On March 25h 1994 The Elder Scrolls: Arena was released and a franchise was born. This franchise has come to mean a lot to me for a lot of different reasons, and because today marks its 30th anniversary I'm going to take you on my journey.
I started playing Skyrim in 2012. The first mention of the game on this blog is from April 2012. Skyrim wasn't just my first Elder Scrolls game, but my first open world game and my first RPG, and it opened the world of gaming for me in a way no other game I had tried before had managed. 2012 was my first playthrough. 2021 when Anniversary Edition released on the game's 10th anniversary is to date my most recent playthrough and I still come back to it. I have Skyrim screenshots from every year from 2013 to 2021.
After I played Skyrim I became interested in the other Elder Scrolls games and I played both Oblivion and Morrowind in 2013. As a skybaby my first foray into Morrowind didn't go at all smoothly, but with some tips and tricks from an online friend on Steam I managed to play through the game and Morrowind became one of my favourite games of all time. I also tried my hand at Arena and Daggerfall around this time, but didn't complete them.
Having played all those games in the same universe I got a little bit curious about lore and started reading about the different races of the world. Especially the extinct races caught my fancy. But I didn't delve too deep into it at that time.
Because in 2014 Elder Scrolls Online released and for the next few years I was stuck. In 2016 I joined a guild called Masters of Eternia where I met a bunch of people who later formed the Guild of Adventure in 2017. These guilds are what prompted me to join discord and through these guilds I met a lot of people who've become close friends. Some of whom I've even met IRL now!
I was a guild officer for both guilds until I left MoE in 2017 and GoA in 2020. I'm still in contact with a bunch of the guildies though! Joining discord for the guilds prompted a whole new era of Elder Scrolls for me. In 2019 I joined the server for this youtuber and quickly became a staff member of that server. Via this server I joined the r/Skyrim server in 2021 and once the youtuber server era came to an end (for reasons I don't need to go into here) the Skyrim server became my main server on discord. I joined the staff team there on April 2nd 2022. Turns out a lot of the Elder Scrolls related servers on discord share members so via the Skyrim discord I joined a whole bunch of other servers (most notably the r/Oblivion server) and now spend most of my days with other TES fans. Via all these servers I've gotten to know so many people and many of them I consider real friends.
As for the games... In 2017 I played Legends, the card-game spin-off, which didn't impress me much back then but I might give it another shot. Last year I started playing Blades, the mobile RPG, and this year I started playing Castles, the Fallout Shelter TES replica, as soon as it was released in Sweden.
Last year I also started to delve deeper into the lore. As they say in Doctor Who: it's bigger on the inside! I'm having a lot of fun learning about the history, cultures and metaphysics of the Elder Scrolls universe and love seeing how all these things connect both in-universe and with RL inspirations. The lore is badass and messed up and wonderful. Have this amazing fan video of Pelinal as reference:
As for fun things that have happened over the years I've been involved in the games/fandom:
• In both 2017 and 2018 GoA did madness runs of trials (12-person dungeons), completing them with severely underlevelled characters.
• We accidentally started the cult of dagothwave on the Skyrim server and to date the dagothwave song has been played over 2000 times. Listening sessions are called "wavin".
• I discovered a total overhaul mod of my favourite Total War game, placing it in Tamriel rather than Europe, and played that extensively.
• Last year was the first year I bought an advent calendar since I was a kid, and only because it was Skyrim.
The Elder Scrolls have given me so much enjoyment. Not only in the terms of hours of gameplay, but also in the form of shenanigans and hijinks, intellectual discourse from lore stuff (so much comparative religion omg), and so many friends. I'll be forever thankful that I decided to try Skyrim that day and that it opened the world of gaming and TES for me ♥
Today, as part of the 30th anniversary celebration, Bethesda released two announcements. Both of which reference the next Elder Scrolls game, and I'm hopeful this means we'll see a new TES before the 20s turn into the 30s!
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