Part of the awesomeness of the Elder Scrolls is making your own character and having the freedom to explore the world.

ESO has seemingly done away with all that. If you want to play with your friends, you *have* to pick a race you might not have any interest in playing. I can tell already than 99% of people are going to go Ebonheart Pact anyway, so how do I play my Khajjit with my friends? I guess I can't.

To me, this is almost a deal killer for ESO. If I wanted to be segregated from my friends and stifled in my creative choices, I'd go back to playing WoW.

And what good is exploration when entire segments of the world are blocked off simply because you chose to play a Dunmer instead of a Altmer... It's the most backwards, inept, and anti-RPG system ever conceived.

If the world isn't fully explorable, it's not an Elder Scrolls game. Plain and simple.

You are so right.

I agree in general.

However, since I see this game not as a multiplayer ES game, but rather a MMO with ES theme, I'm ok with it.

I expect that ES players will have to deal with a lot of compromises related to usual faction/themepark MMO design.

Every TES game I've played limited you to one country to explore.

This one is offering you the better part of an entire continent to explore.

As far as the race thing I'm honestly biased on the subject due to me being 100% satisfied with my alliance (DC) and I feel as though I'm still playing with friends but we're just not on the same team.

Edit: Perfect opportunity to make acquaintances & learn to work with new & old players alike

You can explore the 'locked off' portions of the map once you hit level 50.

Not only explore them, there is also different quests and such inthere..

Basically, its a gamedesigen meant to give the world meaningfull PvP, and still having uninterupted PvE..

I think its a great solution so far. If you want to join your friends in another alliance, you are free to make your character there, but keep in mind we are at war..

looking back to my own DAoC experience, i think its the smartest thing they did so far.

Many threads on this. Agree that it's a bit of a turn off and potentially a big one if you're coming to the game with friends and or guild mates.

As others have pointed out, though, you will be able to explore all of Tamriel with a single character regardless of what faction you choose.