My wife and I were just chatting. We both started playing ESO during the Beta and still play it with our son ( he turns 10 next month and has been playing for almost 8 years now). One of the biggest changes made to ESO over the years was making "Soul Shriven in Coldharbour" a skippable, optional quest. For the first time since Necrom, I just created a new Nord that I wanted as an original, Ebonheart Pact character. So I skipped the tutorial, did Bleakrock, then Bal Foyen, then headed to Davon's Watch where I met the Hooded Figure, went to meet the Benefactor, and got abducted.

The cutscene that plays at that point shows you being dragged into Coldharbour in chains and sacrificed to Molag Bal by Manimarco.

That's the start of why you can be resurrected by soul gems. Once you complete that short quest, you're the (a?) Vestige and can reform your damaged or destroyed mortal vessel just like other Daedric or Aedric entities.

I think allowing you to skip it, and allowing you to trigger it at will be speaking with the Hooded Figure is good, but I think it could be better with one tweak.

Since the events in Coldharbour explain why you can die and be resurrected, I'd add one more option.

The first time you take lethal damage on a character, your screen goes black, and when it comes back, you're stumbling down the stairs in Coldharbour. Once you escape, you are a vestige and can resurrect.

This could be a problem, potentially, if someone who has never died makes it to an end-game raid. But, NGL, if I was in some end-game group activity and we wiped, but one player disappeared instead of resing, and when we asked what was up, they tell us they're in Coldharbour becoming Soulshriven. I'd be impressed. And then I'd go get a beer while they run the mission quick. As a low-level, single-bar Nord Warden, I still cut through that mission quickly. I've had people go AFK for a bio longer than that mission takes. There could even be achievements for things like "Achieved Level 20/30/40/50 without being captured by the agents of Manimarco."