Elder Scrolls Online Beta Key Giveaway

Ah damn, saw this too late, would have given you a beta key so you can check it out yourself.

Imo it is quite the same game. Compared to Sykrim I'd say the single player mode is a little less complex, the world is huge but also seems to be more compact, the visual quality doesn't reach Skyrim but is still great for a MMO. However, there are a few downsides attached to the MMO situation, for me personally most annoying is the fact that other players ca interfere with your single player experience, for example by killing the boss mob of a epic quest chain whose spawn you just triggered.

There are quests/areas you play really as a single player, being the only one in the instance. There are quests you play in the same instance other players are too using for the same or other quests, but as mentioned above mob spawns, chests, resource nodes etc are global, meaning all players in the instance can kill/open/collect the same and after a while there's a re-spawn. There are also group dungeons and quests appropriate for groups of players, so if it's a kill quest each kill will count for every player in the group for example. Coop PvE is probably one of the major feature why people will like the game.

The other one is mass PvP, where three predefined alliances play against each other on a really huge map. But you don't even need to engage in killing other players to participate in PvP, there are also scouting missions that reward alliance points. The real pk'ing is as disappointing (imo) as it is in most other MMOs, it's mainly a field of people executing pre-calculated character builds with the support of 3rd party add-ons and scripts, little to no strategy or tactics or RL skills involved, and when it comes to groups the only strategy is having the bigger group, and nothing really deriving from the tank/dps/supprt approach. A little bit of a difference exists on the grand scale, each alliance owns a number of properties other alliances can attack and take over. For example castles have 3 other properties attached in form of a mine, farm and wood mill located nearby, if those get taken by the enemy one effect is the breakdown of the TP network to and from the castle. Furthermore castles have outer walls and a keep, there siege equipment to tear down the walls and gates and kill defenders, there's also equipment to defend the walls and gates and kill attackers and enemy siege equipment. To sum that up, Alliance vs Alliance is great, the map is great, besieging and defending is great, PvE inside PvP is great, but pk'ing is still retarded (imo).

However, if you want to play a fantasy MMO I guess TESO should be first choice, at least until something more innovative comes out.