This past weekend was the last beta test before releasing the Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) game for PC and Mac.  I've been involved with the beta for a few months, but until now either wasn't allowed (under NDA) to post anything, or I didn't have anything worth posting.

The problem was I couldn't actually get into the game.  I don't mean "I didn't like it", I mean it crashed so much I couldn't play it.  I have since discovered it was the Razor drivers (for my keyboard) which were somehow causing ESO to spin up memory usage to exhaustion and thus force Windows 7 to kill the process.

Once I removed the offending drivers (and confirmed the keyboard and mouse still worked), I was able to finally play the game.

You start out in a cavernous prison "cell" and are released by a fellow inmate NPC.  The prisoners are making a mad rush, so you quickly grab a fallen sword and join the rush.

Other players are among the fleeing characters, popping out of their "cells" as you run past.  For some reason there's skeletons and ghouls attacking the rush.  They get chopped down pretty fast.

At one point you're encouraged to sneak through a section.  I watch as another player charges on ahead, so I sneak along behind him.  Let him kill whatever we encounter.    After killing a few more ghouls and skeletons, he eventually gets lost in the maze, so I look at the map and head off on my own without incident.

This is the tutorial, and it goes for some length until you kill some giant skeletal demon (I bashed his pelvis to smithereens I tell ya!) and are magically spirited away to a town in Tamriel.  I was not a fan.  The hectic atmosphere of the story meant I felt like I was missing something as I rushed past dangers.  It was very dark and uninteresting to look at as well.

Once I finally reached town, I quickly went off to explore.  Guards were yelling at me to "Halt citizen!" before I left town, and everyone and everything seemed hostile.  I quickly grew bored of the incessant danger, and washed out colours.  I just wanted to reach a vista of some sort to look at the lay of the land, and once I did, I felt underwhelmed (since it was just a view of vast water).

Here's where I got fed up with the game.  I tried to exit, expecting to come back later.  Hitting ESC did nothing.  I brought up the menus and saw nothing that looked like exit.  I searched the extensive Help system for "exit" or "quit" and neither gave any clues on how to leave the game.  Ultimately, I brought up Task Manager and killed the process.  F* this, I thought.

The Good: The potential for an Elder Scrolls MMO is HUGE!  The graphics were detailed, but meh.
The Bad: The tutorial was long, dark, and uninteresting.
The Ugly: As much as I love Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim, this MMO makes me rather play Warcraft.

To be fair, I didn't really do much more than the tutorial level, but it didn't inspire me to keep playing.

More pictures available here http://tay.kotaku.com/pics-of-the-last-day-of-the-elders-scrolls-online-beta-1545337405/@tinaamini from someone who loved the game.