ZeniMax Online Studio has unveiled its 2025 plans for Elder Scrolls Online. As you might recall, the studio announced the transition away from the yearly Chapter model toward a more seasonal content release cadence.
This begins with Seasons of the Worm Cult, which marks the return of the enemy faction originally seen in the base game’s main storyline. Indeed, this will be a continuation of that storyline after over ten years, with many fan-favorite characters like Razum-dar, Skordo, Gabrielle, and Vanus Galerion making a comeback for the occasion. Elder Scrolls Online will also be updated with a new zone called Solstice, a tropical island where Argonians and High Elves live together. The main city is called Sunport, and it’s run by Corelanya Elves and Tideborn Argonians, mostly outcasts from the respective races. The latter are actually a new Argonian tribe that hasn’t been seen before in Elder Scrolls Online, though there are also new Argonian Behemoths and Stone Argonians on Solstice that players will encounter as foes.
It’s here that players will face off against the Worm Cult once again. Initially, though, they’ll only be able to access half of the island. One of the twists is that there will be a server-wide event to take down the so-called Writhing Wall erected by the necromancers and access the rest of the island. The whole community will participate in this event (which is set to begin in late Summer), even those who do not purchase the new content pass, which is essentially the equivalent of the old Chapter.
It reminds me of something like The Gates of Ahn’Quiraj, a server-wide event in vanilla World of Warcraft where individual player contributions determined exactly when any given server would get access to the raid. Of course, whereas World of Warcraft had many servers in each region, the same is not true for Elder Scrolls Online, which employs a megaserver structure where there is only a single server per region (and platform). In this case, players will aid the Fellowship of Stirk in taking down the Writhing Wall.
Anyway, the biggest addition to the game is actually something else entirely: the developers are introducing full-fledged subclassing. That’s right, once you have at least a character at level 50, you’ll be able to access skill lines from other classes, although you will always have to maintain at least one skill line from the original class that you picked during character creation. This means that a Templar character could add one skill line from Dragon Knight and another from Sorcerer, and this is just one of many possible examples. According to the developers, there are now over three thousand combinations of skill lines. Critically, there will be an account-wide progression for all skill lines. This means that if you have already unlocked a skill line with one character, you can use that skill line on any other of your characters through subclassing.
As for Season of the Worm Cult, a Prologue Quest is available today, but the first real part of the new story will be delivered in June, with the rest coming throughout 2025, starting with a second update in late Summer. With the June patch (Update 46), ZeniMax is also adding the new 12-player Trial called Ossein Cage, a gigantic vault located in Coldharbour, Molag Bal’s Daedric realm. Ossein Cage holds a powerful relic called Dolorous Cista that absorbs pain and transforms it into power; it’s up to the players to prevent Molag Bal and his Daedric servants from getting their hands on it.
ZeniMax Online also stressed that work continues on a variety of other aspects, from PvP (especially RvR, following the Cyrodiil Champions test) to revamping the new player experience, the returning player experience, the graphics look of the game, and the combat feel, and the user interface on PC. For a lot more on subclassing, Season of the Worm Cult, and everything else coming to Elder Scrolls Online, check out this interview with Studio Director Matt Firor, Game Director Rich Lambert, and Executive Producer Susan Kath. As a side note, the game has now reached over 26 million players since launch, up from the 25-million milestone of a few months ago.
