General:High Isle Chapter Preview

The Elder Scrolls Online: High Isle Chapter Preview
Medium/Format	Online Interview
Date	April 14, 2022
Hosted By	Twitch, YouTube, eso.com

Chapter preview for the High Isle chapter and its Legacy of the Bretons arc. See also the ESO 2022 Global Reveal.

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Matt Firor: welcome everyone to this exclusive look at The Elder Scrolls Online: High Isle. We've been working on Elder Scrolls Online for 14 years, and we're still breaking new ground, telling new stories, and continuing to explore this incredibly deep world. We are constantly growing and expanding along with you our community and this year highlights that growth we have a new area to explore a new game system the launch of Spanish text translation and we'll bring all of this to you while continuing to make ESO the best virtual world fantasy game. Last year we made ESO truly next gen with the addition of native Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 clients showing our commitment to keeping ESO up to date and relevant on just about any device you want to play it on there's so much to explore and do in ESO it's almost impossible to describe in just a few sentences but we truly believe in our play the way you want philosophy ESO is so big it's essentially many different games and experiences in one which makes it a living breathing virtual world just like the ESO community Zenimax Online has also been growing and thriving we've learned new ways to work together while remaining apart and we're poised to do great things in the future by being an amazing collaborative welcoming group I couldn't be prouder of the studio and now it's time for the show we have so much to share with you about high isle new areas to explore new friends to meet new enemies to confront a new trailer we'll be debuting at the end of the show and of course our new in-game card game tales of tribute it's all here so let's get started.

Introduction

Rich Lambert: C.J.

C.J. Grebb: Yeah.

Rich Lambert: When we finally decided to go off and explore something brand new…

C.J. Grebb: After I emailed you for two years straight asking you, “please don't send me somewhere dark again, let me be someplace pretty.”?

Rich Lambert: What were your thoughts?

C.J. Grebb: My thoughts were I was very happy that that we … it was kind of a collective agreement. We were all really excited that we’d spent two years, kind of taking a trip down nostalgia lane, right? We had gone to Skyrim with Greymoor. We went to Oblivion with Blackwood, and then we were all kind of ready to like, “Oh god. Let's do something pretty again.” Right? Like not only someplace pretty, but all new in terms of nobody who's played an Elder Scrolls game has ever gone here before, right? And so it was all new lands. We're going to go someplace that's gorgeous. And we're going to get to explore the Bretons, which is really cool lore. So, yeah, we were totally excited to sink our teeth in. It was great.

Taylor Cyr: So when we get ready to start an entirely new zone, every team has to kind of do some initial steps, right? What's the art team's steps?

C.J. Grebb: We had in front of us already from the writers, like an idea, they were like “We're thinking something kind of Mediterranean, paradise island, vacation resort. This is where the really well-off Bretons go to hang up their hats, right? And immediately concept artists are you know looking up images of Mediterranean islands. And then the rest of it was these sort of alabaster cliff faces, sort of White Cliffs of Dover, but we knew we were close to Summerset, so we wanted to sort of play off the rock forms that we had done in Summerset. We wanted it to be clear, there's going to be some geography there that's shared, but it has to look new because we make an effort for every zone to look a little bit different and have its own unique kind of space in the art. And we started immediately looking at sunflowers, and sunflower fields, and doing something. We've done a lot of like overhanging dark places, you know, cool locations. But we were very excited to go, “Ok, can we do open fields?” Like let's give the players a place where they can stand and see for you know a good couple of miles and then have something kind of really lovely and wistful going on in there. And it's comparable to the last two years, size wise. So, you know, it's big.

Rich Lambert: One of the things I love the most about High Isle is how grounded in reality it is. What was that like?

