For a long time, it was unclear what ZeniMax would bring as a novelty in The Elder Scrolls Online (TESO) in 2017. Now you finally know: The entire island of Vvardenfell from the legendary The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind is coming to Online-Tamriel! Jürgen was live at ZeniMax and has all the info about the new ESO expansion!
Actually, you already knew: Clever dataminers found an entire map of the volcanic island of Vvardenfell in the ESO code as early as January and on January 29, ZeniMax even posted a picture of cooled lava on Twitter. “No, those are dragon scales! The Dovahkiin and more Skyrim are coming!” some hardcore Skyrim fans still said, but at the latest since the ZeniMax livestream on January 31, everyone knows it! Morrowind and the island of Vvardenfell are coming to The Elder Scrolls Online on June 6, 2017!
Now it’s getting serious!
However, Morrowind is not coming as a DLC like Orsinium or the Dark Brotherhood! Rather, this legendary Elder Scrolls region is the first true expansion for The Elder Scrolls Online.
Morrowind therefore not only includes the entire island of Vvardenfell, which is about 20 percent larger than the previously largest map in ESO and offers about 30 hours of main quests. As a proper expansion in the style of Legion (WoW) or Hearth of Thorns (Guild Wars 2), The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind not only brings new quests and areas.
Instead, you will receive two things that have been sorely missed since the launch of ESO: A druid ranger class and structured arena PvP. Furthermore, you cannot purchase Morrowind with crowns from within the game but only as a digital download or as a stylish physical version that also includes the base game. A special edition including an art book and a figure of a clockwork golem is also available.
New Class “Warden” – The Druid Ranger
The Elder Scrolls Online has only four classes since release, a warrior, a healer, a mage, and a rogue. However, thanks to the free character system of ESO, you can almost develop these four basic types at will and play, for example, a heavily armored lightning mage with a two-handed axe or a fire warrior wielding a robe and staff. But two specific class combinations have been hardly possible until now.
We are, of course, talking about the ranger and the druid. Especially the former is a fan favorite in fantasy role-playing games and represents a robust warrior who prefers to wield ranged weapons and has an animal companion as support in battle. Such a combination has not existed – with the exception of the demon-summoning mage – until now, but with the new class of the “Warden” finally a pet-friendly fighter comes to the game.
The Deadly Zoo Keeper or the Green Druid?
The Warden can – like all other ESO classes – access three skill trees. The DD tree allows powerful attacks, all of which the Warden performs through summoned creatures. For example, a giant mole can attack the enemy from below, or a cliff racer (those fluttering pests from the original Morrowind) can dive-bomb the opponent.
Especially cool: As an ultimate, the Warden summons a big bear that stays with you permanently and beats up the opponent while tanking.
But even without the bear, the Warden can be a good tank. Another skill tree increases its resistance and gives it control skills that also make it shine in PvP. Finally, there is a variant of the Warden that corresponds more to the classic druid. So a nature mage who heals and supports the group with eco-magic. The healing skills of the Warden are all tactical and stationary.
Structured PvP – When two fight…
Even more sorely missed than a ranger class was actually a structured PvP mode in ESO. So far, there has only been open PvP in the central region of Cyrodiil, which, while capable of providing exciting large-scale battles and sieges, often turned out to be a giant zerg fest. If you were more into structured PvP in manageable arenas and with a specified team size, you had to play another MMORPG.
But with Morrowind, ZeniMax has seen the light and provides battlegrounds. You enter these PvP arenas through a special PvP browser, and as soon as twelve players have signed up, the system distributes them into three teams of four players each.
According to ESO chief Matt Firor, this should create more fairness since three teams prevent one dominating team from always winning. The battles in the battlegrounds are supposed to last around 15 minutes on average. Depending on the game mode, you either have to capture mission objectives or eliminate as many opponents as possible in deathmatch mode.
Morrowind? What is that?
