News From ESO Live – The Year Ahead, PVP, Thieves Guild

Today (Jan 15) was the first ESO Live for 2016, Episode 31, which featured both Matt Frior (Director) and Brian Wheeler (PVP Design).

Key Points

• Thieves Guild DLC coming to the Public Test Server in early February.
• Veteran Rank system removal confirmed to arrive with Dark Brotherhood DLC half way through 2016.
• Lots of PVP changes on the way – the ability to capture Imperial City districts, the ability to capture two new cities in Cyrodiil, new siege weapons and equipment and further tweaks to existing siege equipment.
• Crafting Bags coming as an exclusive ESO Plus bonus will grant the ability to carry unlimited crafting materials.

The Year Ahead

• Thieves Guild coming to PTS in February and maybe Live in early March.
• Dark Brotherhood coming half way through 2016. In this patch the removal of Veteran Ranks will happen too.
• Two more DLC for the last two quarters of the year.
• This year there is a focus on social aspects of ESO, so fixes for the Group Finder, better Guild tools, a Looking For Guild system and further improvements to cross-Alliance play.
• The Champion Point cap won’t be raised with the Thieves Guild DLC, but it might go up around 51 CP each DLC after that.
• Barber Shop (Race, Appearance, Gender, Class?) is still coming, but don’t expect it until half way through 2016.
• Crafting is going to be updated when Veteran Ranks are removed, maybe some new materials will arrive as well?
• They hope to increase many of the current item sets to VR16, but there is no ETA for this.
• The ability to buy extra character slots may come with Dark Brotherhood DLC.
• Some kind of universal crafting style material may come to the Crown Store.

You can read more about ESO in 2016 over at The Year Ahead For ESO.

PVP News

• There is a lot of work going on to improve Cyrodiil server performance.
• A lot of work is going into siege equipment, some more siege equipment and improvements for existing siege weapons.
• The ability to capture towns or cities in Cyrodiil is coming.
• The ability to capture Imperial City districts is also in the works.
• Champion Point free PVP Campaign is coming, it will probably be a 30 day Campaign.
• The non-Vet Campaigns will all be CP free.
• They are still working and designing small scale PVP and arenas / duelling.

You can read about some of the other PVP changes coming up over at Siege Weapons Changes, CP Free PVP, Dueling and Future of PVP in 2016.

Watch ESO Live 31

You can watch Episode 31 of ESO Live right here.