Been a lot of big news from Elder Scrolls Online lately. It’s finally launched its much anticipated housing feature, and announced its first expansion.

Homecoming:

ESO’s housing is a lot worse than I hoped, but a little better than I feared.

The biggest problem is that the houses are massively over-priced, regardless of whether you’re spending real world or in-game currency. Even the smallest homes cost tens of thousands of gold, making housing out of reach of leveling players and pretty much the sole domain of dedicated end-gamers.

This might be justified if housing was a powerful character perk, but instead it’s a purely fluff feature with little to no practical benefits. At best you can put target dummies or crafting stations in your home, but aside from being fairly weak perks, those are all quite difficult/expensive to acquire.

You do get a room in an inn for free once you complete the introductory quest, but it’s so tiny that even calling it a room is bordering on false advertisement. It’s more of a closet.

This is the entire room. And keep in mind my character is a Bosmer; she’s pretty tiny.

Furniture is a bit of a better story. While there are still some insanely expensive pieces (thirty-five thousand gold for a single tree), there are also a lot of more affordable options, so if you ever do manage to get a home, you should be able to decorate it without breaking the bank too much.

The controls to place furnishings aren’t the most intuitive, but you do have a lot of options for how to orient them. Can’t scale their size, though, which is unfortunate.

I do like that you can fully explore every house before deciding to buy it. That’s a nice touch.

For all my complaints, there is one house in particular I’m thinking of getting: Autumn’s Gate in the Rift. It’s still a bit on the small side, but it’s not as claustrophobic as some of the other basic homes, and it also has a small yard, which is a great perk. The Rift is my favourite environment in the game, so I’d love to own a bit of it.

It costs 60,000 gold, which may just barely be within reach for me. I’d also have to play through the Rift’s main story to unlock the option to buy it, but again, I like the zone, so that’s not too onerous a task.

Morrowind thoughts:

I feel obligated to give my opinions on the newly announced Morrowind expansion, but to be honest I don’t have a lot of strong feelings on it.

I imagine it will be a solid expansion, and the new environments look interesting, but it’s mainly a play to nostalgia for a game I never experienced, and I don’t know much about Dunmer lore in general, so it’s not really grabbing me out of the gate. The main character is supposedly a fan favourite, but I’ve never met her. I’d have been more interested in an expansion set in Elsweyr or Summerset (for the lore), or Skyrim (for the environments).

The new warden class looks fun. Actually it fits my concept for my main better than sorcerer does, but progression in this game is far too slow for me to consider rerolling.

I’ve seen some people asking for a paid class change option. In most games I’d consider this a ridiculous idea, but class is a relatively small part of each character in ESO, so it’d actually make sense here. Of course, there are a lot of things that would make good sense that Zenimax is dead-set against, so I wouldn’t bet on it actually happening.

I roll my eyes a bit at the developers’ insistence that this is a “chapter” and not an expansion, but I do like the idea that this game’s expansions will be somewhat standalone affairs. Fits well with the game’s existing structure.

The developers have confirmed there will not be a gear reset with Morrowind’s launch, but their statement also indicated that a gear reset will happen at some point. After spending so much effort to maxing out my current gear, this is not welcome news. A gear reset might just drive me away from the game entirely, to be honest. The current level of effort it takes to get everything maxed out is only justified by the promise of some level of permanence.

Odds are decent I may buy Morrowind some point, but probably not at launch. I’ve got way too much left to do in the game’s existing content.

One other thing…

Altitis strikes again.

As predicted, I now have a Dunmeri templar, my first non-Dominion character. I’ve only just started the character, and it’s very early going, but I’m actually really enjoying it so far.

I managed to luck into a pretty fun and satisfying build right out of the gate. I load the enemy up with debuffs from the one hand and shield skill line and then nuke them down with my Aedric spear skill.

Being super over-powered from my 130+ Champion Points doesn’t hurt, either, I suppose.

Her backstory really came to life for me in character creation, too. I already have a pretty good image of who she is and her history.