C.J. Grebb: It was it was an interesting challenge because we've done Breton’s already. They're in High Rock. They have an architecture set. They have a look, and we wanted to honor that, obviously. It needed to feel like these were more Bretons, not different Bretons. And so we got to take some of those original, certainly in the architecture, we got to take those original Breton ideas in the architecture. We got to update it. And we wanted to do something kind of new. So we took that medieval, that classic medieval, almost post-Dark Ages kind of look that the Breton stuff in High Rock has, and we folded in a little Germanic medieval into that. And it was really fun to sort of do a whole new set in that in that paradigm, that Breton paradigm. Update it, make it fancier. You know. And remember that the lore of the Bretons is really interesting in this and that they'll do excess because they come from a place where they were, way back in their history, they were kind of subjugated. They broke out of that, but they still have that, that sort of, that sense of stratification in their society. Right? Upper class, lower class. You know, it's very political. All the stuff that's going on with the Bretons is always political. And we wanted to play with that, even in the architecture. We wanted to honor that. And so, even in the lower class stuff, that's still fancier than you might find in, like, it's not disheveled, it's still nice, because these are people who think that they can achieve if they want to. And we had a lot of fun, just like playing with that dynamic, you know.

Rich Lambert: The Bretons in and of themselves are a feudal society, but the druids play a part in this whole year.

Taylor Cyr: Yeah, you can't really have the Bretons without the druids. They are both inhabiting this place and they are very different, and they both have different opinions of each other, obviously. But you can see influences of druidic culture throughout the whole place, and definitely in the art as well.

C.J. Grebb: It was fun to know all that was coming later and just start to like carve out the little pieces that we're going to tease in High Isle. And then there's a whole lot of stuff coming with them, especially concerning like the volcano and these vents that are spotting the isles themselves. And it feels a little weird. You're in this beautiful place, and every once in a while, you crawl over a hill and there's a little volcanic vent spewing out you know noxious gas and lava. And why is that happening? Has something to do with the druids, right?

Biomes and Locations

Taylor Cyr: Right, yeah. Biomes unique. How?

Rich Lambert: That's great.

C.J. Grebb: Well, let me tell you. Three biomes, we try to do three biomes, two biomes on this main island, right? High Isle itself, the playground of the Bretons, right? So we've got Oakenvald, which is sort of the verdant forest. We've got the Sapphire Coast, which is around down around the southern end. Sapphire Coast is where we got to play with the Summerset ideas because they're only across a bay from each other, right? So you'll sort of get that a bit of that Summerset sense there. But we had to fold in the nautical history of the island. This is where the great navy was built so many years ago, right? I mean, it's behind us right now, like we're surrounded by the remnants of that navy and the treacherous nature of the seas around the island. So all that nautical stuff got folded in there. And then we put sunflowers all over the place, because sunflowers are awesome.

Taylor Cyr: They're beautiful.

C.J. Grebb: And then we have Amenos, this crazy Escape from New York island you guys threw at us. And there we got to play with like, super verdant rainforest. It's a place where … I guess they just toss people they don't like.

Taylor Cyr: Yeah, they really do. There's part of it where Amenos Station is like a stockade that kind of separates the normal prisoners from the ones they just yeet out into the jungle. They're like, “There's the bad people. And then there's the really bad people that we just don't even want to mess with.” So those are the ones that just get banished to the verdant forests. There's so many things that want to kill you out there, and so many gangs. You know, the Green Serpents gang is out there, so it's not the place you want to be, for sure. It's very pretty, but …

C.J. Grebb: It was fun to make.

Taylor Cyr: Yeah, it's gorgeous.

Taylor Cyr: I don't want to go there. Do you have any favorite locations?

C.J. Grebb: Stonelore Grove is a great one. That's sort of our little druid village, and it's kind of part of that teasing the druid culture to come. Breakwater Cave is great. The Firepot cave is fantastic because it's more of that volcanic connection, and it gave us a chance to go underground and do something a little more oppressive. And then i think my favorite right now is Ghost Haven, because i'm an 80s kid, and every time i play that one, I get a Goonies vibe out of that adventure.

