Well, the cat is literally out of the bag. Last night we go full confirmation that Elder Scrolls Online’s next chapter is called Elsweyr, and what’s more, the whole year’s worth of content updates will be about one massive storyline surrounding someone unleashing the ancient dragons on Tamriel.
Elder Scrolls Online: Elsweyr is due out on June 4th, and of course you can pre-order now, it comes with tons of cool stuff, mounts and cosmetics which you can unlock right away, yada-yada-yada. What’s crazy cool to see is that if you pre-purchase Elsweyr digitally, you’ll immediately get access to both Summerset and Morrowind and the base game. If you’ve yet to try ESO, or haven’t done any of the two recent chapters, now is the best time to buy in as you can get a butt-load (TM) of content for pre-ordering the latest chapter.
I’m only wondering... where the heck is my physical CE with awesome statue this time? It seems Elsweyr isn’t getting one, and I really was hoping for a dragon to put in my office. Let’s see if that gets announced later. I mean, it’s not like the game isn’t doing well enough to support one. They announced in the stream that in 2018 they added more new players than in any other year except for 2015 with the console release. That’s insane to think about. It’s very likely that ESO is the biggest MMORPG in the market right now, though we’ll never know without numbers from Blizzard on WoW.
If there’s any real disappointing thing for me, and it’s really nitpicking, it’s that two of the DLC updates this year are once again dungeon packs. The first one is coming in February, to tide us over until June, which seems like a really long time to wait. I love dungeons like the next guy, but I miss when there were more story/zone DLC and Dungeon Packs were a once a year thing. It seems like only two big content updates are really coming, with two lighter dungeon packs being filler but really good filler.
The Necromancer seems like a legitimately great class, and the way NPCs will react to you if you don’t hide your evil ways enough is a solid world-building touch that only ESO and games like GW2 really try to do. Heck, who doesn’t want to turn into a Bone Colossus? I’m also really curious to see the new world event “Dragon Invasions” and hope they’re more than just the static events of chapters past. Cyrodiil and the Imperial City getting big content adds, like Sheogorath items to sort of turn the tides of balance, seem like really fun ways to spice up the campaigns in IC and Cyrodiil.
The UI is getting some much needed love in improved Guild Traders and a Guild Finder, along with map guides that help players find all the content in a zone. One final thing? John Cleese returns as Cadwell. I mean, it’s awesome that Abnur and Alfred Molina are back too, but come on - Cadwell is the best NPC and we all know it. This is going to be a great year for ESO.
