Cool, I can definitely get into some grinding. I'm just concerned with how many people have said the early game is boring as hell. Mini-instance thing at level 12? That sounds way more interesting. Is that separate from the adventures?
The tl:dr version is that I mostly was staying ahead of the exp curve and out-leveling quests, but when I did fight mobs or did quests 1-3 levels higher than me, it was pretty enjoyable. I'll elaborate on the quest, then I'll summarize the lv 1-15 content thoroughly if you give a shit and want to read through it all. Deal?
As a lv 11 I stumbled upon a lv 14ish quest that put me on a ship into space heading to an asteroid colony. On the way there space pirates boarded my ship and it was actually difficult to hold off the waves and adds on my own. I had a soft timer to deal with because the optional objective was to intercept the smaller adds that would run in and try to steal the ship's cargo. You could either kill off 8 or so big adds to move to the boss phase or quickly kill off the thief mobs before they take all of your shit. There was also a random health power up that would spawn that added an extra dynamic to the event. I actually died once and I completed the quest with 2/15 cargo remaining. You get this feeling that you can only attempt this once on the way to the colony so it was fun as a solo. Since i got the optional objective, the npc gave me a merc npc that helped me kill mobs after landing on the asteroid.
When I got on the asteroid, I killed a number of mobs then encountered some npc's in trouble. The environment was pretty sick because the whole thing felt like an Aliens ripoff and the ambiance actually impressed me. Basically you go through this derelict installation and you find dead colonists and larva parasites burst out of thier corpses to attack you. Later on, the mob packs were semi-difficult and the big mobs right before the boss were a pain in my ass. I actually died a few times and I remember thinking to myself "You fucking noob, you should have picked up your two new skills before stumbling into that quest npc."
The whole premise of this game that makes it slightly more difficult than tera or GW2 is this: Yes, there is dodging, but that doesn't mean anybody (like a fucking Tera Archer) can solo tank/solo mobs like they do with BAM's in tera just because you are pro at dodging. The white damage in this game puts a soft timer on any fight or mob that you can't blow up right off the bat. It's worth mentioning that some of the casuals on the beta forums are say they can't handle the white damage in some areas of the games at different ranges past lv 20. personally I think a simple respec will solve those issues even for a bad player.
So the mobs right before the boss encouraged me to figure out a rotation to burn the mob down in a reasonable amount of time with a pure dps skillset. I'm sure I might have been able to equip a shield or heal in one slot, but that would have hurt my dps. The boss itself was a little easier than the big mobs next to her, probably because I got in a groove and busted my ass a little bit. Keep in mind I was having fps issues so the lag was making it even more tricky. More on that later.
Anyways, that was just one quest and I'm not trying to sell the game on just one quest (lv 14,) but it was pretty cool considering it wasn't even an adventure (lv 15) or a dungeon (lv 20.) It was a pleasant surprise honestly.
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I'll try to avoid sounding like I'm on payroll, but here was my experience with the 1-15 content since a couple of you were interested.
I rolled Spellslinger Explorer at random and I didn't think I'd like it. I heard a lot of shit about classes from others in this thread. Overall, W* classes aren't as engrossing as WoW classes, but they are still pretty fun honestly. As far as paths go, the explorer path overall kind of impressed me. It's more than jumping puzzles and isn't as boring as you think. You can actually bring yourself or group mates into mini dungeons with tougher mobs and a mini boss at the end, which was pretty sick. The solider path might even be the most boring tbh, which isn't what you expect.
The tutorial itself was a very bad experience only because of the shit fps I was getting. The game isn't fully optimized yet, so you might have to set the target render to .75 or .5 if your computer is more dated, which will make the screen more blurry. I was pretty butthurt about the frames per second issue and I almost wanted to stop playing right there and not think about buying the game, but I stuck with it. Turning down the target render and also running the game by using the 64 bit client on startup helped a ton. One beta forum nerd mentioned that the game always runs the 64 bit client, but it still helped me out so don't quote me on that. The first time you play the actual tutorial you might enjoy it. You will probably loathe doing it on multiple alts though. I liked the dominion tutorial more for what its worth atmosphere-wise. The tutorial, along with the rest of the game is very formulaic. I'll explain more about that at the end.
Depending on your class choice, you might not get a feel for your class within the first 5 or 10 levels. This isn't tera where you are blessed by having a fun tutorial that showcases all of your skills up to level 20. The esper is a good example of early level misrepresentation. Your stock lv 1 skill is actually a stationary cast, meaning that you have to stand still to cast it. I actually died in the tutorial because 1. I forgot to pick up the quest to equip my weapon since it was my 3rd character and 2. most of the skills in this game are freeform skills that you can use while moving around. My guy wasn't attacking because I was moving and the other lv 1 skills are freeform and spammy as hell. At first glance the esper class looks like a boring ass caster with a WoW rogue combat point mechanic. The good ole "spam sinister strike then hit eviscerate to kb the mob" routine. It's actually not like that later on because the esper gets a shitton of skills that make the class pretty god damned mobile and annoying to deal with.
The spellslinger, on the other hand, had a solid mage archetype vibe right from the start. You basically have a nuke skillset along with a varied heal skillset coupled with WoW Frost mage utility spells (Frost Nova, Cone of Cold, etc etc.) You get all of these skills before lv 12, so it's pretty fleshed out early on. You can choose from two starter areas after the tutorial and I enjoyed those zones and their atmospheres. The moment you get to the 2nd tier zones, the quests don't make you feel like you are on rails even though they have various hubs.
You can also just go out of your way and clean out all of your path quests before everything else, which I did first. In the tutorial and the first starter area, it's braindead easy to complete all of the path stuff, but the moment you reach the 2nd tier zones, the zones get much much larger and more open. There's plenty of quest and path content, maybe even too many quests. You can very easily outlevel the quest content if you are a completionist type in the 1-15 bracket. You can grind if you want with challenges or just plain grind mobs, which I also did. If you are a grinder, just run ahead and start killing yellow and red cons and you will be golden. I have no clue if the content gets worse later on. I've heard mixed reports. Some people say the game gets to be more like "Kill xx Mobs" where others say otherwise, but the content is there and it's available for digesting. It's not like they are hiding that shit from us so that's a good sign.
Keep in mind that the game's early content is very formulaic though. Both tutorials have the same stages and are basically mirrored. The first starter zones have a hub layout, while having a theme or story that revolves around a conflict building up towards a clash with the opposing faction. The quests and environments are different and varied which is pretty solid, but the structure is similar. Even little details like having a easy miniboss mob, near the end of those 4 starter zones, that drops a blue quality weapon remain the same. Once you hit the 2nd tier and beyond, shit gets pretty damn open though.
I'm a little bummed that I can't give you a final verdict on the game since I didn't level too far, but I can say that I kind of miss the game already since I'm not in closed beta. I have no interest in logging on ESO again after trying W* and I'll just be playing other games in the meantime.
Sorry, from what I gather the first 6 lvs are the tutorial, 7-14 are branching out into pve zone quests, crafting quests, home instance introduction, Battle Grounds from 6-14 etc. Other people seem to suggest the experience in Battle Grounds, even if a cluster fuck of newbs, is fun at times and a decent leveling experience. But like other's have said it's subjective.....
I can't say that the first battleground or the PvP is anything amazing. It's a weird WSG clone with 5 flags that spawn one by one in the center and you can pile all of your flags at the base. My experience is that the team with too many heals and not enough DPS loses every time. There's nothing more silly than a medic running the flag healing himself with a bunch of bads trying to kill him. It's worse than a geared WoW Disc priest laughing at you while he books it across the field. The PvP isn't looking that great at first glance.