Rich Lambert: I can see that yeah for sure.

C.J. Grebb: So those are some of my favorites.

Who are the Bretons

C.J. Grebb: So Taylor, I talked a little bit about how much fun it was for us on the art side to get into the Bretons, but I mean, we should probably talk about them a little deeper, with their history. Who are these people, the Bretons?

Taylor Cyr: First and foremost, they are feudal society, like we talked about. They have their nobles at the top. They are you know, stabbing each other in the back, political intrigue, alliances, arranged marriages, all that fun stuff. And then you've got middle class and a lower class.

Rich Lambert: They're very much the underdog society if you will, where the person at the very bottom feels like they can always aspire to something better and advance all the way to the top.

C.J. Grebb: It was the coolest part about it, because it's not what the [High] Elves believe. If you're born to a certain you know status, you stay there for the rest of your life.

Taylor Cyr: Right.

C.J. Grebb: Bretons were like “F that! We took High Rock. We can do anything.”

Taylor Cyr: Yeah, I think something that ties into that too is like their knightly orders. There's three main knightly orders on High Isle, and they all have their different creeds, and their different values. But they're all very prestigious and neat and have that kind of like romantic fight for glory and honor and all that good stuff.

Rich Lambert: This is a grounded story, but the Bretons are innately a magical race like. They have this affinity for magic. Walk us through some of the trials with that.

Taylor Cyr: It was very interesting to try and keep a grounded story with people who are inherently magical. But it's also it's fun to do that as well, because Bretons and magic are inextricably linked, and their history is linked to that as well. And so there are a lot of intersections between, how does that work in feudal society? How does magic interject with your role there? Sometimes, magic can increase your standing at court, but it also can cause conflicts with your sense of self. I think it opened up a lot of opportunities for like character development, and not so much big grand magic stories, but more personal magic stories.

C.J. Grebb: It's not beams of death in the sky this time, right? It's politics and it's backstabbing and it's, you know, the seedy things that are happening in the back alleys of a very well-off people.

Rich Lambert: It's not the cosmic threats. It is the threats from within and the focus is on the Bretons and their culture and their race, rather than big daedra coming in and destroying the world.

C.J. Grebb: Which is fun!

Taylo Cyr: We love that! Yeah, this is fun too.

Factions

Rich Lambert: So this year's storyline is a bit of a deviation from what we've done in the past. Kind of walk us through that, what that meant to the writing team

Taylor Cyr: Yeah we're doing the Legacy of the Bretons year, so we are really delving into who the Bretons are because they are a race that really hasn't been explored much in Elder Scrolls lore before. We're really getting into their history and their culture, and we are learning who they are. And our theme is kind of like a hope for peace, but tied up in all this political intrigue and backstabbing.

Rich Lambert: Right, and it takes us back to our roots. Yeah, We're really, really good at telling these very interesting small stories where you learn more about the individual characters in the world. And in politics, there's always multiple sides to everything. Clearly, there is a bad guy faction and a good guy faction. Who are the major players in the story?

Taylor Cyr: The Ascendant Order are what we would think of as bad guys, but their whole creed is that they want to empower the common folk. They think that the common folk can fight injustice on their own by losing the shackles of the nobility and freeing themselves from that kind of bad leadership. So that all sounds great on paper, but the Ascendant Order is actually killing people indiscriminately and not being very nice.

Rich Lambert: So we touched on the Ascendant Order, is there a leader?

Taylor Cyr: There is. There is the Ascendant Lord, and then there's the Ascendant Magus as well. So, the Ascendant Magus is his second in command, but they're both very scary. They're both very mysterious, too. You don't really know a whole lot about them. No one does. But part of the fun of the story is that you are going through it and trying to figure it out and trying to discover things about them. And you pick up certain pieces from the world and try to put it all together like a mystery.

Rich Lambert: So the Bretons, as we've said up to this point, are kind of this medieval feudal society. That must mean there's a bunch of different houses, different bit players, I guess, in the storyline. Can you walk us through some of those?

