This reduced healing to mindless button-pushing. All of the restorative spells in my arsenal seemed to have automatic targeting, seeking out injured players without me needing to target them.

I traditionally enjoy playing the healer in dungeons and raids in other MMOs and hoped to do the same in ESO. The group-only content, meanwhile, never got its hooks in me. I also can't ignore the bot killing the quest boss over and over to farm gold. I can't ignore a group of players that wipes out every enemy in a tomb right before you get there, though. Sure, I can ignore the zone chat about whether the game's better or worse than World of Warcraft. I can't just pretend this is a single-player game and enjoy it as such. If anything, the multiplayer hurts the traditional Elder Scrolls experience. The presence of other players isn't enough to outweigh its disadvantages. This padding only got worse as I progressed, with each new level requiring more XP and questing than the last. ESO feels like a single-player campaign that's been stretched to three times its recommended size. I guess you need to make an MMO as time-consuming as possible to retain subscribers but smart business decisions aren't always great design decisions. The game also features the usual MMO busywork, like selling off junk in my bags, depositing items in the bank or working on crafting skills. Right now, all players have to do is slaughter a lot of enemies and pick up whatever they drop. The current lack of Dark Brotherhood or Thieves Guild quests really hurts the game at least those two organizations demand some stealth and strategy from players. The quests don't demand much out of you other than killing monsters, grabbing items or talking to NPC's. I was forced to plow through these filler quests to earn the right to do more meaningful activities. My play-time is monopolized by quests with smaller stakes like saving farmers from daedra or wiping out a camp of cultists. The larger storylines of ESO are interesting but very little of my time was spent pursuing them. I should check it out!' Instead, I'm thinking, 'I'd better clear out this area of quests before I head all the way over there.' If I see a fortress in the distance, my reaction is no longer 'Man, that looks interesting. My movement through the world is less of a journey and more of a scavenger hunt. This design works for a lot of MMOs but in an Elder Scrolls game, it feels confining.

If I try to jump to a different area, you'll encounter quests that you can't accept and monsters you can't defeat. I have to do the level 1-5 quests so you can level up and do the level 6-10 quests. The game attaches specific level ranges to each zone. I can't just start doing quests wherever I want. However, ESO limits the player's travel far more.

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