About
Originally, I was reluctant to even play the game. I’d heard many rumours that it was pretty bad. I had also avoided any MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online) games because I wasn’t really interested in the social aspects of gaming at the time.
But near the end of 2016 I had purchased a PS4 and I was looking for some different games to try out. I loved both Oblivion and Skyrim, so I figured I’d give ESO a shot and decide if I liked it for myself or not.
Well I fell in love immediately. I had the good fortune of showing up some time after the One Tamriel patch that fixed so many of the issues that people seemed to have with the game. You were no longer fixed to certain regions. The entire world became available for you to play right out of the tutorial.
They’ve been constantly improving things and adding new content since. Some people might argue about the details about which set got nerfed during one patch or another, but since I’m not stressed about end game content, that’s yet to be a real issue for me.
But what I love most is the fact that there is no fixed way you have to play the game. Want to follow the quests and learn all about the lore? No problem. There’s acres of content for you.
Want to fight other real players? Ok. There’s 4 different areas for that now. Cyrodiil, Imperial City and its Sewers as well as the only real PVP’ing that I do, Battlegrounds.
Want to spend your entire time fishing? There’s oceans, rivers, lakes and foul holes to fish in all across Tamriel.
Stealing and murdering? No problem! As long as you have the Dark Brotherhood/Thieves Guild DLC or ESO Plus.
You can even get dressed up in your swankiest outfit, pick a random person and start making silly gestures at them to see what they do. If you’re lucky, they may even make some back.
There are really only as many ways to play this game as there is to your imagination. Which is where this blog really comes in.
I was recently(ish) shown the feature where I could disable the user interface and take a screenshot of the game as if you were taking a picture of a real place. It blew my mind. I’d taken some screenshots before, but I didn’t feel any were worth sharing because of all the different bars and UI components all over the screen.
There are some beautiful locations in this game and now I could finally capture them properly! But then there didn’t seem to be any way to really showcase them.
I could have just uploaded them somewhere like Facebook or Pinterest, but I came up with a different plan instead. I’d create a new character from scratch. Give him a personality (thanks D&D for teaching me how to do that).
And so an idea was born. I created Tiberious Maximillion III. He’s an imperial looking to make is way out of Cyrodiil and into the fantastic world of adventuring. He answered an advert my main character (Dread-Claws) sent out and I’ve been writing his story since.
There was, as with all projects like this, a bit of a learning curve at first. I knew that I wanted to tackle the summerset storyline first, and tell it from the point of view of my new character. So I started out by doing the quests, and taking some screenshots.
Well after I was a few stories in I decided to start actually writing. By that time, I had a rather difficult time remember all the exact details of what happened. So I started taking notes down as I went. That helped tremendously.
There was also the photos. Turning screenshot mode only got me so far. First I turned off all of the labels used to identify characters or other players, as well as follower icon. I also needed to completely disable any sort of outlines on the enemies. Which made them look cleaner in any shots, but of course made them much harder to see. It actually helped with the immersion, so that was a nice bonus.
That’s about it. I’m still a rather novice writer, but I hope through this project that I’ll find my voice(es) and bring you lots of fun adventures. I hope you find it entertaining. I know I’m having a blast writing it.