Time flies when you’re having fun right? Well, it feels like time has gone into light speed. Didn’t we just have The Dark Brotherhood DLC release? We’re already starting to see what is in the next update, aka Update 11. If you don’t believe me that this update is going to be huge, keep reading and if you want to test out everything you’ve read here and more, well, get on the PTS and start checking it out.
If you want to check out everything that is changing or being added to the game read the official Natch Potes (err Patch Notes)
I haven’t had the opportunity to jump into the PTS as of yet but I’m hoping I can soon. I’ll also do another “live” article as well. Basically, I write the article and my impressions as I play the game, think of it as Twitch but for readers. I did this style of article when I dove into My First Murder.
Let me just list some of the things that are coming to the game and then try and discuss them;
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Two new Argonian Dungeons (Cradle of Shadows and Ruins of Mazatun).
- These new dungeons will dive deep into Argonian lore
- New helmet and shoulder set pieces
- Six new item sets
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Trials now offering Normal and Veteran modes
- Trials will scale to the level of Raid Leader
- Gear will now scale up to Champion Level 160
- DragonStar Arena also scales along with its loot as well
- Name Change Service
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Race and Appearance Change
- Extra appearance options available via crown store
- Cyrodiil Town Captures
- Champion Point Cap Increase (531)
- Racial Passive Adjustments
- Costume Dyes
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That’s not all of the changes. There are more. I strongly suggest checking out the notes for all of them. These are just some of the major ones.
Those are some pretty amazing things coming in August eh? Well, there is one more major tidbit that I need to mention before we start discussing this plethora of content. More than three quarters of this update is FREE. The only content that is being pushed out is new dungeons and set items. By the Nine! This update is going to be epic.
Okay, let’s do a quick dive into it, as I mentioned earlier I haven’t had the time to test any of this myself so I can only say what I’ve seen not what I’ve experienced.
Two New Dungeons
There isn’t much I can say about these aside from what they showed on the ESO live stream last Friday. As with every ESO Dungeon, it’s a visual master piece. Their art team and world creator does such a great job in setting the scenes for the stories. One thing I did notice, when they went to the entrance of the dungeon the door was under the ground it felt like you were going to enter a temple. But once you zone in, you’re placed outside. There is no real hints that you were underground prior to walking through the door. Hopefully they’ll adjust that and make a small tunnel that you zone into and walk out into the incredibly illuminated landscape. This is strictly an aesthetic issue and doesn’t affect any of the game play, but I like it when things meld nicely.
Trials & Dragonstar
YAY!! They are relevant again. It’s always sad to have such great content become out geared and become nothing but a nostalgia zone. A prime example of this is (or was) Karazhan in World of Warcraft. By far one of the best raids in WoW and once players out leveled it, new players never did it and old players would farm it strictly for the mount. So glad to see that ZOS wants to keep all content relevant and fresh. Now that they offer a Normal and Veteran mode and they scale, it doesn’t matter if you’re new or have been playing since release. These zones that came out shortly after launch are actually useful and provide benefits to doing them at end game.
Cyrodiil Town Captures
YES! A thousand times yes. Between you and me, I was starting to get a bit burned out on Cyrodiil content. Luckily ESO is designed in such a way that when I jumped into the PvE side of the game I had a sense of awe. It’s been so long since I dove deep into PvE that everything felt new and exciting. With this new Cyrodiil Town Captures hopefully we’ll start seeing smaller scale battles around these towns.
From what I understand the way these new captures will work, you’ll need to secure 3 flags. One of which isn’t guarded, one that has only a few and one that is heavily guarded, similar to the Imperial City District flags. Once you’ve gained ownership it allows your alliance a new spawn point in Cyrodiil and offers players of your faction access to purchase purple quality gear for Alliance Points. Such a great addition to ESO, one that I commented about having a while back in my Open Letter on PvP.
As a side note, ZOS has confirmed they are working on battlegrounds but no information on those have been mentioned.
Name | Race | Appearance Change Service
Again, a fantastic feature. Players always want to update the way their character looks, and I’m not speaking just about RPers. All players like to update. When you play a game for a long time you become numb to the way your character visually looks and only notice gear changes. These types of features allows you to change the visual look so you don’t get numb. You can change your look as often as you like. Perhaps after a holiday dinner such as Thanksgiving, you give your character a few pounds. It’s added flair.
There are some restrictions in place, specifically to the Race and Appearance change options. If you purchase the race change option from what I understand you can also change your appearance as well if you choose to. However, the appearance change option does not allow you to change your race, so is there a cost difference? I don’t know but I’ll be checking that out as soon as I can get into the PTS.
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Costume Dyes
Ever since they implemented the Dye system back in 1.3 (I think) people have been requesting the ability to dye their costumes. Well, now we can. There are two ways you can dye your costume. You can buy dye stamps from the crown store or you can dye them via the dye station. The dye stamps are basically pre-made dye colour schemes. The benefit to these dye stamps is they can utilize all dyes in the game with the exception of the rare dyes, so even if you haven’t unlocked the colours utilized within the stamp you can still use the stamp. It doesn’t unlock it for you, but it allows you that one time use, via the stamp. The other way to dye costumes is through the dye station. You dye the costume using all the dyes you’ve unlocked thus far. You do have to be an ESO Plus member to access the costume dyes via the dye station.
I’m so estatic to finally see ZOS implementing features to the ESO Plus members. So far we have the unlimited crafting bags and now the costume dye option. Adding value to the ESO plus membership is exceptionally hard to do and not make it fall into a “pay to win” system, but ZOS is doing a great job so far.
So, that’s just some of the stuff that’s coming in Update 11. Amazing right? What do you think? Are you excited for update 11? Isn’t it crazy that we’re getting all of this in a single update right after The Dark Brotherhood? Name one other company that is pushing out this high end content so frequently. I can’t!
Keep it up ZOS, you’re paving the way for what MMORPGs should be.
