Frior reflects on 2014 and looks ahead to what's ahead in Elder Scrolls Online.

The Elder Scrolls Online launched earlier this year and Game Director Matt Frior took the opportunity to look back on 2014 and ahead to what's next in 2015.

Looking Back

As with any game, updates have been rolling out to refine and add to the game. Through five major updates, improvements to TESO have included:

• Implemented many different lines of defense against black market gold farmers, spammers and botters
• Fixed a far-reaching quest bug that prevented quests from advancing properly
• Released Craglorn with new Veteran Ranks, a new zone for veteran players to explore and 12-player Trials
• Released many Veteran Dungeons
• Re-designed many of the delves throughout Tamriel to be larger and more challenging
• Introduced the Dragonstar Arena, which presents four-player groups with a progression of challenging PvE encounters
• Introduced new quality-of-life systems like the ability to dye armor, new upgraded conversation and face animations, guild tabards, chat bubbles and much more
• Smoothed combat animations and timing, an ongoing process
• Reconfigured Campaigns in Cyrodiil to make them shorter and more interesting
• Made repeatable dungeon and crafting quests, and implemented scaling dungeon difficulty

Looking Forward

The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One launch of Elder Scrolls Online is still ahead for 2015, but first Update 6 will be released in January 2015. It includes the Champion System, which features post-level 50 veteran progression changes and the Justice System, which will be introduced in phases and in its first phase, will include Skyrim-esque PvE elements such as pickpocketing and stealing from NPCs, with repercussions from the guards.

The console development will include the new Champion and Justice features in its release version. Frior stresses the the PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game are "not just ports of the PC/Mac game" and mentions the UI being redesigned for these systems to be more console-friendly. Xbox Live and PlayStation Network integration and voice chat will also be included.

We look forward to seeing everything The Elder Scrolls Online brings to the table in 2015!

Ann "Cyliena" Hosler, Managing Editor