The Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind brings battlegrounds as new PvP arenas. In an interview, Brian Wheeler, the PvP lead of Zenimax, explained how the Battlegrounds work and the state of Cyrodiil PvP.
Morrowind, the upcoming stand-alone add-on for The Elder Scrolls Online, introduces a long-awaited PvP feature to the game. The so-called Battlegrounds are manageable arenas where three teams of four compete in short skirmishes for dominance. There is a team deathmatch mode as well as Capture The Flag.
Interview with the Battleground King
Regarding the Battlegrounds, the colleagues at MMORPG.com interviewed Brian Wheeler from ZeniMax. Wheeler is the head of the PvP department in The Elder Scrolls Online. During the interview, a few interesting details about PvP were revealed:
- There will be four to five loot sets from the Battlegrounds. These come complete with weapons, armor, and accessories. However, they will not glow or sparkle; the ESO style remains understated. Whether the new gear will only be interesting for PvP or will also please PvE fans is still uncertain, according to Wheeler.
- In the Battlegrounds, you can earn medals for special actions, such as dealing crits worth 5,000 damage, killing an enemy for the first time, defeating multiple foes, or optimally defending mission objectives. These medals will enhance your rewards at the end of the skirmish. Due to different playstyles, there are different medals for deathmatches than for the CTF mode. The former rewards more kills, while the latter rewards teamwork and capture.
- Items of the quality tiers green, blue, and purple will be earned depending on whether you win and how many medals you have. Even losers receive loot; only players who leave the match early will receive nothing! Leavers will also face additional penalties, such as temporary bans from PvP. A detailed concept is still in the works.
- There may be more loot introduced as victory rewards. For example, resource bags like in the Imperial City. This would make PvP interesting for players who enjoy crafting and typically acquire their good resources from dungeons and raids.
- The PvP rewards are expected to be bound upon equipping. So you should be able to resell or gift them.
- Ladder systems are also planned later on. For that, additional rewards are expected, most likely more purple items.
ESO-PvP – Curious matchmaking and leaderboard tournaments
In addition to details about the reward system, Brian Wheeler also provided information about future content and mentioned a controversial feature of matchmaking.
- More Battlegrounds after the release of Morrowind are planned, most likely as part of additional DLCs or the next chapter add-on. Among them will be asymmetric battlegrounds; the current ones, however, are quite symmetrical.
- The matchmaking has a curious peculiarity. According to Brian Wheeler, it does not consider the class roles of players. This means there could be rounds where only tanks face off against a horde of healers. It remains to be seen how often this actually happens and whether ZeniMax addresses this potential issue.
- Once leaderboards are implemented, there will also be tournaments. However, this will happen later after the release of Morrowind, as many players interested in PvP might be intimidated by leaderboards and ranked fights.
- In the Battlegrounds, you are still members of your alliance, but you fight for one of three differently colored teams, which can include members from all three alliances. This way, the player pool is not unnecessarily divided, and everyone can participate.
Alliance PvP – Nothing new in Cyrodiil?
The Battlegrounds are clearly the new big thing in ESO PvP. However, the existing open-world PvP in Cyrodiil is still relevant. There, the focus is primarily on balance and server stability.
- The server performance is an important topic, as many players simultaneously fight for the imperial throne in Cyrodiil. Especially in campaigns like “Trueflame,” where maximum-level heroes are allowed with passive champion skills, the servers can really struggle. In campaigns like Blackwater Blade or Azura’s Star, it is less severe because there would not be as many extreme player builds (Blackwater is only for players below max level, and Azura’s Star does not allow champion passives).
- To enhance server performance, server resources have been better allocated. The greatest performance boost was achieved with optimized caching of important data. Since these now have their own cache, everything operates faster.
- Otherwise, the focus is mainly on balance. Recently, it was implemented that captured mines and farms are worth as many points as defeating an opposing player hero. This is intended to encourage players to pay more attention to the small capture objectives on the map. These had not been attractive enough for many players so far.
- Also mentioned: World bosses in PvP. However, Brian Wheeler did not want to go into detail on this, as such matters always bring significant balance issues. However, it is possible.
- All in all, the Cyrodiil PvP is popular among players and is doing well.
In line with the topic: The Elder Scrolls Online – An add-on and DLC planned every year
