I'm going to bring up somethings about Cyrodiil. While alot of people here follow everything about the game, there are also alot that don't and have misconceptions of things.

First, there are alot of people who are put off by this game because they want open world PVP where you come across enemies and fight. You can look at it this way. Cyrodiil is actually kinda like its own Open world PVP server. At level 10 you can go there and only play there if you want. It is massive, close to the same size as the alliances home world zones. You can do everything there. Quest, PVE, explore, dungeons, gather resources, and craft. there are alot of people who like the sense of danger, the unknown and the watch your back feel. While it isnt true open world pvp it still brings alot of the feel and instead of people being ganked by people 40 levels higher everyone will be bumped to max level. And everyone you come across will be there knowing they have a good chance of being attacked. The map looks to be big enough that you can venture far away from the keep seiges and hot spots and have those random encounters with enemies doing what your doing like exploring a dungeon.

Next there are people who only think Cyrodiil is a battle ground only for keep seiges. if it does pull off what DAOC did, which it looks like they are going for. then besides the massive zerg sieges there will be roaming group fights, PVP DEV stated the map has many open field setups away from keeps and towers to promote group skirmishes. Also since every class can stealth there should be a huge solo / stealth game. the map will have many bottlenecks where the alliances territories meet. (like bridges) these are perfect spots to wait and ambush enemies or for small man fights

Now the map itself. first it is right in the center of the whole world map, You can think of Cyrodiil as a giant pizza that is divided into 3 large slices. Each slice belongs to each alliance as their homelands with thier keeps and towns. Each slice is connected by a few bottlenecks, these serve as the line where you can protect your lands or just the place to head for action. this setup now allows one side to attack and push into enemies lands seiging keeps and giving the invading feel. you can think of it as a wave coming in and you will always know where the battle line is pushing to take the next objective or falling back to your keep and defending. the furtehr your side pushes should become more difficult because your respawns and renforcements will have further to travel and the defending side will be much cloer to their border port. the unknwn is the 3rd faction breaking keep ports and going after what they want.

Endgame. Now there is alot of arguement but many see this as the main focus endgame because the game was build around the Cyrodiil map setup and the 3way war amonst teh alliances. you could also compare this to DAOC which had teh same endgame. endgame progression looks to be the same. Instead of raidng for gear or PVPing for gear it looks to be like DAOC's realm rank system. In Cyrodiil from PVP you will obtains ranks and gain abilities and passives in the AVA skill trees and allow you to spend perk points in the ones you like. Fighter Tree, Seigemaster Tree, Warlord Tree. if it does work like the DAOC system you will be able to keep building and making your character better for years after hitting max level. 99% never hit that "my character is done wall" Which i like much better than a gear endgame because this allows crafters to still be viable and still craft endgame gear.

Sadly, people are still going to complain that it's not true Open World PvP. Many people will just consider it to be a battleground in reality it's much more than that. But you will always have people that will complain about it.

DAOC did not have enough need for pve in the frontiers. When I played it nobody wanted to pve in the frontiers because it was more efficient to do it in the Home Realms. What ESO needs to do is make sure there is more reward for pve in the pvp enabled areas so that people go there for more than keep sieges. People playing a pve only game are playing in easy mode and it needs to be clear that greater reward comes from greater risk. It has always been clear, in games that have open pvp servers, that the pve servers are easier to collect gear on and lvl faster. The general loot tables in Cyrodiil need to be amended to reflect the conditions of pve'g there.

They have put a lot of work into making Cyrodiil a huge area with dungeons, camps and towns just like the rest of the world. It would be a shame if people don't get out there and put those regions to good use. That is where my mid and end game will be played.

This is mostly untrue.

For the largest part of DAoC's life the frontiers were the most efficient XP outside of SI raids and powerleveling. Summoners halls groups were BY FAR the best for exp groups, and it lead to a ton of ganking inside. There were many, many spots in the frontiers where you could gank xpers (what the bads call "open world pvp") and people did it allllll the time.

At some point that did change during the decline of DAoC's population. They added different quests and things that made it more efficient to PvE it out... as of today however, again the most efficient method of leveling is XPing in the frontiers and BG's all the way to 50.

Good post OP, I think Cryodiil will bring a lot to the game, I think it has not sunk in for a lot of people, I think TESO over all has a lot going for it, I think this year is the year of the Hybrid game, will have to see how folks warm up to them, I know I am ready for something to break the mold of the standard theme park mmo. I just hope enough folks have an open mind enough to give it a fair chance.

I also hope they are testing Cryodill, a campaign can run for several weeks from what I have read, and if Cryodill does not work well at launch, it is going to be a rough ride..

They will test it soon enough. Don't think they are doing it right now. I bet once they start opening up Beta more and sending out a lot of invites that's when they will be doing Cyrodiil testing.