Taylor Cyr: There are two … I mean there's a bunch of noble houses, but there's two main ones that the story really focuses on. One is House Dufort, and they are the dukes of High Isle, so they are the ones in charge. And they are run by Duchess Elea, and she runs everything from Castle Navir. And she is someone who is very fancy and wealthy. But it's going to be up to players to decide, is she really serious about fighting the Ascendant Order threat? And then the other house that's really important is House Mornard, and they are technically rivals of House Dufort. There's some bad blood between the two of them, and you'll find out why there's history between them. But House Mornard used to be in charge, and they're pretty salty about that. But they are also kind of partners of House Dufort, because House Dufort is concerned with shipbuilding and they have shipyards, and House Mornard is concerned with mining and trading, and they need House Dufort ships to be able to do that. So they are rivals, but also need each other very much.

Rich Lambert: You've talked about the Duforts, you've talked about the Monards, you’ve talked about the Ascendant Order, but there's also this other society this Society of the Steadfast and Lord Bacaro. How does he and that group play into all of this?

Taylor Cyr: He's one of those people who uses his wealth to make people's lives better. He genuinely cares about the people around him, and he is someone who tends to be very sincere. But he's also direct and to the point. He is not a fancy noble like Duchess Elea. He is not Ascendent Order crazy, but he's just there doing his best.

Characters

Rich Lambert: One of the things that I love about chapters and story DLCs is bringing back characters that fans love. It's something that we always do. We get a kick out of it. Who do we have coming back this year that players will be excited about?

Taylor Cyr: I love Jakarn, obviously. that rogue.

Rich Lambert: He's always got his shirt off for some reason. I don't know why.

Taylor Cyr: He does he loves having his shirt off.

C.J. Grebb: If I looked like that, I would never have a shirt on.

Taylor Cyr: Look, I love to hate Jakarn is what I mean. But we've got him, we've got Captain Za’ji, who i also love.

C.J. Grebb: So happy that Za’jis back.

Taylor Cyr: He’s the best.

C.J. Grebb: He’s the best.

Taylor Cyr: He's so good. And Caska is coming back. So we've got a lot of familiar faces that players are going to be happy to see, I think.

Rich Lambert: We've also got a bunch of new characters as well.

Taylor Cyr: Yeah, Lady Arabelle comes to mind. She is one of my favorites, because she is just the coolest, most confident, curious, intelligent woman. And she's going to be the one who's kind of guiding the player through the main story, which I think is really cool because the two of you kind of develop a bond through it, and she is kind of not your mentor, but you just you rely on her a lot, and she relies on you a lot, which is neat.

Rich Lambert: I love that she knows what she wants and she is very straightforward in all of her conversations, which is which is really cool.

C.J. Grebb: And yet she makes you fall in love with her almost immediately.

Rich Lambert: Absolutely.

C.J. Grebb: When you meet her, you're not following her immediately like, oh! I’ll follow her to the ends of the earth.

Taylor Cyr: Well she’s not afraid to be flirtatious, or make an innuendo, or be snide to someone who's being rude to her. Like she just has no qualms about that at all.

Rich Lambert: Fair enough.

Companions

Rich Lambert: In addition to the new storyline that we have going on this year, we also have two brand new companions. And when you look back at Blackwood, and you look at the characters we had there. They were kind of stuffy, kind of prim and proper, and or at least one of them was. The player feedback was clear that they really liked one character over the other, and we really wanted to dig into trying to find a better balance, trying to find a different feel and vibe for these characters this year than last year. Oh, I’m just going to come out and say it: Ember is probably my favorite out of all of them. I love the character. I love her storyline. Who is Ember? What is she all about?

Taylor Cyr: Ember is a bit of a mess. I adore her. She is a Khajiit mage. She grew up on the streets, so she really has no qualms about violence, stealing, fighting, or getting into trouble. In fact, she really likes getting into trouble, and she will probably get you into a lot of trouble as you take her around with her. But she's just a lot of fun.

