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Imagine a point almost exactly halfway between The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim and your traditional mainstream massively multiplayer RPG, for which the reference points are, in 2014, still the first EverQuest and World of Warcraft. This is where you will find The Elder Scrolls Online. I've spent around 20 hours in the beta. I have much still to discover, but my overwhelming impression is of equipoise - of a game balanced with conscientious, almost fearful care between the two things that it is trying to be.Much has been made of The Elder Scrolls Online's identity crisis, but you can't really call it a crisis anymore. After sceptical fan feedback on early builds, Zenimax Online Studios, the developer created to make this game, has made a determined push to bring ESO more in line with the wildly popular series of solo role-players whose name it bears. The art style has been steered towards Bethesda's trademark muted realism and a convincing, useable first-person camera has been added. I don't know how much the content has changed, but it certainly now bears the Elder Scrolls imprimatur: longish, talky quest lines with a fondness for political intrigue or the hubris of mad mages. It looks, talks and walks like an Elder Scrolls game: prestige, high-minded high fantasy.
What Zenimax can't do, though, is go deep and change the foundations ESO is built on, which are very much those of the not-so-modern MMO. They consist of a giant, sturdy superstructure of long-form levelling, mixing solo questing, group dungeons and player-versus-player warfare, at the distant end of which await a level cap and a gear-progression endgame. Although not short of sheer acreage to explore, it is an essentially linear journey with a pace strictly governed by your character level. Wander into higher-level zones, if you even can, and you'll end up going nowhere in a hurry. This is a fundamentally different proposition from the flat, free-form structure that made the Elder Scrolls name, where with only a few exceptions you can explore the world, fight stuff, develop your character and follow storylines at your own whim.
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