UESPWiki:Podcast/2 29

So... 2020 was a wild year... (Recap episode) Welcome to the UESPodcast! Join your host Pylawn with AKB and baratron as we go through all the Elder Scrolls news so far in 2021 and recap one of the craziest years imaginable, and what it meant for TES.

Twitch: VOD • Youtube: VOD • Anchor: Audio

Show Notes

Roster

Host:

• Pylawn

Guests:

• baratron
• AKB

News

ESO:

• Gates of Oblivion Teasers.
• Worldwide reveal delayed to 26th January due to US Presidential Inauguration. 5PM EST / 10PM GMT.
• New Life Festival over, expecting the Midyear Mayhem to return soon.
• Matt Firor Letter to the community
  • https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/556720/official-discussion-thread-for-studio-director-s-letter-2020-retrospective#latest
  • “Having much of the world shut down led to huge changes in player behavior in the game: far longer play sessions and far more people playing.”
  • “Engagement in our housing system spiked, as many of you virtually nested—so it wasn't just about the number of you playing, it was how you changed and adapted during the pandemic.”
  • “We kept our aggressive development schedule that, in hindsight, might not have been the right strategy.”
  • “We will still be working from home for the foreseeable future” → “in 2021 we will devote more time overall to stability and game performance and less time to new game systems”.

Legends:

• It died in Asia :(
• Allegiance Gauntlet: players compete with decks made exclusively of cards of a single attribute – no mixing attributes or multi-attribute cards allowed. (Note: Neutral cards may still be included in a single-attribute deck.)
• The Allegiance Gauntlet closes at 12pm EST on Monday, January 18

Call to Arms:

• ESO is coming to Call to Arms!

Supporters

Patreon:

• Andrew Schaaf
• David Sabbagh
• Skirtzzz
• Mara Birna Jóhannsdóttir
• Madison Turlington
• 123alfonzo123
• David Ellis
• LauraBlueberry
• Rob Schneider
• Nick Aagaard
• Christian Culak
• Viktoria

Twitch Subs:

iTunes:

Wiki:

Scholarly Pursuits

I will ask our guests what they have been working on in the world of TES! This can be game play, wiki work, discord things, anything relevant to UESP/TES that you’ve been working on the past couple weeks / when you were last on the show.

• Pylawn
  • What haven’t I done?
  • Stadia ESO Life
  • 2nd Ever Oblivion playthrough
  • Took an ESO and Streaming Holiday
  • Redid my entire setup basically
• AKB
  • General summary of the year
  • I have spent nearly a year in isolation due to COVID.
  • Been playing around with AIs, spent a while looking into Deep Learning.
  • I played Cyberpunk 2077
  • And Underrail
• baratron
  • Not so much game playing, a lot more creative stuff.
  • Been making characters on HeroForge.
  • Writing fanfiction, and helping other people write theirs.
  • Sent out Christmas cards to guildies who wanted them - they’ve been arriving over the past few days. (So only took A MONTH.)
  • Plus the usual Trial-running with my EU and NA guilds on ESO.

