ESO’s latest expansion is roaring along on the PTS, and this week I’m continuing my thoughts on the new content. As I continued to delve deeper into Summerset and all its new chapter glory, I felt overall my satisfaction peaked. I don’t mean that in a negative way, in fact I am happy at where it peaked. I’m overall happy with how Summerset came and how it was designed. With that being said, let’s go into a little more detail this time on what made the journey as fun as it has been.
Let’s get the big one out the way first, because I know for at least myself this is what I was most excited for: Psijic skill line. Overall, I am happy with how this turned out. Out of all the skills that was provided I am only using two of them. For what my character does right now, I don’t see a need for me to run even the ultimate. Undo, the ultimate for the skill tree I feel would be better suited for PvP than PvE. It could give a PvP healer the extra help it needs to survive from a gank or an unfavorable position. The two skills that I do use though are: Time Stop and Meditate. Mostly Meditate, I just like fooling around with Time Stop for the hell of it. Meditate I use for less down time. I didn’t have much before I use the skill but being able to minimize that to nearly zero has been wonderful.
I don’t know how much useful the skills will be to my character, but I feel that I would be able to maximize the skills if I built around them or one of my characters were more focused on how those skills interact. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying they are bad, but with my main characters that I play, I really haven’t them more useful than my current skills…
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Maybe, I just don’t like change? I think down the road though, when I tinker with PvP more I feel like they will become way more useful. I could be completely wrong though. I keep asking myself though, if I wanted more to come out of this skill line. Overall again, I am happy with how the skill line shaped up. I’m very curious on how the balance of this will go down though when more people start to theory craft and hopefully give me some more ideas on what to do.
Questing in Summerset was pleasant as usual. I’ve never been really bored with the questing in Elder Scrolls Online and Summerset does not disappoint in this aspect. I took my time like I said I would and found myself not bored and wanting to play more. Although, I kept to my word and did not finish the main quest line. Deep down I want too, but I want to keep it a surprise for launch day. Overall, it kept true to the “ESO” feel and I am glad they kept that. I know a lot of games keep trying to reinvent themselves or reinvent the wheel, but I am glad that Elder Scrolls Online has that continued feel. I know a lot of people are looking for the next big thing to reinvent the genre, but I am glad ESO has consistency.
Going back and forth from Live to PTS, I can’t explain to you in words how beautiful the new zone is. I’m extremely impressed with how ZoS designed Summerset. I always thought the game had some good looks to it, but Summerset really just set a new standard for the game and with every new zone added to the game, it better look as good or better than Summerset Isles. I would be lying to say that everything is perfect in Summerset though. There are some things I for sure didn’t like. I don’t like how they implemented Jewelry Crafting. I often find it a bore and will just pay someone to do it for me. It’s not something I see investing my time into. I don’t know if it’s the grind involved or maybe I am already just tired from grinding the rest of the crafting skill lines, that I don’t want to do another one? I don’t know, but whatever it is I hope they either streamline it or keep tweaking it.
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Some people have questioned the price of admission, are we getting what we are paying for? As we know, Summerset is priced at 39.99 for the standard edition. Again, the big question is: Are we getting enough for that price? I want to say yes, it’s worth it. I thoroughly enjoyed my time and when official launch comes I am excited to finish up the epic story. I am really looking forward to how the game progresses after Summerset and see if they expand on the beautiful zone they created. If you haven’t bought Morrowind as well, for a limited time if you purchase Summerset, you get Morrowind for free! That’s a pretty good deal, two chapters for essentially the price of one!
Summerset launches on May 21st for PC/Mac and June 5th for Xbox One and Ps4. I am excited to see you all in the land of Summerset. I’m also very curious on where we go from here...
