I don't know how many people have brought this up before, but there was always something that bothered me about the look of ESO that I could never put my finger on, but have just now realized, and that is that the animations are too cartoony. Now I'm not saying that the graphics are bad or cartoony, I understand that it's an MMO and that by MMO standards, the graphics aren't bad at all, and truthfully, I have no problem with them. What bothers me is the movements made by the characters. The way they run, the way they string an arrow on a bow, even to an extent the way they stand idle. It all seems too cartoony to me, at least for a TES game. Even with the outdated graphics of Morrowind, with it's awful movement and attack animations, I still always got a sense of realism, at least to an extent. Maybe it's that the ESO animations are to flamboyant? I don't know, let me know what you guys think about it. Just to be clear, other than this, I have no real complaints about ESO up to this point, I think it looks like a great game, so I'm not trying to trash it at all. Cheers.

I haven't really noticed it myself, so I've nothing to complain about. But I agree it shouldn't be cartoony.

I don't think it's anything to do with being cartoony and more to do with animation in TESO are one of the games weak points.

I think the lack of defined terminology of animation and art styles is a bit of a bane for the MMO community in general.

Do I understand what people refer to with WoW's "cartoony" art style? Yes. But I'm not too attuned to want people refer animations in games as being "cartoony" (outside of people getting into scraps in a big ball of smoke with the occasional fist or leg popping out).

That aside, the problem I have with animations in some cases like with the cooking animation as it stands in the public eye: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST9D_P0d_Oc&list=PLZng8hzxXSt5j4tS8noAr7fcP1H-r3yBa at 0:46. That to me says it's more like a forced facial expression, the type you'd see from maybe a bad actor, overacting, who has yet to grasp the idea of less expression can mean better acting. Other animation like mining at 0:37 should be obvious to everyone that the animations are clearly not representative of the final product, as most things are. But apart from that, I think there's much to say in terms of utter awfulness; they should at least be able to get to a position of animation quality seen in Skyrim, for better or worse.

Have you even seen the Ogrim thread? That may have been the case at first. Not anymore. ZOS has listened to feedback, and improved their style accordingly.

People seriously need to get the concept of beta here.

Yes we have to consider its only beta, as shown with the new Ogrim art they are sharpening up the graphics and making them 'less cartoony' however I feel this is more a subjective issue than anything else, my idea of cartoony graphics is completely different to yours.