C.J. Grebb: I loved her intro quest. I was laughing out loud the entire time, like I was trying to get through it, but i had to stop. But like, that's just hilarious.

Rich Lambert: It is it is so good and it's the character, but it's also kind of the environment. And I’m terrible with names, I will totally forget the name of the objective.

Taylor Cyr: Oh yes, the Tor Draoich tower.

Rich Lambert: Yeah, I’m glad you said that not me. Just the tower in and of itself is amazing looking, and just the story that we're telling there. Like I just love her so, so much. And who is Ember voiced by?

Taylor Cyr: She is voiced by Alicia Rotaru, so she is most notably known from Arrow. She is doing an incredible job. She is just knocking it out of the park as Ember. So I’m really excited for players to hear her.

C.J. Grebb: And Ember is Khajiit, right? So what was the impetus there? Why did we go Khajiit for her?

Rich Lambert: I mean, truth be told, it's because Khajiit are cool. They're so different. They speak differently. They act differently. They're a very, very different culture. It just kind of made sense. We wanted to do something very, very different with her, and I think we knocked out the park with it. And then we have a second character, who is kind of the exact opposite of Ember named Isobel.

C.J. Grebb: I liked Isobel a lot.

Taylor Cyr: She's really great. Isobel is definitely opposite from Ember. She is not a trash fire. She has her life together a little bit more. But she's from a minor noble house in High Isle. But she's not your typical noble. She's not snobby. She's not stuck up. She's very down to earth, tends to be driven and eager. And she's a little bit dorky, actually.

Rich Lambert: So, like most of us?

Taylor Cyr: Yeah, exactly. We find a kinship with her. We think that she's really kind of the best of the knightly orders have to offer on High Isle because she is someone who is driven to a higher purpose, but she has both feet firmly planted on the ground.

C.J. Grebb: When you meet her, it's the chivalry and the knights in shining armor. I love that one a lot.

Rich Lambert: And I think our players in our community are going to be pretty stoked at who voices Isobel.

Taylor Cyr: Yes, she is being voiced by the incredible Laura Bailey, so it's going to be really, really fun to hear.

Rich Lambert: Yeah we had a lot of fun working with Critical Role over the course of last year, and with the one shots. And yeah, we're so excited to be able to bring her along and voice a character in-game.

Taylor Cyr: I feel like the systems, writing, and design team really collaborated this time because this is like our second iteration of it, and we tried to integrate Ember and Isobel into the player experience a little bit more.

C.J. Grebb: Yeah, there were lessons learned the first time around, right?

Taylor Cyr: Yeah, absolutely. we like listened to player feedback. And so there are things like uh when you go into combat, we have more lines now and more variations on lines, so hopefully you won't be hearing the same repeated lines. We also tried to get their backstory into some more lines. So when you are standing around, they're not going to push you to move forward. They're going to be like waxing poetic about taffy, or telling you a weird story about their past. So keep your ears open and they'll have a lot of interesting stuff to say. The companion storylines this time around are pretty personal. It's hard to talk about them without giving them all away. But even Ember, who's really chaotic, has you know this part of her that is very guilty and has been heavy for a long time, and part of your adventures with her is like helping her lay that guilt down and meeting the interesting people along the way. And Isobel's about friendship, growing up, and maturing. So they've got some really wonderful beats in there I think that are really fun.

C.J. Grebb: You definitely want to hang out with them more after you meet them, which is … totally

Rich Lambert: Yeah, totally agree.

Taylor Cyr: Yeah.

Purchase High Isle

Jessica Folsem: Like what you're hearing so far? We wanted to remind everyone that the High Isle chapter is available to pre-purchase now and includes a free mount that you can start using in-game immediately. Visit elderscrollsonline.com, or your favorite retailer today.

