Recent reviews by mychaelo

Verdict: cautious recommendation. Buy it if it's on sale, but not at full price (for now, at least).

Upsides:
+ Art: Environment Design is mostly up there on par with Skyrim (and sometimes even more imaginative, as devs were not afraid to use the vertical space to their advantage). Textures are generally nice, though they could use an optional "HD texture pack". Though I also understand that said pack would make the installation weigh more than a hundred gigs, and would be a nightmare to update. Lighting system is quite impressive, and lits the interiors way better than, say, Skyrim engine would, shadows interact with lights in numerous ways and are always dynamic - all this results in a remarkable picture, even if some shaders are a bit basic.
+ Script: I can safely say that I met a whole lot more memorable characters in TES:Online than I had in TES5. Apart from defined characters, a good dose of humour is applied even in some dramatic situations, like, for example, when you meet a vampire cat /ahem, khajiit/, who tries to save last few villagers from being eaten alive, and she is distracted by a thought of yarn. In spite of some players crying "DEY BROKE DA LORE" "DEY RUENED DA ALDUR SCRULS" I didn't see many violations, more so considering how inconsistent the 'canon' lore is. Cyrodiil still has no jungles, but that has more to do with Bethesda's decision during TES4 development than anything else. The so-called 'Main quest' is used more like a plot device in order to explain some events in the game world, though it does have its bright moments too.
+ Voice-over: the amount of dialogue is immense, and it's fully voiced in its entirety. While there are few characters, who will make you cringe (that last Ayleid king, urrrgh), there are more than a few splendid jobs (even Sheogorath, which is not voiced by the original actor, but is still totally fine).
+ PvP as idea: Having a full-fledged war with melee weapons, siege machinery and thousands of participants - looks great on paper. Too bad that this concept is undermined by balance and stability issues. More on those below.
+ UI modding system: TES5 had a fair share of UI mods (mostly due to its UI being console-oriented in the first place). TES:Online supports this kind of mods as well with per-character settings, so if you don't like something about the interface, there's generally "a mod for that": mini-maps, map markers, HUD overhauls, trading helpers, combat macros and whatnot.
+ Amount of content: while you have to choose your starting ("home" so to speak) faction, you'll eventually get access to the zones of other factions as well. And it really does feel like three games worth of content (or time you spend on them at least).

Now on to some YMMW things (you might like these, you might hate these):
~ Subscription model: it has its own upsides and downsides, huge upside being no teenage trolls spamming in chat or doing /playdead + /pushups on the town square (like they did in open beta). Downside being that by paying a fixed amount of money you won't necessarily get a steady amount of content (in fact, the only big content addition to the game was Craglorn). Arguably there's no better model choice - and most certainly I wouldn't want this game to become Free-to-Play.
~ Character models: yes, mouth animations are finally added in Update 5, so people don't look like sock puppets. They still look like dolls, though. Just a pair of skin/eye shaders would work wonders here, but it seems like devs don't want to increase the budget even for close-up shots.
~ Skillbar ala Warcraft 3: five skills + Ulti, with additional second bar after Level 15. Unlike in TES5, you cannot dual-wield a spell and a weapon. In fact, you don't actually have any spells. Instead you have abilities, which might or might not be magical, and may produce various types of damage or have other effects on you, your allies or your enemies. So in short, Warcraft 3. DEY RUENED DA ALDUR SCRULS. Yeah, right.
~ Game is overpopulated: you heard it correctly, and no, it's not a LITERELY DED GAEM by any means. So good luck finishing any dungeon on your own - more often than not you'll get inside just to find half of it already decimated by players, who got in a few minutes before you. On the other hand, you'll have no issues with finding a party. Party will find YOU, comrade.

And at last, let's discuss the flaws:
- The world is static. Your actions may have only a few different outcomes: a) enemies disappear from the area b) enemies become non-hostile in the area c) area is not changed in any way. No crumbling cities, no dynamic objects (the about only example of those is sky anchor, which pops every 10 minutes in predefined places), game sometimes tries to mitigate it by sending you into 'fake' zone, which becomes a 'true' zone once you complete the quest and return to it. To be fair, the devs did use a few dynamic objects in the main quest line, but that's far too few.
- Justice (absence of it). Second-era Tamriel is populated with communists. No possession, no stealing, no jails. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. This also means no Thieves Guild, no Dark Brotherhood, no Morag-Tong. Devs promised to introduce this system in one of the upcoming updates, so this might change in the future.
- PvP in current implementation: when it works, it's an okay experience. You deploy siege machines, employ cover-up and deceit tactics, ambush the reinforcements et cetera. The key is 'when it works'. Game uses several servers (called Campaigns), with most players going to Thornblade. It's almost always population-locked on evenings, but that's not the main concern. Once you get inside, be ready to meet the almighty LAG. While the in-game counter breaks upon latency >1 s, the actual lag spike in >30 x >30 battles may freeze everyone in place (while you still can move around, that's an illusion made by lag compensation system) for up to several minutes. Thus taking any given fort may become an impossible feat even with prevailing forces. Currently some guilds have decided to just ditch the Thornblade and play on alternative servers. Though those might have some lag spikes time-to-time, but not any of same scale as Thornblade. Again, devs promised to fix these issues in upcoming updates, but until then this remains a flaw.
- You can't make a bad guy character. Also, you have a choice. But really, you don't: this probably applies to the last two TES games as well, but yeah, it still is a flaw. Your choice is in most cases reduced to dialogue options before being given a reward, and generally only decides if that one character will greet you upon your final appearance in the current zone. Again, nothing out of ordinary for TES series, yet still.
- Autoleveling (absence of it). Okay, the TES4 was disliked by many for this, but TES5 used autoleveling to its advantage - if you go into a cave at Level 50, be prepared to meet bandits in glass armour or Draugr deathlords. In TES:Online if you go to, say, Glenumbra, to do some quests you missed, while you are already past Level 20, you'll find it extremely easy. In fact, many do miss the 'Bad man hallows' public dungeon, and when they return from the next zone to complete it, players just molest everyone inside. Another example: you completed every available group dungeon and played a few evenings in PvP zone. Then you return to usual questing and discover, that you are 5-6 levels above than the quest enemies/rewards. This means you get little to no items/experience for your activity, and basically robbed yourself of potentially good items, as they don't drop if you're more than 5 levels above your victims. The last update did fix some of the leveling issues, mainly with solo/group-only content.