The Elder Scrolls Online

There's another round of press beta isn't there? I think it was mentioned by a few of the guys doing the initial impressions but some of them weren't sure they'd get in the second round due to their opinions on the first. I wonder if they'll have the same odd restrictions (they could only publish a maximum of 15 screenshots and 15 minutes of game footage in their coverage). Next one is supposed to be an RvR press test. Assuming it's like the last press one it'll be on restricted servers with very low load (pretty much all the reviews I saw noted that there was basically no one else on the servers with them during the first round). I wonder if they'll pump in regular closed beta members to fill out Cyrodiil or just leave the press on their own to make sure it runs smoothly.

Either way, it will be a very different experience for them than it was for those of us in the last stress test. We can only speculate what their motivations are with the press rules, but it reminds me a bit of a certain recent game: cherry-picked press got to play on a private server without the stress of online features/load for a limited time to write previews. Those previews were unsurprisingly more positive than post-release review drama upon server meltdowns. I can't imagine the NDA being removed until the press have their second beta + time to write/record/publish. If Zenimax are serious about getting this unified server (forget the name- megaserver?) working they better have a several more stress test weekends to see if anything they're adding/changing is working. I think watching for those is going to be far more important than knowing exactly when the NDA comes up- it'll show exactly how serious/competent they are at fixing the load-derived problems they've created for themselves.

Gecko_sl said:

Fuck those people with too much time and google fu.

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SOOK EET BIZANATCH! I FINDED THIS!

"We are going to have public dungeons, that are more geared towards two players, and four man dungeons, which we internally call instances. Finally, at launch, we'll have what we calladventure zones for larger groups of up to twelve, and we'll be releasing more details on those zones a little bit later. The latter might be compared to what people usually call raids, but they are a little bit different than what people are used to. They are still a lot of fun to play with a number of other players. -Paul
Sage"

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December 6, 2013.

Paul Sage on Adventure Zones | Elder Scrolls Off The Record I An Elder Scrolls Online Podcast

Edit: TO be Sure 12 man dungeons are not overly epic in a crowd that once 72 man raided.

A four man 'dungeon' requires its own instance?

Vilmz_sl said:

A four man 'dungeon' requires its own instance?

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There are one man instances called Mastabatoriums.

Rhino, by day 3 the server had problems spawning many quest objectives. You would often see dozens of players waiting for them to spawn, but sometimes they just never did. It was not broken quests, but rather a broken server that seemed to need a reboot.

A lot of the "broken" quests aren't actually broken, but the server wasn't handling load well. /forcereload would almost always fix the problem because it would give the script another chance to run, but a lot of players didn't know to do that. It's not necessarily an excuse since servers will definitely be stressed on launch day, but I think if ZOS gets the server problems smoothed out or has more resources available for launch it will be a lot less troublesome.

And no, the resource thing isn't pie in the sky hopeful - it's extremely common in the industry to limit the server resources available just so you are more likely to hit the point where stuff breaks and you can actually utilize that data. We can't really know for sure what the state of the megaserver will be at release (although it is safe to say from all of our previous experience that it will be rough on day 1). We'll see when early access starts. I pre-ordered so maybe I'll see some of you there!

Tuco_sl said:

Would bet dollars to donuts that release is going to be a nightmare.

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There have been solid games coming out of beta experience poor releases so why would this one be any different knowing the state it's in.

Tuco_sl said:

Would bet dollars to donuts that release is going to be a nightmare.

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I can't remember a launch that wasn't at least really rough...maybe Rift or Neverwinter? Those had problems but not nightmare level. This mega server tech is just going to be really really broken. How are they going to get you with your friends? How well will switching from shard to shard be? Ugh, gonna be a lot of downtime.

Rift wasn't bad with the exception of server capacity issues. Curious how many Skyrim fan boys will be there for ESO.

Giant problems, most likely what 1m+ concurrent all jamming on one server? Yeah....

Tuco_sl said:

I don't get the tortage stuff. I played AoC at release and got to max level very quickly (within a week or two at most). All I remember about leveling is that after I got out of the newbie zone the game stopped annoying me with too much dialogue and shit I didn't care about.

Then again all I cared about was the PVP. We built the first keep in the US and burnt the first keep to the ground, but the siege mechanics were so missing and broken it was a hollow victory.

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Holy shit I thought I was the only one in the world who felt this way , all I've ever heard was Tortage was great and then after it sucked. I hated going back and forth between my private night instance for the story part and all the talking etc. I don't play mmo's for this shit.

While I was more into the open world PVP , I still remember how much I enjoyed hearing the music in I think Connells Valley (or something close) and as a necro running around with a weird 8 meatball build that not many used initially. I actually enjoyed AoC a decent amount at launch post Tortage.

Well its not really just one server. Its just a fancy load-distribution front-end where they can add or subtract as many server resources as they need. I'm still willing to bet they'll underestimate their physical server needs for launch day however.

Everyone could learn a lot from this

Rhinohelix_sl said:

This isn't a challenge but where? I really wasn't able to start playing any real time (I only leveled my first char to lvl 3 Friday and Sat) until day 3 and never experienced or saw that personally.

Edit: I did have to /reloadui a fair number of times, getting hung in the first person conversations, etc.

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That's a bug that has been there since I played in the November stress at least. The mobs respawning is hit and miss depending on whether you get to the objective right after a reset (or maybe the megaserver splits people into instances and some get the mobs, some don't- it's hard to tell exactly what's being instanced at any time). One time I was stuck with that bug for an entire evening, and when it's part of the quest chain to get off the starting island it's pretty important (have to kill 3 amalgamations of fear or something like that). One of the press previews mentioned their group had to reroll from khajiits to argonians because the opening area was similarly bugged for one of their members and they couldn't get out- so I'm not convinced the fault lies entirely on server stress.

As to other issues, this was the first of three stress tests where my client was also crashing regularly- but I chalk that up due to it mostly happening in Cyrodiil and this was my first test where I went in that zone. I had a screenshot earlier in the thread from Monday where every single Cyrodiil chat line is bitching about the lag/abilities not firing- I would call 5-10 second ability delay in PVP pretty broken. Some had it worse than others- I and several others on the bug report forumdesyncednearly instantly upon encountering anyCyrodiil zerg, kicking us back to the log-in queue.

Funny you mentioned the door glitch earlier. In Cyrodiil I had something similar, but it was just a straight delay. And apparently both sides of the door use the same command to switch sides so I'd hit "e" at a door and nothing would happen. Then I'd hit "e" again and I'd get through and run for a few seconds before the second command went through and I'd warp back to the side of the door where I started. Third person has always been glitchy for me, with my character often facing away from his target when swinging his weapon after dodging/moving. The animations then go off in the wrong direction, but the abilities still land. Looks goofy. Critical Charge was always the funniest.Running in placewhile downward swiping the opposite direction 15 feet from the target and still killing it. Doesn't need to be that drastic either, basicallyany tiny inclinecan let you spam charge for ranged damage as a 2hander. I guess the upside of third person is I never got stuck in conversations?

ThunderCougarFalconBird_sl said:

Well its not really just one server. Its just a fancy load-distribution front-end where they can add or subtract as many server resources as they need. I'm still willing to bet they'll underestimate their physical server needs for launch day however.

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I'm more talking about that many people jam packed into zones, waiting for quest mobs, npcs, queues etc. I understand its not 1 physical server handling it all, but I would bet a hefty amount there will be more issues because everyone is in 1 "World" instead of spread out among either different traditional server setups or instances of zones.