Just incase you hadn’t heard: The Elder Scrolls Online is being relaunched as a subscriptionless free-to-play title. Much like Guild Wars 2, Tamriel Unlimited requires you just to buy the game, and then the whole Elder Scrolls world is yours to explore without leeching from your bank account every month.
The changeover from subscription to free-to-play model happens on March 17th. To entice old players back and excite those who’ve not played, Zenimax Online have issued this ‘best bits’ trailer to show off what’s new and improved for Tamriel Unlimited.
Tamriel Unlimited will be available with the 6 major content updates that the game has already received, which includes veteran dungeons and adventure zones, and party-based challenges. The rulesets for various campaigns across the world have been rebalanced and retooled, and improvements have been made to armour customisation and the facial animations of characters.
A new champion system adds more complexity to the levelling system, and levelling itself is now faster. Guilds can now set up stores for their guild members to shop at, and have more power to customise their tabards. Monster density and loot drop frequency has been increased. Daily rewards and challenges have been added to dungeons to aid in replayability.
The biggest new additions though are certainly the Justice System, that allows players to go full-thief and pickpocket their way to riches, provided they can avoid the eyes of the law. Then of course there’s the Crown Store, which will sell cosmetic and convenience items for real money, which effectively replaces subscriptions as Bethesda’s form of income.
When The Elder Scrolls Online launched, we along with many other sites and magazines gave it a fairly negative review, with Nick calling it “a mess”. With these additions and the culling of subscription, perhaps Elder Scrolls Online is about to become the MMO it should be.