The Elder Scrolls Online is the elephant in the room where discussions of The Elder Scrolls 6 are concerned, though calling it an elephant is obviously missing the opportunity for a banger lore joke – “dragon”, perhaps, or even “Numidium”? Launched back in 2014 after seven years in development, ESO's hybrid of deceptively single-player-ish Elder Scrolls presentation with MMO fixtures attracted a lukewarm response, initially. “At its best The Elder Scrolls Online looks like a faithful addition to the lore,” intoned Brendy in our own launch impressions. “At its worst it is a derivative and uninventive anachronism.”
ZeniMax Online have made big strides with the game over the years, however - binning off monthly subscriptions and introducing a “level-free” format in the One Tamriel update in 2016. ESO has also swelled and sprouted steadily as a work of geography and history, with major chapters introducing areas hitherto only mentioned in dusty collectible tomes, or creatively reintroducing locations from the single player series – the forthcoming Gold Road expansion, out in June 2024, takes us to the West Weald in Cyrodiil, an area last seen in The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion.