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Next chapter of ‘The Elder Scrolls Online’ will take players back to Morrowind

The Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind Announcement Trailer
Bethesda on Tuesday unveiled The Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind, the next chapter in the popular massively multiplayer online (MMO) game. The Morrowind expansion reportedly features around 30 hours of new content and takes place on Vvardenfell, the ashen island setting of the beloved The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.

TESO‘s Morrowind expansion also features a new class (the Warden), a player-versus-player mode called Battlegrounds, a new Trial, and more, the company said. TESO: Morrowind will be available on Windows, Mac, PS4 and Xbox One on June 6. According to listings on the Xbox Store, the expansion upgrade will cost $39.99, while the expansion plus base game is $59.99. Pre-orders for a digital collector’s edition, which includes a special gray bear ally, an armored war horse, a Dwarven spider pet, a Morag Tong armor converter, and exclusive character emotes, are available on the official Elder Scrolls website.

Released in 2002, Morrowind laid the blueprint for more modern Elder Scrolls games like Oblivion and Skyrim, and many players to this day maintain that it’s the best of the bunch thanks to its unique setting and unprecedented player freedom. The cinematic trailer released Tuesday features some big mushrooms and Dwemer spiders and centurions, elements fans of the original should find enticing — plus a familiar location in a shot at the end.

The expansion was unveiled during a liv-stream in which Bethesda promised to unveil “a bunch of new, exciting information that you definitely won’t want to miss.”

The Morrowind expansion was first guessed at in early January, when a Reddit user going by the name FloorBelow posted an image of an alleged ESO map alongside an explanation of what he discovered while data mining the game’s code.

The Elder Scrolls Online was released on PC in 2014. Originally, the game required a monthly access subscription, but by the time the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 ports were released, the game ditched the subscription service for the base game and was rebranded as The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited.

The removal of subscription fees for the base game has helped turn the game into a hit. In June 2016, the game eclipsed 7 million registered users. While we don’t know how many players are actually active, the game is apparently doing well enough to warrant another chapter.

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Steven Petite
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Steven is a writer from Northeast Ohio currently based in Louisiana. He writes about video games and books, and consumes…
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