Morrowind pickpocket2/1/2024 Those surroundings are beautiful, too, even if they're crafted in that spindly, overlong style ESO prefers that I've never grown accustomed to. My adventures with Eoki and Sun-in-Shadow wisely take me all over it, whether it's in the Telvanni manors built into the hollows of skyscraper-tall mushrooms or the shadows of a volcanic mountain threatening the surroundings. Ordinarily the early hours of an MMORPG thrive on pure discovery, but riding through Vvardenfell here feels a bit like coming back home after years of absence. I know the poetry of its place names-Balmora, Ald'ruhn, Hla Oad-as well as I know the streets of my own hometown. I'd say my awe at the breadth of its imagination largely put me on the career path I'm on today. In the early 2000s, beholding Morrowind's mushroom forests and complex social structures felt like a revelation, leading me to wear Morrowind shirts around my graduate school campus in the hopes someone would notice and share my joy. This, after all, is Vvardenfell, the setting of one of the finest RPGs ever made, and the expansion's aimed largely at us who knew it well. Ordinarily I'd need a map, but I knew where to go. And so I'm off again to Vos, a tiny village nestled in the northern expanses of the vast island. Poor Eoki, busting his scales on some construction project in a swamp, laments that she didn't just buy his freedom, but he accepts it. Typical Telvanni.Īnd now Sun-in-Shadow wants me to buy some land with all of her gold. "Lift one of these beasts up and a thousand more will follow," one of the Dark Elves says. I bring the finger to another mage who's impressed by Sun-in-Shadow's initiative, and they agree to raise the clever Argonian up a rank from slave. There's a lot of outcry in the community right now about how ZeniMax weakened every other class in preparation for the Warden, but right now I'm loving it. I can shield myself in ice, do decent healing, and even summon a bear. None of ESO's existing four classes ever really appealed to me, but I love the nature focus of the Warden, and the way I can call ghostly versions of Morrowind's famed cliff racers down on foes. It's what I've always wanted out of ESO, right down to the Aragorn-as-Strider style costume the class comes with. I'm playing as a Warden myself, the new druid-meets-ranger class that comes with the expansion. We're in.ĭown into the dungeon we go, Nord-Warden-Test and I, slaying imps, skewering frightening floating eyes wreathed with tentacles, and plucking holy finger bones. Finally, the riddle clicks in my head and the lock clicks in the door. It apparently stumps me less than other people, though, because a player with the delightfully beta-appropriate name of Nord-Warden-Test starts following me and mimicking my every move. To even get into the Daedric ruin, I need to solve a puzzle involving bowls and skulls left by followers of the unpredictable trickster Daedric lord Sheogorath. The laziest MMORPGs think all you need for a quest is some reason to run out and kill or fetch a few things, but Morrowind mixes moving conversations with puzzles, pickpocketing, and the occasional pun.Įven here Elder Scrolls Online adds variety to the MMO template and captures some of the spirit of the original Morrowind. Sun-in-Shadow soon sends me to the Daedric dungeon of Zaintirasis, where I have to steal some saint's finger bone before the rival Redoran clan gets it. I'm grateful enough that Elder Scrolls Online lets me pickpocket and read bad poetry in the first place rather than just sending me out to kill a bunch of guars for their sweet meat. It's not Shakespeare, but there's much more wizardry in that rhyme than in anything the dark elf scribbled. "Hide the ink when next you drink," my character tells the Telvanni. Heck, the whole time I kept expecting another player to burst in and shatter the illusion further. There's a justice system in Elder Scrolls Online these days, but I can't help but think the guards would have already been on me in Skyrim. Ethrandora shows not the slightest apprehension as this tall stranger dawdles in her quarters, inching up and waiting for her to look away before rummaging in her pockets. So, massive Nord named Isleif the Unwieldy that I am, I venture into her private office to pickpocket her. (And truly, it's criminal stuff, infected as it is with couplets like "O Ethrandora, I do adore ya" and "Your smile is so sweet like the sweetest guar meat.") One of the first things I have to do after chatting up Sun-in-Shadow is steal an awful love poem a drunken dark elf Telvanni sent to a local wood elf-which is bad because dark elves are massive racists, mm-kay?-and now he wants it back lest she blackmail him. Yet it'll never fully be able to shake off that disconnect between the expectations of the singleplayer games and an MMO.
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