Earlier today Zenimax released a developer play session featuring Paul Sage, the creative director of ESO, Nick Konkle, lead gameplay designer and Dan Crenshaw, dungeon lead. The video is well worth watching because it gives a pretty good idea of how the combat and UI in ESO play out. It also reveals some of the group PvE content we can expect in Elder Scrolls Online. The video starts with a showdown between a huge storm atronach called Zymel Kruz and two of the developers. The named storm atronach is referred to as “overland boss”, so now we have an idea of what they could be: rare, unique monsters that will be challenging to take down on your own.
The video also showcases some of the travelling options players can use in game and reveals what the Dark Anchors are all about.
No new information on adventure zones
As speculated in my earlier post, the overland bosses have nothing to do with adventure zones. In a way it’s disappointing, because you’d think Zenimax would have included more information on adventure zones (the ESO equivalent of large group PvE content, ie. raids) if they had anything to share with us. Perhaps they still want to polish the adventure zones before publishing more specific information on them. There’s always hope of getting adventure zones out for the release, but the release date is getting closer and closer. Even if the adventure zones are not included in the final release of the game, it’s good to keep in mind that the levelling process is said to take a long time in ESO.
Huge Storm Atronach Overland Boss: Zymel Kruz
Dark Anchors explained
As for the Dark Anchors, the developers explain that the daedric prince Molag Bal is using them to try and pull the world (also known as Nirn) into his daedric realm, the Coldharbour. And that is of course a terrible, terrible thing which has to be avoided at all costs! The Dark Anchor has anchor-like structures which fall down from the sky and dock onto a stone platform on the ground. A group of ritualists seem to be summoning something, and as the devs engage in combat, waves of daedric creatures pop out of the anchor. As the fight goes on, every now and then objects called anchor pinions pop up from the platform. It seems like there were five of them overall. They are interactible and supposedly a way to “close” the Dark Anchor and the gateway to Coldharbour. Different types of atronachs and xivilai with their servants were seen in the video. The last thing the dark anchor throws at the devs is a massive daedra, unique to ESO, called the Dread Harvester.
Wayshrines and fast travel
This is something that has been confirmed before, but now we actually saw it in action. There is an option to fast travel to locations in ESO, but you can only fast travel to wayshrines which you must have previously found. You open up your map, click on a wayshrine, pay a fee of gold and see your character perform a flashy looking cast animation and boom – enter the loading screen. I think it’s a good compromise between being able to fast travel to virtually every location in game and not being able to fast travel at all. This way the player can still experience the huge space of Tamriel without getting fed up of having to constantly run from one end of the world to the other.
What did you think about the video? yay or nay?