UESPWiki:Podcast/2 02

Don’t go changing... Tamriel Welcome to the UESPodcast! Join your host Pylawn with guests AKB, Alarra, Lost in Hyrule, and baratron as they discuss the latest Elder Scrolls News and have a discussion on why after a thousand years, things haven't changed all that much in Tamriel.

Twitch: VOD • Youtube: VOD • Anchor: Audio

Show Notes

Roster

Host:

• Pylawn

Guests:

• AKB
• Alarra
• baratron
• Lost

News

UESP

• Charity Drive
• Google Mobile Search is broken :( It’s being fixed, yo.
• We’re holding a little contest on the wiki to create the quest pages for Greymoor. Pick any side quest or daily quest and get started! Whoever writes the most complete pages (Quick Walkthrough, Detailed Walkthrough and Stages) by the end of the PTS will get our last Bristlegut Piglet 2014 convention exclusive pet code! (https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Blackreach#Quests and https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Western_Skyrim#Quests for applicable quests)

ESO

• ESO had its all time highest number of concurrent players.
• Greymoor Launch Update: Tuesday 26th May on PC/Mac and Tuesday 9th June on Xbox One and PlayStation®4 News Post
  • No change from last show, just a confirmation.
• More information about Antiquities:
  • Basic FAQ: News Post
  • Also ESO Live on 1st May, still available to watch on Twitch: Twitch VOD
• Russian Language support with Greymoor release: News Post
  • Full localization support on PC/Mac, no plans for console support at this time.
  • Greymoor not required.
• May Crown Store Showcase: News Post
  • Following from May 26 (PC) and June 9 (Console), to coincide with Greymoor Release
  • Elsweyr DLC & purchasable Necromancer
  • Alliance Change Token
  • Vampire/Werewolf full skill line unlocks
  • Limited-edition items this week, available from 2pm GMT / 10am EDT May 7th to May 11th at the same time:
    • The Elder Scrolls Artifact: Sinweaver Outfit style: Alter your two-handed sword's Outfit style with a replica of the legendary Elven claymore Sinweaver. This item cannot be dyed. From Oblivion, Azani Blackheart quest.
    • Gem Prospector costume: New for Greymoor. Has pouches, pockets, and ZE GOGGLES.
    • Siegemaster’s Warhorse mount: HORSE ARMOR.
• PTS updated to 6.0.2 today. All characters deleted, PC-EU database copy.
• Very important news for crafters hidden in today’s PTS Patch Notes. The New Moon motif is currently a guaranteed drop (with what appears to be a 20 hour cooldown) from the Dragonguard Supply Chest, but it wasn't supposed to be. From the latest PTS patch notes, it looks like this will be 'fixed' when Greymoor releases so make sure to grab it as often as you can until then.
  • Thanks to @Amarthiul from The Adventurers League on PC-EU for pointing that out.

Legends

• Pauper Gauntlet the weekend of May 1 - only common cards
• April monthly reward card News Post
  • Duneripper -5-cost 4/3 red/green card. “When Duneripper enters a lane, it deals 2 damage to an enemy creature in the lane. Pilfer: Move.”

Blades:

• In game there was an announcement that Blades will be leaving Early Access Soon
  • We don’t really know when but I imagine it will be the same day as Nintendo Switch Launch
  • Arena will be reset with rewards. Special helmet for the top 1000, 500, 100 players.
  • There’ll be thank-you gifts for all Early Access players.
  • New quests will be released

Call to Arms

• Alone in quietness

Supporters

Patreon

• Rikke Aaby Olesen
• Soup Wizard

Twitch Subs

• Yazdigerdiv
• Supercowsock
• skormsnowstrider

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
  • Haven’t played much Elder Scrolls this week.
  • Didn’t even realize it was Podcast day until a couple hours ago
    • Streamed some random Dungeons
    • I need to convince people to run cloudrest again…
• AKB
  • Midnight Sun is announced, so I have that to look forward to!
  • I got a Bristlegut Piglet! I went through some of my old codes, and found out I just had one sitting around.
• Alarra
  • Finished Cadwell’s Gold! Working on Craglorn now.
• Lost
  • Got to 222 Event Tickets! Started spending them to run Solo Arenas, getting 2 wins and retiring, to document the rewards
  • Playing Legends to keep daily quests progressing
• Kiz
• baratron
  • Not so much time for games this week.
  • Mostly just been doing the daily writs in ESO.
  • Completed Veteran Aetherian Archive with my EU guild, most of whom had never done a Vet Trial before. Took over 3 hours, score of 82 (!!), but we completed it!
  • UESP Guild did a Nightblade-only run of the 3 x Normal Craglorn Trials. That was fun, like all of our solo-Class runs have been. Trying to decide which Class to choose next.

Topic: Don’t go changing, to try and please me

Here’s a list of Elder Scrolls locations which have come up again in later games:

• High Rock & Alik’r (Daggerfall → ESO base game, Wayrest also Legends FotDB) Someone who knows about this please fill it in.
  • Not sure we can really use these since wasn’t a lot of these procedurally generated?
  • Well then, we can mention that it was procedurally generated! Daggerfall, Wayrest and Sentinel were all present, as well as smaller city states.
• Stros M'kai (Redguard → ESO base game)
• Dawnstar, Stormhold (respective TES Travels games → ESO base game)
• Dragonstar (and I think Elinhir, too) (Shadowkey → ESO base game)
• Solstheim (Bloodmoon → Skyrim)
• Windhelm & Riften / Eastmarch & The Rift (Skyrim → ESO base game, Riften also Legends FotDB)
• Bruma, Cheydinhal, Chorrol, Vlastarus, Cropsford (Oblivion → ESO base game Cyrodiil)
• Imperial City (Oblivion → ESO Imperial City)
  • Imperial city has three bridges in ESO vs one in Oblivion. Also, sewer entrances on the mainland in ESO and on the isle in Oblivion.
• Anvil & Kvatch (Oblivion → ESO Dark Brotherhood DLC)
• Falkreath (Skyrim -> ESO Horns of the Reach -> Legends FotDB)
• Vvardenfell (Morrowind → ESO Morrowind Chapter)
• Clockwork City (Tribunal → ESO Clockwork City DLC → Legends RtCC Story)
• Shivering Isles (Shivering Isles → Legends IoM Story)
• Bthardamz (Skyrim → Legends IoM Story)
• Solitude, Dragon Bridge, Morthal, Labyrinthian etc. (Skyrim → ESO Greymoor Chapter)

