I've sunk over 200 hrs into ESO but every time I come back to it, having reached VR 11, I just end up grinding. The quests are fun until you reach VR1 and figure out that the game forces you into another TWO ENTIRE factions with all the accompanying questlines to really finish the single player content. By the way, soloing all the way up until VR10 is very well doable, but requires a solid build, gear and combat skills/tactic. It is a pretty fun challenge, but a far too lengthy one really.
ESO was a great experience in many ways, and as an immersive game it works pretty well, but as an MMO it falls horribly short in my opinion. The nasty thing about ESO is that even though it does the questing very well, Skyrim/Oblivion/Morrow. still does it slightly better and gives you more options while not feeling like a 'grind'. Basically ESO has 'too much' content that you have to work through to reach the power plateau, so you end up XP grinding and that kills the fun.
I've been pretty close to dev progression and plans for the future and from what I could distill, this game has been pretty much abandoned content-wise. Planned content like the Justice system was already projected since release but still needs to be fleshed out. The VR levels are being swapped for a CP system where you are funnelled into end-game grinding for percentile advantages, introducing a min-max culture to a game that was pretty freeform in character building.
With the recent changes and transition to B2P, everything points towards a mostly abandoned game to me. The cash shop is the one thing that is getting a shitload of attention and updates, but content is still extremely similar to what we had on release and many things are still (partially) broken and crudely balanced. Basically we got Craglorn and that was that. The end game doesn't really deliver either. Cyrodill, while being a potentially awesome RvRvR, is mostly too empty or too zergy to really enjoy - though at the right time and with a solid and good group of players it can be really awesome. The game economy is quite broken because of the multitude of bad design choices, bots and hacks that have occurred (such as duping items and patches involving the Hirelings that give free daily crafting ingredients) even though the devs maintain 'all is good'.
ESO always held so much promise to me, and I gave it a dozens of chances trying to really get into it and enjoy the game; solo, instanced groups, and in RvRvR, but it just won't really stick. It gets bland and repetitive really quickly and once you've seen a dozen builds for your class, you've really seen all there is to see. It's a shame.
And that little bug is só telling of the overall patch love this game has gotten over the past year. It's always late, insufficient or introduces a slew of new issues.