Gina Bruno: For those that are watching and haven't tried ESO yet, our free play event is live now until April 26. If you decide to pre-purchase the High Isle collection, you'll immediately unlock the base game and all previous chapters, and you can pick up right where you left off from the free play event.

Jessica Folsem: Both new and existing players can also pick up the 2021 chapter Blackwood, on sale now for a limited time. The High Isle prologue quest is also now live, so anyone can jump into the game and get ready for the upcoming chapter. Even if you're just participating in the free trial.

Gina Bruno: Last but certainly not least, you can save on crown packs during this limited time sale. We have all the details listed on our website at elderscrollsonline.com. Now let's get back to the discussion. So you can learn a bit more about our new card game: Tales of Tribute

Tales of Tribute

Taylor Cyr: In January, we revealed a brand new card game that is going to be releasing with High Isle in June, Tales of Tribute. We've gotten a lot of questions about it, most prominently: why?

C.J. Grebb: That was always the most blunt and straightforward.

Rich Lambert: So I think that the biggest reason is we wanted another way to experience Elder Scrolls Online. We've got lots of questing, we've got lots of killing. What do the people that live in Tamriel do when they go to a tavern, other than drink? Like what do they do to hang out with their friends? This was kind of an answer to that. What would a card game look like in Tamriel?

C.J. Grebb: It was evident as soon as you guys dropped the design on us because we were like, “It's not small at all.” Like and we had to start thinking in terms of, “Oh this is a game that people in Tamriel been playing for hundreds of years.” Right? It's like backgammon. It's that traditional. Right, and the extra added challenge that we threw at you was this has to feel grounded. This isn't magic, this is … what does it the game look like when two people are just sitting at a table playing back and forth.

C.J. Grebb: But it's deeper than that. There's a story line that goes with this thing. There's like world hooks into this thing, right?

Rich Lambert: There are. And there's PVE, is what we're calling it, where you are kind of learning the storyline, challenging masters.

Taylor Cyr: Yeah, there's a lot of like lore tie-ins too, with the actual card game itself, so it really makes you feel in universe.

Rich Lambert: Absolutely, and it's focused more on kind of Tamrielic-wide things like, yes, the game kind of originated in High Isle, but it's propagated throughout the world. And so you're going to see the Patrons, the unique decks, are kind of Tamriel-wide.

C.J. Grebb: Let's get to it. How do you play this thing, right?

Rich Lambert: Fair enough. So at its core, Tribute is a two-player strategic turn-based deck building game. You and your opponents are taking turns, building your deck, trying to put the most you can into it to win the game. And the way the game is broken down, is at the very beginning, you and your opponent each choose two Patron decks to put into play. From there, we create our hands. We get six starter cards and then one card from each of the unique Patron decks. The rest of the cards are shuffled into what we're calling the tavern, which is that communal deck. And then you and your opponent play off that deck. You play your cards that you draw, you draw five at a time, and then you use those cards to purchase new cards to build your deck, to work towards whatever strategy it is you're working towards to ultimately win the game. And one of the win conditions could be if you have all four Patrons favoring you.

C.J. Grebb: Right.

Rich Lambert: The other way is a contested victory, where once you hit 40 victory points, you win.

Taylor Cyr: So if we're playing a game, describe to me the turn order, like what does a turn look like?

Rich Lambert: At the very beginning, you will have five cards in your hand, and what you do is you play your cards. Generally, it is play currency first, play action second, then you get the opportunity to choose any cards from the tavern. You can only purchase cards that you have the currency for, or you can only do the combat that you have currency for. And once your turn is done, you discard to your discard pile and then your opponent goes. When you run out of cards in your deck and they're all in your discard pile, you just reshuffle and kind of go from there. And so it's one of those things where you're constantly adding new cards to your deck, or you could be thinning your deck out. That's a viable strategy. And you're constantly trying to build up combinations of cards, the strongest possible hand you can have to defeat your opponent.

