ESO, the highly anticipated MMORPG has been launched this Sunday, with early access beginning for both digital and physical-copy owners. We’re not going to talk about whether or not Elder Scrolls Online is a good or bad MMORPG, nor will we debate the subscription fee. There has been plenty of talk on the matter, and there’s no reason to get on board the bandwagon. As far as how good the MMORPG really is, it’s too early to tell. A proper review will have to be based on end-game content, and frankly, apart from some really sleep-deprived individuals, nobody has gotten even remotely close to that stage.
That being said, Elder Scrolls Online had a surprisingly smooth launch. The two megaservers (North America and Europe) have been up to the task of handling the huge initial load, and there have been minimal down-times so far. In fact, players barely noticed log-in issues or queues, which is commendable for an online game of this size and magnitude. It’s certainly one of the smoothest and stablest launches we’ve seen on the MMORPG market in years, and the initial concerns from the Elder Scrolls Beta (where servers were laggy and loading-screens were endless) have been all but washed away.
Not everything went perfectly though. Because of the huge strain on the megaservers, there were some issues in Elder Scrolls Online, most notably related to some bugged quests. A number of quests were impossible to complete for all but the lucky first few, not because of poor Quality Assurance, but because the servers eventually stopped spawning certain quest-specific NPCs or items, which rendered quests uncompletable. After yesterday’s brief downtime, the issues have been mostly resolved, but some frustration had been given voice by the Elder Scrolls Online community.
Regardless, server performance is impeccable (at least for now), and will likely remain so even after the official launch that’s coming Friday. The servers will then be opened to all players, not just pre-ordering ones. The initial problems with early-game quests are likely to disappear as players disperse from the starting islands and areas and spread out all across Tamriel. Overall, we’re very pleased with how Bethesda and Zenimax handled the ESO launch, and while it wasn’t completely problem-free, you’re unlikely to see similarly smooth launches in the MMORPG world for awhile. It will be interesting to see how ESO will be launched on the PS4 and Xbox One come June.
How are you enjoying ESO so far? Have you encountered any issues with down-times, lag or broken quests? Leave us your feedback in the comment section below!