ESO Update 1 Promises Exciting New Features

ESO Update 1, the first major game patch to The Elder Scrolls Online, promises exciting new features including the highly anticipated Craglorn expansion.

The month of May kicked off with a new announcement on The Elder Scrolls Online website. Building on April’s State of the Game Address, the announcement not only details the devs ongoing run and gun with ESO spammers and bots, but gives specifics on Update 1 — the first major game patch to The Elder Scrolls Online.

ESO Update 1

ESO Update 1 is already available for gamers on the PTS (Play Test Server), and will hit the North American and European servers as soon as testing is complete. The exact release date isn’t known at this point, but so far there promises to be a lot of new features, including the highly anticipated Craglorn expansion.

Quoting directly from May’s announcement, these features include:

• Craglorn, the first Adventure Zone, specifically created for groups of Veteran Rank 1 and above characters
• Trials, which are 12-player “raid”-type instances for Veteran Rank characters, featuring completion time leaderboards
• Death recap: you can now see who killed you and what ability they were using. This is invaluable information in dungeons, PvP, and Craglorn
• Underdog bonuses in Cyrodiil—you’ll get more Alliance Points while fighting for an alliance with a lower population in your campaign
• Animation tweaks and polish
• Combat ability balance changes and fixes
• Class ability tweaks and updates
• Content bug fixes, especially edge cases where quests could become de-synced

Beyond Update 1

While ESO Update 1 will be the first major game patch, more changes are in the works for The Elder Scrolls Online. The devs are already hard at work on future updates that promise even more features to be implemented in 2014. Again, quoting directly from the announcement, these upcoming features include:

• A system that allows grouped players to see each other even when they’re in different phases
• A justice system—steal from and kill NPCs and deal with the consequences if you are caught
• Migration of European Megaserver to our European datacenter.
• Field of View (FOV) adjustment
• Armor dyeing and tinting
• Two new Veteran Dungeons: Crypt of Hearts and City of Ash
• New region of Craglorn with a new Trial (the Serpent)
• Increased ability to pick up items in the world
• Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood storyline and quests.
• Spellcrafting
• Horse Racing
• Dragonstar Arena—similar  to Trials, but built for a group of four
• Improvements to fishing
• Crafting system improvements
• Improved Looking for Group system  
• Better NPC facial animations
• Guild functionality updates: guild store interface updates, customizable guild insignias, tabards, and guild ranks, and Guild Kiosks—guild stores open to everyone that are available to the highest-bidding guild.
• Auto-leveling dungeons that level to your group leader
• Awards when you repeat dungeons
• Imperial City PvP dungeon

Final Thoughts

Today marks the one month anniversary of The Elder Scrolls Online. In the last 30 days the game has seen many challenges in the form of spammers and bugs. In light of these growing pains, the ZeniMax Online team has risen to the occasion, making changes where necessary and being completely upfront and honest with the community. For ESO players and fans, this level of open communication is refreshing and reassuring. With the exciting new features on tap with Update 1 and future game patches, it’s hard not be enthusiastic about the future of The Elder Scrolls Online.

So how about it? As a player, what new features in ESO Update 1 and beyond are you the most excited about? Share your opinions in the Speak Your Mind section or visit our forums. Until next time fellow travelers!