my inventory, I brewed an ale and a wine - potions which would restore my health or mana over a brief time. You can also "deconstruct" anything you craft to get some raw resources back and possibly discover new recipes, but I didn't learn anything new when I deconstructed my beer. Pity.
Throughout the whole quest line, I might have fought only a handful of enemies. I'm impressed the Elder Scrolls team was able to show off a quest series that proved storytelling in MMOs doesn't have to revolve around killing X amount of dudes.