Ten years is a long time. This is the achievement of The Elder Scrolls Online in 2024, a ten-year-long journey filled with memories and adventures throughout Tamriel. The latest addition to the ten-year-long journey takes players back to a familiar location pulled from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the West Weald but this time in The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road. The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road adds hours of additional content, a new scribing system that bolsters every class in the game with new abilities and brings fans back to a favourite locale in the West Weald without skipping a beat. I say it’s about time.
After the exploits of Necrom (which may have been my favourite DLC addition to date), I had concerns that this expansion would be a step in the wrong direction, considering so much was done with what was already offered in ESO. But I couldn’t have been more mistaken and excited for it. The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road brings players back to the center mass of Tamriel, Cyrodiil, without the need to defend themselves against opposing players.
One of the best parts of The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road is that it feels like a full-fledged expansion to the story set in Necrom, but that’s also its biggest flaw. Every other add-on to the base game has felt like you can dive in without even playing the story, as each add-on felt standalone and a different book set in the same universe.
Throning a new king in Orsinium, meeting the Night Mother in the similarly named Gold Coast, and even the small narrative of Murkmire brought its little slice of Tamriel to explore, but I can’t help but feel players who have not played Necrom should do so before they play this one. Breaking tradition and continuing a story worth telling is a bold move, one that I am happy the development team went with, but not one everyone will be thrilled at.
“The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road adds hours of additional content, a new scribing system that bolsters every class in the game with new abilities and brings fans back to a favourite locale in the West Weald without skipping a beat.”
The beginnings of Gold Road task you with retracing the many paths the new Daedric Prince Ithelia has followed to determine what exactly is going on in Nirn. The introduction of a new Prince goes hand-in-hand with the introduction of a new group of Daedra maniacs willing to fall to the sword for what they believe in. This charming group is referred to as the Recollection, and without diving too far into the story beats (spoilers loom around everywhere), it’s one of the best they’ve told since The Elder Scrolls Online launched.
The whimsical feeling of stumbling across a cursed town and finding everyone petrified is amplified here, and let’s face it, The Elder Scrolls (not just The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road) is at its best when you explore and see what the people of Nirn are capable of messing up. The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road went back to this ‘stumble upon’ method of questing with vigour, and hats off to ZeniMax for following this path.
The dev team seriously blew smoke for the new environments present in the West Weald, and I’m stunned to say they hit the nail dead on its head. The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road is possibly the richest environment in ESO to date. A forest is smack dab in the middle of the West Weald, and Aylied ruins populate the landscape as they did in Oblivion. Skingrad is a stunning hub city location that appears as if it was yanked straight from a travel brochure, and the attention to detail in the surroundings is impeccable.
The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road has also taken inspiration from the other Elder Scrolls title, Skyrim, by placing an entire subplot of faction vs. faction (similar to the Stormcloaks against Imperials) inside that very forest. The Colovians and Bosmer don’t agree with each other’s politics, and it’s more diplomatic than, say Game of Thrones’ Red Wedding (or Imperials wanting to kill Ulfric Stormcloak). There’s a lot to explore here, especially for the Elder Scrolls die-hards, but while some quests are stronger than others, I can’t help but feel like I’ve done all of this before.
“The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road is possibly the richest environment in ESO to date.”
It turns out I have while playing every other add-on (that I’ve played) in ESO, and even every other MMO RPG. A wealth of quest busy-work plagues Gold Road and is an artificial lengthening of the expansion. Leramil the Wise is your contact (throughout Necrom also), and she conjures a portal to anywhere at any time. When Leramil needs the player to come with her, she travels you by portal without needing an Uber. But, when she sends you on a task, this is where tried and true RPG menial fetch quests rear their ugly head.
The writing for all Elder Scrolls is always greater than average (especially in The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road), and the team takes care not to step on the lore in any way. Certain quest actions (the artifact charging the main questline in particular) feel meaningless sometimes and like an excuse to lengthen a questline. This effectively sucks all of the air out of the room when you hit a solid stride in a good quest line.
One of the highlights of the expansion, the Scribing system, is the best thing Gold Road offers, and that’s including the intriguing questline that goes along with it. After completing some basic quests for The Scholarium (this will be a spoiler-free mention, considering the storyline is a STRONG component of this add-on), you can tag special effects to abilities. The questline makes your created character feel like the main character for the first time since confronting Molag Bal in the base game. You must prove yourself worthy of wielding the power of Scribing. The luminaries must be pleased and it’s your job to do so to access the full brunt of the Scribe.
After toying with the system a bit, I noticed you could tag healing spells to other weaponry (not just the restoration staff). This is a BIG single-player game changer, as using the entire back bar to heal while trying to do damage is burdensome. These abilities also tag to what you have already built. If your Dunmer Templar has mastery in the Racial Dual Wield Damage skill, this directly applies to the Travelling Knife Scribe skill and makes it cut much deeper.
“The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road is a testament to the longevity of ESO, and it’s easy to see why the title has lasted for ten years.”
This circus juggling act that the developers perform each time an add-on is produced is a Herculean task but one that ZeniMax makes look easy after ten years. This is very similar to the Antiquities ability added in Summerset, and by adding the Scribing system, ZeniMax is adding value not only to the rest of the current game, but to future add-ons as well. My favourite skill is the AoE Destruction Staff skill, Elemental Explosion, and I have added abilities to make it not only immobilize enemies for three seconds but also keep them off balance for seven. Crowd control is easier here than at a buffet.
While adventuring in The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road, a general happenstance that made me fall in love with it years ago happened. Looking at the overworld chat and seeing a traveler request help for a world boss is an SOS beacon this Dunmer always responds to. I ‘had’ to defeat a Wood Elf Spinner Urthrendir with comrades who were out of sync.
This is one of the best experiences in The Elder Scrolls Online, confronting hard tasks with others and in Gold Road it continues to absolutely rock. After nearly fighting back our adversary’s numerous ads, we fell to his magical might to which my teammate wrote “NOOO!” in the chat. This was a genuinely funny moment and made us try the task again with new (still non-communicative) strategies.
Sweating and overcoming these amazing encounters is the bread and butter of ESO, and with every add-on, the title gets players to come back and populate these areas with more stories to tell and adventures to embark on. As the Wood Elf fell, we all emoted in victory, and this triumph is the true magic of The Elder Scrolls Online. The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road, if nothing else, does one thing well. It brings more of the best The Elder Scrolls Online has to offer, and that is a true accomplishment.
I love The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road. It brought me back to not only one of my favourite locations in Oblivion, but brought me back to why I started playing in the first place. Excellent storylines, a new Daedric Prince (that gets top-billing screen time), and beautiful lush biomes populate the West Weald. Character writing is on point, and each questline demands the player to keep going. Other Daedric Prince statues are also present, which makes this feel even more like a long-lost friend you haven’t visited in years.
The main issues with Gold Road: the artificial quest lengthening, tedious travel, and some pointless-feeling tasks do drain the player at some points, but these instances are far from game breaking (no matter how much of a drag it feels). The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road is a testament to the longevity of ESO, and it’s easy to see why the title has lasted for ten years. As a player from day one, I can’t wait to see where ZeniMax takes ESO next. Happy Anniversary ESO.
