It really depends on what you're looking for in the game.

It's an MMO more than an Elder Scrolls game, but it's an MMO with very strong Elder Scrolls trappings. However, it also feels more like a single-player MMO most of the time. Outside of dungeons, PvP, and your guilds, there's very little feeling of connection with the other players. You see them running around, but you typically don't talk to them or interact with them.

The game is beautiful and detailed, though of course you can't pick up everything you see like in a regular Elder Scrolls game. Every line of dialogue from every npc, no matter how small, is fully voiced.

My favourite things about the game:

• It rewards exploration. There are many quests that no one sends you to or hints about; you can only find them by running into the wilderness until you get close enough that the quest-giver marker appears on your compass. There's no mini-map, so you have to find crafting materials the old-fashioned way, by snooping them out in the actual landscape. And there are hidden treasure chests cleverly placed in the wilderness for you to find. There are achievements for finding and exploring things that the main quest lines never tell you about. There are 300 lore books scattered around the world -- not in libraries, but in dungeons and in the wild, all waiting to be discovered and read.

• The game is best played slow. For me, the one time I tried to blow through quests as fast as possible was when I disliked the game the most. When I slow down, listen to all the dialogue, search my surroundings, and take my time, I find myself enjoying it much more. There are 150 PvE levels to gain if you play all the way through. I've currently played for 35 hours and I'm only at level 13. One person in my guild, playing faster, hit level 50 after 105 hours.

• The skill system is wide open and full of interesting skills. You gain skill points by leveling, by completing certain quests and hidden objectives in the world, and by finding skyshards hidden in the world (you get a skill point for every three you find). The only restrictions are the three class skill trees that everyone has. After that, it's all open. Any class can skill up with any weapon, any armor type, and any crafting type, or all of any of those. There's a race skill line, a soul trap skill line, and several guild skill lines as well. You can create any type of character you want, beyond the three class skill lines. While some classes will be better at certain roles than others, any class can play any role if they're willing to invest the skill points.

• The combat system is fairly well balanced. There's no target-locking or auto-attacks. Against one on-level enemy, you'll win easily unless you really screw up. Against two, you're in for an actual fight but should prevail without too much trouble. Three enemies is a real challenge, and four has a good chance of killing you. There are enemies of varying difficulty spread around the world, but there's no indicator, like the elite markers in WoW. The only way to know is to attack, and if you attack the wrong thing unprepared you're in for a world of trouble.

• There's a sense of having to work for your rewards. Everything takes time, effort, and patience. Things aren't handed to you, the path isn't laid out in a straight line of quest markers, which is something I started to dislike about WoW before I stopped playing. The game only gives out light punishment for failure, nothing bad, but you have to work and invest time and skill points to get good at crafting, to have good equipment, and to gain enough money for the expensive bag upgrades, bank upgrades, and horses. It's not Eve Online level ridiculous when it comes to the time needed to get good, but it's got a solid, slow growth curve.

My least favourite things:

• In order to feel immersed in the game, I had to turn off general chat. It was full of gold spammers and people trying to trade goods, because there's no worldwide auction house (you can only do auction house style trades within a guild that has 50 members or more; to balance that out, you can join up to five guilds). Basically the general chat was a blur of people talking, and it kept drawing my eye and distracting me from playing the game. So I turned it off, which leaves me even more disconnected from the community. My only community is my small guild. I was able to build a three-person group once to beat a world boss, but only because I saw them in the world nearby and spoke to them up close.

• Currently the game still isn't fully stable. I haven't encountered any game-breaking bugs, but every once in a while I get kicked to the log-in screen, or I go too far off the smoothed parts of the world map and get launched thousands of feet into the sky, or fall beneath the world. There's been a bit of maintenance time while they work to fix the worst of the issues. I think that's standard for MMO launches, and it's been getting better over the first three weeks, but it's not 100% yet.

• Because there's no targeting system, the combat can get confusing in large battles. Sometimes I get too close to an enemy and can't hit it after delivering a big blow, until I stop attacking and back away, while the enemy gets to keep hitting me. It's a working combat system, but it takes some getting used to.

• The game is hard to play in first-person mode, if you want that from your Elder Scrolls. I have to play in third-person, which strengthens the MMO feel.

Summary: If you like Tamriel and the Elder Scrolls a lot, and if you don't mind a slow-playing MMO and enjoy taking your time and exploring, this game is awesome. If you want a regular Elder Scrolls game, or fast-paced content, or lots of group interactions, it might not be the right game for you.