Elder Scrolls Online's new Gold Road expansion might just make me an MMO convert

Yesterday, if you can believe it, marked the tenth anniversary of The Elder Scrolls Online. That's a whole decade of tromping across Tamriel with your mates, and a whole decade in which I've watched tentatively from the sidelines, thinking about dipping my toes into the MMO pool, but never quite building up the courage (or lining the walls of my bank account) to fully take the plunge. I've heard all the horror stories about starting a new MMO from other members of the RPS Treehouse - particularly when it comes to the lore-laden shackles of World Of Warcraft and the bloated MMO-service-hybrid Destiny - and quite honestly, it's enough to put me off them all entirely. But The Elder Scrolls Online might just be the exception to the rule.

I spent a portion of the game's tenth birthday yesterday playing Gold Road, its upcoming eighth Chapter expansion. In it, you're whisked over to the West Weald, an autumnal, sun-dappled region whose main city hub, Skingrad, will no doubt feel familiar to seasoned Oblivionites. Seemingly overnight, a strange jungle has sprung up on the city's outskirts, uprooting the nearby villages of the neighbouring high elves and causing havoc as strange beasts pour out of its curling root beds. There are more mysteries to unravel here, too, including the emergence of the new Daedric Prince, Ithelia (revealed at the end of last year's Necrom Chapter), and much more besides - too much to realistically take in during a 90-minute preview session, or for this MMO newbie to fully comprehend the significance of. But there's something about Gold Road and its gnarled-up jungles, strange cults and fantastical beasts that's definitely made me want to make a return journey here when it launches on PC on June 3rd.

I started my quest by getting parped out of a portal on Skingrad's outskirts. While my pre-built character had all the bells and whistles unlocked as part of the preview build I was playing, first time players will be able to jump into Gold Road with just as much haste as their decade-old counterparts. The Elder Scrolls Online has been completely non-linear since the introduction of its Chapter expansions back in 2017, allowing players to tackle almost all of its quests in any order, and at any level. It's a neat trick - and one that World Of Warcraft could arguably stand to learn a thing or two from - as it means you won't have to grind up through the previous seven Chapters to get right into it (though given that this particular Chapter follows on from Necrom's big cliffhanger, the developers do recommend you play that one first if you want the full story experience).

Still, the Necrom preamble aside, Gold Road makes a very amenable first impression. Developers Zenimax Online Studios definitely haven't mucked about with the titular colour palette here, as on the ascent up from the portal, you're greeted with an almost perpetual sunset falling over fields of rich vineyards (with nary a single low-poly grape in sight - don't worry, I checked), colourful autumnal trees and large, stately manor houses. It's a place that screams, 'Yes, nothing bad could possibly happen here, no sirree.' That is, until a woman gets spat out of another portal in front of you that's lined with black, oozing tentacles and oval-goat-like green eyes bubbling around its edges. Her name is Valaria Calidius, and she's here to tell you about the Lucent Citadel, the game's latest 12-player trial activity. She makes it sound all very urgent and important, but given the limited time I have, I bid her and her no-thank-you-eyeball-portal good day and about face. I want to get as far away from those tentacles as possible, and as I quickly scan my navigation bar in search of an emergency waypoint, it turns out I missed another important quest giver back down the hill.

There are other scraps of parchment lying conspicuously in the middle of the road, as well as other NPCs milling about in camps and crossroads who are also just itching to add more things to my to-do list, but I resist the urge to start collecting questlines I know I'll never even start or finish. There's 30+ hours of stuff here to dig into, and I only have 90-odd minutes to make a dent on this, so I make a beeline for the wise lady who'll set me down the critical path and most importantly, give me a reason to visit the West Weald's mad jungle forests. There are two other areas I need investigate as part of that main story quest, she tells me, but I can see the coiling branches of Ostumir rising up on the horizon, and they're simply too enticing to ignore. With a new objective in hand, I set off, and almost immediately find myself in a scorched and barren beige wasteland, dead villagers slumped by rotten doorframes, with bandits and vultures picking through the ruins. It's quite the contrast from the safe and comfortable confines of Skingrad, setting the scene for what's to come. Something bad definitely did happen here, and all fingers seem to point to the overnight jungle that's sprung up on the horizon.

First, though, some fingers are being pointed at me, which means it's fight time. ESO's combat still has that Skyrim weightlessness that makes each sword strike feel like the waft of a feather when you're right up in the thick of it, and most of my encounters descended into a maddened frenzy of simple mouse-mashing. Class specific skills earned through levelling can be mapped to 1-5 on your keyboard to spice things up a notch, as well as an Ultimate set to R - though thanks to my preview character's exceedingly generous stat base, this too felt like I could simply rinse-and-repeat them all in order without really eating into my magic or stamina bars. Still, while I wouldn't say there's a lot of skill involved in any given combat encounter, I do like how active they are, as I was always circling my opponent to stay out of harm's way, dodging area-of-effect attacks laid out in red zones on the floor, dashing out of the way of charges, blocking big swings, and occasionally hammering both mouse buttons together to interrupt their next attack. Yes, it's all a bit mindless, but certainly a touch more engaging than what I remember about the fisticuffs I had in Skyrim.

