The Elder Scrolls Online

Earlier in March, Bethesda announced The Elder Scrolls Online's new upcoming expansion is set on the mysterious Summerset Isle.

The Elder Scrolls Online's next big expansion takes place in the Summerset Isle, Bethesda has announced.

The Isle of Summerset, home of the High Elves, was an explorable area in 1994's The Elder Scrolls: Arena, but has only been mentioned in Elder Scrolls games since.

The Elder Scrolls Online: Summerset includes a new zone, a new story, a new skill line based on the Psijiic Order and the introduction of jewelry crafting. It comes out on 5th June for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

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A note from the editor: Jelly Deals is a deals site launched by our parent company, Gamer Network, with a mission to find the best bargains out there. Look out for the Jelly Deals roundup of reduced-price games and kit every Saturday on Eurogamer.

Is it possible to enjoy The Elder Scrolls Online's Morrowind expansion if you're a fan of the original game who hates MMOs? Is it folly to even try? Either way, I loved Morrowind too much to ignore the arrival of its multiplayer-focused quasi-prequel.

I've been making video game foodstuffs in my kitchen for 22 straight weeks now. In that time, I've learned a thing or two - most notably that in-game recipes aren't always the most comprehensive.

Bethesda really wants you to play The Elder Scrolls Online.

When I look back on my 90 hours with The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, I think of constellations rearing gossamer heads over the hills near Whiterun. I think of sunken cities grown copper-green with age, of flipping through books for mention of long-extinct civilisations, and snow licking the path to the summit of the Throat of the World. OK, so I also think of dragons that fly backwards and that time I had to Fus Roh Dah a bug-stricken Lydia across a mountain range, but these are stray notes, hiccups in an otherwise blissful aria.

One of the consumable items on offer in The Elder Scrolls Online is the venison-stuffed grape leaf - a little parcel filled with meat and rice. One of our YouTube viewers asked me to recreate these tasty morsels for the latest episode of Chiodini's Kitchen, so I agreed - not because they're delicious (they are), but because there's something that really tickles me about the existence of these delicate morsels in the world of Tamriel.

See how ZeniMax Online Studios has reinvented Vvardenfell.

ZeniMax Online Studios has shared fresh details of the people, places and lethal steampunk contraptions you'll encounter in The Elder Scrolls Online's new Morrowind expansion, due for release both as optional DLC and as an updated edition of the game on 6th June 2017.

The Elder Scrolls Online is doing just about the most exciting thing it can: a Morrowind expansion.

It's due 6th June on all platforms and introduces: a new zone, Vvardenfell, and a 30-hour story; a new player class, the Warden, and his War Bear pet; and a new 4v4v4 PvP arena mode, Battlegrounds.

Vvardenfell is apparently the same size as in The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind - occupies "the same geographic footprint" according to the press release. All the landmarks from TES3: Morrowind should be there, albeit set 700 years earlier.

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UPDATE 22nd November 2016: The Elder Scrolls Online is free to play on Xbox One this week.

The Elder Scrolls Online will make use of PlayStation Pro via a patch from day one, 10th November 2016. Bethesda said the online fantasy game will be "immediately playable in native 4K resolution" from then.

Update 11/patch 2.5.0 will be released for The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited 1st August on PC and Mac, and 16th August on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It'll be around 5.6GB, according to an announcement on the ESO subreddit.

The Elder Scrolls Online had a few announcements during Bethesda's E3 2016 conference last night.

The Dark Brotherhood content for The Elder Scrolls Online will be released 31st May on PC and Mac, and 14th June on PS4 and Xbox One. Or, if you like, you can try it out on the Public Test Server from today.

The Dark Brotherhood assassin quests are beloved in the Elder Scrolls series. They're not about being good, not about saving the world - they're about killing people. Accessing them usually involves a following a shadowy trail.

In ESO the Dark Brotherhood is on the Gold Coast, and joining it unlocks a new and exclusive passive skill tree. There's an overriding story about a mysterious new foe killing Brotherhood agents, and there are also repeatable quests offering rewards.

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The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited's upcoming DLC pack, the Thieves Guild, is due on the public test servers next week and launches on 7th March for PC, 22nd March for Xbox One and 23rd March for PS4.

UPDATE 21ST DECEMBER: Bethesda PR has refuted the report by local news source Connacht Tribune. Bethesda said only approximately 50 jobs had been cut at the customer service centre as part of routine manoeuvring mid-August after the console Elder Scrolls Online launch.

