Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) transforms the single-player worlds expressed in Bethesda Softworks’ series of five games into a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG, or hereafter, MMO). It draws much from Oblivion (fourth in series) and Skyrim (fifth in series); however, the ESO narrative includes elements from all the former games, referencing and building upon the four Eras. ESO is set in the Second Era while Skyrim is set in the Fourth Era, and Oblivion the Third Era. The game provides a rich narrative that weaves together Tamriel religion, lore, and culture to tell the story of why the three alliances are at war, alongside a narrative for the solo hero’s quest to defeat Molag Bal, the enemy of all factions. The game has separate areas for the Player vs. Environment (PvE) and Player vs. Player (PvP) (please reference Figure 1). The PvE areas are: Ebonheart Pact – red, Daggerfalls Covenant – blue, and Aldmeri Dominion – yellow; each Alliance has five areas. Playing PvE leads one through all 15 areas, providing hundreds of non-person player (NPC) quests including the hero’s quest line that culminates in Cold Harbor (not pictured in Figure 1). The PvP area, Cyridill, shaded green, also has NPC quests but is primarily a massive game of Capture the Flag with several servers running multiple Alliance Wars in Cyrodill. The battle for Cyrodiil is fought among three alliances. When one’s faction dominates an Alliance War map (Figure 2), players receive a weapon damage bonus for their characters. Quests can be completed individually or in a group. Typically, people form groups of four for dungeons (i.e. an contained area where players cooperatively defeat various formations of “bad guys”); groups of 12 for timed trial runs (explained below); the largest group option is 20 and is commonly formed to run PvP campaigns in Cyrodill.
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