Greetings! Below are the "Ask Us Anything" questions and answers from our latest episode of ESO Live. Enjoy!

@GruntMasher117 - How long does it take to create a new zone in the studio?
For a zone the size of say Glenumbra or Auridon, it took roughly 30 to 33 weeks, including QA time. But for a zone like Orsinium (the upcoming new DLC game pack), it has taken us a bit longer though as its huge!

@Mix - Will there be a costume that is just Cadwell's hat (his cooking pot)? So we could be seen wearing a cooking pot for a helm but the rest of our gear would be whatever we have equipped? I love his helm, but the soul shriven rags get a bit boring
That has actually been discussed as something we might want to do. We’ll take a second look at this.
While answering this question, we would also like to take the opportunity to let you all know that while we do not respond to all requested features and products for the Crown Store on the forums, we read them. We see all of your requests and we take them seriously. We want to let you all know that we can’t always act on the requests and when we can we can’t always react quickly. Please though, keep the conversations going; we do hear you and appreciate the feedback.

@Gidorick - Will we see the "rare shaggy giant centipede herdbeast that can live only at high altitudes" in Orsinium that is spoken of in the Pocket Guide to the Empire, 1st Edition/The Wild Region?
Lady Honnorah af-Lahreq says, “No such beast is mentioned in either De Brazy’s ‘Steeds of Tamriel’ or Luponio’s ‘Mounts of the World,’ so it’s probably safe to regard them as mythical. (I’ve always found the Orcs to be more fanciful than most people think!)"

@silky_soft - When is CP catch up and cap starting?
We are still working hard on the Champion Point catch up and point cap systems. We don’t have a time frame to share yet, but we’re looking forward to getting these new improvements into your hands.

@Acrolas - Why does killing a non-combat animal lock you into combat far longer than a combat mob does?
What you described sounds like a bug. We’ll look into it. Thank you, Acrolas!

@Rhass - What's going on with the politics in western Skyrim? We have heard there is another king claiming to be the true king of all Skyrim and this has caused a political split between the east and west because the Skald-King also makes this claim. Who is this west king?
Phrastus of Elinhir says, “Shortly after the Second Empire dissolved into chaos, High King Logrolf of Skyrim was assassinated. The succession was disputed, and the kingdom of the Nords split into East and West Skyrim, with the west being ruled by the Jarls of Solitude. King Svargrim has ruled West Skyrim since 561, and though aging, is still hale, and shows no desire to give up the throne.”

@Mix - Will Argonian horns ever be allowed to clip through helms? I used a mod "horns are forever" in Skyrim to allow them to do this.
In all likelihood, we will never allow the Argonian horns and adornments to clip through the helms. In our opinion, geometry clipping looks bad. We provide players with a choice of hiding their helm so that can see the head customization options on their characters, or wear a helm. There are too many chances for bad clipping with all of the horn/adornment/helm permutations.

@DRXHarbinger - Does leveling up a skill grant any XP at all? Such as my Medium armor is like level 11, so if I sweat it up to max level will that have yielded any XP gains at all? I know it's easy to boost by jumping in and out of lava etc but just wanted to know if skill leveling / inspiration gains give XP.
Skills level up in a variety of ways. Class abilities rank up as long as the ability is slotted when you gain experience. Armor skills require you to be wearing that type of armor when you gain experience, the more pieces of an armor type slotted the faster it will progress.

@Rhass - Is Daggerfall invading the west part of the Rift (presumably through the pass from Helglen aka Lion's Den)? We also see in Craglorn, near the city of Elinhir at the border to Falkreath, there are Daggerfall with siege weapons and the conversation with them implies invasion beyond the sealed Skyrim gates at that location. Does Falkreath belong to DC at this time?
Phrastus of Elinhir says, “Dear me, no—Falkreath is part of West Skyrim, and its jarl owes allegiance to King Svargrim in Solitude. As I can tell you from personal experience, the Covenant soldiers you see near Elinhir are part of that alliance’s expeditionary force to Cyrodiil, and are holding open the supply lines from Cyrodiil to High Rock.”