The big Elder Scrolls Online recruitment drive continues as Bethesda/Zenimax announces a free-play weekend on PC and Xbox One this weekend. PS4 isn't included because of its PlayStation Plus obstruction, presumably, but Zenimax is "working with Sony on a technical solution". However, there is a free PlayStation Plus weekend this weekend that would appear to solve that problem, so we'll see what effect that has.

Bethesda is so keen for you to experience The Elder Scrolls Online that it will reward you with entry into $1m sweepstake.

You just need to play The Elder Scrolls Online.

The prize is open to anyone who heads to millionreasons.elderscrollsonline.com, a website where fans have shared their reasons for playing the game.

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The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited will receive its largest add-on yet in November, titled Orsinium.

PC players can purchase the expansion on 2nd November, followed by Xbox One owners on 17th November and PS4 players a day later.

Anyone with an active ESO Plus membership will get the content for free. Otherwise, it will cost around 3000 crowns via the in-game store.

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Bethesda has announced The Imperial City, its first major DLC for The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited.

UPDATE 29/6/15 4.55pm: Zenimax Online Studios has now confirmed Paul Sage's departure, but reassured fans that the game was still in "great hands":

The Elder Scrolls Online's PS4 patch is a colossal 15.9GB.

The reason for this is that it contains all the content from the PC version's first three patches, developer ZeniMax Online Studios noted on Twitter.

As such, it makes numerous changes to the game's performance, UI, questing and bug-fixing.

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After a rocky start on the PC last year, The Elder Scrolls Online finally comes to the PS4 and Xbox One, six months later than expected. Launching with a number of netcode-related issues that saw players unable to login to the game and stuck waiting in a server queue for up to several hours, it's fair to say the release hasn't gone as smoothly as expected. Indeed many bugs and gameplay issues are still being addressed, despite the emergence of a 15GB day one patch. In particular, the netcode code causes regular interruptions in performance across all platforms, compromising overall stability during gameplay. On the plus side, the new versions of Elder Scrolls Online deliver a new menu system built around regular gamepad control, so this is clearly not a straight port of the PC version - some thought has gone into redesigning gameplay for the console audience.

Both PS4 and Xbox One hand in native 1080p presentations, with similar anti-aliasing techniques in place. The Elder Scrolls Online generally takes on a fairly clean look with smooth edges and little in the way of obtrusive jaggies; sub-pixel shimmer is kept under control, though smaller details still break up when viewed from a distance. The type of anti-aliasing isn't listed in the settings menu on the PC game, but it's clearly a post-process solution. It's not bad either - texture blur is minimal with just a light reduction in clarity compared to the crystal clear look you get from traditional multi-sampling.

On first impression, the console versions of Elder Scrolls Online appear to align nicely with the PC release, the overall look doesn't seem unduly compromised in terms of texture work and overall detail, while the lighting and post-effects pipeline is a close match across platforms. Texture filtering is a sticking point on consoles though, with the lack of anisotropic filtering impacting clarity on flat surfaces, particularly across the ground where the amount of detail resolved quickly tails off within a few feet of the player. Filtering isn't perfect on the PC either, with the game sporting what looks like something closer to 4x AF instead of the usual 8-16x filtering that you'd expect to find - but it's enough to visibly reduce the texture blurring we see on both console versions.

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The console version of The Elder Scrolls Online will not require a CD key to play, publisher Bethesda has explained, just hours after initially claiming the opposite was true.

Bethesda has put out a new trailer for massively multiplayer online RPG The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited, and it does a decent job of running through the game's various systems ahead of the looming launch on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

What there wasn't, in the recent Elder Scrolls Online console closed beta, was the option to chat via text. That's unusual for a massively-multiplayer online game but not for a console game.

Invites for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One closed beta of The Elder Scrolls Online are now being sent out to a limited number of participants.

The beta itself will go live from tomorrow, 23rd April at 3pm UK time and last until Monday, 27th April at 3pm UK time.

If you previously signed up for the closed test, now is the time to check your inboxes and spam folders.

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Eligible owners of The Elder Scrolls Online on PC or Mac can now take advantage of a £12.99 deal to both buy the upcoming console game (PS4 or Xbox One) and transfer your existing account to it.

The Elder Scrolls Online has received its biggest content update to date with the launch of the 20GB-sized Patch 6.

This update readies the game for its upcoming "buy to play" model, and adds a number of new systems.

