Game news The Elder Scrolls Online is celebrating its 10th anniversary in Amsterdam, I was there and I was able to play Gold Road, the new ESO expansion
The Elder Scrolls Online is celebrating its 10th anniversary and the developers were able to invite the community to Amsterdam to share, together, the future of this successful massively multiplayer role-playing game. JV was on site! The opportunity to look back at what awaits us throughout 2024, and part of 2025, for this anniversary, but also and above all to test Gold Road, the future extension planned for next June.
It is therefore to Amsterdam as the festivities for ESO’s 10th anniversary took place. In a huge hangar completely redecorated for the occasion, we were able to experience The Elder Scrolls Online in truth. With hundreds of participants, multiple workshops (creation of bracelets, signings, cosplays, etc.), round tables, discussions with game developers, passionate players and activities galore, the whole thing was impressive.
ESO is doing very well, thanks for him!
The developers were also able to confirm the enthusiasm around their game through its years of activity, but also its economic success with more than 2 billion in revenue since its launch in 2014. It makes a good jackpot every year, which explains the support this MMO regularly benefits from. Between Necrom, High Isle, Blackwood, Greymoor, Elsweyr, Summerset, Morrowind and so on ESO is benefiting from expansions rich in single-player and cooperative content at an extremely impressive rate for this type of video game.
The meeting in Amesterdam was also an opportunity to meet Rich Lambert, the ESO creative director with the teams from Zenimax Online Studios, those who are in charge of The Elder Scrolls Online. Indeed, if Zenimax takes care of the MMO RPG, Bethesda owns the rights to The Elder Scrolls and develops the single-player game series you know, The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim, IV Oblivion, III Morrowind, etc. The two sagas, Online on the one hand and the classic episodes on the other, draw on each other and the link between Zenimax and Bethesda is extremely strong in order to create a coherent whole. Suffice to say that The Elder Scrolls in the broad sense is doing very well and that you will be hearing about it for a long time to come.
The 10th anniversary, a milestone for ESO
Building on its undeniable long-term success, The Elder Scrolls Online therefore begins hostilities/festivities this month for its anniversary. We will thus be able to discover the Gold Road expansion prologue (we will come back to this), partner events next month, launch of Gold Road itself in June, updates 43 and 44 as well as a few surprises between July and December, an in-person event in 2025 with updates 45, 46, 47 and 48 and all with additional content. But the main course is above all Gold Road which will expand the offer on June 3, 2024 on PC and June 18 on Xbox Series, PS5, Xbox One and PS4. We were able to try our hand at this major update, like every year, of ESO in advance and the first hours of play are particularly promising.
A golden road for ESO?
First of all you should know that Gold Road will take place in the Western Weald and we will discover the city of Skingard. This region was first seen in The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion and we will be able to explore it from top to bottom through three unique biomes: The Gold Road, obviously, but also Valenwood Annexation and Colovian Highlands. We are promised varied environments and quite a few interesting encounters, including the one with Ithelia. The opportunity to meet a brand new draedric prince, created for this expansion with the developers of the single-player saga The Elder Scrolls. Between crossed destinies and friendships or aversions that come and go, players should enjoy more 30 hours of content.
But it’s not over since a new system appears in ESO, writing. No, it’s not about what you’re thinking. Writing allows you to create your own spells and skills. By mixing different elements with dedicated resources collected during the course of Gold Road’s story, you will be able to mix several effects and skills to create, for example, unique spells. We were thus able to create a projection spell on enemies which also adds damage over time, all with a unique cosmetic rendering when it is launched, the appearance of which we decided. If we were able to see that this creation was easy to make during our game, some might worry about balancing as players are so inventive when they have a tool as powerful as this in a massively multiplayer role-playing game. But Rich Lambert said he was confident in both PVE and PVP because their system is solid and mathematically well balancedeven if it will surely be necessary to make some adjustments, he told us.
In any case, this new feature allows you to personalize your playing style even more and to better make your avatars your own. With this are added incursions into Mirrormoor, brawls with draedric enemies to contain their invasion following Ithelia’s return.
The Lucent citadel is also new in which you will participate in a sort of 12 player raid to challenge this draedric crypt with impressive architecture. This place is an opportunity to make new discoveries related to the extensionwhile taking part in events never before offered in ESO.
Our first hours on Gold Road proved very promising for fans of Zenimax’s MMO RPG. If the engine shows a little the weight of the years, the rendering and the artistic direction so unique of the game manage to seduce visually, especially since the places really have quite a bit of character. Writing allows you to rewrite your character, but also to reinvent it to create unique spells easily. They will expand its arsenal while promising better synergy with all of your skills if you can manage everything correctly. And, finally, if the content of each year’s expansions often ensures the spectacle, particularly through history and the universe, Gold Road promises even more with this unique and new system. It remains to confirm these promises next June!