The Elder Scrolls Online Vs. The World of Warcraft

ZeniMax and Bethesda are stepping feet into the MMORPG market later this year with their highly-anticipated Elder Scrolls Online. As with any big budget MMO, the comparisons to the World of Warcraft are inevitable. Unlike the titles before it, the Elder Scrolls Online seems to be doing less imitation and more innovation. There are some big differences between the two titles, particularly in the lore, combat, and questing.

Lore
The World of Warcraft has a deep and rich lore, built up across three games before WoW, and if you participated since release you actually got to see the world change in big ways. This includes the reopening of the Dark Portal, a huge Cataclysm event that reshaped most of Azeroth (Literally. Most of the 1-60 content from release is no longer accessible, having been replaced with Cataclysm content) and, most recently, the revealing of the previously-unknown island of Pandaria.

That’s not to say the Elder Scrolls world isn’t richly detailed either. There are several hundred page books inside the game for the player to find. There are meticulously detailed cultures, crazy god-beings that constantly dip into and stir up mortal affairs, creation myths and more. The events in the Elder Scrolls Online takes place a thousand years before the events of Skyrim, with the playable races of Tamriel split into 3 factions: The Ebonheart pact, the Aldmeri Dominion and the Daggerfall Covenant.

Combat
Although initially complicated, the tactical side of WoW combat has been simplified and refined over the years. Although it varies slightly, at the higher levels most classes will end up managing several bars of hotkeys, juggling upwards of 16-32 different abilities/activated items.

In the Elder Scrolls Online you only manage 5 abilities and 1 ultimate at a time. The ultimate is used by generating finesse points using their finesse system, which rewards successfully attacking, dodging, or blocking attacks. Blocking itself is an active action used with the right mouse button.

Questing
Most of the questing in the World of Warcraft is done in ‘hubs,’ where a player will enter an area, gather a bunch of quests, finish them and then move onto the next area. In the Mists of Pandaria instead of large hubs there are smaller nodes, allowing the player more choices in where they want to go and progress.

In the Elder Scrolls Online, the questing sounds fairly similar to the Mists of Pandaria, with a few key differences. Exploring is rewarded more, with the occasional quest finding the player as they wander. The goal seems to be a freer, less follow-the-bread-crumb approach to questing.

As the launch of the Elder Scrolls Online approaches more info will be released. By going over what is available now you can assemble a basic idea of the game, and so far that idea seems to be a significant departure from standards set by the World of Warcraft. ESO has a 3 way faction conflict set a thousand years before their games, WoW has a two sided conflict that launches directly from their games. WoW’s combat offers you dozens of abilities to utilize with a refined combat role system, whereas ESO has a simpler control scheme that rewards more accurate play. WoW questing is mostly stream-lined and centralized, though the Mists of Pandaria allows for some more choice in how you progress. ESO tends to follow the same structure as Mists of Pandaria, though perhaps more rewarding for travelers.