Interview with Brian Wheeler - Elitist Jerks

Several days ago Brian Wheeler was invited to Elitist Jerks forum to answer questions of ESO fans. It was an interesting event that brought some new information about the game. There were many different questions answered but I decided to highlight only new information about the game that was unknown before.

Balance in AvA

On my opinion one of the most interesting questions was asked by a member of Tesof.com. He asked about balance in AvA war: how the balance will be maintained if one alliance has more players (and Campaign points) than other 2 and thus dominates the battlefield? It is a very basic question and a very important one for PvP players.

Brian answered that if one alliance has more Campaign points than the other two combined, weak alliances receive temporary bonus that allow them to gain Campaign points faster. That means all actions in Cyrodiil, including capturing keeps, resources and questing will bring more points to weak factions. The strongest faction will not receive penalties. But this system starts working if one alliance has great advantage and dominates over other two. I think that it is a rather good idea. My MMO experience tells me that if one side really dominates the other it is rather difficult to play on the weaker side. Unfortunately every MMO has problems with balance between factions sometimes but Elder Scrolls Online offers rather good way to help weak alliances.

Trading the Emperorship

The second cool question was about possibility to trade the Emperorship status. Is it possible to trade or somehow give this valuable status to your friend if you are the Emperor?

Brian answered that Emperor is a really powerful person on the battlefield and everybody wants to get this amazing status but it is almost impossible to trade it. To understand this you need to understand the mechanics of getting Emperorship. Your alliance needs to capture and hold all 6 keeps around the Imperial City in order to crown highest ranking player. The only way to lose Emperor status is to lose all the keeps your alliance holds. Taking into account that each alliance wants to have this powerful warrior on his side it is almost impossible to trade this status to your guild mate or other person.

Brian also mentioned that Emperor and Alliance War abilities are not for PvP only; they can be used in PvE. But there are special abilities that will be helpful only during siege. Emperor is a leader who inspires surrounding allies and many of his skills are made for this.

Guilds and Objects in Cyrodiil

There was a very good question about guild ownership. We know that a guild can claim ownership of different objects in Cyrodiil: keeps, farms, mines and so on. These objects give different bonuses to the owner. Are there any restrictions on how many objects a guild can own simultaneously?

The answer was: each guild can own only 1 object in Cyrodiil. On my opinion it is fair. This rule allows to distribute objects between different guilds. Don’t forget that a guild can have public guild store in keeps and if all keeps are owned by 1 strong guild there will be similar goods in each store. This allows to set high prices because of lack of competition. 1 guild = 1 object is a fair system that allows different guilds to get benefits from participating in AvA. There will not be situation when the strongest guild owns all objects and receives all possible benefits.

How large is Cyrodiil?

There was an interesting question about the size of Cyrodiil. Is Cyrodiil province as big as it was in Oblivion?

Brian answered that it will take about 30 minutes to cross the province from one side to the other on foot. I think that it is a really big territory. Just keep in mind that all Alliance war action takes place there and it will require much more time to cross the province in the game.