No sooner had a snuggled down into the warm embrace of Black Desert Online than my friends got pumped for The Elder Scrolls Online. Well hell, I’m down with that, I love TESO! But one small fly in the ointment…they all wanted to play on Xbox One and I play on PS4.

Once more into the breach! Because I am crazy, I already owned the game on XBox One, but I took advantage of a sale on Crowns to pick up the new Thieves Guild expansion, as well as the older Orsinium expansion.

My only character on XB1 was a level 7 dude that was just a random mash-up of race, class and stat points. My goal now was to get to grouping level (say 12+) ASAP and ideally to catch up with Talyn who was in his low 20s. I decided to roll a Daggerfall Alliance character since I’m nost familiar with that faction, and followed one of Deltia Gaming’s builds (a stamina templar).

At first I felt a slight bit of resentment for “having” to start all over to play with these folks but y’know, I just love TESO and before long I was in love with my new character and enjoying myself all over again. It didn’t hurt that the Xbox One community seems very healthy; there were people all over the place.

One of my favorite aspects of TESO is that it is so group-friendly, and I mean group, not Group. In other words, there’s no kill stealing or anything, so you can and often do find yourself working with another player without any formal announcement that you’re going to do so. That happened to me several times over the weekend when I found I was working on the same questline (apparently) with another player and we just started traveling together. I started hanging back and throwing heals (not that my spec is a dedicated healer) and DOTs and I let the other player(s) lead the charge while I kept them from worrying about their health levels. After some variable amount of time we just drifted in different directions. Never exchanged a word.

That’s my kind of multiplayer gaming, honestly. Sometimes someone will cheer or something (using the emote system) but that’s about it for communication. TESO has proximity voice chat on consoles (no text chat yet) but I find people rarely use it out exploring and mostly just use it to be annoying in towns.

Since I was being pretty determined about leveling I wasn’t constantly over-level for the areas I was in (something that often happens in the game thanks to me roaming around gather crafting materials and stuff) so some of the open world mini-bosses were a real challenge. After dying I’d just hang out and wait for another player or two to come along and I never had to wait long. Again, working together without entering in a Grouping contract. I love it.

Of course in spite of promises to myself not to do so, I started crafting because I am incapable of running past mats without gathering them, or running past a crafting station without poking it.

Anyway it was a good weekend and I ended up somewhere in level 14. We’re tentatively doing our first dungeon next Monday so I’m comfortably prepared for a level 12 dungeon, but it’ll be nice to hit 15 and get the 2nd weapon slot open (bow and dual wield for me).

I haven’t forgotten BDO but it’ll be there when I’m ready for it. That’s one of the joys of subscription-free MMO gaming. You can play when you want without feeling like you’ve wasted your cash. So I’ll continue to be an MMO vagabond and go wherever the winds blow me.