He also gave GW2 10/10 so while he may know his stuff for single player ES games, clearly his MMO taste is questionable at best.
I'm not playing ESO anymore, but I check this thread on the off chance certain things change. Huge things that would change the game almost entirely, so I'm not holding my breath, but I'd like to chime in on this... disregard me if you want.
Joe is like me. Everything before end game in an MMO is icing on the cake, not the 'meat' of the game. ESO was fun from 1-50, but it is just a warm up for the 'real' game that starts when you get to end game. That end game is always PVP, high level crafting, high level dungeons, and social content.
GW2's PVP was the best I've seen in ages. I spent countless hours in the WvW, and the structured PVP. WvW was a constant push and pull where you might be taking something over, only to be chased back to your area by a large force of enemies that might appear just when you thought you had taken something. You never got roflstomp/instakilled in large groups unless you played bad.
ESO's PVP is a gank fest. Since everyone can stealth, you have no idea if ten invisible guys are camping an area, and even if you do find out, there is zero reason to try and take them out, since the map is so huge it would be a waste of time to try and even find them. While the actual keep/etc combat was fun, it was about 5% of the actual play time in PVP; the rest was being ganked by invisible glass cannon builds that re-stealthed in seconds, or spent riding your horse over vast distances.
GW2 didn't have much end game dungeon content, but when you killed something, you got decent loot and items to craft the end game equipment. ESO's VR dungeon bosses drop white items 99% of the time, so people leave their groups to die while they open chests that are guaranteed green or better items.
I could list more examples, but I agree with Joe. Maybe after a year ESO's end game will be better (minus PVP which can't get better unless stealth is removed), but GW2's end game was pretty much in place on release.
From 1-50 I would have given ESO 8/10, but by VR4/5 only a 6/10.
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As for the post above talking about chest EXP... I told you so. Nobody seemed to believe me, but go on late at night while few people are around, and run the edges of a map looking in all nooks and crannys and open 30 some chests. I did this mainly for research items/deconstruct, and sometimes left 1/2 of the quests in a area before I out leveled it. In VR zones it doesn't seem to give EXP, but it DOES level skills, so load up your bar with stuff you want leveled and go on a chest opening spree.