[Expansion Idea] Introducing the Elder Scrolls Online: Pyandonea

Justiciar

Welcome to the Elder Scrolls Online v5.0.0, introducing our first full-fledged expansion: Pyandonea!

This fully featured expansion will retail for $60 and introduce a host of new content for all playstyles

Key Features:
• The largest landmass addition to date with 6 new zones which cover the islands of Summerset and Artaeum, as well as introduce the never before seen island continent of Pyandonea!
• Over 100 hours of new story line quest content.
• 4 exciting new dungeons and 1 trial.
• A new PvP game mode and maps.
• A new crafting profession: Jewelry crafting!
• A new playable race: the Maormer, or Sea Elves.
• A new joinable faction complete with its own passive skill line.
Read on to learn more!

Main Story:
The Three Banners War continues to rage across Tamriel! Sensing the weakness of the Aldmeri Dominion, King Orgnum of Pyandonea has launched a full-scale invasion of Summerset. Capitalizing on this invasion both the Ebonheart Pact and Daggerfall Covenant have sent expeditionary forces as well. The fate of the Dominion has never been more tenuous.

Faction leaders and their voice actors return for Queen Ayrenn, King Emeric, and the Skald-King.

Players of the different alliances will see the same main storyline of the Summerset zones unfold through a slightly different narrative. Dominion players will be tasked with saving the island from invasion by the Queen, while players of the other alliances will be tasked with missions from their respective leaders. These separate quest chains will witness the same story but through the eyes of their faction, eventually culminating in a unified quest chain at the end of the Summerset story. Players from all factions will unite to take the fight to the sea elves homeland: Pyandonea.

Summerset Isle:
Summerset has been split into two zones for this expansion, with quest content expected to be 20 hours per zone. Each zone has a public dungeon as well as world bosses, delves, and everything you’ve come to expect from a zone in ESO.

Artaeum:
The last main island of the Summerset Isle’s is added to the game as its own single zone. This zone has no overarching quest chain, but serves as the home of the new joinable faction: The Psijic Order and their daily quests. The Psijic Order will be discussed more in a later section of these patch notes.


Pyandonea:
The island continent has never been visited in an Elder Scrolls game before! Split into 3 zones for this expansion, each zone is expected to provide 20 hours of story content as well as delves, a public dungeon, world bosses, etc. The story of the expansion will culminate in the alliances of Tamriel invading the continent, ending the atrocities of the Maormer for the forseeable future.

Dungeons and Trials:
4 new group dungeons have been added with the expansion:
• To be determined
• To be determined
• Leviathan’s Lair – The sea elves atrocities know no bounds. They have summoned a Leviathan to wreak havoc across the ocean lanes. You and your companions must battle through its lair and sea elf masters and confront the monstrosity itself to put an end to this madness.
• King's Perch - King Orgnum, leader of the sea elves, has always lead invasions of Summerset himself and this time is no different. Do battle with Orgnum and his personal guard, expelling him from Summerset and back to his island home. This won’t be the last you see of him.
1 new trial has been added with the expansion:
• Orgnum’s High Hall – Can you defeat, however temporarily, the deathless wizard ruler of the sea elves? Infiltrate his fortress home, take on his top lieutenants, and test your mettle against Orgnum himself in this exciting trial.

PvP:
For this expansion 2 new battleground maps have been added to the existing queue and game types that were released with the Morrowind Chapter. Additionally, an entirely new PvP mode will be added: The Siege of Dusk. The Siege of Dusk scenario will utilize its own map separate from the other battleground queue and is designed to be a fast paced battle of offense and defense to simulate the continuous battles over this coastal city from the sea elves, Ebonheart Pact, and Daggerfall Covenant. There are two rounds to this scenario. During the first round one team will be assigned offense, and is tasked to take the fortress of Dusk as quickly as possible, while the other team is defense and attempts to hold off the invaders until the round has concluded. At the end of the round, the roles are reversed. Whoever takes the keep the fastest wins the scenario! Teams will be 12v12. This new battleground shows off the exciting style of siege PvP that ESO is known for in a fast paced and fun environment. It also allows for unique mechanics and siege tools for the battleground!

Jewelry Crafting:
Crafters rejoice! All crafted sets now have jewelry that can be crafted for them by those who master the new skill line. Jewelers may also upgrade the quality of existing jewelry as well. New Jewelry traits have been added to the game to allow more diversity in jewelry builds, as well as give crafters traits to research as they level up the new skill! Crafted Jewelry pieces may also be augmented with a unique gemstone during construction to give it a powerful new effect. Gemmed jewelry pieces of existing sets will drop, extremely rarely, from world bosses and final bosses in dungeons for their existing sets but do not prevent the non-gemmed version from dropping.

