Uninstalling Elder Scrolls Online - The Bethesda Way

[Deleted member 24505]

Hah. I remember that when Fallout 76 launched people were setting off nukes in the game which would cause the server to crash. What an embarrassing mess of a game that was. Hopefully Bethesda will go back to making single player games now. They will still need the modding community to fix them though.

I bought fallout 76, read a few reviews and never even bothered installing it.

 

[SomeOne99h]

I bought fallout 76, read a few reviews and never even bothered installing it.

The Fall of 76 by Internet Historian
Very hilarious video and very detailed in the same time! You won't regret watching it!

 

[Vario]

The Fall of 76 by Internet Historian
Very hilarious video and very detailed in the same time! You won't regret watching it!

Todd Howard's voice sounds like a chipmunk on helium.

 

[64K]

The Fall of 76 by Internet Historian
Very hilarious video and very detailed in the same time! You won't regret watching it!

Hilarious.

 

[bug]

Seems like most games leave behind some stuff after uninstalling. That's pretty silly though. When I uninstall a game I go back and check if there's still a folder left behind and I delete that. It's an old habit that goes back to when hard drive space was a concern.

You should probably check your user's folders too (there's like 3 of them in Windows, who knows which one the game decides to use?).

 

[Eric3988]

What a mess!

 

[Vayra86]

You should probably check your user's folders too (there's like 3 of them in Windows, who knows which one the game decides to use?).

Yeah that is some truly arcane stuff as well. The user folders. When I dive in there I feel like I'm starring in the movie Inception.

 

[rtwjunkie]

The Fall of 76 by Internet Historian
Very hilarious video and very detailed in the same time! You won't regret watching it!

OMG, that is unbelievably hilarious, and quite summarizes all the Bethesda Mistakes with Fallout 76!

 

[neatfeatguy]

This I had heard about most of the MS Store games, which is why I haven't bought any. I recently reinstalled Gears of War (yeah, the original one- from physical media) on my W8.1 rig. I may go and get my fix again next week.

Edit: @64K have you looked here, under user on C drive? LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore

Don't forget to install the patch that fixes the time expired certificate issue that prevents the game from working after the date of January 28, 2009 - I may have the patch file saved somewhere still (got loads of patches saved on DVD/CDs from any physical copy of games that I have or had). Or, just set the date on your gaming system pre 01/28/2009.

I sold off my old copy of Gears of War on PC a couple years back. But 4 or 5 years ago (when I still had it) I wanted to play it again and had to track down the patch that fixes the issue, otherwise the game wouldn't launch.

As for this eye sore of uninstalling ESO - I participated in the Alpha and Beta of the game and I just couldn't bring myself to play it. It was awful. As @64K mentioned, I, too go back and delete out folders/files that are left behind from games I uninstall. Only ones I leave be are the save game folders/files, if I plan on coming back around to playing the game again sometime in the future.

 

[Voluman]

At least he can get to the folders to delete them. I bought 2 games from the MS Store. Gears of War Ultimate and Gears of War iV and MS installed them in a folder that I can't access and I am administrator on my rig. I followed the prompts to gain access to see what was installed and it didn't work. The folder is 250 GB in size. Those 2 games can't take up that much room. I suspect MS loaded some stuff in that folder besides those games and I can't even open the folder to view what they put there. They can't be uninstalled with the regular uninstaller either. They don't even show up on the list. They didn't even put icons on my desktop to launch the game either. What a mess the MS store is.

Yeah, i meet that mess too, with one of Forza demo under w10 / w8.1. There was a huge directory (game installation) which i cant access even admin rights. After a few tryout somehow i can delete its content, but the folder remains.

 

[Vayra86]

As for this eye sore of uninstalling ESO - I participated in the Alpha and Beta of the game and I just couldn't bring myself to play it. It was awful. As @64K mentioned, I, too go back and delete out folders/files that are left behind from games I uninstall. Only ones I leave be are the save game folders/files, if I plan on coming back around to playing the game again sometime in the future.

Played since closed beta - with long pauses in between and came back during Summerset... at its core its the same game. Same blubbery gameplay, weird combat, and awful UI. Content wise though its a pretty sweet experience; lots of cool things to see and really a theme park quest fest with complete freedom. That also translates to the character building and progression; they're nice elements to an MMO, and the main reason I came back.

 

[Fouquin]

Note; this game was NOT made by the same team(s) as Fallout 76. Its a real culture thing with this company.

I was under the impression that the entire Zenimax Online team was formed outside Bethesda with no original employees other than some Zenimax management. I mean yeah it's fun to poke at Bethesda, but I'm pretty sure this isn't their doing.

 

[s3thra]

I play ESO through Steam on Kubuntu. Luckily for me the Proton compatibility tool takes care of this game nicely and it runs flawlessly on my system.

I haven't needed to uninstall ESO on my machine, but I think everything gets placed neatly into the SteamApps/common directory. If I uninstall through Steam it would be insteresting to see if the ESO directory in this location gets nuked or if everything still remains dormant. This directory sits on a separate HDD to my main system SSD so I'm not left worrying about storage size of the things I'm installing. It makes things easier when upgrading my system OS as well as this separate drive doesn't get touched.

As for the game, I quite enjoy immersing myself in the adventure. I am by absolutely no means a hardcore MMO guy - I've played single player RPGs my whole life, and when I was looking to get lost in more of the Elder Scrolls lore, story, environments and sounds, ESO looked like the right place to be. After playing on and off for the last six months I can say that I'm happy that I dove in to the adventure and I've thoroughly enjoyed my experience so far.

 

[moproblems99]

Up for a laugh?

Had enough of the infinite hassle with their broken launcher and updaters? Yep - been an issue since closed beta, and still not fixed You have to workaround even for getting a simple game update.