TESO's gameplay has also been entirely rebalanced, to the extent that all skill and attribute points are being reset.

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The Elder Scrolls Online will soon allow you to buy health, stamina, magic and experience boost potions using real-world money.

Bethesda has announced plans for its first ever dedicated E3 conference, which is set to take place in Hollywood on Sunday, 14th June 2015.

A limited number of tickets will be made available to fans, or you'll be able to watch the whole thing from home via the magic of Twitch (and, naturally, Eurogamer will be reporting the whole thing live).

There's no word yet on what Bethesda will be showing, although we can take a couple of educated guesses.

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UPDATE #2 7.20PM GMT: Console gameplay footage was shown during an Elder Scrolls Online livestream this afternoon. I've ripped out the relevant gameplay for a video embedded below (the full Twitch stream is also now available). Please bear in mind it is recorded from the low quality Twitch stream and then blown up and encoded again, so it's not indicative of final game graphic quality. It's produced to give you an idea of the console game in action.

The other major thing of note is that there will be a console beta, and you should expect it "sometime in the April timeframe", said game director Matt Firor towards the end of the stream. Joining him were Bethesda chief marketeer Pete Hines and game creative director Paul Sage.

They covered a lot of topics but these stood out.

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The Elder Scrolls Online developer ZeniMax Online Studios has given a brief update on the game's delayed console versions, and stated that they are still - slowly - being developed.

There have been lay-offs at The Elder Scrolls Online developer Zenimax Online Studios, the company has confirmed, but the message is that this is routine, six months after launch, and there's still "a large work force" working on the massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

"As is the norm for games of this type, we had ramped up a large workforce to develop a game of vast scale, and ramped up our customer service to handle the expected questions and community needs of The Elder Scrolls Online at launch," Zenimax/Bethesda told Game Informer.

"Now that we are nearly six months post launch, we have a thriving online community in a game that runs smoothly. We have adjusted staffing to meet the ongoing needs of the studio, which continues to operate with a large work force.

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The developer of Elder Scrolls Online has launched a new initiative to reward paying subscribers.

ZeniMax Online Studios has revealed a loyalty program which will gift players a free in-game pet if you buy at least three months' worth of game time.

The next reward - yet to be detailed - will unlock if you pay for at least six months of game time.

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A report published by SuperData Research (via GamesIndustry International) claims The Elder Scrolls Online had 772,374 subscribers in June.

QuakeCon 2014 is under way in Texas and there's a Bethesda game sale running on Steam and (partly) Xbox Live to celebrate.

The first major update for The Elder Scrolls Online will arrive later this week, developer Zenimax Online Studios has said.

Speaking with IGN, creative director Paul Sage explained that the long-awaited Craglorn expansion would be available to download this Thursday or Friday.

Craglorn was announced back in early April and its launch had been expected by now. But developer Zenimax Online Studios has kept been busy instead fixing game bugs and battling gold spammers.

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UPDATE 3.00pm: The Elder Scrolls Online developer Zenimax Online Studios has confirmed the game's six month delay for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions.

Elder Scrolls Online players will be given five free days of game time to make up for the game's various "launch issues", developer Zenimax Online Studios has announced.

The extra time will be awarded to anyone with an active account registered prior to 8pm EDT today (1am tonight in the UK). You also have to still be on your 30-day free trial period (which should apply to everyone, since the game was released less than 30 days ago).

Elder Scrolls Online director Matt Firor announced the decision today via the game's official site, in a statement discussing the game's next and future updates.

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The Elder Scrolls Online developer Zenimax Online Studios has taken the unusual step of requesting that players ignore the game's community code of conduct in an attempt to battle a fresh bout of black market gold spammers.

A major patch for fledgling MMO The Elder Scrolls Online has been detailed by the game's developer.

Zenimax Online Studios has been battling bugs and black market scammers since the game's launch - a plight highlighted in a statement to players issued last week by the studio's boss.

Many of the points mentioned in that message have been addressed in the new patch, including a number of quest progress issues and bot-fighting tweaks.

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You can see how making a massively multiplayer version of a popular single-player role-playing game would look like a no-brainer to a publishing executive. The gameplay will be broadly portable and, if your game series is as long-running and voluble as Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls, the world and the lore have already been mapped and written.

