The online game in The Elder Scrolls universe (Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim) celebrated its tenth anniversary this week. Over 10 years, Zenimax has raised $2 billion from the game. Along with the basic version of The Elder Scrolls Online with a fixed price, there is a subscription that provides additional features, and you can also buy individual chapters and other additional content. At the same time, the game does not upset with intrusive microtransactions, and the principle of «pay to win» does not work in it.
In the interview GamesRadar+ studio director Matt Firor says that the $2 billion figure was released by «mostly to shed light on the» game. According to Fearon, ESO is not often referred to as one of the most successful MMORPGs, but it is. According to him, even ESO’s connection to Skyrim rarely draws attention to it, as it does to, say, World of Warcraft.
«I think [the number] just shows the dedication of the players to the game and also to us at Zenimax Online. It’s extremely successful and we love working on it,» says Firor.
The Elder Scrolls Online celebrates its anniversary with a new chapter «The Golden Road» and a variety of in-game promotions and bonuses. This is perhaps the largest annual ESO update yet, featuring approximately 30 hours of new story content centered around the events of the new Deirdre Prince Ithiel, a character never before seen in the Elder Scrolls franchise.
In terms of gameplay, Gold Road offers new public dungeons, quests, world events, world bosses, new unique collectibles, and much more. However, the biggest real change in the gameplay is undoubtedly the new scribing system (skill creation). Grimoires have been added to the game, a new type of skill that you can acquire through the chapter quest line to use in conjunction with your existing skills. Skills from grimoires can be customized to create multiple variations of additional abilities.
Keeping in mind that Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls 6 will not be released soon, the annually updated Elder Scrolls Online may be a good option for those who miss this universe.
The author of this news has spent many hours in the game and can say that it has more solo quests than several regular RPGs combined and more of them are added every year, new territories and game mechanics are constantly appearing, and it also contains a lot of information about the lore of the «Scrolls» universe.