Elder Scrolls Online - Interview @Wccftech

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Zenimax Online's President and Elder Scrolls Online Game Director Matt Firor talked about the game with Wccftech.

During Gamescom 2016, we had the chance to meet up with Zenimax Online's President and Elder Scrolls Online Game Director Matt Firor to talk about the game.
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The game has been doing very well lately. Update 11 was recently released on all platforms, adding two new dungeons and several improvements such as text chat on consoles and a PvP town capture system in Cyrodiil.

However, much bigger things are coming with One Tamriel (set to allow players to group anywhere in PvE regardless of level and alliance) and player housing coming after that. We've talked about these features and a lot more in our overview of the game's future.

First of all, in the game's community folks got used to big QuakeCon presentations where you would showcase the game's upcoming features, but this time there was no presentation. I'm wondering whether you have something special in store for later this year to make up for this?

No, this year we did E3 which we hadn't done the year before. We didn't have anything new to talk about, so we decided to just wait until Gamescom and PAX. We're going to have a community event on Friday here at Gamescom, and then at PAX we're going to have another series of community events, so we just decided to spread it out a little more.

Now for the big elephant in the room, is there anything at all you can tell us about player housing?

Really the point of Elder Scrolls Online at Gamescom 2016 is to talk about One Tamriel, which is the next big thing. Housing is the thing after that, so we're concentrating more on One Tamriel right now than player housing, but it is going to happen and it is going to be the update after One Tamriel.

Some questions from the community. For PvP players, the gap closers issue is pretty important and they'd like to know when you plan to fix it.

Yeah, we've been looking at that for a long time. It sounds easy to fix but it's not, because of the way the mechanics work behind the scenes and we don't want to make them not work at all. So we've been slowly looking at how it can be done but yes, it will be fixed.
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Roleplayers would like to know whether you have something special coming out for them, like sitting at tables and the likes?

Yeah, we're looking at that. We're doing personalities, so we're doing some fun things that roleplayers can do. We're also doing a Witches' Festival event, we're going to do a Midwinter "Christmas" event, so we're going to do more stuff like this. Every few updates we try to slip in some fun things for roleplaying.

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Are you looking to add more world events, like Dark Anchors but different ones?

We're doing that more through events, like the Witches Festival. I know what you're saying though, we don't really have plans except in One Tamriel where we're going to change zones a little bit so that they're more like Orsinium and they have world bosses. You're walking through Glenumbra and there'll be a world boss somewhere now.

Do you have any changes coming to crafting?

No, our crafting system is really good, so we're happy with it.

Bethesda as a whole has been kind of championing mods on consoles with Skyrim Definitive Edition and Fallout 4. I'm wondering if this is something you may consider for Elder Scrolls Online?

We can't, because...maybe UI (user interface) mods, but you can't really do UI mods on consoles, because then your controller wouldn't work. Bethesda can do that for its other games because they're single player.
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Lately there's been a trend of bringing online communities together through cross-play. Is that something you're evaluating for Elder Scrolls Online?

That is not a technical issue, it's a business issue. We're on different platforms and each partner has its own ideas on which groups they want their players to be with. It's easier for everyone if they're just in separate communities, that's just the way it is for now.​