The Elder Scrolls Online Director on State of the Game and Future Plans

In the latest The Road Ahead article on The Elder Scrolls Online’s official website, game director Matt Firor talks about what’s included in the recently released update 4, what’s going to be included in update 5, and the plans for the future, which have apparently been shaped in part thanks to a guild summit hosted at ZeniMax Online’s headquarters. Here’s a snippet:

UPDATE 4

Update 4, which brought the Upper Craglorn region, a new Trial, and the Dragonstar Arena (and plenty of other fixes and improvements), has been available to everyone on the live servers for about four weeks now, and we appreciate everyone who helped us troubleshoot some issues that cropped up when the update went out. We deployed a series of hotfixes over the first week Update 4 was live to address those problems, and your feedback helped us find and correct them quickly.

WHAT’S COMING IN UPDATE 5

Update 5 is on the PTS and ready for testing right now! It’s a big update that contains a Veteran Dungeon, a new system of repeatable Pledges and Writs for dungeons and crafting, our new facial animation system and fixes for player separation when questing in a group. Here are some more details:

• A new Veteran Dungeon: City of Ash continues the dungeon’s story and introduces dangerous new challenges for your group.
• The new facial animation system makes NPCs far more lifelike during conversations. Repeatable Pledges: The Undaunted now reward players once a day for specific dungeon runs with special loot and trophies.
• Repeatable Writs: You’ll be able to obtain certification in your crafting skills and then complete Writs for inspiration, materials, and special Survey Reports that will lead you to high-yield harvesting nodes.
• Dungeon level scaling: Dungeons’ enemies and rewards will scale to the level of the group leader, giving you more chances to group up, experience a challenge, and get appropriate rewards.
• More player separation fixes: More quests will be streamlined so you aren’t separated from your group members as often while adventuring.

Those are the main highlights of Update 5, but much more is coming, including the new Dwemer crafting style, a new item set to craft, chat bubbles, and our continued effort to expand delves throughout the game. And, of course, the update will bring plenty of bug fixes and other improvements. Check out the full patch notes here to see all the changes.