I thought you were going to mention that there shouldn't be any Ayleid ruins in High Rock in the first place.
They really shouldn't repeat mistakes they made at launch. At least make it a Direnni ruin.

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Direnni

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Laloriaran_Dynar

TX12001rwb17_ESO wrote: »

I am mostly disappointed with how they used the Wayrest Castle/Daggerfall Overlook/Ravenwatch Castle design for one of the new dungeons.

This had me looking sideways lol

It's a new DLC and you're using really old textures and assets on top of new higher-res ones..it looks gross to look at imo.

I'm really confused...

Should there be Ayleid ruins to begin with?

I thought Direnni bred with their slave Nedic and eventually created the Bretons.

Are Direnni Ayleid?

Was gonna start by saying something funny and clever about the presence of those Ayleid ruins in High Rock. Something about them being imported from Cyrodiil due to a fad among the kings of High Rock, and something about selling the Direnni stuff as raw masonry to Elsweyr or some other place. but... It's way too damn hot for my poor old brain, and it all got muddled up and don't want to think about it too hard, so just imagine I said something funny and insightful.

The real thing though, that I wanted to comment on, was that ZOS doesn't give a flying hoot about lore. Never has, never will. Bethesda doesn't care about it either. None of it matters to them. Elder Scroll is not some revered part of our literary history from ages past, it's an intellectual property they aim to use to make money with.

As such, each installment of the franchise is it's own unique concoction. They go with whatever they think to be coolest and most bankable idea at the moment of it's inception and just roll with that. If some other earlier title said something to the contrary of the current idea, then it's time to retcon. Or just ignore whatever was said before an not worry if it makes any sense.

Unlike some writer who is creating a fantasy world they want to write stories about, the world of Elder Scrolls is not the product that ZOS or Bethesda are trying to sell. They are trying to sell us games (and merchandise tied to those games.) The world is not the product itself, just a brand name that helps people find new stuff to buy. Thus internal consistency is not a high priority.

I learned long time ago to deal with all installments, of franchises such as Elder Scrolls, as their own separate unique things. Every game has it's own lore and setting and world. Any continuity or shared elements between games ins incidental and not important. It has made enjoying these things for what they are lot less headache inducing. Which is a shame in a way, since I used to be big into the lore of these sort of fantasy worlds. It's just that none of it really matters to the people who hold power over it. If someone gets a cool idea they think can make money, that doesn't fit the existing "lore", then the lore can just take a hike and that's that.

Obviously the root cause for this particular inconsistency regarding those Ayleid ruins in High Rock, is that they needed stuff in those zones back in 2014, but did not have the budget to create unique assets for them. So out go the Direnni and in come the Ayleids, problem solved. I am actually sortta surprised that they at least bothered to make the distinction between Aldmer and Ayleid ruins in Auridon. You know, by the color of the crystals in those places. Aldmer ruins have orangy yellow hued crystals, while Ayleid have those cold bluish thingies.

But when the time came to add Summerset to the game, they ignored the lore of their own bloody game. They had established that Aldemr ruins had the same general architectural style as Ayleid ruins, but using old assets would not help to boost sales of the expansion, so they just made a completely new tile set for Aldmer ruins in Summerset, that has nothing to do with the ones that exist in Auridon.

So... the weirdness of Ayleid ruins in High Rock just doesn't matter much in the end.

Olauron wrote: »

Grandchamp1989 wrote: »

I'm really confused...

Should there be Ayleid ruins to begin with?

I thought Direnni bred with their slave Nedic and eventually created the Bretons.

Are Direnni Ayleid?

The difference between Ayleid and Direnni is... name. That's it. Both are just Aldmer who were not changed by some external powers (unlike dunmer, bosmer, orsimer). You will not see a difference in appearance of Altmer, Ayleid or Direnni. There may be some cultural difference between Ayleid and Direnni, and there may be not. After all, there are hundreds of Ayleid kingdoms with completely different cultures and beliefs, yet all of them are represented by the same Ayleid ruins with the Auri-el statue (even if their main god is Magnus or Meridia, or Molag Bal, or some insect thing, or whatever they could imagine).

hcbigdogdoghc wrote: »

There really shouldn't. There are no references to Ayleid in Northwestern Tamriel before ESO at all.

ESO gave us the explanation that some Ayleid fled to High Rock after the Alessians defeated them, which makes sense.

This has nothing to do with ESO at all.
Then in 361, the Alessians gained control of the Empire and enforced the Alessian Doctrines throughout its domain. The Ayleid lordships were abolished. Enforcement of this decree does not appear to have required much direct violence -- it seems that by this point the balance of power was so overwhelmingly against them, and their fate so long foreshadowed, that most of the remaining Ayleids simply left Cyrodiil, eventually being absorbed into the Elven populations of Valenwood and High Rock. Indeed, the rise of the Direnni Hegemony may be linked to this exodus of Ayleids from Cyrodiil (a connection so far little studied by historians).
The Last King of the Ayleids by Herminia Cinna from TES 4: Oblivion (given that Herminia Cinna is an ordinary imperial NPC in the same game, having this book in ESO is lore-breaking, by the way).

Really interesting, seems like it's not so black and white maybe..

I was discussing this with someone the other day and have come to the conclusion that someone at ZOS must have seen at least something complaining about Ayleids everywhere (especially High Rock) and they decided to keep doing it anyway in reference to some internal joke or just to troll the lore community. It's either that or the writers ignore the forums entirely because they're so convinced of their own vision, but I bet Morrowind wouldn't get the same treatment. When even Lawrence Schick admits there are lore errors (like Dawn Era Ayleids) and ZOS still hasn't fixed it despite it having been brought up with two Loremasters over a number of years, you know they don't really care. It saddens me as a frequent ESO player that I need to overlook such things whenever I end up in pseudo-High Rock.

Re: "Lore errors." Todd Howard said that if it appeared onscreen then it's lore. Sorry, I can't find the video-- but he was talking about different levels of lore or canon, and IIRC the highest level was if it appeared onscreen in one of the games. So even if a loremaster "admits" that something was a "lore error," if it did make it into one of the games-- and was approved by Bethesda before making it into one of the games-- then it's lore.