Also the launcher screams 2000s. I keep forgetting that.
“Downloading file <big number> of <even bigger number>” with no indication of how many GB I have left to download. Also why are we downloading individual files? Why are the downloads not coalesced into single-file deltas, like it is the standard practice?
The launcher is very old and could do with an update. I tend to run into an issue that it wont work properly sometimes to install unless I delete the entire game and have the launcher re-download it. (I’m using the steam version).
yeah this is why.
I love Altmer. Nobody else seems to do, including the developers.
Right around every quest in Summerset is about how Altmer that don’t hate other Altmer and Altmer culture are awful. Quest about Altmer culture? Here’s about how it’s awful and everyone good is against it.
Queen ‘I never lived here but you all gotta live your life the way i like to do it now’ Ayrenn’s favourite spy-cat finds out the son of a town’s mayor is a traitor to the crown, so what does he do? He goes to the completely, entirely loyal mayor of said town who loyally serves the crown, and slits his son’s throat in front of him to warn him that heh… altmer suck btw… and this is heralded as a universally good thing
ESO in general is very into pointing out about how all the nasty tendencies of non-human cultures in TES are Very Bad and Evil and Must Be Destroyed by showcasing anyone that adheres to their cultural traditions as Bad or at best an Idiot (unless they’re Argonians or Khajiit, in which case being racist towards everyone not of your species is good and cool, or Imperials in which case it’s their Noble Plight of Being Better, or Nords in which case being racist is super funny and goofy and doesn’t stop you from being a super good cool guy)
Summerset’s questing is just the embodiment of it
It should be fun and exciting to explore and learn and discover new things about Altmer and their homeland if you like them.
It isn’t.
it’s like making a blood elf-centered expansion for WoW but then making sure the players all learn that every blood elf who doesn’t love orcs and wants to be like an orc and thinks elf culture stinks lok’tar ogar is evil incarnate and that this is some sort of objective truth of the world, it’s not very fun
ESO Morrowind also does it with the exception of the Telvanni, because being a racist slave owner is only bad when you’re not an incel in a mushroom tower proclaiming the virtues of anarcho-capitalism who rejects the stupid so-called divinity of the fake gods that are only real, present, and actively exercising their divine powers, all of which is stupid and smelly and weak and not cool, actually, because the writers are just as mad about the death of nerevar as the average guy that self inserts too hard into his nerevarine
Alright… we’ve checked out from work. Now we travel home, grab some proper food, and then we GAME
Can’t make up my mind whether to main the warrior or monk version of Dagnira for TWW. Both feel fun.
(IC she’s a mage)
I’m biased.
But warrior.
(really am biased, the actual IG version of Mithcha that I play and RP on is a warrior)
i close my eyes to the bretons war crimes in stonefalls. i do not see it. (neither did ZoS apparently)
as i say repeatedly to a friend. “Summerset is beautiful and would be perfect if not for ZoS Altmer on it.”
ive a split mind with the portrayl of factions and races in ESO, partially born of faction fatigue in WoW. on a plus side, it actually portrays more than one side as being terrible actually and no one race is completely perfect, which after the repeated villain batting and pedestal placing of the horde and alliance was a breath of fresh air, every society has its flaws as well as its pluses.
on the other hand as you say their too heavy-handed on the non-humans cultures and downsides being “kill on sight for beleiving this actually” and thats just. poor writing
What is ZoS
shorthand for saying Zenimax Online. never knew where the S came from but im a conformist
my mate saw a shaman named sïndrí or something like that today on alliance, i hope the lil guy reaches his goal.
I think the best example of ESO Summerset Altmer writing™ is the Proxy Queen Alwinarwe who, despite doing her best to enforce Ayrenn’s wildly out there policies (that she isn’t there to actually oversee because she’s too busy wanting to become Empress of all Tamriel, something that the Altmer generally don’t really care for) in a way that will actually both implement them and not cause the total breakdown of Summerset society, is still depicted as a Bad Snobby Altmer Who Doesn’t Get It Because She’s An Altmer, even when ultimately she learns the true good virtues of ‘changing everything about summerset is good’ and ‘haha, a cat-assassin that kills everyone who he thinks disagrees with our queen that continuously disrespects everyone around him and continues to make sexual innuendos whenever can be funny for it i think’
It’s Zenimax Online Studios, hence the S
The writers are too strongly into reddit dot com slash teslore basic posting, see also how they’re super into depicting Almalexia as bad and stupid and Sotha Sil as very good and cool
…On that note as well. Reminder she returned said inuendo’s with bloody RIGURT.
on the one hand i do like his depiction in ESO. very good voice actor as well.
on the other yeah. she’s been confined to base game hell. most people cant read any nuance beyond “ah she kill nerevar ah she very controlling ah kill me mommy.” one of necrom’s sins for me was failing to give us any further development of her and vivec but we still got a sotha sil cameo somehow
He’s the Nord I was thinking of when I mentioned racism is cool and funny and epic when it’s done by Nords but extremely evil when done by elves or whatever
And in base game they based her on her TES3 depiction, which is meant to be a far cry from how she was for actual millenia!!
