Falkner

I might not have luck on my own, but a friend kindly gave me his spare key out of the blue last night, so I'm all loaded up and ready to go for this weekend. ^.^ I'd poke around, you might know people who have gotten extras, because I've seen that happen quite a bit. Good luck with your surgery!

A friend said he was able to get in about 5 minutes ago. Also woo, I have 313 GB free so I'm all set. o/ ...if I didn't have the worst luck evar.

Ahh, now all my US friends got their keys. Looks like it'll be all over.

Hmm, I wonder if it's largely targeting EU players this time around. All of the people I personally know who got in are EU.

Hopefully they're just coming out in email-batches. If not, I'm definitely going to pounce on that opportunity. ^.^

THREE KEYS? ;_; I want one. I swear, my luck is just awful. A year of being signed up and not a peep! QQ

And here I wanted to smack people with my staff. Ah well- good to know, thanks!

Thanks! Good to know there are ways to make it work; I'll have to try this come open beta (or closed if I'm lucky) and see how it works. :3 One question though- restoration staffs are melee weapons? As in, in combat you smack people with them close-range?

*pokes head in* I'm not sure if this is the place for questions, but shoot, I'll do it anyway. I'm going to have a sorcerer alt, and I'm going to want to be a really mobile and sneaky healer for PvP because I'll be following around a group of sneaky hard-hitting DPS rogues as their pocket healer. This means, however, that I'll probably want to wear leather for the most part, which is beneficial to stealth, speed and stamina- but I don't know how wise it is to do this when as a healer I'll probably need to rely on magicka. Haaalp. I already know that I want it to be a Breton. But I'm stuck as to where I should start off for my sneaky/fast healer concept (think restoration druid, if you've played WoW). Is it even viable?

Fun fact: if you wear a mask with your eyepatch option, if the mask is big enough, you don't see an eyepatch; the affected eye is a milky white instead, which is pretty cool. But I'm making a beggar character and dirty face is important. D:

I'd love to know if there's an option for dirt on your face. Y'know. For the party. Preferably for a gal of the Breton persuasion. Or maybe at least an option for no makeupy looking stuff.

Or not a lesbian. Or both. But if I had a boyfriend, I'd drag him to play TESO with me.

I've recently changed what I want to do with my characters. x.x Been trying to fix up some skill lines but I feel like I'm derping it up and don't know what might be effective. I want to try a tanky heals/support Templar for PvP. I presume this build would focus on health and magicka with a bit of stamina to stay effective with blocks. I'm also thinking sword and board... maybe resto staff for offhand? Or sword and board in both, just a different skillset for each, seeing as Templar heals ought to work fine. Heavy armor for sure, but likely enchanted for some magicka fun stuffs. Basically, I want to be able to take hits. That might take a bite out tons of heals to shove at everyone, but I'll stay in the fight longer. Right now I've only got a very loose idea for maybe the first skillset to use: Breton Templar Tank/Heals Heavy Armor - Sword and Board Focused Charge Rushed CeremonyHealing RitualRestoring AuraBacklash Ultimate: Dragonskin I figured the charge would be useful for mobility to get into the thick of a fight so I can spam the support. Wasn't sure what to put as my fifth but thought a magicka vs stamina based ability would be better, so I'm iffy about backlash- I thought it could be a good idea because I'll end up being targeted because I'm a healer, and it'd be a nice bit of damage, but hurmmm. I dunno. Stuck on what I should focus on with the second skillset. Other than that, I'm totally yoinking one of the dual-wielding/bow nightblade builds I see here for my Redguard. ...that I decided to make a DPS instead of heals.

I'm such a derp. My Bretons are all melee, my Redguard is heals. Ah well. Looks good!

.___. Oh good. I can spend the 100 hours I'll need for character creation ahead of time.

Is invisibility and sneaking the same thing? I know that magelight is supposed to reveal you if you're sneaking/stealthing, but I was under the impression that invisibility was a totally different animal, one that the nightblade abilities touch on. They specifically mention sneaking characters when referring to magelight's ability. But I might just be nitpicking. Anyway, thanks for the input! I think I'm going to go with Nightblade and check out some of the siphoning abilities, see if I can't make myself a loose set of skills to play with. The sneaky-heals I had in mind wasn't so much spamming heals while stealthed/invisible, but being viable enough in stealth (having a bit of medium armor for the bonuses) to sneak past enemy lines with a group of stealthies and then act as a support and heals for them. I'll see if I can do anything viable with a bow for that, but if worst comes to worst, I suppose I could use a destro staff. I just hate the aesthetics of staves- it's bad enough using one for resto! My other nightblade is going to be tank/DPS, that should be fun too.