Maormer Playable Race:
The first new playable race comes to ESO. Their passives will represent the independent and self-sufficient nature of a people who have long lived without trade to mainland Tamriel. As such, they are designed with passives to encourage a hybrid style of play that utilizes both stamina and magicka abilities. The playable Maormer will have a unique starting area that shows how your character splits apart from the rest of the invading Sea Elves and joins with the alliances of Tamriel. This fills a niche build type that is not currently available through racial passives that already exist in the game.

Psijic Order Joinable Faction:
The Psijic Order joins the ranks of joinable factions in ESO complete with their own passive skill lines. Intended as an end-game hub for daily activities they, and their island home of Artaeum, have a variety of activities to keep you busy for months. The order will provide daily quests such as daily delves, world bosses, and the new dungeons etc. The quests will reward a certain amount of tokens, which can be redeemed at the faction quartermaster for fun rewards which include: motif chapters, a mount, a pet, furnishings and plans, and unique gear sets.

HatchetHaro

Now THIS sounds like a proper expansion. Great concept!

Reality check: nah ZOS is not even competent enough for such a large-scale operation.

Justiciar

HatchetHaro wrote: »

Now THIS sounds like a proper expansion. Great concept!

Reality check: nah ZOS is not even competent enough for such a large-scale operation.

It would take quite an effort that's for sure. That's actually why I put it down as 5.0. Gives 2 years to complete it.

I really enjoyed the Morrowind chapter. But I really want something with some meat on it. A full expansion is something I really want to see for this game.

Stovahkiin

Zeni would charge like $300 for an expansion this large

Korah_Eaglecry

How about we focus on areas of Tamriel we havent seen yet? Instead of a landmass that belongs to a race of Mer that prior to ESO hadnt been seen before in a TES game. Let alone the fact the race of mer being unplayable.

Justiciar

Korah_Eaglecry wrote: »

How about we focus on areas of Tamriel we havent seen yet? Instead of a landmass that belongs to a race of Mer that prior to ESO hadnt been seen before in a TES game. Let alone the fact the race of mer being unplayable.

@Korah_Eaglecry

The islands of Summerset and Artaeum have never been visited before and would fit that quite nicely. With the previous DLC's and chapters focusing heavily on Daggerfall Covenant and Ebonheart Pact territories it's certainly time the Dominion had some additional landmass added to it.

The inclusion of Pyandonea would also allow Zenimax to do just about anything they want with the zones, as they wouldn't have to try and conform to previous games geography or anything like that. It would allow for some great creativity.

Arundo

Awesome idea throw in the feature to create your own Ship to sail the oceans and this is an amazing expansion.

Wont happen though but we can dream

SantieClaws

Perhaps something less focussed on elves this time yes ...

Perhaps we could travel .. Elsweyr?

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

Kneighbors

What you wrote here seems to me a minimum of 80$ for such a juicy "expansion"

Kay1

Kneighbors wrote: »

What you wrote here seems to me a minimum of 80$ for such a juicy "expansion"

Lol Guild Wars released a bigger one for 40€

me_ming

SantieClaws wrote: »

Perhaps something less focussed on elves this time yes ...

Perhaps we could travel .. Elsweyr?

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

Nah, this idea is waaaay better than Elsweyr.

Plus I've always wanted to be a Maomer (or a Falmer). I wish this happens, but well, can't expect too much, don't want to be too disappointed.

BTW OP really nice read. Love the concepts you got. I hope ZoS do this or something similar to this, would pay $80 for an actual expansion pack.

DRXHarbinger

@ZOS_MattFiror you need to employ @Justiciar he has proper ideas.

Fingolfinn01

excellent idea, though it seems just putting out this new chapter was a massive effort for them and really testing there skills.

Something like that is what we all would like to see.

notimetocare

The Psijiic order wouldn't let you join

Kendaric

Nice idea, though I'd rather see more of Elsweyr before we're forced to come to the defence of the Altmer.
Also, I'm not sure about adding a new playable race to ESO. We already have 10 races, which seems enough.

ChuckyPayne

Very detailed. I like it.

Qbiken

Remove the jewelcrafting and you´ve my vote

TheNuminous1

I love this idea. Maybe not the adding of summerset to the expansion. Summerset will come one day with its own story and content. But pyeandonea would be nice

TheNuminous1

Oh and artaeum as a hub would be amazing. I'm so sick of craglorn.

Justiciar

Arundo wrote: »

Awesome idea throw in the feature to create your own Ship to sail the oceans and this is an amazing expansion.

@Arundo

I'd actually brainstormed something like that and/or adding the ability to actually swim underwater(seeing as the expansion is sea based, this could have added some interesting quests/areas). Ultimately those ideas got the axe, as I felt I was already pushing the limits of what could be feasibly included in a 60 dollar expansion.

me_ming wrote: »

...I've always wanted to be a Maomer (or a Falmer).

Since they have npc maormer already in game I don't think it would be too much of a stretch that they'd be playable at some point!

deleted008293

I don't want to be rude or anything but... keep dreaming!

