PvP Content and Changes Coming in 2019

The developers have surprised us by announcing a couple of major changes coming to PvP in 2019. Specifically to Cyrodiil and Imperial City. These changes are slated to come out with the Elsweyr Chapter in June.

Additionally, there will be a new Battleground Map in the Wrathstone Dungeon DLC and performance improvements in Cyrodiil which will hopefully come out sometime this year.


Artifact Weapons in Cyrodiil

Sheogorath has decided that Cyrodiil needs even more chaos. So, he is opening up his vaults and leaving weapons for players to find in Cyrodiil called Artifacts*.

When one of these Artifacts spawns in a random location in Cyrodiil, all players in the zone will be notified (similar with scroll carrying probably) and the Artifacts location will show up on the map.

The first of these Artifacts being introduced is called Volandrome(?). When you pick up the weapon, your hot bar will swap out and you will get a set of six new abilities (five regular abilities and one Ultimate). One of the abilities will allow you to break keep walls.

Volandrome(?)

But, there’s a catch. You have to ‘feed it’ by killing other players. If you don’t kill other players with it, it will eat you (kill you).

Basically it’s designed to be a counter to an Emperor, but it will be far more powerful then Emperor.

Unanswered Questions

What happens to the weapon once it eats the player wielding it? Does it disappear and reappear a short time later or does it stay on the ground until another player picks it up. Personally my bet is that it’ll disappear for a bit then reappear elsewhere on the map. Otherwise the chaos would be never ending.

Will an Emperor be able to pick it up the Artifact? All Rich Lambert would say is that we would have to wait and see for ourselves.

Will there be more Artifacts in the future? Possibly. They’ll see how well it’s received by the players before adding more.

*Name subject to change.


Imperial City will be it’s own Campaign

Imperial City is getting separated from Cyrodiil and made into its own separate campaign. This is being done to help improve performance in Cyrodiil by reducing some of the overhead and to increase participation/interest in the zone.

Making it so we don’t have to travel through Cyrodiil to get to Imperial City is a major quality of life improvement. It will hopefully reduce the overhead not only in performance but also help with queues for Cyrodiil.


New Battleground Map

There is a new Battleground Map coming in the Wrathstone DLC called Eld Angvar. It is very different from all other Battlegrounds currently in the game specifically, in regards to how we move around the map. Rich Lambert likened it to the Ayleid part in the Murkmire storyline. Depending on the game mode, some sections of the map will be shut off and inaccessible.


Performance Improvements in Cyrodiil

The developers are focusing on two key areas for improving performance in Cyrodiil this year (and the overall game). One is fixture loading specifically, how they’re loaded and how quickly they load. The other is how they ‘update’ our characters. Loading characters is a huge system and a lot goes into it such as gear etc.

Rich Lambert stressed that these performance improvements would take time but will happen sometime in 2019. The earliest they could be implemented is in 6 months.

You can watch the PvP announcements section from the Season of the Dragon Post Show Stream below.

Watch The Elder Scrolls Online – Season of the Dragon Post-Show from Bethesda on www.twitch.tv

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