I'm so torn on what class I want to make my main, and my friends all think I'm crazy for being that torn on it this early before the game, but I am. ;___; I need help deciding! My main is going to be a Redguard (pirate!), but I want to go sneaky heals/support. Sneaky heals are my favorite heals. Anyway, I want neither Templar nor Dragon Knight for her, but I'm torn on whether I want to go Sorcerer or Nightblade with a mix of medium and light armors. Both classes would obviously carry a resto staff, but I don't really want my secondary weapon to be a destro staff, so I'm still looking at what interesting things the other weapons might offer (perhaps dagger + shield or something). Anyway, what interests me in the sorcerer lines are repulse (dat knockback) and the lightning escape as well as lightning form for an added defensive measure against attacks. But... but... nightblade has all the other yummy stealth and invisibility and running away, as well as siphoning abilities for that added leeching which always helps for heals. Whichever I don't use on my redguard I'll use for my nord; so if I go nightblade sneak-heals for redguard, my nord goes sneak-heals sorcerer. I'm just at a loss for which I think I'll enjoy playing more, or which will be most effective for my main. Or even which fits a Redguard better. HALP. DECISIONS. I NEED GUIDANCE, O MASTER OF BUILD-SMITHING.

The problem here is that I'll be having at least 4 characters and they're all too varied! So for the poll I went with my stealthy healer nightblade with the resto staff and bow for the ranged CC (helpful for PvP I reckon). B-but I also want a dual-wielding and sword and board tank/DPS Nightblade. And also a sword and board/two-hander Dragon Knight tank. And also a Templar... something... that heals. And a sneaky, medium-wearing sorcerer with destro staff. And... and... a sorcerer with heavy armor and tanking... and.... and.... *waves real life goodbye*

You can also customize the color and opacity of your chatbox. Forgot to throw that out there, though I like it just plain see-through. The color customization seems pretty in depth, too. I noticed that they even differentiated between incoming and outgoing whispers in the brief snippet that tester showed us. ALSO if you notice on the chat that they show, if you type up something that goes past one line, the second line and beyond is indented very slightly to show that that entire block of text belongs to that person. It makes it soooo much easier to differentiate from what people are saying, and as an RPer, all of the above makes me super happy. It's hard focusing on 10 people emoting at a time without all that stuff. And yeah, I think they confirmed no built-in voicechat for ESO, so you'll have to either get vent/mumble/teamspeak/raidcall/etc or rely on Xbox One or PS4's built in voice chat systems. ...also, /lute makes you play a lute that actually plays a soft, fairly simple song, looks like. Better than nothing!

It's just like any chat channel, like say, emotes or a regional chat. I can only assume from what I saw, but it looked like he could check and uncheck which chats his particular tab accessed. So if he wanted to not receive say and whispers in that tab, he could unclick them. If he wanted access to guild chat 1 and guild chat 2, he could check them off and maybe give them different colors so as not to be confused, and then (the following is speculation) type in /g1 and chat in the first guild, then /g2 to chat in the second, and he'd be seeing those streams. He could even make multiple tabs, and only have guild chat 1 activated in the first tab, guild chat 2 in second tab, etc and flip through them if they're too talkative to keep in just one tab. So I think if you represent a guild, that representation manifests in what guild tag is showing on your character and what tabard you're wearing and stuff. However, I think you can always access all guild chats regardless of if you're repping that guild at the moment or not. At least, that's my PC experience with it. I have no idea whatsoever how that'll work on a console, if that's what you play. Particularly not being able to type.

Yessss. I don't know if anyone else noticed, but it looks like we've got customizable chat colors, the ability to make custom chat channels, and the ability to access all 5 guild chats at once, or delegating them in whatever tabs you want. That last bit is a relief for anyone who's experienced GW2's system of only being able to chat with the guild you're repping.

I'll stick with one of two potential mains I've got floating around in my head, because I'm still not sure on the other besides 'Redguard Templar'. Going to go for a nord nightblade with a resto staff and a mix of light and medium armors. Some people like to sneak behind enemy lines and kill a bunch of healers. I'll be sneaking behind enemy lines and healing a bunch of killers. As far as what I'll be sticking in my skill slots, I have absolutely no idea. I just know I want a sneaky heals/support. I'll definitely be checking back to this thread to see what more you come up with.

Pffft. Just like a haughty elf to try and assert dominance! We humans are not children, and we know how to rule- it's our legacy. We'll wipe you from the face of Cyrodiil and resume laying the foundations of righteous order without your interference. And we'll assimilate the khajiit because d'awwwww, kitties. Ahem. With regards to female elves running around, on a bright note, at least ESO armor seems like it'll be a bit more pragmatic than most games? So we'll have more of this: http://www.digitaltrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/The-Elder-Scrolls-Online-Aldcroft1.jpg And less of this: http://tec-cia.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Human_light_armor_render_female.jpg *crosses fingers*

