After teasing most of us (and horrifying some of us) for what seems like ages, Elder Scrolls Online will finally launch in just eight short days on April 4. If I'm any judge, barely 48 hours after that, someone, somewhere, will hit the level 50 experience cap and lord it over the rest of us. For the dedicated, a new blog post at the ESO website details the many ways we'll be able to explore Tamriel after our journey through the levels is complete.
One of the first things you can do after climbing to the top of your chosen faction's storyline is, well, go back and climb the other ones. “At Veteran Rank 1 you can travel anywhere in the first or second alliance you want to go,” the blog post reads. “When you meet the qualifications for opening up the third alliance, the entirety of the current game world is open to you. Yes, it does get harder, but that's part of the fun and challenge. When you consider that 2/3 of the hand-crafted content and quests are available to you after you hit the level cap of 50, the veteran solo/duo game is huge.”
Groups of players will also be able to take on veteran dungeons and areas designed to be more difficult than regular dungeons. Most of these are geared toward groups of four, but special twelve-player trials promise to be a grueling experience: “In a Trial, you will have a limited number of resurrections, known as a Soul Reservoir. Too many resurrections mean that you have failed the trial. It takes a lot of coordination to survive a Trial... Provided you do survive and make it to the end of a Trial, your group might make it to the leaderboard.”
Like all MMOs, ESO will change a lot after launch, so you can expect a lot of these areas to evolve as the game gets older. Phil took a look at ESO in February and came away a bit disappointed about the combat. Evan and Cory also checked it out and lamented the lack of exploration. We'll see what's changed in the last couple of months and what hasn't when the game launches next Friday, April 4.
