The other half, a bog-standard massively multiplayer role-playing game, is hampered by The Elder Scrolls Online's tendency to punish you for playing with others.
One half, the single-player fantasy experience, does not provide the emergent adventuring for which the series is known, hobbled as it is by the online environment. The great disappointment of The Elder Scrolls Online is that many of these sights and sounds are weak facades that cannot hide how clumsily the game tries to join two disparate halves that cannot form a whole. Such vast landscapes must also have room for a story of your own crafting, a story you can share at the inn after a hard day's journey across deserts and mountains. Such grand vistas must harbor unknown secrets. The great wonder of The Elder Scrolls Online is that sights like these can inspire gleeful anticipation. It's a pensive moment, and I savor it, for I must believe that a grand adventure waits for me beyond that shrine, beyond the rocky plateaus that wall in this desert, beyond the Arabia-inspired dwellings that dot the sands. I see a shrine in the distance signaling a friendly oasis, but it's lonely here, and I long to catch a ride on the hot breezes that blow past. The arid ground below its hooves has been cracked by the sun's intense heat, and only husks are left where vegetation once thrived. I look across the Alik'r desert from atop my steed.