The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind brings long-awaited features into the game with the new PvP modes and the Warden class, but what is the addon actually about and what is this “Morrowind”? The namesake of the addon is a region in the ESO world of Tamriel, which already played a role in the single-player RPG “The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind” in 2002. This third part of the series was also the first Elder Scrolls game that was truly successful and popular. The first two parts, “Daggerfall” and “Arena”, were far too ambitious and technically underdeveloped for their time (the 90s).
Morrowind, on the other hand, marked the breakthrough because, on the one hand, the game looked extremely good at the time (especially the water effects were impressive!) and, on the other hand, it placed players in a convincingly open world. This was the island of Vvardenfell in the Morrowind region, where strange dark elves traveled on giant insects through bizarre mushroom forests and desolate volcanic ash deserts.
The story revolved around the “Nerevarine,” the reincarnated savior of the dark elves. Over the course of the plot, it turns out that your hero is that dark messiah, and in the end, you fight an ancient evil in the depths of the central volcano on the island and later confront actual gods. The Elder Scrolls was epic even before Skyrim and the Dovahkiin!
Back to the Past
Those who played Morrowind back then can look forward to a reunion in ESO, as the island of Vvardenfell has been meticulously transferred into the online role-playing game. Only the central volcano is off-limits, as you are not supposed to wake the later big bad Dagoth-Ur too soon. The Elder Scrolls Online takes place 700 years before the original Morrowind game, so the island of Vvardenfell looks a little different.
This means that the large ash deserts from The Elder Scrolls 3 in ESO are still significantly smaller, and the gigantic mushroom towers of the Telvanni mages have not yet reached the impressive size they would later achieve. Also cool: At the time of ESO, the construction of the city of Vivec is just beginning. Therefore, only three districts are accessible, which greatly aids in navigation. In The Elder Scrolls 3, the city had nine districts, and you would always get lost!
An Impotent God and the Steampunk Raid
The city of Vivec is being built around the palace of its namesake, the living god Vivec. He is part of the “Tribunal,” the three incarnate deities of the dark elves. However, you won’t experience much of his divinity in ESO-Morrowind, as Vivec lies suffering.
A mysterious plague has befallen him, and when Vivec dies, his magic that prevents the volcano in the center of the island from erupting will fail. Your task is to cure Vivec and save Vvardenfell. Along the way, you will encounter many familiar faces, including the assassins of the “Morag Tong”, the mysterious “Sixth House”, and even the bizarre mage Divayth Fyr.
This wizard will later help the Nerevarine significantly with his “cloned” daughters, but at the time of ESO, he is just a small wizard who, through clumsiness, lets Daedra into the clockwork city. This is the second major raid coming to ESO after the “Pit of Lorkhaj” (from the Thieves Guild DLC).
The new raid takes you into the depths of the clockwork city, a replica of the ESO world made of steampunk elements like steam pipes and gears. According to game designer Rich Lambert, this instance is supposed to be the hardest and most challenging raid in ESO to date. Whether that’s true, you’ll find out on June 6, when The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind releases.
Jürgen says: I admit: I’ve known about the Morrowind expansion for a long time because I was invited to its presentation at the ZeniMax studio last fall. However, the sheer scale of the expansion (and the fact that it is a major expansion and not just a DLC) still surprised me.
The presentation by Matt Firor for the first ESO expansion dripped with nostalgia and as the classic Morrowind theme and the former starting region “Seyda Neen” were shown in ESO, I was sold, and my enthusiasm grew even more.
In Morrowind, there is a lot of love in the details, and in my opinion, the coolest and most coherent region of Tamriel is finally back on the theme! Now I just hope that Morrowind does not only thrive on nostalgia and delivers similarly cool quests and stories as before. Then ZeniMax would have created a worthy start to many more cool expansions and a fitting tribute to the original Morrowind game.
Do you want to know, whether ESO 2017 is still worth it? Read here for the answer!
