Ask us anything returns

Its been an important month for The Elder Scrolls Online. Closed beta invites are trickling out and people are getting even more excited for this upcoming MMO. With all that's going on it has been awhile since an Ask Us Anything has been released. This edition of Ask Us Anything is short, yet it is quite sweet.

The first two questions are about player versus player scaling and how quests will be received. For those of you who may not know, ESO features a three way battle between the three factions. The fighting takes place in Cyrodiil, which is a continent of Tamriel that was featured in the hit game The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. When joining this war players are raised to max level, supposedly characters that are boosted will be able to compete with "true" max levels, but due to a lack of skills and experience they are at a disadvantage.

Questing in ESO will be handled in a very familiar way. According to the fine folks at Zenimax, quests first and foremost have to make sense in the context of the game world. This means that most quests will have a middle-man, some quest-giver who wheels and deals exp. and rewards to heroes and heroines. Rest assured there will be triggered quests; some examples that were given involved circumstances where you stumble upon a corpse or find a special book. A heavy emphasis was also put on the game experience outside of questing, it would appear Zenimax wants to put the spotlight on actions that happen naturally, like exploration.

One question that seemed particularly important involved player instancing. In ESO players are given the liberty of choice. Do I save the damsel in distress from the blood hoarding vampire, or do I ask him for his blessing and take her as my first victim? I could save that burning town... but I think I will induldge in these fine sweet rolls instead.

Because of such choices, players have to be separated into different instances, one instance where the town exists and the girl's alive, and another where the town is ash and I am an awesome vampire lord. This can often make it hard for players to form a party and group up because they are seperated into these different dimensions. Zenimax doesnt appear all that worried, apparently their megaserver will handle it for them.

This "megaserver," places like-minded players into the same channels. So PVE players will more times than not be with other PVE players and your friends list will have a higher chance of being in your channel. So grouping with your friend should be as easy as switching channels.

The subject of werewolves and vampires was brought back up again, if you could not tell from my previous excitement. The two have been confirmed if you were not already aware, though much to my dismay you cannot be both at the same time.

The Ask Us Anything closes with a question on raiding and its lack of existence in ESO. Although there will be no raiding in ESO in the traditional sense, there will be large-scale endgame PVE. They touch on adventure zones being the end game pve content, but they also hint at the possibility of there being some more to it, although they are not ready to talk about these systems until they are completed.

Get the full story here and come back to ZAM for all your ESO news.

Peyton "FluidD" Montgomery