The Elder Scrolls Online is going to Morrowind in June
MMOrrowind
When The Elder Scrolls Online [official site] first slunk into the world I was not impressed. At a preview event, I was reticent, and at release I was still unconvinced. The MMO shackles just didn’t fit with the Elder Scrolls I have always known. But Zenimax have been hacking away at the RPG’s extraneous limbs and replacing them with whole new ones, which has reportedly improved the beast. Morrowind is the next leg to be stitched on, the developers have announced, bringing with it the wide island of Vvardenfell, 30 hours of story quests, a new class and a new PvP mode.
This’ll be happy news for any oldy-worldy fans. Here’s some of the places you’ll be going and some of the jaunts you’ll be having, according to the devs.
Players will embark on a dangerous journey through legendary locales in Vvardenfell, 700 years before the events of The Elder Scrolls III, from the docks of Seyda Neen, to the volcanic Ashlands, to dense, mushroom-filled forests, and through the glory of Vivec City, still under construction in this time period
Morrowind is in dire peril and it’s up to player heroes to help Vivec, the legendary warrior-poet and Guardian of Vvardenfell, solve the mystery of his mysterious illness, regain his strength – and save the world from ultimate destruction
The new class is called the Warden, the first new class since launch. This mucker will have a skill called the War Bear, which summons a massive grizzly to fight alongside you. This is what they reckon that will feel like.
Which is probably not accurate. But it is pretty. The new PvP mode, meanwhile, is called Battlegrounds and it pits three groups against each other in “arena-like environments”. Stabby, magicky battles of 4v4v4 in the Ashlands. On top of that there's a new 12-person Trial in the Clockwork City. The whole caboodle is scheduled for release on June 6.
Like I say, this isn’t the only update TESO has received since launch. The Dark Brotherhood were added, the subscription fee was thrown out and an update called “One Tamriel” scaled all the enemies of the world to your level and ditched class restrictions to your character. All solid efforts to bring the game closer to what people wanted. Before this you couldn’t go anywhere without grinding and being impeded by MMO gateiness. Now, you can prance about and steal things. Richard thought all this helped when he dipped back in for his Scrollbars column, though maybe not enough.
Whatever the case: if you're still playing, they're still making.