I think a prologue quest is missing from the Crown Store?

FabresFour

I'm doing my daily translation review for my project, and I decided it was time to go through all the prologue quests to check their translations... And then I realized that the Clockwork prologue quest is not available in the Crown Store! The name of the quest is Of Knives and Long Shadows.
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Of_Knives_and_Long_Shadows

I'm posting this in the bugs section because I believe it’s not intentional for one of the prologue quests to be unavailable for claiming from the Crown Store.

@ZOS_Kevin

LunaFlora

i am pretty sure it's never been in the crown store, at least not in the 4+ years I've regularly played eso.

you get it from the Order of the Eye dispatch in the Mournhold Mages Guild Hall, if i recall correctly.

FabresFour

LunaFlora wrote: »

i am pretty sure it's never been in the crown store, at least not in the 4+ years I've regularly played eso.

you get it from the Order of the Eye dispatch in the Mournhold Mages Guild Hall, if i recall correctly.

Yes, but technically should be. It's a prologue quest like all the others—maybe the most prologue of them all, since it ends by directing the player straight into the first Clockwork City quest lol

(and you even get the prologue warning)

SeaGtGruff

FabresFour wrote: »

LunaFlora wrote: »

i am pretty sure it's never been in the crown store, at least not in the 4+ years I've regularly played eso.

you get it from the Order of the Eye dispatch in the Mournhold Mages Guild Hall, if i recall correctly.

Yes, but technically should be. It's a prologue quest like all the others—maybe the most prologue of them all, since it ends by directing the player straight into the first Clockwork City quest lol

(and you even get the prologue warning)

Except Morrowind was the first Chapter, which makes Clockwork City the first Zone DLC that connected one Chapter to the next, given that the storyline began with the Morrowind Chapter and concluded with the Summerset Chapter. In essence, ZOS apparently had not yet "nailed down" their current way of providing access to the prologue quests.

jle30303

Here's what I suspect to be the weird thing:

The earlier DLCs - Thieves Guild, Dark Brotherhood, Orsinium, and indeed Craglorn (which was released as an expansion that got fully added to the base game, but was not in the game at release), all have a "starter" quest which takes you, via one or two stages, directly to the zone in question.

The later DLCs and Chapters (Morrowind, then every DLC from Summerset onwards) all have a self-contained "Prologue" quest which is exclusively in Base Game zones (since High Isle, this has included Vvardenfell too), and which DO NOT actually transport you to the Chapter / DLC zones or start off their quest line.

Clockwork City, although released AFTER Morrowind, has the older format of a base-game "starter" quest - in two stages - that takes you directly to the zone: like Orsinium, Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood: which may be why it wasn't counted as a formal "Prologue" quest when these were added to the store.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Another point that can be noticed is that, when the player has completed both Orsinium and the Main Quest (Harborage / Coldharbour), you get an appearance of the ghost of The Prophet (confirming that he is now the official canonical Main Quest sacrifice, regardless of whether you actually sacrificed Lyris or Sai instead - and of course these two come back alive, later), telling you that more trouble is brewing, when "the gates of Sotha Sil's Clockwork City stand open".

Which - put together with the fact that Clockwork has the *older* type of introduction, a quest that leads you right there and starts the quest chain, rather than a self-contained prologue - suggests that, in fact, Clockwork City was designed BEFORE Morrowind, and intended to be the next DLC after Orsinium.

And that, in fact, despite being much bigger in size and scope, Morrowind - designed in the newer style - is in fact itself an interpolation: its main quest is, in fact, comparatively short, and functions as another introduction to the Clockwork City story, and has only 1 of the 3 story skill points (the other 2 belonging to Morrowind's other 2 major stories, in Balmora and Sadrith Mora).

Conclusion: A change in design philosophy happened at the time of Morrowind's release, and Clockwork City - designed under the *old* philosophy with the old structure - was released later, after Morrowind, but almost certainly designed before it, which would explain why its "prologue" was possibly forgotten and thus omitted from the list of prologues available in the Crown Store.

FabresFour

jle30303 wrote: »

Here's what I suspect to be the weird thing:

The earlier DLCs - Thieves Guild, Dark Brotherhood, Orsinium, and indeed Craglorn (which was released as an expansion that got fully added to the base game, but was not in the game at release), all have a "starter" quest which takes you, via one or two stages, directly to the zone in question.

The later DLCs and Chapters (Morrowind, then every DLC from Summerset onwards) all have a self-contained "Prologue" quest which is exclusively in Base Game zones (since High Isle, this has included Vvardenfell too), and which DO NOT actually transport you to the Chapter / DLC zones or start off their quest line.

Clockwork City, although released AFTER Morrowind, has the older format of a base-game "starter" quest - in two stages - that takes you directly to the zone: like Orsinium, Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood: which may be why it wasn't counted as a formal "Prologue" quest when these were added to the store.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Another point that can be noticed is that, when the player has completed both Orsinium and the Main Quest (Harborage / Coldharbour), you get an appearance of the ghost of The Prophet (confirming that he is now the official canonical Main Quest sacrifice, regardless of whether you actually sacrificed Lyris or Sai instead - and of course these two come back alive, later), telling you that more trouble is brewing, when "the gates of Sotha Sil's Clockwork City stand open".

Which - put together with the fact that Clockwork has the *older* type of introduction, a quest that leads you right there and starts the quest chain, rather than a self-contained prologue - suggests that, in fact, Clockwork City was designed BEFORE Morrowind, and intended to be the next DLC after Orsinium.

And that, in fact, despite being much bigger in size and scope, Morrowind - designed in the newer style - is in fact itself an interpolation: its main quest is, in fact, comparatively short, and functions as another introduction to the Clockwork City story, and has only 1 of the 3 story skill points (the other 2 belonging to Morrowind's other 2 major stories, in Balmora and Sadrith Mora).

Conclusion: A change in design philosophy happened at the time of Morrowind's release, and Clockwork City - designed under the *old* philosophy with the old structure - was released later, after Morrowind, but almost certainly designed before it, which would explain why its "prologue" was possibly forgotten and thus omitted from the list of prologues available in the Crown Store.

More or less. The Clockwork prologue specifically ended at the end of the island quest, when we defeated the traitor and used the Obscurus. I remember because I did it at launch, and it even granted the memento. The subsequent quest, which leads to Clockwork, was only released later when the DLC launched. So technically, the Clockwork prologue follows the same pattern as the new ones.

A video from that time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=Lnc0jw5Uyt0&t=804s (the end, the quest just ends, like the prologues from nowdays)