So I was running on an older MacBook Pro for most of the weekend, letting my fiancée play ESO on my newer machine. The first day of this we were using some pretty extreme graphics reductions to get the framerate to a point where the game was playable. On Day 2 I decided to do a bit of research (this was very helpful) followed by experimentation with the settings, and I got much better results—same playability but not longer felt like I was playing the original Doom.
There were a few side effects, though, especially when it cam to loading assets and sprites in a new area (and especially if that area was densely populated, such as in a city.) So I got some great shots of floating bits of architecture and the graphics slowly dropped in, piece by piece.
This one reminds me of the “armory scene” from The Matrix, you know, when the gun racks slide in out of the seamless white void:
And floating gothic doors:
Less charming were the number of times I fell through a part of the world and got stuck—especially on stairs, and especially on these particular stairs in Davon’s Watch, which I would always remember about just a half second too late:
The first time I saw the Missing Asset graphic I sort of instinctively thought it was an ammo crate or explosives box that I should pick up. Wrong game. And off by about 10 years.
pies & heavy armor 