The Elder Scrolls Online Previews
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We'll start with The Escapist:
Having spent a good 20 minutes of meticulous Bawls-fueled character customization, I dove headlong into the world with my Dark Elf Sorcerer, Encaen. It took only a few minutes to really acclimate to the control scheme, and the story took off immediately. A potentially dangerous ship was spotted near town, which may prove to be the vanguard of an invading force. It's time to round up the townsfolk and evacuate. Naturally, the townsfolk are off doing their thing all around the zone, so it was no easy task to collect them all. Further to that, as you venture out into the world, you'll start accruing side quests. There is no quest hub, rather your quests are collected as you explore the world. For example, you might run into a near-hysterical villager whose friends have been turned into Skeevers. Failing to accomplish this mission means several villagers stay missing when the invading force hits, so it's not strictly a side quest in the traditional sense of the word. Likewise, you'll be specifically looking for a few major characters, but are only required to find one before you progress the story line. Sadly, I only got one shot at it and, having limited time, I only rescued 7 of the 15 villagers before moving the story forward. I can't say what ramifications my early departure might have had, but I'm fairly confident that the people I failed to save would have offered some assistance in the upcoming siege, had I taken the time to round them all up.
Then move to The Koalition:
While playing, I could never really decide between sword-and-board, two-handed or ranged, so I just ended up switching throughout my preview to get a feel for all the different playstyles. Quick swapping to a second set wasn't available until level 15 or so, and I only got to level 5 by the end of the preview, so I spent a decent amount of time in the menus. Everything is auto-sorted into different types, like any good TES game should be and it wasn't too cumbersome to navigate, but it still didn't feel as fluid as most MMOs.
Quests consisted of your standard MMO fare, ranging from "gather x item by killing x creatures" to "talk to this NPC and come back and tell me what they said," so none of that really stood out at all. However, I was really impressed with all of the voice acting, as the dialogue in the game is fully voiced - not unheard of for MMOs, but still good to know. Hopefully once the game is more polished and more content is added, quests will feel more developed and engaging. I liked all of the seemingly "random" events that popped up in the wilderness (NPCs running from creatures, getting stranded and needing help) but I wonder just how scripted those events really were.
Before finishing at Exilic, where the focus is on the Dunmer race:
House Dres is infamous for their slave trading to the other Great Houses; they have earned much hatred from the Argonians as a result. Traditionally they have been an agrarian agricultural society, which relied on their slaves to work the farms; however with the conquest of southern Morrowind by the Argonians the house has lost much of its holdings.
Slavery has been a large part of Dunmer society for most of their existence. Even when Morrowind was made part of the Empire, the Dunmer were allowed to keep slaves as part of the treaty. It was only after King Helseth came to power in the Third Era that slavery was abolished; however this has not earned the Dunmer any favours. Many slaves were Argonians, and as a result of Red Mountain's newest eruption, they were given the chance to strike back at their oppressors, conquering much of Morrowind.