Besides, with Gold Road's new Scribing system in tow as well, this promises to let you customise your character's skills even further, giving them additional abilities, buffs and debuff effects, and even altering their appearance for that extra personal touch. Again, as a new player, I'll admit that the precise ins and outs that scribing can have on the game's combat was somewhat lost on me. But I do like the idea of being able to tweak your build even further toward your own particular playstyle, and I look forward to tinkering about with them more in the future. I just hope the consumable Ink resources you'll need to scribe them in the first place - along with the grimoires and scripts to make them and add specific effects - won't be too burdensome to find, earn or collect.

Still, as I mince up the feathered and scorpion-like bodies of chimeric Wildburn Tharrikers and the rune-etched faces of various bears and lynxes lurking about, I eventually come across Ostumir proper - or at least what's left of it. The locals who once lived on these rolling hills of farmland tell me they were rather taken by surprise when this jungle suddenly appeared beneath their feet overnight, sending their houses and manors skyward up into the lush green canopies of its twisted woodwork. It's an eerie sight, seeing so many trees wearing cottages like cardigans, especially when they're all dangling several storeys above your own head. Sure, ESO isn't the prettiest game out there - to put it politely, you can probably still feel every bit of those ten years in how it looks and feels to play - but the crucial thing is that the world still feels evocative, drawing your eye forward with its wild scenery as you venture out to your next objective marker.

In this case, it leads me to a chap called Beragon, who's looking for survivors still trapped in the rubble down on terra firma. He accompanies me as I go about doing my good deeds, and while I don't get the impression he's one of the game's full-blown companion NPCs (which were introduced with the 2021's fifth Chapter, Blackwood), I have to say he's still a pretty dab hand at helping to fight off the local wildlife that's moved in since. He, too, is looking for someone specific - a lady by the name of Greenspeaker Sorilen, who in turn is trying to seek out some ancient ruins that might hold the answer to why this jungle's appeared in the first place. You can see the breadcrumb trail forming, and when another player suddenly turned up midway through my quest to join in biffing the cultists who have set up shop in said ruins, I can easily imagine myself getting sucked down the rabbit hole hook line and sinker. How's your week? *clang* Yeah, not bad, thanks. *klunk* You been watching Succession/3 Body Problem/current streaming show of the moment delete as appropriate? *everything screeches in an ear-curdling death rattle* You know how it goes.

But even if I was playing alone, I can also see ESO being a good podcast game, or something to unwind with. Combat isn't so difficult as to require a huge amount of concentration, for example, and the dripfeed rhythm of its 'one more thing' story beats were enough to keep me firmly in its grip as I ploughed forward - so much so that when my demo handler told me it was time to stop, I felt genuinely bereft that I wasn't going to be able to see the quest through to its conclusion. That, and also mildly relieved that my impromptu co-op partner hadn't just stopped following me out of boredom or disdain over my fire-staff-wielding abilities a moment ago, but that they, too, had probably been booted from their demo PC.

My time with Gold Road was brief, but it's a place I'm eager to return to, especially when I now know I won't have to grind through umpteen other expansions first (looking at you, Final Fantasy 14) before I can even get my toes wet. It's quite a tall order, starting a new MMO in the year of our Horace, 2024, let alone one that's been going for ten years already. But The Elder Scrolls Online feels like the one that's arguably the most beginner-friendly, both in how it lets you pick and choose from its bevy of Chapter expansions in whatever order you like, and the fact that you don't need to pay a subscription, have hit a certain level cap, or have a ready-made band of friends with you to tackle its main story quests. Instead, each Chapter is a one-off, upfront cost, and you can tackle as few or as many as you like to get your fill.

The high-level end-game stuff is still there if you want it as well - along with its eye-encrusted tentacle portals - but they're not essential to having just a regular fun time as a lonesome solo player. I can quite comfortably imagine the level 10 wood elf I made earlier this month (who's still hanging out on the shores of Elsweyr in ESO's Aldmeri starting area) having a grand old time in Gold Road when it comes to PC on June 3rd, and really, for me, that's half the battle won already - unlike trying to parse the tomes of prerequisites for getting into something like World Of Warcraft or Final Fantasy 14, not to mention the ongoing costs of their respective subscriptions. Besides, if your main hankering in The Elder Scrolls series is really just 'I'd like to play Oblivion again with some fresh set dressing again, please,' then Gold Road is arguably the really the last big piece of the Tamriel puzzle left to go here. Ultimately, I came away quite buoyed by my experience with it, thinking you know what? It might finally be time to take the plunge on this old MMO lark. Who needs The Elder Scrolls 6 when this is right here?