The Elder Scrolls Online

I cannot commit a hundred hours to anything, so I treat The Elder Scrolls Online as a place to visit rather than live in. Queuing for a group dungeon with a friend and then arguing about who pulled the boss is a proper night out, and Cyrodiil PvP adds large-scale conflict. It missed the top 10 because onboarding is heavy, with skills, menus and zones to learn before a group clicks. For MMO friends it is the long-term pick. Two free evenings a week? Start somewhere lighter.

Elder Scrolls Online is the MMO I recommend to people who bounced off Final Fantasy XIV's subscription wall but still want that guild-driven, quest-heavy sprawl. Buy the base game once and there is a genuinely free path through most of it, DLC aside. Wander into a side quest and it usually pays off with actual writing instead of filler text, which matters to me since fantasy worlds live or die on whether the lore feels earned. Combat trails a step behind FFXIV's job system. It shows its age in places. A guild of five people can still spend a year here without running out of things to do together.

The last MMO that really had me was World of Warcraft, back when raid nights were the actual plan for the week, not something squeezed in around them. Elder Scrolls Online scratches a similar itch without demanding you rebuild your schedule around it. Dungeons queue in minutes, trials are there if your group wants the harder stuff, and the open world lets you group up loosely without a strict raid roster. It's a proper MMO, though, and that comes with proper MMO overhead: menus, currencies, and a story that assumes you've been paying attention since 2014. Worth it if your group wants a long-term home. Less so if you just want a weekend distraction.

Fantasy is my favourite genre in games, full stop, and Elder Scrolls Online is built entirely on that same world I already love from the single-player games. Tamriel at MMO scale means guilds, world bosses, and delves layered over the exploration Elder Scrolls fans already expect, and it holds up years after launch. The multiplayer here is structural rather than optional. Quest through a zone with a friend and you'll both get credit and dialogue, no waiting around for someone to catch up. My hesitation is the time commitment. An MMO asks for a schedule I genuinely don't have most weeks, between work and two kids, and ESO is honest about that ask rather than hiding it. Go in expecting a long relationship, not a weekend fling.

Tamriel at MMO scale is a different thing from Tamriel in a single-player Elder Scrolls game, and I mean that in mostly a good way. The world is enormous, there are public dungeons you can wander into with strangers, world events that pull multiple players together organically, and enough questlines that you will not run dry for months. I gravitate toward the solo-friendly aspects of it because I do not always have a group free at the same time, and ESO handles that better than most MMOs. The combat feels a bit weightless compared to an action RPG, which is the main thing that keeps me from spending more time in it. But for PS5 players who want a proper fantasy MMO world to inhabit, this is the obvious answer.

ESO is on this list because of what it offers over time, not what it offers in the first hour. The first hour is confusing. There is a lot of UI, a lot of systems, and the sense that you have walked into a room mid-conversation. But once a group commits to it, the dungeon runs, world events, and PvP content give you more multiplayer variety than anything else in the catalog. I went in expecting Skyrim with other people and found something stranger and more demanding. Fantasy is the genre I keep returning to, and ESO has enough lore density to reward curiosity the same way the single-player Elder Scrolls games do. Just budget several sessions before it starts making sense.