Beta testing – Lazying Around

ESO Elsweyr and more coming in 2019!

LadyW02/02/2019Leave a comment

Yes, you read it correct! Elsweyr, the homeland of The Elder Scrolls’ universe’s cat folk, is coming to ESO June 4th. And with Elsweyr – DRAGONS (or, technically, wyverns as the creatures we were shown have 2 legs and a pair of wings, but it’s still something). As Bethesda and Zenimax announced – the new story arc will be presented in pieces throughout the whole year and therefore the year 2019 is called The Season of The Dragon.

I’ve already mentioned that I absolutely love The Elder Scrolls Online cinematic trailers and it’s the same case with the newest Cinematic Announce Trailer we got for Elsweyr.

I still remember watching it during the chapter announcement Livestream and the moment Abnur Tharn appeared – I, and many others, was convinced for a moment this time it’s an actor in the trailer, not CG. I could also talk a lot about how I love the details in the video or about the amazing job the animators did on the Khajiit’s face that shows so many emotions and expressions and yet still remains feline. But it still wouldn’t express how much I love the quality of the animation in the trailer.

I think it’s quite interesting and worth mentioning, that we only got this short trailer but the playerbase already fell in love with the female Khajiit from the it. It seems she’s quickly becoming one of the community’s beloved ESO NPCs, but only time will tell if she stays in the pantheon of most loved characters in the game or not.

What about the “To be continued” part of the trailer though? As I’ve already said, it’s not only a single chapter announcement actually, but the whole arc’s. There will be four major ESO updates in 2019, one for every quarter of the year and for each we’ll get a new trailer! How awesome is that?! Unfortunately though, Elsweyr will go live not in the first, but in the second Quarter. And below you can see a (very) general time frame for the Season of the Dragon updates:

Wrathstone DLC dungeon pack: Quarter 1
Elsweyr Chapter: Quarter 2
Unannounced Q3 DLC dungeon pack
Unannounced Q4 DLC story zone

A big and already very awaited feature that will come with Elsweyr zone and its story chapter is a new playable class. And a very interesting one at that because using it is forbidden in the most parts of Tamriel. Could you already guess what class is it? No? I’ll give you a hint then: it starts with “N” and ends with “ecromancer” 😉 That’s right, we’ll be able to play the infamous Necromancer class starting this June. I’m very curious about it, especially considering the fact that in ESO every class has the potential to deal damage, tank or heal. Or mix and match all the roles. I personally can’t wait to create my Necromancer healer.

Some of the other announced features I’m waiting for is Zone Guide that in the shown previews looks similar to the Guild Wars 2 zone completion statistics but will also tell you where to go next to meet the quest-giving NPC if you have some quest missing in the zone. I think it’s one of these not essential, but very useful and player-friendly features that every modern MMO should have. Another feature I’m very interested in is Guild Finder – an update to guilds system UI that will let you look for a guild according to your preferences in game. Now this is a feature that I was very surprised it didn’t even exist when I started playing ESO. I think if you want to join a guild inside a game, browsing the available guilds outside of this game shouldn’t be the only option. Sure you can ask on chat but it’s definitely not effective. I really like it that Elder Scrolls Online is step by step getting all the “fancy” features that will make life in the game easier.

The first part of ESO’s The Season of the Dragon, Wrathstone DLC, is currently available to testing on PTS. It brings a lot of new things to the game, such as (but not limited to):

2 new dungeons
new item sets
new collectibles and motif
new houses and furnishings
new Battleground

new achievements for dungeons, holidays, prologues, etc.
Zone Guide
Champion Points increase
Elsweyr Prologue Quest
racial skills changes

Additionally, the newest update on the Test Server introduced the new upcoming ESO Anniversary Event that will be a bit different from the previous ones this year due to the milestone of the game reaching 5 years of running. You can read details of the changed Anniversary Event on ESO PTS forum.

Phew, that’s a lot of new stuff to wait for throughout the whole year! It’s been a while since the announcement but my PTS is finally finishing updating so I’ll be able to test some of the new features!

As for the live server…

This month (February) you can get this cute little piggy pet if you gift your friends! The rule is: you have to gift at least 2 different accounts on the same server and the sum of the gifts has to be 1000 Crowns. To gift someone go to Crown Store in game and when purchasing an item be sure to check “buy as a gift” option. Then you’ll be able to choose who you’d like to send the gift to.

Also, the Storm Atronach crates with some very cool rewards are back in the Crown Store *wink, wink* 😀

In Gaming

ESO beta testing #02 + Contest!