So, then you're fed up with the mess called ESO:
This is what you find after using the uninstall application Zenimax provides

View attachment 125137

And its not like the app likes to save a small selection for whenever you'd reinstall, either;

View attachment 125138

What, you think we're done? Note the scroll bar.

View attachment 125139

Leave it to Bethesda to grab an off the shelf uninstall wizard and screw it up!

Note; this game was NOT made by the same team(s) as Fallout 76. Its a real culture thing with this company. I bet when you apply for a job they will ask you to create a small product with a minimum of five bugs, or you can turn around and go home

Shit, I haven't uninstalled just because it so long to get working in the first place. It took more time to install it than I have accumulated playing it.

 

[StrayKAT]

Seems like most games leave behind some stuff after uninstalling. That's pretty silly though. When I uninstall a game I go back and check if there's still a folder left behind and I delete that. It's an old habit that goes back to when hard drive space was a concern.

Everything does. Windows is horrible (yet I still use it). If it's not files, it's config files or registry stuff.

That said, I love TES.. probably in my top 5 favorite series... but you couldn't pay me to play TES Online. I suppose I've been traumatized from MMOs since 2004-ish.

The Fall of 76 by Internet Historian
Very hilarious video and very detailed in the same time! You won't regret watching it!

He's hilarious all around. One of the best channels on Youtube...but he doesn't make enough (I suppose it takes a lot of time).

 

[Vayra86]

I was under the impression that the entire Zenimax Online team was formed outside Bethesda with no original employees other than some Zenimax management. I mean yeah it's fun to poke at Bethesda, but I'm pretty sure this isn't their doing.

Its some unholy alliance of people of whom some worked for Dark Age of Camelot. They like to pose around with that alot, but I struggle to see the link in the actual game that is ESO. Or, maybe the link is that it feels like you're still in 2001

Still though, its striking how quickly the new team adapted to general Bethesda mode. It translates to everything: starting off with an ancient engine (Hero, single threaded by design while a big part of the game is RvR combat in Cyrodiil ... FPS takes a nosedive anytime more than a few assets are in view, SLI was impossible or not worthwhile on it (still isn't)); very slooooooooow updates, balance patches that make absolutely no sense, shitty server performance (still feels like latency land, the game just hides it better now), and a very questionable business model shift (yep, they even re-released the game a few times just like Skyrim, major middle fingers to the early adopters really, and its one of the most expensive MMO's to play now if you want it content complete).

The writings were on the wall since closed beta (and probably earlier, too) really... they had a gamebreaking bug with dialogue where you'd simply get stuck in it, or the character you'd talk to was invisible. Patched it straight from closed to open beta and it was still happening. 'We fixed it'... nope They did in the end... but dialogue boxes still feel sluggish and funny like most other UI pop ups. You'd think there is no latency involved with something as simple and scriptable as this... think again.

Moo

 

[StrayKAT]

Its some unholy alliance of people of whom some worked for Dark Age of Camelot. They like to pose around with that alot, but I struggle to see the link in the actual game that is ESO. Or, maybe the link is that it feels like you're still in 2001

Still though, its striking how quickly the new team adapted to general Bethesda mode.

View attachment 125225

Moo

The good thing is that they chose a timeline without much preestablished lore. That's mostly what concerned me as far as them not being Bethesda Studios proper. Now I can safely ignore them.

 

[Fouquin]

and its one of the most expensive MMO's to play now if you want it content complete).

This is why I stopped playing. Also a beta tester, I enjoyed the game for the multiplayer world exploration in the Elder Scrolls setting. Other than the extremely poor instancing issues with other players in your party, and boss timers being reset every time somebody completed the event trigger in your instance (mostly a Beta issue, but persisted for some legendaries) I can't recall too many extremely game breaking bugs. The third time I had to redo all my characters' attributes and abilities, as well as the constantly growing dollar figure to get all the content without a continued subscription is what finally drove me to uninstalling.

 

[Frick]

It's not a bug, it's a feature.

Hah. I remember that when Fallout 76 launched people were setting off nukes in the game which would cause the server to crash. What an embarrassing mess of a game that was. Hopefully Bethesda will go back to making single player games now. They will still need the modding community to fix them though.

The best thing they could do is to make a ... map, essentially, and provide ample and simple tools for creating characters, items and questlines. Then let the modders do the rest. Make an official "campaign" and release it as a DLC. I'm almost serious

 

[natr0n]

I use geek uninstaller for removals free and works.

That's disgusting really on Bethesda's part all that wasted drive space.

 

[Octopuss]

I'm sure my ESO doesn't leave that much shit behind (it does some for sure) when uninstalled. That could be related to me using different folder than Program Files though, maybe?

Anyway, I've had it with the game. I played the shit out of it like a maniac for a year straight, but then I started to gradually get more and more annoyed by the pathetic performance, useless engine/client, unbelieavably crappy networking side of things, and not least of all by ZOS's blatant bug fixing ignorance and godlike ability to always do half-arsed job with new features (that NEVER EVER get improved/tweaked again).

They were also talking about new DirectX 12 client about three years ago. There are traces of Vulkan in the client, but that's it. Nothing came out of that.

I just log in for daily rewards these days, and will probably uninstall the game within a few months unless a miracle happens. Supposedly, they have "major" client/engine/whatever performance improvements scheduled for 2nd update from now, but I don't believe a single word they say anymore. Chances are the game will still behave like shit.

P.S. While the game is pretty, I don't think I need to stare at rectangular bodies and blurry lowres textures in this time and age. I mean some of the meshes are Skyrim-like quality, but that shit is from 2008-ish or so (when the development took place).