The reality is very different, as EA discovered to its incalculable cost with BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic. The single-player storytelling style your audience has come to expect clashes both practically and philosophically with an environment teeming with other players, creating a buzz of dissonance that refuses to go away. Too much effort is expended on things that don't play to the strengths of an MMO, like all-star voice acting casts and plot-heavy quest lines that can't be shared, and the sheer quantity of content needed starts to erode quality. (It's telling that the world's most popular MMORPG is based, not on an RPG at all, but a strategy game, Warcraft: a world of hundreds of tiny warriors scurrying about, little cogs in a grand plan, participators but not protagonists.)

The Elder Scrolls Online suffers from all of these problems and the result is a tepid and dull interpretation of Bethesda's straight-faced fantasy universe, stretched so thin you can see right through it to the cold machine running underneath. It's a shame, because ZeniMax Online Studios, the team put together in 2007 by Bethesda's parent company to make this game, has got a lot of the MMO basics right, if not all. ESO boasts a superb character-building system, impressive networking tech (when it works), solid combat, fun dungeons and player-versus-player warfare, and it at least appears to have plenty of endgame content to keep players hooked and paying its mandatory subscription fee.

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Elder Scrolls Online developer ZeniMax Online Studios has given a progress update on its work behind-the-scenes of the fledgling MMO, a little over two weeks since its PC launch.

The Elder Scrolls Online will get its first post-launch content update later this month. It's called Craglorn, and it's designed to challenge the game's veteran players.

Craglorn introduces new quests designed for four-player groups, and special content designed for 12-player groups. It also includes a main city, where the developers expect players will pick up groups.

It adds the Trials system, a new high difficulty 12-player challenge creative director Paul Sage said is for "the best of the best". Trials include environmental hazards, monsters and boss monsters that employ new tactics. You're playing against the clock, and with a limit on the number of resurrections your group can use. Each resurrection counts against your overall time, which feeds into a leaderboard.

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UPDATE 7th April 4.15pm: Due to some surprise game server maintenance (a surprise to us, anyway), we've had to cut this live stream short. Sorry!

Bethesda has created yet another stunning trailer for The Elder Scrolls Online - this time to celebrate the game's launch on PC.

The video, below, is a computer generated teaser called The Siege, and its release coincides with today's launch of the long in development MMO. It goes on for a good five minutes.

This isn't the first snazzy trailer for The Elder Scrolls Online. In January Bethesda released a cinematic just as good as today's - and those who saw that might recognise a few returning characters in this new video.

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Early access to the Elder Scrolls Online live servers begins as soon as Sunday for some people. A five-day head start!

UPDATE 27/02/2014: Thanks to everyone who signed up for a key! We have now sent them all out. Even better, we had so many submissions that Bethesda gave us some extra keys, so we sent out around 2700 in total. If you got one, enjoy the beta!

ORIGINAL STORY: Bethesda Softworks has announced that a large-scale public beta test for its ambitious MMORPG The Elder Scrolls Online will take place this weekend.

The public beta will start at 5pm GMT this Friday, 28th February, and run until 4.59am GMT on Monday 3rd March.

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Imagine a point almost exactly halfway between The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim and your traditional mainstream massively multiplayer RPG, for which the reference points are, in 2014, still the first EverQuest and World of Warcraft. This is where you will find The Elder Scrolls Online. I've spent around 20 hours in the beta. I have much still to discover, but my overwhelming impression is of equipoise - of a game balanced with conscientious, almost fearful care between the two things that it is trying to be.

Mammoth MMO projects sure know how to do one thing: cinematic trailers. And the newest The Elder Scrolls Online video, Arrival, is no exception.

Bethesda's upcoming MMO The Elder Scrolls Online is not going to require a PlayStation Plus account in addition to a regular £8.99 / $14.99 monthly subscription on PS4.

Elder Scrolls Online publisher Bethesda has roped in a green room full of acting talent to voice some of the key characters in its upcoming MMO.

Group combat in Elder Scrolls Online is something that's fundamentally new to the Elder Scrolls IP. There are MMO classes and roles - it's not you in an AI playground being what you want, doing what you want and changing the world around you.

Fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game The Elder Scrolls Online launches on PC and Mac on 4th April 2014, Bethesda has announced.

The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions follow in June 2014.

Bethesda released a new gameplay trailer, War in Cyrodiil, designed to highlight the game's PvP system, which lets hundreds of players fight together and against each other.

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Bethesda has released a new Elder Scrolls Online video that discusses the all-important aspect of character progression in the online role-playing game.

