A different approach

"It's like he had to show me a negative so I could see the positive."

- Will Graham, Hannibal.

Credit where it's due, when they made Elder Scrolls Online, Zenimax didn't just copy/paste World of Warcraft and call it a day. They've certainly put in the work to give this game an authentic Elder Scrolls feeling, but there are times when it feels like the game is also going out of its way to rehabilitate certain cliches of MMO design not by showing how these can work when done well, but by showing what happens when they're not done at all.

Overly convenient quest locations

It can stretch credibility when it's a longer walk from the questgiver to the village inn than it is to the lair of the savage monsters that are ostensibly raiding said village, but ESO goes to the other extreme, with questlines that send you back and forth across the continent. Other MMOs do this as well, as when Lord of the Rings Online's epic story sends you back to Rivendell over and over again, or when you have to go and talk to someone in each of the three city states in Final Fantasy XIV before the plot will move on. The difference is that in those games this usually only happens in the main story whereas it's much more widespread in ESO. There's usually a fast travel option within the questline, but this is only acknowledging the problem it's not fixing it, and if you make use of FT a lot it'll leave the open world feeling extremely fragmented.

Quest categories

Related to the above, something I've rolled my eyes at in The Old Republic is the way it designates its quests as either Class (do those), Planet Story (do those too, if you like) and Exploration (eh, who cares...) but ESO could really do with offering some indication of what I'm letting myself in for when I start a quest. Is it a go-here-do-this-come-back type of quest, or is it a chain so long I could use it as a dark anchor?

NPCs that don't do anything

I've given ESO kudos for making its questgivers behave in relatively realistic ways, but there's only so many ways they can get involved in the action - but not too involved - before it starts to feel contrived. "I'll go this way while you go that way" is coming up rather a lot. So is "I'll catch up with you shortly." Sometimes it's okay if an NPC just stands there and wait for your return.

Stereotypes

Racial and factional identities that are so exagerated they border on caricature are like that for a reason. It's been years since I've played the game, but I'm still going to point to World of Warcraft as the shining example of this in the MMO space. In WoW you can identify a race simply by their silhouette, their armor, their mounts, their architecture - it's all distinctive. In ESO there are areas that stand out, but these are few and far between and usually quest locations, whereas the towns and villages have a tendency to blur into one. It says a lot that I fast traveled to an area in another faction's territory and didn't even realize I'd done so.

Also, is it really necessary for every NPC to dress in some slight variation of drab, desaturated medieval peasant? I get that this is the art style of the series, but If I play this game too much longer I'm going to start to forget what colors are.

Info dumps

No one likes info dumps - except in Secret World Legends because the writing and voice acting in that game is next level amazing - but there are times when ESO could offer a bit more context for where I am, who I'm talking to and why I should do what they're asking.

But we do have info dumps, cries ESO. They're called Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim. They'll tell you everything about this world that this game doesn't. What do you mean you haven't played them?