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One of the best single-player MMOs is cheap, and needs no subscription

Elder Scrolls Online is dirt cheap as we await the Gold Road expansion, so ESO, an MMO that doesn't require you to sub, might be for you.

Elder Scrolls Online Steam sale: a pale man with red eyes and horns growing out of his head, looking up and screaming

If you’re looking for something to stave off the agonizing wait for Elder Scrolls 6, the deeply discounted ESO – the Elder Scrolls MMO – should be right up your street. Elder Scrolls Online even has a new expansion, Gold Road, set for this year, so now’s the perfect time to dive in if you’re completely new.

Thanks to Final Fantasy 14, I’ve been eying up every single-player MMO I come across. I even tried Elder Scrolls Online back when it came out, hoping for my post-Skyrim fix when I was but a young, impressionable lad, bouncing off it. Now though, with Gold Road announced and millions still logging in, this Steam sale might just be the reason to try ESO again.

With Bethesda announcing both the Gold Road expansion and the landmark of 24 million players in ESO, you might be thinking about jumping in. If you’re one of the 60 million people who bought Skyrim (not accounting for double dippers) and are yet to try ESO, it does play very similarly, so you won’t be too out of your depth. The Elder Scrolls 6 release date is a ways off yet, so you’ve got to keep busy somehow.

There’s solo or co-op questing, classic MMO dungeons, and PvP on top of a lot of the Elder Scrolls flavor you’ll know from games like Oblivion and Skyrim.

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The beauty of grabbing ESO for cheap isn’t just in how you can catch up before Gold Road drops later this year, it’s also in how it forgoes the requirement of a subscription model. So if you buy ESO for cheap and treat it more like a single-player RPG, you don’t need to worry about extra costs. Subbing does get you the expansions, in-game Crowns to spend every month, and some extra bonuses while you play, but you don’t need to fret about that unless you really end up liking the game.

You can grab ESO over on Steam right now at 70% off, giving you the base game for $5.99 / £4.79 until Thursday, January 25.

If you’re looking for more persistently online worlds to dive into we’ve also got all the best new MMOs and MMORPGs for you to try in your free time as well.

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