The Elder Scrolls Online is an interesting one - an ambitious and gargantuan new MMO, it has perhaps underwhelmed a little when shown before, a victim of the grandiose expectations that fans of the Elder Scrolls series have off the back of a run of outstanding games over the last ten years. Zenimax Online's epic has looked competent, good, even, but it's lacked the spark that people expect from Bethesda's universe.

Today we're happy to reveal that Bethesda Softworks is returning to the Eurogamer Expo in a big way this year, bringing along The Elder Scrolls Online and Wolfenstein: The New Order for their first playable outings in the UK.

The Elder Scrolls Online director Matt Firor has explained to Eurogamer why Zenimax Online Studios has decided to charge a monthly subscription for the massively multiplayer online role-playing game at a time when most observers consider the business model outdated.

Elder Scrolls and Fallout publisher Bethesda has said that it has no plans to support Wii U due to "hardware" issues.

The Elder Scrolls Online is coming to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One as well as PC and Mac. All versions will launch in spring 2014.

"Just announced: Elder Scrolls Online is coming to PS4 and Xbox One when it's released Spring 2014," tweeted Bethesda's Pete Hines.

Sony announced ESO for PS4 during its E3 conference and said the beta will be exclusively available first on PlayStation 4. The press release just mentions the console beta is happening later this year.

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The Elder Scrolls Online is having a tough time winning over fans of the single-player series. By design it's erected walls and boundaries to work as an MMO with thousands of heroes and not just one. But at the same time it has to look and feel like Elder Scrolls otherwise what's the point?

UPDATE: That didn't take long! ZeniMax Media has had the video removed from Vimeo.

ORIGINAL STORY: A 20 minute video of unedited The Elder Scrolls Online beta gameplay has found its way online.

The video emerged this weekend (via PCGamesN), where it popped up on YouTube and DailyMotion before it was removed following copyright claims by Zenimax Media - the parent company of TESO developer ZeniMax Online Studios.

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The words 'theme park MMO' get thrown around a lot these days, but rarely have they felt more apt than during my four hours with The Elder Scrolls Online. If Skyrim, Cyrodiil and so on are worlds, TESO smacks of the World Showcase from Disney's Epcot - familiar sights remade in fibreglass to be admired but never seriously mistaken for the original. Not as many gift shops. Far more spiders. This time, the park owners will actively block your path until you agree to sit through the local equivalent of "O Canada". Still, the comparison fits.

MMOs love a sumptuous cinematic trailer and The Elder Scrolls Online is no exception.

Bethesda has released a new, nine minute long Elder Scrolls Online video that's packed with new gameplay footage.

Gameplay and environmental footage is spliced with commentary from the game's developers at Zenimax Online.

Topics covered include real-time combat, groups, the mega server feature, level 50 content, armour and player verses player content.

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Bethesda has discussed the reaction to Elder Scrolls Online, saying even before work on the game had begun it expected it would be mixed.

The Elder Scrolls Online doesn't look like Skyrim because it can't - MMOs can't yet replicate those sort of graphics on the scale they offer, insisted developer Zenimax Online.

Elder Scrolls Online director Matt Firor has explained why upcoming MMOG has public dungeons.

Given the sorry state that relatively modest single-player offering Skyrim launched in last year, many gamers are justifiably concerned over what sort bugs might cripple Zenimax's considerably more ambitious Elder Scrolls MMO when it launches next year.

The main story in The Elder Scrolls Online will be "100 per cent solo" so that you feel like "you're awesome, you're the hero", game director Matt Firor has revealed.

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What appears to be Game Informer's world-first preview of The Elder Scrolls Online has been splashed across the internet. In a nutshell, The Elder Scrolls Online looks different and plays differently to a single-player Elder Scrolls game.

The graphics are stylised with a tint of cartoon, in a way reminiscent of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. The gameplay is Elder Scrolls squashed to fit a lag-conscious and balance-conscious MMO world - i.e. real-time combat is out, and classes, levels, hot bars and a third-person viewpoint are in.

Becoming a werewolf or a vampire is a no-no, as will be mastering all skills and becoming godlike in power. Player housing is out to begin with.

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The wraps have just come off The Elder Scrolls Online - a PC and Mac MMO due out in 2013.

According to Game Informer's reveal, it's set 1000 years before the events of Skyrim, with daedric prince Molag Bal attempting to incorporate Tamriel into his demonic realm.

It's Zenimax Online Studios' very first project, with Matt Firor at the helm. He's a former Mythic Entertainment producer whose credits include Dark Age of Camelot.

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