An early look at Craglorn, patch 1.1

Patch 1.1 is coming with the promise that it will improve gameplay and fix many of the bugs that players have had to endure since launch. This is an important patch for Zenimax and Bethesda because many players have vociferously expressed their frustration on the forums. I am hopeful that this patch will be the fix that players are hoping for, but reading through the patch also made me a little concerned.  You can see the patch notes for yourself here. Here is an early look at 1.1:

Craglorn

I think that Craglorn will finally give players strong incentive to break out of their shells, join guilds, and start working together.  Craglorn's 60-death limit will make the trials very difficult to complete in a pickup group.  The patch notes even say, “You can use the group finder tool to locate others for your Trial group, but be warned: you’ll need excellent coordination and skill to take on the Trials.” The leaderboards are also a great incentive to find a good guild and excel. I am excited to see this kind of raid-level challenge.  I was worried that ESO would be a “Mickey Mouse,” MMO but it looks like it will offer some real challenges, and some real rewards!

Dungeon Chest Changes

Weapon animations will be smoother and won't freeze.

Dungeon chests will give loot to the entire party.  This is just a no-brainer that will help parties get along better, and it is great for me since I can’t open those darn chests to save my life!

Population Underdog Bonus

I have yet to PvP but I am familiar with underdog bonuses from other games.  This will mean that if you are in a weaker alliance during a campaign your group will get buffs that will even the odds.  They tried this in WoW for some zones and I felt that it did not truly even the odds. There is no substitute for additional fingers and eyeballs.  I hope ESO will be different.

Death Recap

This is just a cool little feature.  When you die, you will know why and how so you can tweak your game.  Thumbs up!

Fixes

Horse sprinting is not actually a glitch! It is here to stay!

There are bevies of fixes that will make gameplay smoother and more satisfying.  Weapon animations will no longer freeze in mid-swing.  The annoying glitch that plays sounds from former quests will be gone.  Self-reviving now returns you to full health.  They will also fix that irritating issue where you can’t use certain abilities after an attack.  If only I had a gold piece for every time that one killed me!

Missing

I did not see anything about the phasing problems, specifically.  I hope individual quest fixes remove the phasing issues.  I also didn’t see anything about hitting bosses into walls, which is a persistent problem for me.  Perhaps the quest fixes will also address this. 

Takeaways

Resurrection will restore full health and death will provide
valuable information.

This is really make or break for ESO.  I, for one, am confident that the devs know what they are doing and that this patch will end most of the major bugs. It used to be that when you released a game on CD-ROMs back in the day everything had to be perfect.  In the internet age, however, every game is a work in progress. MMOs are especially thorny since they are so large, in terms of both users and content.  Games that fix their bugs, like WoW, succeed.  Games that don’t, like Age of Conan, fail.  We have yet to see where ESO will end up, but I am hopeful!