During the Elder Scrolls Online 2024 Global Reveal, the news that players would be exploring the West Weald again for the first time since Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was definitely a high point of mine. I spent so much time trekking the Colovian Highlands in service to the Vampire overseer of Skingrad, and I loved just how much the landscape of rolling hills and vineyards reminded captured my imagination every time I played.
Yet, that turned out to only be my runner-up for the announcement that got me most excited for this year. Scribing, which sounds like it could completely transform how the MMO is balanced and how players approach building out their characters, is incredibly exciting to ponder. Though we are still about five months removed from the Gold Road chapter launching, it's all I've thought about since hearing the feature is coming to the long-running MMO.
What is Scribing?
One thing the Elder Scrolls Online team was adamant about when we were in a pre-brief earlier this week was that Scribing was not Spellcrafting. When people hear Spellcrafting and Elder Scrolls, we typically think of the legit broken spells and effects we could create in Oblivion with no regard to how ludicrous and broken our spell truly was.
The Elder Scrolls Online is, however, a multiplayer title with both PvE and PvP elements, and thus it needs to be as balanced as humanly possible. Broken Spellcrafting just does not fit into that brief. However, Spellcrafting has been a hallmark of the franchise and players have clamored for a version of it in ESO ever since it launched a decade ago.
Enter Scribing, what is, in effect, being described as an early precursor to what eventually could have become Spellcrafting. Considering ESO takes place a thousand years in the past from the events of Oblivion, this allows for some creative license from the developers to tinker with how some of the mechanics we saw in the single-player RPG could have been created in Tamriel's history.
Scribing allows players to collect new skills and augment them in a way that reminds one of how enchanting works in the MMO. Players will collect three pieces of the puzzle: the Grimoire, which holds the base skill, Scripts, which will augment the skill, and the Inks needed to write that skill into existence. The way it was described during the Global Reveal, Scribing is a way to effectively create new ways to play that are closer to your personal playstyle versus the standard skills on offer.
Scribing Sounds Potentially Game Changing
One aspect of Scribing that really has captured my attention is the idea that, with any Elder Scrolls game, player freedom and agency are at its core. It's a little harder for that to come across in an MMO, obviously, where you are surrounded by hundreds of other players all talking to the same NPC or doing the same quests, but The Elder Scrolls Online throughout the years has added more and more to the MMO to help fuel this RP fantasy. Its skill system, for example, is a key aspect to the MMO that makes it feel like I have real choice - I can use any weapon, any combination of skills I want from the class skill lines to the myriad World and supplemental skill trees ZOS has added over the years, and truly make my character unique.
However, much of this is left on the wayside thanks to how ardently we MMO players are at min-maxing everything. Even with the sheer degree of freedom ESO have when creating their characters, there are still optimal builds many of us gravitate towards purely because we want to play the best builds, or the most efficient at accomplishing our goals, whether it's surviving a PvP scrum or glass cannoning enemies in PvE with impunity.
Scribing feels like it has a chance to break this up a bit. First, the sheer amount of permutations on offer here are likely in the couple thousands, if not more. While we don't know how many Grimoires are being added when the feature launches, we do know it'll affect the Weapon and World skill lines first. Class skill lines will likely get this treatment as the year goes on, with even more customizability on offer as time goes on.
Then, consider the amount of customization on each skill with the different Scripts you can use. Each Grimoire has three sockets for these Scripts to slot into - the imagination runs wild with the sheer amount of customization we can potentially have to play with here. I'm now envisioning my Destruction Staff-wielding Necromancer slamming down a Wall of Elements-style AOE that damages enemies in its path and heals allies and boosts their stamina regen.
Or, if I want to get up close and personal on my Templar, use a skill that could potentially add a DoT to an enemy while simultaneously adding a shield to an ally in range to absorb some damage. Maybe I want to drain Magicka from an enemy to replenish my own stores while also dealing Poison damage? That might be possible. My mind is literally running wild with the possibilities.
To me, this gives ESO the potential to feel more dynamic than it has in years. While excellent sites like AlCastHQ and others that do optimal build guides will still have a place, and indeed, the incredible writers and players hunting down the most optimal builds will always find them, I might feel less inclined to even bother looking at them now. Scribing brings the promise that I can finally play, in pretty much every respect, exactly how I want to. It potentially, if implemented well, can change how I approach ESO builds to where it's no longer about min-maxing the stats and weapons, but rather it's building a character the way I always wanted to from the start.
I'm incredibly excited about what Scribing represents in ESO, especially as someone who has played it since the alpha days. Scribing, at least from my vantage point, represents a new way to approach and play the MMO, shaking up its formula as it enters its second decade.