Topic: A year in review

• Microsoft bought Zenimax
  • Allegedly for $7.2 Billion
    • An interesting analogy I heard to describe this was that Microsoft just paid slightly less than two Star Wars for this deal. -- AKB
  • 2nd largest software media acquisition in history.
  • No major changes to ESO as part of this.
  • We should see this finalized this year.
• Bethesda pulled almost all games from GeForce NOW.
  • And put ESO on Stadia instead.
• ESO
  • Live announcement in Las Vegas! So exciting! UESP staff all said “we’ll try to go next year!”
  • Harrowstorm Dungeon DLC
    • Had to redownload the entire game! (But the game was drastically reduced in size, and subsequent patches have also been smaller)
    • Icereach with Lyris Titanborn.
    • Unhallowed Grave introduction to Fennorian. Has fun secret areas.
      • I still cannot cope with the grappling hook mechanics -- baratron.
  • Greymoor Chapter
    • What did we all think?
      • I am typically 2 years behind with solo player content because most of my ESO time is spent either doing Guild maintenance or doing group content. So I’ve run the 6 x delve dailies, done a couple of Harrowstorms, a few World Bosses, Kyne’s Aegis a whole bunch of times - but only the tutorial and first quest of the main storyline.
      • But I LOVE LOVE LOVE Antiquities. Levelled 2 x characters to max. Now that they’re 99% bug-fixed they are so fun.
      • Alliance Change Tokens are still great. So is the Precision Editing Tool.
      • Changes to the Imperial City also great.
      • Vampire changes are still v unpopular with players, far fewer people playing vampires “seriously”.
    • Lessons learned
      • ESO’s Twitter ran “Vampire Week” to determine the most popular vampire character in the series and AKB got very angry about Verandis Ravenwatch’s popularity.
      • So many bugs with Guild Traders. Continued to be bugged all the way from Greymoor release until Markarth release.
      • Harrowstorms were a real problem at the beginning, several changes made.
      • The patch “cadence” of ESO changed due to the launch of ESO on Stadia on June 16. Since PC and Stadia players share the PC megaservers, patches must now be certified by Stadia. They suggested that patches would become fortnightly, but in practice we are now getting patches only every month or so, whereas we used to get them almost weekly. Lots of player disgruntlement about this.
      • ZOS added two new wayshrines to the Western Skyrim map - unprecedented!
      • A whole bunch of UESP Guild members become Emperor during the summer Midyear Mayhem.
  • Stonethorn Dungeon DLC
    • The two dungeons are Stone Garden and Castle Thorn, both with Gwendis of House Ravenwatch.
    • Possibly the best dungeons EVER. A ton of unique mechanics.
    • From now onwards, all Veteran Dungeons will feature a new Challenge Banner for bosses which have a Hard Mode, so you can see clearly if HM is turned on.
    • Veteran Castle Thorn has Hard Mode for EVERY boss not just the final boss.
      • I’ve done the first two HMs and they aren’t too bad - the final one is hilariously difficult though -- baratron.
    • Pylawn and baratron’s favourite patch note: Added a filter for "Included banked items" to the Deconstruct and Research tab at crafting stations. Finally you can make sure that you only deconstruct items in your inventory instead of the ones you’re saving for other characters!
    • NPC pathing in houses super fun - check out @baratron’s primary on PC-NA to see the Guard Bear.
  • Markarth
    • Highlights
      • Better name than Darkstorm!! -- baratron
      • Vateshran Hollows - Solo Arena!
      • ITEM SET COLLECTIONS OMG.
        • Sticker book is best thing ever -- baratron
        • “I cleared out 700 bank & inventory slots” - Wicked Shifty
      • Transmute Crystal increased to 500/1000 compared to the previous limit of 100/200. Much easier to get e.g. your first Random Normal of the day per character gives 10.
      • RETURN OF WES JOHNSON!
    • Bugs
      • Some houses inaccessible if the owner wasn’t in the house, quite a few were affected - the CWC one definitely. Took several months to fix.
      • LAs weren’t firing correctly.
      • RANDOM DISCONNECTIONS. Mostly fixed - like 80%? You can usually get through a Trial with only 1 or 2 disconnects now instead of entire groups getting kicked off.
      • There was supposed to be a 2-player mount introduced in Stonethorn, but it’s never been released. On PTS it kept kicking people off and freezing their accounts. (Another piece of code decided that the rider of the 2-player mount was a bot and activated anti-bot protection.)
  • ZOS Silliness
    • Smoulder Scrolls Online! https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/smolderscrolls
    • ZOS paid the “Binging with Babish” YouTube channel to create a Sweetroll special, to promote Greymoor. https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/58321
