I, like many other people in this community, have seen that there is a total lack of a proper, up-to-date ESO fansite/database. Nearly all of them are severely outdated or lacking information. Not to mention they have dead forums and very little sense of community. I feel that ESO's community has grown large enough to support a centralised fan-site on the lines of something like Wowhead or MMO-Champion.

So this is why I am creating ESO Champion. It's just about time something was done about the disorganised mess of ESO-related websites just drifting around untouched on the internet, and this ambitious project seeks to resolve this long-running problem.

Features

Here is a list of planned features for the website. Bear in mind that nothing is 100% final though I will aim to include all of these listed features to some degree.

• Homepage with ESO News Blog
• Community Forums
• Database, kept up to date by an addon that the players of ESO install and send to the website.
• Wiki
• Game Information e.g Classes, Lore, Gameplay etc.
• Player-created Walkthroughs and Guides
• Guides for new players. This is included because of the recent influx of new players ESO is having, which I predict to increase evne more once ESO begins its marketing push in 2015 leading up to the console release.
• Community Gallery, where you can upload your images.
• Live Chatroom where people can hang out.
• Green/Dev Tracker, where important developer posts on the official forums are tracked. By "important" I mean no moderation posts, no very short/unimportant posts etc.

Design

ESO Champion is not without pretty aesthetics. The site will sport a modern design with traditional ESO colours - Black and Beige. The colour scheme will mainly be black and the translucent main body reveals the 9 constellations of the Champion System laid out in a circular fashion - just like the in-game menu.

Release Date

ESO Champion currently does not have a solid release date. However, expect to see it around Q4 2015 or Q1 2016. Building a website usually does not take so much time, but there are a few issues that need resolving before it enters open beta and then launch.

Issues with development

As with everything developed on the internet there are a few issues with development that need to be resolved:

• The ESO Champion add-on. Developing add-ons, believe it or not, does take some time, especially for someone who knows jack about LUA code.
• The wiki. Developing a wiki for a monster of a game like ESO will take quite some time, in fact the wiki and the database alone are most of the work needed to finish the website. If the wiki and database weren't included, the site would be finished and ready for release in about 2 months.
• Which site provider to use. You definitely have to factor in the technical stuff when developing something. I've ruled out Wordpress as it is extremely user-unfriendly, and vBulletin because it's way too expensive. Currently I'm considering Dreamhost as the web host due its value for money and I'm considering Squarespace to build the site itself.
• The community team. It is physically impossible to manage a website like this by yourself. A community team will have to be made, and I think 7-8 people, whom I will personally message, will do for a community team. It can always be expanded or lessened.

I will post updates to this forum as time passes. We're currently in the "trial and error" stage where ideas are tossed around and demoed on the Squarespace builder. I really do hope that this highly ambitious project does succeed and that ESO will finally have a functioning community website.
Expect a public beta nearer to release. Feel free to leave suggestions and ideas below!