LadyW01/05/20182 Comments

Hello everyone! It might have seemed like I disappeared from here but on the contrary – I was working on some little project of mine concerning this blog. It’s finished now, but first things first.

Besides the mentioned project, as some of you may remember, a while ago I kept fighting with Elder Scrolls Online PTS broken download. And after many troubles I finally managed to not only download The Elder Scrolls Online PTS but it also works (this time)!

Elder Scrolls Online: Summerset PTS login screen

And I maybe didn’t have much time to play it but so far I loved everything I saw in Summerset. Above is just the login screen that managed to amaze me with its beauty on its own.

I also have to admit, I’m a big fan of ESO loading screens art. In fact one of such paintings is currently on my PC’s wallpaper. The Summerset loading screens are truly beautiful as well, a real pleasure to look at.

Elder Scrolls Online: Summerset PTS loading screen

As I play on European server, after I logged in to PTS, the character selection screen was empty for me – the NA characters were copied to PTS a while ago but the EU characters will be copied on May 7th. That’s why I had to create a completely new character. And this is also when I noticed the game is overlayed with my username. This is a pretty smart thing, especially that there were some secret beta contents there that beta testers weren’t allowed to share back then, so, with the username overlay, if someone uploaded a screenshot or a video containing this content it would be easy to tell who posted this content first. Now the secrecy is lifted though.

Elder Scrolls Online: Summerset PTS character creation screen

Anyway, I got to play with a character creator and… no surprise here, there are no new features there. Except the newly introduced and popular glitch which causes the Novice Gear to look the same as “No Gear” aka… underwear.

On live server I play a mage so this time I decided to try out a rogue, my other favourite class in video games. I could have picked another mage since there is a new mage skill line coming with Summerset but I don’t expect to get to max level on beta and that would be required to fully test it. So I decided to just try a different class instead.

The starting zone is…. BEAUTIFUL. Not to spoil too much, you start in a really dreamy zone and it’s also very immersive, I loved it. But on the other hand, as I’m still relatively new to ESO, I’m not sure if the previous starting zone will be still there after Summerset launch and I wouldn’t be happy if was removed. My live character started in Soul Shriven, but will the newly created characters only be able to start the game in this new zone? This is what I will test when my live characters get copied to PTS!

Elder Scrolls Online: Summerset PTS starting zone first look

After you finish the starting zone that teaches you how to play you ~~wake up~~ are back to the “real” ESO world and you are free to play as you usually do. You get new storyline quests and can explore the new areas. And believe me, the fist area you are in is STUNNING.

But, this is also where I found my first 2 glitches! Unfortunately, the first one, that was funny and bizarre , I didn’t get to document, plus it disappeared after relogging as expected. My character at some point not only disappeared but also to some extent was able to hover over the ground. I wouldn’t mind it that much but I couldn’t use any of my skills since apparently the weapons also became hidden from the game fully rather than just be invisible. But like I said, everything appeared and worked as intended to after relogging.

Another glitch I found, and this one I was able to even record (and of course – REPORT) was also about disappearing objects. At first I thought it was part of the area magic, since I spotted there some teleporting (and beautiful) magical deers that seem like they disappear for a moment because of the teleporting ability. But this “magical” disappearing chest wasn’t supposed to disappear, I think. Not completely, at least.

As you can see it doesn’t only get invisible but it’s removed from the zone completely when I’m close to it and reappears back when I look at it from some distance AND from an angle.

One of the things I was really curious about in the update 18 was daily gifts. In the most of modern MMOs there is a feature rewarding players for daily logging in – be it even small rewards like bundle of health potions, it’s always very welcome. The older games that didn’t have such feature often introduce it later to stay competitive, but not ESO – and this was a thing I was really missing in the game. It’s the small things, you know. Someone mentioned in the comments here a while ago that they don’t like cluttered game UIs. ESO doesn’t have this problem, but in my opinion it’s the opposite here. ESO UI sometimes feels too simple maybe even to the “outdated” level. I love it that it’s clean but it could use some updates. Not having the daily rewards was another thing that was making the game feel outdated for me but this feature is getting a fix with Summerset and I really love it!

Elder Scrolls Online: Summerset PTS daily rewards UI

When I was testing it the daily rewards weren’t fully launched yet – you can see the UI is showing January even though it was April. The list of rewards was also empty so I’m really curious what the daily rewards will be for the whole month, plus, will they be the same every month or will they vary depending on the month OR maybe they will be completely different each month. I’d assume they will stay the same every month but we’ll see.