Mm. I think it will be a variety of people in each faction- most every friend I have that's going to play ESO wants to make a character on each faction, if possible. I have to argue on the Aldmeri Dominion being hardcore and having undesirable races, though. Elves are very popular in many games, and it looks like the elves in ESO will have more options as far as the face goes to appear appealing to a wider base of people. Subject 1: http://www.elderscrollslevelingguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/The-Elder-Scrolls-Online-Screenshot-Altmer-Lute.jpg Now that could change, as it is still beta and models are subject to tweaking, but most of the elven models that I've seen, while usually angular like a TES elf ought to be, look fairly appealing or have the potential to be so. Speaking of appealing. Subject 2: http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2012/06/faction3-590x246.jpg Don't underestimate the power of hot (right?) CGI elf chicks. Not to mention the Khajiit have a sizeable fanbase and are pretty awesome and the internet loves cats, Bosmers = wood elves and wood elves = Legolas, and Altmer = high elves and high elves = blood elves. And we all know that blood elves made up at least 50% of Horde players in WoW... or was that 50% of the entire WoW playerbase? Point being, they're popular. Elves are much beloved, and ESO elves seem pretty enough to pass. Also for that reason I call total nonsense on Horde being older and more mature. Maybe before Burning Crusade, but after? Belves, man. Awful belves. It was a plague. Goblins made it worse. Don't get me started on pandas. Plus you may get a lot of Skyrim players who think to themselves, "Ah, the Thalmor were bad guys, so Altmer are bad guys, and if I play one I'll be ironic." Plus TES fans haven't been able to see a whole lot of the Aldmeri Dominion's homeland, and it should be very pretty. We've already seen Skyrim and Morrowind, but entirely new, beautiful environments to explore? Sure we can see it at 50+, but why not delve into it from the beginning? I think AD will be appealing to a broad spectrum of people just as the rest- but that largely includes a lot of young players, like in EP, who want to play a cool character... though in this case it'll be more like a pretty elf. Don't think Morrowind Altmer with their crazy awful hair and slightly terrifying, alien faces.... because that's probably not how most people will see them from looking at their models in ESO. They are far, far from unappealing. I'd say that DC has the most 'unappealing' races and is suffering in numbers (in current polls anyway) as a result. A lot of people think playing humans is boring, and two of the three races are human. The third, orcs, is usually the least popular pick, although that could change perhaps with a faint bump in popularity due to other games. Bretons are about as generic fantasy human as TES gets, and Redguards are pretty badass but still human. EP is most varied in that regard because you've got a popular human race, a popular elven race, and a popular beast race all in one. They'll probably be most popular... and probably easiest for friends with different tastes to reach an agreement on as far as picking a faction goes because of that. I reckon AD will be a very close second, if not at the same level, though. DC will come in last. As far as the player bases? Eh. I'd venture to say "hardcore" players are often drawn in more by the underdog for that challenge. Plus it's often the non-appealing but still tough races that appeal (like pre-BC Horde), so I'd go with DC for the orcs and Redguards, but honestly, I think they'll all be varied, particularly given that we'll be on a megaserver. There's just too many people to interact with that there's going to be a large population of varied intensity doing PvP, PvE or RP. And Cyrodiil campaigns are loosely capped at 2000 people- for a grand population of, let's say 6 million, that's a total luck of the draw in terms of who you'll be fighting with. tl;dr Kiddies love pretty elves and AD has pretty elves. People love cats too. EP has cool nords which is also appealing, plus a reptilian race which is fairly rare to MMOs, so that's cool. Also dark elves. Drow, anyone? DC has humans and orcs and is toughest faction. No, I'm not a biased elf-hater, why would you say that? Lies and slander.

All they've done so far was confirm that there would be a cash shop in one of their interviews- I can't for the life of me remember which one to source, but I'll throw it up here in an edit if I find it again. However, I'm pretty sure they specified that it would contain only cosmetic items and the like - [the following is speculation] probably things like horse skins, armor, character slots, bag space, etc. So it won't be pay to win like f2p games are. As for the ring partners, as I understood it you paid for those +xp rings with in game gold... they never specified one way or another, though, that's just the impression I got. I could be wrong. The cash shop though, combined with the fact that TES fanbase is used to the one-time-payment of TES games with additional purchases for things like expansions/DLCs, and also the fact that TESO will be on consoles makes me think (hope?!) that it might be a B2P at $60 or so + nonessential cash shop game. With, of course, needing to pay for expansions that come out. My only solid comparisons are GW2 and WoW, though. GW2, whether you like the game or not, continues to pour out new content pretty regularly. New storylines, areas, minigames, armor, even dungeons are churned out at a reliable rate. GW2's model is that B2P + cash shop, and appears to be doing alright. WoW, on the other hand, puts out content less frequently (or it did the last time I played) and new content is far less noticeable most of the time. Even with a subscription of $15 a month I never felt like I was actually getting $15 worth of new content every month, which seems to be what a subscription model is supposed to do. Granted, this payment system works super well for them- it just hasn't been a sustainable system for most other P2P games. WoW is more or less a wildly successful fluke. It's TES. Around, what, 12 million copies of Skyrim have been sold? That's a lot of fans. Combine that with a fair amount of MMO players who have never touched a TES game, and even if a couple million don't play, they'll probably break even pretty fast, and then make a nice profit. And a lot of those players will want numerous alts, so that's + plenty of $$ for that. Bag space too, don't forget. Pretty mount colors and extra customization, yes please, more $$ there. /endramble Anyway, I'm hoping for the flat price of $60, and will gladly pay out the butt for character slots and bag space and pretty horses if it means no subscription. I have several friends who will only be able to play if there's no sub. :<