ESO Chronological Timeline Guide - Best Way to Play the Story

Depending on where you start, and which alliance you belong to, you will want to start in your alliances area. The reason for this is that you will get to experience the other alliances as part of the Main Story quest. Without spoiling too much, a specific NPC will ask you to continue through the other alliances to get to know them in order to learn about how they deal with obstacles.

For example, if you belong to the Aldmeri Dominion, you will want to start on Khenarthi's Roost. From there you will go to Auridon, then Grahtwood, Greenshade, Malabal Tor and then finally to Reaper's March. If you have progressed in the Main Story quest past Coldharbour and its finalé, you will be asked to go experience Tamriel through the world of your enemies, which for the Aldmeri Dominion starts with the Ebonheart Pact

The following is a list of the order in which players get to experience the various alliances:

You will have to orient yourself at a new tab option that will open up as soon as you complete the first alliance area, the Main Quest, Mages Guild quest and Fighters Guild quest. It helps you track your progress through the storylines of the other two alliances. The Almanac is unlocked as a new tab in the Journal menu and lists the location objectives required to complete the associated quests.

Note that any progress you made in the other two alliance areas will be carried over to the Almanac when it becomes available at the end of the Main Quest, so if you decide to play with a friend for a while or need a change of setting, you can do so without having to fear needing to start a new character.

Also, the required Zone story quests only make up a fraction of the available quests in a zone. If you want to experience the entire game, its people and the time they are living in it is suggested that you also play through the side quests you see along the way, as long as they don't send you into any of the areas that are mentioned here (like Wrothgar, for example. Don't trust Stuga).