I personally bounced off of it as a fan of the main line Elder Scrolls games. That does, however, come with the caveat that I have no interest in gaming with strangers and don’t particularly get along with the cool downs-based combat and incremental optimisation of gear, so large components of the game were falling flat for me from the start. I tried it out for two reasons - being able to play an Elder Scrolls game with my girlfriend, who was also a fan of the series, and because I enjoy the Elder Scrolls setting and liked the idea of seeing parts of it that have gotten no real attention since Arena. The first part of this, yeah, it did great! I was able to just play with the one person I wanted to play with, and there was plenty to do without joining any big parties. The second part let me down; the world is fantastic, but it really lacks the incidental points of interest and unexpected discoveries that make exploring fun (for me) in the main games.

I didn’t feel like I was forced in to grinding to do what I wanted, and I was able to complete almost everything in Elsweyr by just doing the quests that interested me as they became available. The monetisation and pressure to log in every day irritated me, though. Both are relatively mild, as I understand it, but I’m coming from a background of being used to games with none of either.

I doesn’t play the same at all. It’s way more MMO than Skyrim-like. I don’t think it’s bad, but I couldn’t get into the mechanics.

Exploration is kind of comparable though.