The biggest elephant in the room I think is going to be the fact that many locations appear exactly like their Fourth Era counterparts, to the point where I found people kind of started getting upset over this over the week. I began doing a series of comparison shots between the two, and people were initially very pleased with seeing locales as they were. That started to turn with Morthal, which is basically the exact layout, just with slightly different architecture. I ended up focusing more on the genuinely changed locations (which was very nice to see), and they were for the most part crowd pleasers. I think there’s some worry of people calling foul of there being any difference between 2E and 4E Tamriel (just think of how many people called foul of the Ebonheart Pact), but in my humble opinion, those people are just wrong. Things should be relatively different.

Biggest thing I’m happy about was running into the Labyrinthian Frost Troll Squad, it made me mentally imagine that an extended Frost Troll family has lived in the parts for 1,000 years. I’d play a game just about them at this point.

Pylawn Thoughts - applying real world scenarios to TES for city infrastructure and change is basically impossible. You have a world with essentially stagnant technological innovation because most of the big problems can be solved with magic. There’s also big massive events every few years that kill off huge swaths of the population which means the population isn’t expanding at any rate that would require towns and cities to expand their borders and annex nearby cities.

Without these factors it would make sense that architecture would remain similar for thousands of years because there is no real agent of change. So in cases where there were sieges and things on towns, yes things would likely change as they rebuild, but main structures may not, since they have no real reason to improve on the designs or materials they already have. They may sometimes though if they were destroyed due to a specific tactical disadvantage

baratron Thoughts - There are situations where I LOVE the similarities between the locations in different games, and situations where I hate it.

• Windhelm & Riften / Eastmarch & The Rift (Skyrim → ESO base game)
  • HATE. In this case, the devs made an effort to change the cities somewhat, and it’s just annoying.
  • Riften isn’t too bad because we know it’s a port town mostly constructed of wood, so we expect some differences simply because the wood rots. It isn’t hard to navigate in its new format so it’s no problem.
  • But Windhelm is REALLY DIFFERENT, and I STILL get lost there now. Doesn’t help that the map doesn’t show the height of roads, so you can think that a road will take you to a location, and then find you’re either too high or too low and need to drop down or climb up.
  • Even the maps of the zones are irritatingly different as well. The locations of things like hot springs should be relatively fixed over hundreds of years. Of course, new ones spring up (no pun intended) if there’s seismic activity,
• Bruma, Cheydinhal, Chorrol, Vlastarus, Cropsford (Oblivion → ESO base game Cyrodiil)
  • Changes had to be made to Cyrodiil in general to turn it into a PvP zone. This included the addition of many mountains.
  • Bruma and Cheydinhal are fairly similar to ES IV. So is Hackdirt, although not quite as creepy in ESO.
  • Chorrol’s changed by the GREAT SCHISM OF LAVA in the middle of the town, but otherwise it and Weynon Priory are rather similar.
  • Vlastarus is new in ESO, being only a fort in Oblivion.
  • Cropsford is the real problem, where people start arguing - in Oblivion, there is a quest where you are helping a family found Cropsford. Why would there already be a village of the same name in the same location 1000 years earlier?
• Imperial City (Oblivion → ESO Imperial City)
  • Clearly not even SLIGHTLY the same due to the Daedric invasion. Yet otherwise pretty similar in terms of the districts.
  • My only problem with this is the bizarre 30 degree rotation to the map. WHY was it rotated?
  • Some wags claim this was due to the influence of the White-Gold Tower.
• Anvil & Kvatch (Oblivion → ESO Dark Brotherhood DLC)
  • I LOVED the opportunity to visit unruined Kvatch. Was sad it was as part of the Dark Brotherhood DLC though - would have liked to do more here than the 2 quests which aren’t actually DB content.
  • Weirded out by Anvil because of the wayshrine placement. Putting it by the docks instead of by the gate to the city makes me feel like I’m entering the town “backwards”. I’ve still not got used to it even after 4 years!
• Vvardenfell (Morrowind → ESO Morrowind Chapter)
  • LOVE
  • But so many locked doors :( Morrowind is just too technically challenging to fully recreate given their timeframe
• Solstice, Dragon Bridge, Morthal, Labyrinthian etc. (Skyrim → ESO Greymoor Chapter)
  • So far I like what I’ve seen - paying homage to ES V without being a direct 1:1 translation.
  • I feel that a lot of thought has been given into what to change in Solitude. Ed Stark explained it very clearly in ESO Live.
• Overall - I seem to like it when locations are very similar in different games. I like the familiarity. Some changes due to the passing of time are acceptable, but I dislike deliberate massive changes with no reason.
• The only other game I’ve played which had something like this was Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past, where you visited the same towns in the past and the present. Many towns were ruins either in the past or the present because of whatever disaster you were going there to help with.

I’ve not really experienced it otherwise due to other game series being set only a few years apart (Pokemon), or intentionally being different each time (Zelda).