this was so egragious that I’m still seething about it
The developers unironically fall into the ‘Sotha Sil good and noble, Almalexia evil woman…’ pit that right around the entire fandom circlejerks around in
You see, when Sotha Sil devised the plan to become gods by killing Nerevar so he could then go to a mysterious city where he doesn’t interfere with the lives of their people aside from when someone’s Really, Really Good and Heroic so he can take their soul, stuff it in a machine, and experiment on it until they go insane and he gets tired of them, so he leaves their soul stuck in the machine to anguish in for all eternity because they’re no longer useful to him, that’s objectively good and heroic, because he also expressed feeling sad about killing Nerevar once
When Almalexia followed along with Sotha Sil’s plan and proceeded to immediately use her powers to make sure that nothing like the Nord oppression of Morrowind’d ever happen again and provide healthcare and education for all, and maybe beating the living poo out of Mehrunes Dagon it’s evil because she didn’t express feeling sad about killing Nerevar (also she’s a woman)
I get that Sotha Sil is a depressed neet that quite literally lives in Mother Morrowind’s basement and that that’s appealing to a large chunk of gamers but man it’s genuinely dumb
I mostly play TESO for the housing system at this point and even then just as something to pass time on the side. I was also bitterly disappointed with how poorly the Altmer and Nords were handled.
You spend 90% of the Aldmeri Dominion base game zones slaughtering Altmer who are of course portrayed largely as unsympathetic caricatures who end up coming across as pretty damn sympathetic given that the majority of Altmer seemingly stand opposed to Queen Ayrenn.
The Nords, meanwhile, are largely reduced to ‘haha so drunk and dumb lol xD’.
Dunmer are quite sanitised as well though they at least maintain the ‘alien fantasy’ vibe largely due to their cultural elements and zone design.
I also think the storytelling took a dip in quality after the base game zones, bar some exceptions. I really enjoyed the Daggerfall Covenant zones - especially Rivenspire and Glenumbra. It felt very much like a classic fantasy adventure.
DLC zones suffer from being locked in a time bubble but also completely ignoring the very legitimate reasons for each faction to loathe the others.
I think this is especially funny because a lot of the arguments presented by the Altmer opposed to her are various extents of reasonable, but they’re all universally swatted with the villain bat for it regardless. One might express that they’re a little concerned about the batch of foreign assassins the queen keeps around for the sole purpose of the extrajudicial murder of anyone that disagrees with her, or that they don’t really want to go into a world war to take over the entire world because they’re quite happy just sticking with the Altmer having domain over just the Summerset Isles, but you will then swiftly learn that they only believe these things because they have sworn allegiance to Mehrunes Dagon, Daedric Prince of Destruction, because they don’t like Khajiit or whatever
Zone design (including architecture, interior, etc) for Dunmer continues to be peak throughout for real
I think the DC base game zones feel like a nice fantasy adventure for sure. I think the other two factions are far worse. The Ebonheart Pact intro experience is nice and manages to not depict any of the player races of that faction as bad or stupid or whatever which is good and cool, and I think the Dominion manages to have the storyline that’s the most interconnected, even if I’ve a lot of gripes with how the Altmer are depicted
Kind of funny how the only Elf race Zenimax doesn’t hate is the one of ‘small elves where the women all have cutesy voices and are very horny’, very curious!
Played through the elf tutorial. I like how the game presumes you’re totally helpless to help your teacher because there’s a broken bridge between you. I’m an archer! I can just shoot the attackers!
Look Back has had a US theatrical release date of October 4th announced. Still nothing for the UK yet, but that it has a US release is a positive indicator we’ll get something over here too.
I’ve always wondered, did you ever play and what did you think of the Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor/War games? Because , granted, while the true Tolkien lover and lore enthusiast would get an aneurysm once they delved deeper into it, some themes in it I personaly found enjoyable and still in the spirit of Tolkien’s work.
Namely that, whether you try to use the One Ring against, or try to use the same methods as Sauron, in the end, it’s always a terrible idea that will backfire horribly.
Also actual peeve: Having to dodge youtube , the PTR and the Expansion thread here for a few more days because I didn’t buy early acces and don’t want to get spoiled too hard 
Good lord I still have that game on disc… ( says the man with no disc reader in his current pc).
The game started off pretty good but the ending was just weird ( suddenly ending up fighting the Eye of Sauron right before it’s destruction so I’m assuming everyone got killed). And it was severely hampered by the fact it had only acces to the movie stuff, not the books. But overall still enjoyable and I still enjoy it greatly ( I once super ultra prepared my party by unlocking -all- of their abilities before the segment in Minas Tirith where you have to man the catapults and use yoru whole party).
ANATHEMA!!!
But more seriously…
https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=24726
I haven’t played these games, but everything I know about them confirms this opinion. They run contrary to Tolkien’s themes.
there’s a copypasta where tolkien definitely confirmed that shelob was a hot spider lady that says otherwise