The invites are going out for this weekend’s ESO beta session. There are a couple of major changes you will notice from last beta.
The tutorial has been changed: overall it will be quicker to complete, and the encounters will be more interesting. After you’ve completed the tutorial, you’ll directly go to the first city of your alliance.
Starting islands have been made optional – you can still choose to go back and complete the starting island before moving forward. Leveling will be faster early on, but balances out at higher levels where leveling is a little slower than before.
The biggest change you will notice is NPC Collision detection. It already exists in the private test server, and is now being added to this weekend’s beta as well. Friendly and hostile NPCs alike will have collision detection, meaning you can’t run through them. This will hopefully give melee combat a bit more oomph.
New Zones & Quests have been included in the beta. You can read all the other changes further down this post.
This weekend beta testers will be able to play as Imperials and test all the benefits of Imperial Edition & Explorer’s Pack. Supposedly this means you will be able to choose your alliance in this beta session regardless of your race. You should also be able to cosmetically change your Armor to match Imperial Style, and another benefit of Imperial Edition is the White Imperial Horse, which should be buyable from a Stable Master for a small fee of gold.
Players in Europe will also be able to play on their own Megaserver this time.
Dark Fissures have been added, which are solo version of Dark Anchors. Cyrodiil performance has been improved.
You’ll have access to these zones in this weekend’s beta (new zones marked with *):
- Khenarthi’s Roost
- Auridon
- Grahtwood*
- Stros M’Kai
- Betnikh
- Glenumbra
- Stormhaven*
- Bleakrock Isle
- Bal Foyen
- Stonefalls
- Deshaan*
- Cyrodiil
You can find the full list of changes here. (ESO Beta forum account required)