Watch On
The Elder Scrolls Online just had a huge patch drop yesterday—titled Seasons of the Worm Cult, this new update marks the start of a few key changes to the MMO, alongside a nice helping of content for current or returning players to sink their newly subclassed mitts into.
Subclassing, which I had a look at earlier this year, is by far the biggest shake-up the game’s getting—unlocked once you get any character to level 50, this feature’ll let you mix and match “skill lines” from various classes to your heart’s content. Well, kinda—there are a few limitations.
Firstly, you need to keep at least one skill line from your “main” class—the one you started the character with. Secondly, you can’t pick more than one skill line from a single class that isn’t yours. Lastly, they take a little longer to level up and cost more skill points to grab abilities from.
Other than that, it’s a cool and madcap new way to build out your character—and it’s free for all players at the point of entry. While I’m sure flavours of the month will roll in and out, for those who don’t care much about sweaty optimisation, it’s a huge boost to players’ ability to diversify their build.
The update also throws open the doors to the island of Solstice, where the next chapter of its more seasonal story structure’ll be taking place. Solstice is a sun-baked, mediterranean-style island currently split in two by The Writhing Wall, a barrier of souls that the playerbase’ll be kicking down as the story advances.
In terms of how this place looks, it’s a blend of Altmer and Argonian culture—necromantic Altmer exiles came, booted the Argonians out, they had a war about it, and now they’re (mostly) chill with each other.
What seems interesting, as I digitally attend a presentation by zone lead Jason Barnes and systems designer Carrie Day, is the team’s dedication to making carry-over choices from the game’s base storyline (which Seasons of the Worm Cult is returning to after a decade) matter. “It’s a way for us to honour the legacy of our long-term players,” Barnes states, deeply enthused about the prospect of putting a little more RPG back in the game’s MMO.
Barnes also says during a Q&A session that—alongside some other quality of life features coming to ESO promised earlier in the year—the team’s looking into letting players adjust the game’s difficulty in some way: “There are ongoing plans for that, it’s in the works,” Barnes explains, though the team isn’t “ready to talk about it yet.” Still, he adds that “it is something we’re looking at, and there’s people working on it.”
I haven’t picked up ESO in a little while, but I’m experienced enough with MMOs to know that difficulty discourse is a constant and enduring challenge—when a game’s survival depends on appealing to the most people possible, providing a set of challenges that caters to everybody is downright unfathomable.
Slide too far in one direction, and you get a game that bores its longtime fans to tears. Slide too far in the other, and, well, you get Wildstar. I’ll be keen to see how The Elder Scrolls Online tackles the eternal question—or, from what it sounds like, lets players make that choice for themselves.
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