As part of “ESO Direct 2025”, the officials of Elder Scrolls Online revealed what the first season of the MMORPG will look like and what new features all heroes of Tamriel can look forward to.
In December 2024, ZeniMax CEO Matt Firor explained in a letter to the community that a lot will change in Elder Scrolls Online starting in 2025. Moving away from annual chapters to a more flexible season model that will allow developers to take greater risks and experiment.
After the latest content package from the dungeon DLC and free update 45 remained loyal to the old structure in March, the ESO officials presented the changes during an “ESO Direct 2025” that will be landing on the live servers of the MMORPG in the coming months. Additionally, a Q&A session took place, where MeinMMO was also allowed to ask questions.
Here you can see the new trailer for the Season of the Worm Cult in Elder Scrolls Online:
Seasons of the Worm Cult
The first season will build on the Molag Bal campaign from the base game of ESO 2014 in June 2025 and tells a story where you will once again encounter the necromancers of the Worm Cult, who this time are out for revenge.
Since 2025 is supposed to be a transition year for restructuring ESO’s content pipeline, a fresh region will also be introduced with the first season: the Island of Sunveil. Future seasons are expected to primarily lead you to familiar areas.
On the tropical island, you will mainly encounter High Elves and Argonians – it sounds strange, but it should make sense considering the lore of the zone. The impressive port city of the area is called Sunhaven. In addition, there should be a magical carnival, daedric ruins, and plenty more to discover. Oh, and there will be a reunion with popular characters from the Molag Bal campaign – the good Razum-dar is a recurring guest in ESO’s stories anyway.
Throughout the year, new content will expand the Seasons of the Worm Cult. For example, Sunveil will initially be divided into two areas by an insurmountable wall. At first, only one of the two sides will be accessible.
In late summer, there will be a server-wide, world-changing event where the community will work over several phases to break down this wall. Similar to the opening of Ahn’Qiraj in Vanilla WoW, the players’ involvement will determine the timing of the breakthrough and the final battle. Which megaserver will master the task first?
The finale of the Seasons of the Worm Cult is expected to come with the last update of the year 2025, sometime in the fourth quarter of 2025. The next season of ESO will begin sometime in 2026 and could last only three or six months.
Such a season could then also focus on companions, the card game, or housing. Additionally, remix seasons are planned, which will refresh already known content with new rules – reminiscent of the seasonal and remix variants of WoW.
In the Q&A session, Creative Director Rich Lambert admitted that such a season model will always include elements of FOMO (via Wikipedia), which is the fear of players missing out on something if they don’t participate.
The developer reassures that exclusive rewards from the Seasons of the Worm Cult can be obtained with relatively little time investment. Furthermore, certain content may return at some point.
Subclasses and new Raid
In addition to the new zone and the associated content, more features are planned for the summer.
Subclasses: With the Seasons of the Worm Cult, heroes of Tamriel will finally receive the opportunity to freely combine all skill lines from all classes. The system will be unlocked once you reach level 50 with a character. From that point on, you will have access to all class skill lines that you have already unlocked on your account.
For those who have only played a single class until now, new quests will offer the chance to unlock the skill lines of other archetypes. For everyone, it is important that you still need to level the skills of the other classes. The skills of other classes will cost double the skill points as those of your own class.
When mixing and matching, there is just one restriction: you must use a skill line from your original class in any case. Overall, there will be over 3,000 combinations available for the skill lines with the subclasses, and you will be able to use the subclasses in all areas of the MMORPG, including PvP or raid trials.
New Raid: With Update 46, a new trial for 12 players named Bone Cage will arrive on the live servers in June. This is a massive vault in Coldharbour that holds a powerful Daedric relic. Your task: infiltrate the vault, find the relic, and destroy it before Molag Bal’s troops can get their hands on it.
According to Creative Director Rich Lambert, raid enthusiasts can expect a fight against multiple bosses while navigating platforms and doing “crazy, really CRAZY stuff” in the trial.
What else are the developers planning? After already updating the tutorial for new characters, they want to make some changes during the summer to make it easier for returnees after a long hiatus to get back into ESO.
The developers refer to this as “Welcome Back” features, which will help players quickly navigate the enormous number of systems and content in Tamriel – while being rewarded along the way to regain their former state.
Additionally, the user interface of the PC version of Elder Scrolls Online is set to be modernized, taking cues from the relatively newer console version of the MMORPG.
ESO Plus versus Content Pass
For the Seasons of the Worm Cult, the developers have announced the paid content pass, which is supposed to include all content associated with the season, namely:
- Dungeon DLC Fallen Banners (already released)
- The zone Sunveil with all the associated content (June 2, 2025 on PC, June 18, 2025 for Xbox and PlayStation)
- The world event surrounding the wall as well as another dungeon package (Q3 2025) – with the developers stating that even without the content pass, players should have the opportunity to contribute to the success of the world event (in what form, remains unclear)
- The season finale with an expansion of the region plus new content (Q4 2025)
The new content pass costs about approximately 50 euros on Steam. There is also a new premium edition 2025, which includes the base game as well as the eight chapters. This costs nearly 80 euros. And of course, there are also preorder goodies for players who act immediately. More on this can be found on elderscrollsonline.com.
It is also clear that the content pass will run parallel to ESO Plus. Those with an active ESO Plus subscription will not automatically gain access to the content of the new seasons through it – just as it has been with the chapters so far.
The developers want to expand the offerings of ESO Plus in the future as well. Furthermore, there will continue to be free updates that relate to the base game. The new subclasses, for example, will be available to all players of ESO. Fans of the MMORPG have already experienced an initial product of the new content strategy: Elder Scrolls Online is bringing a special campaign where there are no quests and your level doesn’t matter