It’s entirely possible my interest in this character will wane — again, it’s very early going — but so far, so good.

Well it was bound to happen sooner or later. I now have an alt in Elder Scrolls Online.

Really I’m amazed it took this long. In most games I have alts before the first week is through.

One of the main stumbling blocks in ESO was that the main race I wanted to play other than Bosmer is Khajiit, but those races are both members of the Aldmeri Dominion, so I’d be playing through the exact same content. I could’ve avoided this by ponying up for the Imperial edition, but it didn’t seem worth it.

Now that the world has been opened and faction restrictions relaxed, though, that’s no longer an issue. I’m now the proud owner of a brand new Khajiit who is leveling through the Ebonheart Pact zones, despite still technically being Aldmeri.

I’ve only played through the twin starting zones of Bleakrock Isle and Bal Foyen so far, but the Pact zones don’t feel like a radically different experience. I do note that they present the conflict with the other factions much more prominently — and boy does the Covenant come off badly. The Dominion, by comparison, focuses most of its storylines on internal struggles and more fantastical matters.

I will say this: As much as it pains my Dominion patriotism to admit it (Ayrenn remains the one true queen of Tamriel!), the Pact probably has the coolest zones, at least from a purely aesthetic perspective. The most beautiful regions of the game are to be found in Skyrim and its environs, and the Dunmeri lands are, if not exactly pretty, then certainly unique and oozing character.

It does impress upon me how much of this game I have yet to explore even after months of (on and off) play, both geographically and culturally. I may finally have a solid understanding of the culture and history of the Aldmeri peoples, and I’m getting a grasp on some of the other races, but I still know precious little about the Dunmer, and next to nothing about the Argonians. Other than that everyone hates them for some reason, anyway.

I have decided I don’t like the Nords. You would think, given that they’re based on real world Nordic cultures, I’d love them, but they’re just the stereotypical pop culture Vikings. At best they’re dull and one-dimensional, at worst they’re borderline offensive to my heritage.

Is this a small taste of how minorities feel about being constantly stereotyped, I wonder?

At least they pronounce their j’s correctly. That’s something.

Moving on to game mechanics, for this character I’m being less of a jack-of-all-trades and focusing his abilities much more clearly. He’s going to be a traditional spell-caster, with destruction staff as his main weapon, and enchanting is the only craft I’m pursuing right now. And I might not even stick with that.

For class, I picked dragonknight. On paper sorcerer would be the best choice for a magical character, but my main is already a sorcerer, and honestly, dragonknight feels like a more natural fit for an offensive caster.

Yes, all of the sorcerer abilities are magical, but most of them are utility oriented. Dragonknight skills are all about unleashing fire and fury on your enemies. I’m especially fond of the lava whip.

That said, I’m not finding that having a different class and weapon is making for a radically different experience. The general mechanics of combat remain mostly the same.

Also, I forgot how much it sucks not to have weapon swapping. Level 15 can’t come soon enough.

My final thought on this alt experiment is how confusingly inconsistent ESO is when it comes to what is and isn’t account-wide. Mounts are account-wide, but mount training isn’t (whhyyyyyy). Achievements aren’t account-wide, but dyes and costumes awarded from achievements are. Mail of all things appears to be account-wide, as is the bank. It’s very strange.

I’m not sure how much I’m ultimately going to play this Khajiit character. The need to start mount training all over again is daunting, and since any character can go anywhere and do anything, I could just as easily explore the Pact lands on my main. Unfortunately swapping to a different class and weapon doesn’t provide a significantly different game experience the way it would in most other games.

But if nothing else, it’s been an interesting diversion.

Contrarily, though, I already feel the urge to try another alt. I have a vague concept for a sword and board Dunmeri templar, who I would of course level through the Covenant zones.

Sometimes I don’t make sense even to myself.

Also, I very nearly wrote this entire post in-character using the Khajiiti speech pattern. Aren’t you glad this one decided against that?