Elder Scrolls Online Early Access!!!

I was up at the crack of dawn (at 6:50AM, exactly) with my brother Nick to going in at launch for The Elder Scrolls Online Early Access. Needless to say, as soon as the clock said 7 AM, we punched those Log-In buttons and were finally playing the game we had waited nearly 2 YEARS to play!!!

Our characters, running on the Minimum graphics level, at the end of the first day

 Even with our games both set at the minimum graphics level, ESO was everything we could have hoped for and more! Our crappy PCs ran it with absolute fluid smoothness and with no bumps or glitches (of course, it IS at the minimum level...) and we barely experienced any bugs in the game. I had an unexpected crash during Coldharbour, but I was right back in where I left off in under a minute. There were a few times where objects were big red MISSING blocks, and one particular quest that was a little buggy, but everything else was flawless!

A few things we learned:

1. You don't SEE everyone automatically, but if there is someone you want to see, you can if you friend them or form a group with them and then use the Friends or Group menus to fast travel to that person. It may take that other person fast travelling to you as well, but in no time at all you two can see each other and play in-game together.
2. Sneak isn't really a skill that levels you up. If it was, we would have reached 50+ from all the sneaking past high-level mobs in Valenwood! A pity, really.... that's always how I leveled up in past TES games...
3. Exploration is limited by experience. Not literally, of course; you can go anywhere within your faction, and then ANYWHERE anywhere once you reach 50+, but the mobs and quests become more and more out of your league the further and further you stray from your original spawning point. Like I said before, sneaking past those mobs like we did doesn't really help.

There are many other things we learned in the 8 hours of gameplay we squeezed in today, but those are things we plan to focus in on more and dedicate a whole post to such things. So keep your eyes peeled in the future! We have plenty more hours of ESO to clock before we call it quits in a million years!!