I have had multiple friends try to explain eso to me. It's basically skyrim but with multiplayer, right?
~ @SirCallow
Hah... Hahh.. hah... No.
Skyrim is only one province of tamriel (skyrim obviously) and has one main and solid storyline, 2 sides of the war you can fight, and the hundreds upon hundreds of sidequests (not counting anything added by mods.)
ESO has the whole of tamriel to explore, and has 3 storylines, each rather long. IMO, eso has a much better playability + the quests are more immersive. The quests are a lot more like their own mini-story lines. While skyrim has those as well, there aren't as many and nor do they have a more lasting effect. in ESO the chooses you make matter a bit more.
The skils are very different. While in both games you have basically the same set of fighting abilities - Bows, Magic, and melee, the skills are very different.
In skyrim you have skill trees for every line. For example, if I'm an archer I would spend my skill points on the archery line. The archery line has stuff you can spend on, now I can zoom in, a point later now I can zoom in and it slows down time for easier aim, etc. The skill trees allow you to add specific abilities to specific parts of gameplay, which can be very interesting and fun.
The downside to this is that, while your playing styles and choices are damn near unlimited and you can do whatever you want with your character, once you get to about level 20, 25, the enemies aren't very challenging anymore. Bandits don't seem to go past level 20, so once you're past that cave explorations don't tend to last more than 10 minutes which is... sad after some time. No part of skyrim scales to your or your level EXCEPT the random dragons you find flying around after you complete one quest. But even those are very easy.
ESO's skills are different, slightly. You can hack and slash with a sword all you want but it isn't gonna get you anywhere. you need to spend skill points on special abilities, so you can have better, stronger hacking and slashing. These are linked to the letters on your keyboard 1-5. They use magicka, so you can't only use them, plus you only have 5 so you have to actually think about what you want.
Also in ESO, you have to pretty much focus one 1 or 2 areas. If I'm a sneaky archer, switching to going in with two swords as a tank is not going to be good for me. In skyrim it's a lot easier to switch or have multiple or even all skill lines, in ESO you have to grind lower levels to get new skills leveled up more.
ESO, as an MMORPG instead of just an RPG, it better scales to your level. Dungeons all scale to your level, and you will get one-shotted if you go too far out of the starting area as a level 5. If makes you actually work where you are rather than letting you run around doing EVERYTHING by the time you hit level 15 like skyrim will.
Crafting is a lot better refined in ESO, though I don't do too much crafting so I can't talk about it.
The multiplayer is something huge and to complete some instances you literally HAVE to group as the scaling makes it damn near impossible to do certain dungeons. Also, guilds are just pretty awesome.
The community is okay in ESO, though sometimes can be 10x more salty and toxic than meep. It's a lot easier to handle though.
Skyrim has more flexibility since you have mods and texture packs and all that good stuff, I've spent hours browsing the steam workshop, you name it they have it.
also, you can RP in ESO. I do a ton of that. It's fun as hell. You should try it.
It depends on how you really play as to which one is better. I don't know if any of that info is even super relevent to you. ESO is definitely the more challenging one, but skyrim is a lot more fun and laid back.
(get both xD) (AND SKYPE ME BOUT IT)