@GruntMasher117 - Are there plans to add in new types of weapons or equipment available in the game? (Example: spears)
New weapon types specifically? Not going to rule that out, but we don’t have any plans short term to add spears or something like unarmed combat. Longer term it’s a possibility!

@Hyade - First, can we get the fog pushed back? The fog is constant and thick, and takes away a lot of immersion for me.
In certain situations, the fog is intended to be heavy and thick to contribute to the mood and atmosphere of the region. Aldcroft in Glenumbra, for example, is a spooky and moody place – as are many areas of Tamriel. The fog distances do change based on weather and time of day, and yes, we are able to change them. But, we have set maximum fog distances in each environment to hide other immersion-breaking issues such as LOD (line of distance) transitions, and very low-detail terrain, the worst culprits being the mountains and large rock features in the geography. This is an old issue and something we have been slowly working on addressing.
Additional LODs for all of the environment assets is somewhat prohibitive, but we are working through the problem. We have improved our tree LOD system and our skybox system so that we can have trees draw further in the distance and create the illusion of extended background mountain ranges, so the fog distance in Orsinium (the zone for our next upcoming DLC game pack), is set somewhat farther back than other zones. We would like to go back through the older zones and update them accordingly, but that work is currently lower priority than creating new DLC zones.

@Hyade - Is a DX12 upgrade a possibility in the future? ESO runs pretty darn well, except when there are many things requiring animation on screen at once. My slight understanding of this is that there are too many "draw calls" going out in such situations, and that DX12 handles them drastically better. Right now I run my game on lower settings specifically because of the lower framerate I get in cities, and it sounds like DX12 could improve the situation.
Yes, we are planning on a DX12 upgrade and expect that this will give us a number of graphics performance improvements. We cannot provide an ETA at this time, but it is something we’re working towards.

@CirithValaria - What are your thoughts on making Craglorn dungeons public instead of instanced, but keeping the difficulty as it is. This would make the zone more "solo" friendly and still keep it group based.
We’re focused right now on getting new DLC zones and content ready, so there are no plans right now to go back and make those types of adjustments to Craglorn. Ideally, we would love to revisit Craglorn and make it a bit more solo friendly, where solo players can go. But no promises on if or when that might happen.

@Arato - Will veteran ranks be increased for Orsinium or will it remain VR16 so that PVE players who don't want to buy a PVP dlc can catch up?
Nope – we are not raising the level cap for Orsinium. Orsinium is going to be focused much more on PVE, story, and widening the number of gear options. But that’s all we’ll say for now. Let us catch our breath from Imperial City launch first! Rest assured, we’ll have more news on Orsinium soon.

@dudenamedchris - When will guards be killable?
We don’t have any immediate plans to add this into the game, largely due to the potential for exploitation with the Justice System.

@aneova_ESO - Why did you make it so complex for the newer Motif's? Also, why is so much material needed to upgrade our armor and weapons? 100 is extreme, you'll never be able to update the writs to the new tier if this remains.
There are a few reasons we’ve been splitting up the crafting Motif’s lately. Most importantly, to diversify crafters across the community, at least initially, as players learn individual chapters over time. This provides more niches for more crafters to participate in, and encourages wider overall economic participation. Additionally, we launched with a large number of easy to obtain crafting motifs and we want our crafting community to have aspirational content akin to combat-centric players.
Lastly, for particularly iconic appearances such as Dwemer and Glass, it should feel like a significant accomplishment to unlock the entire motif, given how recognizable and special they are to all of us. That being said, we understand it can feel a bit overwhelming to have to hunt these down across the game and over long periods of time, so we’re looking very carefully at the time investment required to obtain motifs in future DLC content.

In regards to the amount of materials needed for VR16 equipment, the goal was to provide some parity between the challenge of obtaining maximum level gear through non-crafted means (PvP, Dungeons, Quest Rewards, etc) with their crafted equivalents. Any writs we add for this tier will accept VR15 item deliveries which require the much lower amount of raw material.