Additionally, after selecting a log out to character selection screen in the menu, you will get a notification about what will be your next daily reward and how much time you have left until you can claim it. I really love this idea! In the previous MMO I’ve played a lot there was no timer on daily rewards so you just had to know when the daily server reset happens. And with the daylight saving time it wouldn’t be always the same. The timer on the daily rewards allows you to forget about keeping track of the daily server resets.

Another feature I was really missing in Elder Scrolls Online (but didn’t manage to complain on lack of it officially) was gifting – an ability to buy someone else in the game a Store item. I have to admit I’m quite happy that the gifting feature is also going to be introduced with Summerset. Below there are 3 compiled screenshots of the gifting UI. It seems very intuitive and well thought as you will be able to see the whole history of gifts and not only those you’ve received but also what you gave to other players and in addition there is a separate tab for the returned (and unclaimed?) gifts. I really look forward to try it out on live servers!

That’s all about ESO beta for now. I also had an opportunity to test for a while Defiance 2050 but I’ll write about it another time. Now it’s time for promised contest!

Contest time!

We’re celebrating May, working ESO beta and lifting the secrecy on the Summerset main storyline!

You can win a drawing like this! Click it to enlarge it.

Rules:

Write in a comment below a short poem (at least 4 verses) containing words SUMMER and PLAY
Tweet it with hashtag #SUMMER-BETA-ESO
The poems have to be unique, if the same poems repeats – only the first one will count
One entry per person
You have time to enter until Friday, 5/04, 23:59 GMT+1
The winner will be chosen randomly by using Random.org website

Reward:

A chibi colourful drawing like the one on the left depicting one of a video game character of your choice! It can be either your character or an NPC.

Good luck everyone!

In Gaming

Bless news + ESO Beta testing #01

LadyW19/04/2018Leave a comment

Bless Online news

It’s only Thursday and we already got 2 interesting news from Bless Online developer – Neowiz.

Several days ago the dev posted a new lore blog post on Steam that explains what are the two factions of the game, what races are allied in each faction and what is the reason of their conflict. As in any good story there is no “goods” and “bads” – there are just two sides of the conflict, each with their reasons – just like in any war.

The comments on the factions are varied, even though it seems most people sympathize with Union, the more progressive faction that want to bring changes to hierarchy and social structure to, in their opinion, make world a better place. One particularly interesting comment for me compared Union to Germany in WW2 because of the revolutionary intentions, while Hieron, the Holy Alliance, wants to bring peace to the world. As a citizen of Poland I see it comepletely the other way. Poland was taken apart by several countries for over 120 and wasn’t even shown on maps anymore, so freedom and a resistance from being told how to live is an important part of Polish culture now. So I do understand Union races doing anything to not be under Hieron’s rule, that’s disguised as just keeping the peace and order, anymore. On the other hand I’m a pacifist and I’d love the world to be a peaceful place and people just generally being good to each other. And I also think (at least some) traditional values should be kept in the society. That’s why I’m still undecided on which faction I’ll choose to play (and because you won’t be able to have characters from 2 factions on one server it’s an important decision to make). The races allied in each faction are also all interesting so it doesn’t help me much in my decision. The only thing that helps me is the playable Bless classes – some of them are race locked. But the class I’m waiting for the most won’t be released neither with the game’s release, nor even with Early Access, so the race and faction choice is still a struggle for me. Hopefully after reading more or Bless lore I’ll be able to take my decision.

Yesterday on official Bless Discord there was another interesting news announced. About a month ago the devs posted on Bless Facebook an invitation to voice crowd and background characters. You had to record your voice with sound recording software of your choice and send the file(s) to the devs on Discord and… that’s it. Yesterday we got a list of people who got in and will be officially a part of the Steam Bless release! Congrats everyone! (I have to say though, I’m especially proud of my friend who got in, Fayme, who is also a streamer, artist and animals rescuer)

Elder Scrolls Online: Summerset beta testing #01

What I got in was Elder Scrolls Online: Summerset beta testing which was a huge thing for me. I was super excited and extremely proud when I saw the email with the invitation. Not to mention that I’m very happy that I’ll be able to write about my beta testing here on the blog.

In this first beta testing post though I will only be able to say that with the update 18 to Public Test Server (PTS) which comes along with Summerset (and brings some exciting features I CAN’T WAIT to test) came also a huge lag to download. Some players (including me, unfortunately) are just not able to download the new PTS update because of several errors and bugs: very (VERY!) slow downloading speed, a sudden download reset and Content Write Error that prevents the patch from being installed even if it fully downloads. The PTS forum posts suggests a lot of players experienced these problems, but apparently there was some hot fix applied that indeed fixed the errors, at least for some people. I hope I’ll get to play the beta ESO soon too so stay tuned for more information on that!