So after a huge pain in the ass of a download on Friday, and a busy Saturday, I got about 6 hours to play on Sunday. It's not as much as I'd have liked but I feel like I still got a pretty good idea of what the game was like. I spent the vast majority of the time as a Khajiit Nightblade.
So after a short intro you are brought into character creation. I loved it. If you're an Altoholic like me (or at least like the character creation process), then you'll be pleased. The races all looked pretty good and there were a huge number of customization options, from the angle of your forehead to the size of your hands. I spent a decent time going through all the options and decided it's among the best character creations I've seen in an MMO (And I've played my fair share). I also took this opportunity to look at the higher level gear and was once again pleased. Each race had high-end gear that reflected their personality whilst being consistent with Elder Scrolls Lore. It should be noted that some of the low level gear (particularly the medium armour) didn't look great, though I'm sure it wouldn't be a problem for long.
After character creation you are brought into this weird soul prison. You meet 'The Prophet' who gives you information about why you are there and what you must do. I won't go into details about the story so far but as Sennex said he basically tells you that you're special. The prison is a tutorial level and it was pretty boring. It was dark so didn't show off the graphics and the lack of skills at this point meant combat was pretty boring (I'll go into that later). It takes about 10 minutes to go through the tutorial depending on how much you look for loot, so this could be a bit annoying when starting several new characters.
When I finished the tutorial I found myself in a small camp (the starting area for the Khajiit, Bosmer and Altmer races). This was the first time I got to see how beautiful the game really was. I was highly impressed with the looks of the game as a whole and can tell I'll spend a lot of time just exploring the world of Tamriel. Before I would have said that Guild Wars 2 was the best looking MMO I've played, but The Elder Scrolls Online is definitely a new contender. I was approached by a khajiit who set me off on my first chain of quests.
The quests in the starting are were also impressive, there was no "Go to Quest Giver, Kill 8 Wild Boars and Wolves for meat, return to Quest Giver, recieve 200 gold". I had an instance where I was running up from the shore when a woman ran to me for help. I had to run through some ruins and free her master from an evil spirit. It seems a lot more inspired in that aspect.
Whilst I've made the game sound pretty good so far, I do have one main concern. The combat. It neither had the complexity of other MMO's such as WoW or the fluidity of single player games like Skyrim. I think I had 5 abilities as well as a regular and heavy attack. There was also a limited amount of abilities to unlock, around 6 for the three skill trees as well as a few for armour, weapons and races.I was able to link up some abilities well however. I could use the 2 second stealth, followed up by a heavy damaging backstab with bleed. Then crippling the enemy as they try to escape. The combat was sometimes laggy with an enemy taking a few seconds to fall after I killed it, thus causing confusion as to what exactly was happening. I never tried out PvP which I regret, since I'd like to have seen how multiple classes could link up together.
Overall I think the game is more suited for a casual MMO player, with it's strong points being on looks and story rather than the gameplay itself. Whilst I'll be picking it up, with the looks, story and exploration greatly interesting me, the boring combat may mean I'll put it down sooner than expected.