The way I see it, MMO's should be fun from the outset. The first ten levels of TESO is a tedious, mind-numbing grind. Sure, if you re-roll it will go faster, especially if you breeze through the diarrhea waterfall of dialogue. While I agree that we have not even scratched the surface of the game - for me, those first ten levels are downright awful. My opinion is not based on bugs. My opinion is based entirely on content.
Since we're comparing this with EQ, let's look at how far we've come on these terms. I think that will get to the core of what is really being said here (and that thing being said is something I agree with wholeheartedly).
My first EQ character. I had a little background playing a druid in D&D with friends when we were stoned and had nothing else to do. I'd use buffs and tank, so I tried that in EQ. Nope. I had a little background playing a wizard in a MUD, so I tried nuking things to ash before they got to me. Nope. I found a partner (warrior), kept him healed, and we ran a few small quests in Qeynos. He logged off, and I was the only one there, so having gotten the hint about teamwork, I decided to relocate to some place better populated. The nine hour journey from Qeynos to Greater Faydark is something that I look back on fondly; a long, dangerous, nervous journey.
That character was level three when I finally arrived, still with no idea about how to play my class. After binding, groups could be found that would inevitably wipe on the first pull, so teamwork seemed to be out until we got stronger. My next few play sessions were spent finding things that either died seemingly if my character breathed in their general direction and other things that killed my character when they breathed in his general direction. No xp or death, with quests that I couldn't find a group to complete. This lull in advancement lasted two weeks before enough people had learned their class well enough that we could work together.
MMOs have come a long, long way, and we have WoW to thank for bringing questing back to the forefront of advancement. The Elder Scrolls fits with that very well too, and the progression in the early single player games is (I think) mirrored about as well as it can be in a MMO. But what does it take for that experience to be particularly good these days? Players are getting that, "I've done this routine before..." feeling; especially those who cut their MMO baby teeth on WoW.
It takes something totally new; the kind of thing that comes along rarely. I agree that innovation in the early game is something needed now in MMOs. I don't agree that ESO doesn't innovate in general, as their class and role system is the first I've seen to bring freedom to Trinity by making it cartesian. Axis 1: the familiar heal, tank, DPS. Axis 2: melee, magic, stealth. I do agree that there is no innovation in the early game, aside from the way that the story is told.
Let's talk about innovation now. It means doing something new. Change. Well, change means risk. Change everything, people hate it. Change nothing, people hate it. It's just a symptom of WoW syndrome: too much like WoW, "Great another WoW clone," too little like WoW and people complain because it's not what they're used to. Now, back up through these pages and check other sources of opinion too. What they have done differently, they've taken risk with. And predictably, as many people seemingly hate it as love it. So, RvR, phasing, Cartesian Trinity class building... How many risks should one game take?
I never saw druids like what I was used to again until I played the first Neverwinter Nights. There's something to be said for what people are used to. Maybe I look a little bit like a fanboi, but my frame of reference for a first (graphical) MMO experience is spending weeks on a treadmill learning poorly documented things about a game and essentially experiencing nothing but repeated defeat and discouragement. And that with a general player population who liked to pretend they knew what they were doing but didn't advance any quicker than I did. Early MMOs set the bar so low that it's hard for some of us not to feel a bit spoiled by the much greater quality of experience newer games offer in general.