I also had great expectations when I was envisioning my idea about how Morrowind will be and you don't wanna know my disappointment when it came out.
I was hoping Morrowind will have a landmass twice as big as it is right now. I was expecting way more solo and group content. I was hoping to see at least 2 group dungeons among the new trial, more world bosses and delves and a storyline twice longer. I was hoping to revisit old places from Tamriel and also new ones. Huge zones not just a small instance from far far away.

Your idea is great but... It might never get to see the light. Also 60$ come on. It cost more than the game itself already.

Justiciar

nordmarian wrote: »

...Also 60$ come on. It cost more than the game itself already.

@nordmarian

It definitely has alot of features for 60 dollars but there's a few reasons I priced it that way. First, priced any higher than that and you risk alienating a lot of consumers with an entrance price that is out of line with expectations set across the industry based on the current business models. 2nd, 60 dollars is the price of a fully featured triple A new release game. It would be unreasonable, in my mind, that an expansion that adds less zones, content, dungeons, etc be priced higher than a standalone game.

But ultimately you're right, this is just an idea/dream. With ZOS's current business model and dlc cycle my idea is completely outside of our current expectations for the game. While their current content release schedule keeps something new coming every few months, Myself, and a few other gamers that I have spoken with, would like to see a fully fledged and realized expansion as opposed to minor dlc's and chapters that are quickly completed.

jcaceresw

ZOS don't have much money to make a proper DLC (*cough* chapter *cough*). They rely on the crown store sales. The last DLC (*cough* chapter *cough*) is a example they charged too much for a mostly empty zone with a handful of quests. I like your idea but seems unrealistic considering the actual situation on how they handle the game mechanics.

Justiciar

jcaceresw wrote: »

ZOS don't have much money to make a proper DLC (*cough* chapter *cough*). They rely on the crown store sales. The last DLC (*cough* chapter *cough*) is a example they charged too much for a mostly empty zone with a handful of quests. I like your idea but seems unrealistic considering the actual situation on how they handle the game mechanics.

There's a few things that could be done by the devs to tone down the amount of content in this expansion. Ideally, It would all be included for the the expansion price so that the players feel they are getting value for their money and see it as a full and genuine expansion. But it wouldn't be out of the question to, for example, pull the Psijic Order faction and Artaeum from the base expansion and have that come as a content DLC similar to Dark Brotherhood or Thieves Guild. Similarly it wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility to release with 2 dungeons at launch and add the next two to a dungeon DLC.

I opted to be optimistic with my idea and include the absolute most content I would expect in a 60 dollar expansion. It wouldn't be ideal, but even with those changes I think it would be an expansion to get excited about.

deleted008293

The 60$ problem is that we agree to pay more for slightly more content that it should already cost less we will end up one day paying thousands just for a new dungeon.

Justiciar

nordmarian wrote: »

The 60$ problem is that we agree to pay more for slightly more content that it should already cost less we will end up one day paying thousands just for a new dungeon.

@nordmarian

Ahh, I may have misunderstood your original post then. I thought you were stating that 60 dollars was not enough for what the expansion would add. I now understand you meant that 60 dollars was too much for it.

I'd love to go back to a few years ago when expansions were 20-40 dollars and had crazy amounts of content, but unfortunately that ship has sailed with the advent of dlc's and season passes and free to play gaming.

60 dollars for a 100 hour story plus additional features seems reasonable to me for what I've suggested, if anything it's almost too much content for 60 dollars (as I was being optimistic with what could be added).

nhisso

Yeah, no. This is why 99.99999999 percent of the pop cant be in entertainment/the arts.

Arigor

First off, very well written and thought out post right here, I enjoyed the read. There are some very good ideas and I really hope ZOS would at least consider some of them in future Chapters. I highly doubt they would undertake something so rigorous as this, but one can hope and dream though!!

SilverIce58

I love all of it, except for anything relating to the Psijics, i.e. Artaeum and the Psijic Order. They would never let you join, although it would be interesting to see the home of Mannimarco.

The Maormer on the other hand, are my one of my favorite races, and they'd probably have racials just like dunmer, but instead of fire resist, itd be lightning resist, and the third passive would buff their lightning magic dmg in some way

Acrolas

Justiciar wrote: »

Sensing the weakness of the Aldmeri Dominion

Justiciar

SilverIce58 wrote: »

I love all of it, except for anything relating to the Psijics, i.e. Artaeum and the Psijic Order. They would never let you join, although it would be interesting to see the home of Mannimarco.

The Maormer on the other hand, are my one of my favorite races, and they'd probably have racials just like dunmer, but instead of fire resist, itd be lightning resist, and the third passive would buff their lightning magic dmg in some way

@SilverIce58

Recorded instances of new members are admittedly rare for the Order, but I have had a few story ideas that would allow them to recruit player characters in a lore appropriate way. I'm sure ZOS would be able to come up with some ideas there as well. The ability see some background on Mannimarco and Vannus Galerion, as well as possibly even learn more about where Artaeum has been the past 500 years seems like it would be a missed opportunity to not include in some form though.