C.J. Grebb: What kind of cards are there? There's different types, right?

Rich Lambert: There's essentially three basic types. There are action cards which can range anywhere from giving you gold, to combat, to forcing your opponent to discard cards, or for you to draw cards. There are contracts which are essentially one-shot cards where you can purchase it from the tavern, and once you do, you play it right away. And then it's done for the rest of the game. And then there are agents, and agents are cards that once you play, they stay in play until your opponent deals with them. So there's that extra added level of strategy.

Taylor Cyr: All of that sounds a little complicated, but because you're dealing with that luck of the draw, it's very easy to pick up and just hard to master, like even the people who are the best at the game are still dealing with that luck of the draw and your unknowns.

Rich Lambert: Absolutely. And I think that's one of the things that we've seen in all of our play tests. Like we've lost a lot of productivity due to this game. For the first time ever that I can remember of, we actually have people sponsoring tournaments within the studio because they're so into this game and what it means and how it changes things. So it's really exciting.

Taylor Cyr: So, can you talk to us a little bit about how PVP works in Tales of Tribute?

Rich Lambert: Yeah, so it is a game in which you can challenge other players. I could walk up to C.J. and challenge him to a duel. Or there is a new kind of looking for group system, a queue that you can queue up for and challenge random players in there, and that's all tied into a progression system via rankings. There are seasonal leaderboards that give you cool rewards. It's a fully fleshed out thing.

Taylor Cyr: This all sounds really fun, but why play, like what is in it for us? What is important about getting victory at all?

Rich Lambetr: Part of it is it just appeals to kind of human nature. Everybody wants to be the best, so you want to win. But the other side of it is there's lots of really cool rewards here. There's lots of cool cosmetics, there's cool new emotes. There are furniture crafting materials that you can get out of this. Also transmutation crystals.

C.J. Grebb: And all available just by playing?

Rich Lambert: Just by playing, just play the game and you can get rewards. You get more if you win, but you can get them if you lose. So there's kind of something for everybody here.

Taylor Cyr: So this sounds really, really fun. When can I play?

Rich Lambert: You'll be able to play this on PTS very, very soon. Next week.

Taylor Cyr: Wow.

Rich Lambert: And we totally understand this is a huge game. There's tons of information. I highly recommend you just jump in and you start playing. It's really, really easy to pick up and it's difficult to master.

Closing Comments

Jessica Folsem: For all of you eagerly awaiting the journey to High Isle, the Legacy of the Breton's year-long adventure is underway in our Ascending Tide DLC. And as of today, you can get a little more of the story that leads us to High Isle in this year's chapter prologue quest. Grab the free crown store quest item, a letter from Lady Arabelle, to start this quest.

Gina Bruno: We also have our Anniversary Jubilee event live in-game right now celebrating ESO's eighth anniversary. I can't believe we've been doing this since 2014 and have launched 33 major updates. That's a lot! So this year's Anniversary Jubilee is going on through April 19th, so don't miss your chance to collect this year's cake and take advantage of the double XP bonus.

Jessica Folsom: Now if you have a friend you've been looking to start adventuring with, or if you're watching this and thinking about trying ESO for the first time, you can play for free now until April 26th. You can also pick up ESO and crown packs on sale now for a limited time.

Gina Bruno: High Isle is just a couple months away launching June 6 for PC, Mac, and Stadia and June 21st on Xbox and PlayStation consoles and don't forget it's coming to the pts next Monday, April 18th. This chapter is also just one piece of the Legacy of the Breton’s year-long adventure, and there will be two additional DLCs launching later this year that you can look forward to.

Jessica Folsem: And now we'd like to share the first gameplay trailer for The Elder Scrolls Online: High Isle. We'll be right back to give you a look at how a live game of Tales of Tribute works with a guest from our dev team so stick around and we'll see you in a few minutes.

[The Elder Scrolls Online: High Isle - Paradise and Purgatory trailer plays]