Interactive Elder Scrolls Twitch stream teases new Eslweyr online expansion

New year, new Elder Scrolls Online content. And this time it involves dragons.

Bethesda has become notorious for drumming up game announcement anticipation through interesting antics on Twitch. The gaming community won’t soon forget how the studio preempted Fallout 76 news with a day-long stream of a Fallout loading screen, a loading screen that thousands of people willingly watched.

Now Bethesda is back at it again, but this time their Twitch stream is interactive. Upon tuning into Bethesda’s Twitch channel, viewers are greeted with what appears to be a stone surface, geometrically decorated with various carvings. It’s called “The Tablet,” and sparks fly from the middle of the screen to the outer edges, where they coalesce into a glowing trace of the carvings.

Through a Twitch extension, viewers have discovered that they are the ones causing the sparks. By clicking on the stream, they can “infuse the stone with magic and participate with the world.”

via GIPHY

Presumably, viewers have to work together to fill the entire surface with magic before anything more exciting happens. But, according to Elder Scrolls Online official Twitter, interacting with the stream does give viewers a chance to win prizes, with more clicks equaling more prizes given out. The tweet also mentions a world premiere trailer on the way.

As for what the trailer is about, that information was already leaked earlier by dataminers. “The Tablet” stream is a teaser for an upcoming Elder Scrolls Online expansion called Elsweyr, and the data mine revealed this description:

"Venture to the land of the Khajiit in The Elder Scrolls Online: Elsweyr, our newest chapter, an epic story in an all-new zone. Face dread creatures from the past—Dragons!—and discover the dark skills of a new character class, the Necromancer, as you join with new friends and old enemies to save Elsweyr from war and devastation.ESO reaches new heights of storytelling with a war against the Dragons that unfolds and builds over four quarterly releases to an unexpected climax."

In summary, ESO is getting dragons, necromancers and the region of Elsweyr, with future 2019 releases all following an overarching plot line.

With news from the data mine spreading throughout the internet, Bethesda confirmed the leak with a tweet promising more information during an upcoming Twitch broadcast on Jan. 15 where creative director Rich Lambert will outline the future of ESO in 2019. People tuning in on that day will also have the opportunity to unlock virtual goodies based on how many people watch the stream concurrently.

https://twitter.com/TESOnline/status/1081992728098078720

Until then, you can participate in the ESO hype (and maybe win some prizes) by visiting Bethesda’s Twitch channel and doing your part by clicking a couple of times.