    • Lots of humour on @TESOnline - thanks Sarah!
• PAX
  • Yay meetup!
  • Pylawn got told off for being too loud during the DOOM Eternal panel, along with Mike Finnigan (Lead Encounter Designer). “Irish whisper”. He also won headphones!
  • Pylawn snored so loudly that he kept his roommate Tatanko awake all night, and then made him panic when he STOPPED snoring.
  • baratron shared a flat with Wicked Shifty and Alarra like usual. Played Animal Crossing and got addicted to it. Went to Tori and Sarah's PAX panel "The Realities of Creating LGBTQ+ Content in Games". Several very interesting points raised.
  • Alarra represented the UESP on the ESO Game Show. Pylawn helped twice. Alarra’s team won!
  • Also saw Dave, Fio, and Jenovakin + son.
  • LAST WEEKEND OF NORMALITY BEFORE COVID HIT.
• Legends
  • Announcement of shut down of Legends Asia - December 31st 2020.
    • We were all pretty sad because we hoped that releasing the game in another territory would resurrect it in the rest of the world.
  • Still on “life support” in the rest of the world with weekly Gauntlets and monthly Reward Cards.
• Blades
  • Lots of patches and love.
  • First released in Early Access on 27th March 2019. Left Early Access on mobile, and was released for Nintendo Switch on Thursday 14th May 2020!
    • So it had more than a year of active development with player feedback. 6 major patches before official release.
    • Still free to download even on Switch.
  • Release patch was 1.7, also had 1.8 and 1.9.
  • New map added, also Seasons for PvP.
• Skyrim
  • Creation Club delayed for the entire year
• Call To Arms
  • Became a Thing
  • First Chapter was Civil War, set in TES V: Skyrim era.
    • Escape From Helgen, Blood on the Snow, Bleak Falls Barrow Adventure.
  • Introduced more characters:
    • Marcurio, Adventuring Mage with Destruction Mastery
    • Jenassa, a well rounded unit with Ranger ability, swap from melee to range quickly
    • Vorstag, solid frontline fighter with Low Slash
    • Derkeethus, (first Argonian!) stealthy archer (and Histskin helps him survive)
    • Mjoll the Lioness, “a warrior second only to the Dragonborn”. Strong melee.
    • Lydia and Kharjo, both bodyguards
    • Imperial Officers: General Tullius and Legate Rikke, Imperial Headsman, Priestess of Arkay, some sort of generic commander
    • Stormcloak Chieftains: Ulfric Stormcloak, Galmar Stonefist, Stormcloak Quartermaster, generic commander
  • Next installment will be 2nd Era!
• Covid
  • Kinda hard to not talk about it
  • Bethesda made a US $1,000,000 donation to COVID-19-related charities. They gave $500,000 to Direct Relief and $250,000 to UNICEF, and designated the final $250,000 to be donated to local charities chosen by each local studio or office. Full list.
  • ZOS have been working from home since the middle of March and somehow managed to get Greymoor out only a week late.
  • QuakeCon At Home - August 7-9.
  • Some great ESO Lives nonetheless, e.g. when Hyperpixie and Gina interviewed Senior Sound Designer Bill Mueller, and he revealed that the butt-slapping noise when you want to “giddy-up” a guar was him slapping his own butt! He also explained that the ambient sounds you hear in Murkmire change throughout the day, just as real swamps do as different organisms become active.
• Mods
  • We increased our mod documentation
• General Expansion
  • We started to more formally document The Elder Scrolls by using the General namespace to document unofficial content, like developer comments.
• Other Wiki Stuff
  • A reminder that active wiki editors in Online space are entitled to claim free ESO Plus from UESP. If you’re un- or under-employed at the moment, this might be worth your while.
    • Make sure you’re signed in to your wiki account when you start editing, then contact Daveh through his wiki Talk page or email.
• Blog
  • We made a new blog, we should probably use it this year.
• YouTube
  • After some delays, we do intend to start making more dedicated YouTube content.
• Podcast
  • Did a special Pride episode on June 29th with Tori Schafer.
  • Lore of the Altmer on August 3rd.
  • Lore of the Bosmer on August 17th.
  • LORE OF THE ARGONIANS on August 25th.
  • Reach Lore - September 29th.
  • Interview with Dave Humphrey - November 1st.
  • Extra Life streaming all day - December 5th! Lost did his Skyrim Pinball stream! Naked Maw Run! Pylawn made a fool of himself with “Blades Exercise” and 80s ‘tasche! We raised some money for charity! HOW MUCH?? Enough that Avron has to play PvP as Pact this month.
  • Interview with Modiphius - December 27th (?)
• UESP Patreon
  • Happened! We got our PHAT LOOT.
  • We released our first wallpapers and our first loot box. We also did a few giveaways of this, including some legacy UESP items, like the map from one of our first giveaways.