Unfortunate ESO Retcons (Gripe Thread)

[Mattbott]

2nd Era Tamriel.

Of course, you're still correct as the College doesn't exist yet.

thanks for the clarification, i dunno why i thought it was FE..

[CBR JGWRR]

Say what now? The College of Winterhold doesn't exist yet?

Mirabelle Ervine in Skyrim: "The College of Winterhold has been a fixture in Skyrim for thousands of years."

It just seems that for some reason, the College's library only dates to the late Second Era, presumably due to some kind of incident at the College. It's all on the lore page.

Hmm, can't remember her saying that... I can remember the Archmage's line of seeing documents from the late Second Era, but not much further, and Shalidor's Maze being used to test prospective Archmages. Actually, it must be First Era in origin for that line to make any sense... My mistake.


Still, the amount of mistakes already made in ESO aren't filling me with confidence that they will be fixed.

[Mattbott]

haha so my earlier post is entirely inaccurate then..?



Getting the lore right shouldn't be that difficult, if you put the hours into it (which i obviously haven't but i am not making a game)

[CBR JGWRR]

No actually, because the library has been zapped back in time...

[Mattbott]

cool

hope Zenimax are watching this thread

[legoless]

The existence of Cropsford, that town you helped found in Oblivion, was rather annoying.

Ouch, that one hurts. Is their hired "loremaster" just a face for the camera, or is he actually trying to keep an eye on basic stuff like this?

[Minor Edits]

Yeah, that's just remedial.

[AKB]

I would have to say that Cropsford is in probably due to how they designed Cyrodiil, by nicking Oblivion's height maps, and by the relative obscurity of the Cropsford quest. I think that's a genuine error, definitely. They could just say it was serendipity that Second Era Cropsford was named the same, with the future one incidentally finding its way onto the same plot and the settlers choosing the same name, but the point is that they truly need an excuse then.

Can someone point this out to them in a message, actually?

[Minor Edits]

And make sure the message incorporates the seven words you can't say on television.

[legoless]

They have that beta forum, but I haven't looked at it. Might be a way of contacting them.

[AngryNord]

They have a feedback forum there, but users aren't allowed to post in it... I think that says it all, really.

[AKB]

You're supposed to use /feedback in-game, or you can also use your testing groups sub-forum to provide feedback.

And I did ask if there was any real justification of this, I do intend to bring this to their attention however I can if they do not have a good reason to have the town in the game.

[Snail's Pace]

For Cropsford, it's easy to imagine that the Oblivion settlers were simply rebuilding on the site of a previous settlement and gave it the same name. It happens in real-life, too.

I'd file that one in the "New Lore" category rather than the "Errors" category.

[legoless]

For Cropsford, it's easy to imagine that the Oblivion settlers were simply rebuilding on the site of a previous settlement and gave it the same name. It happens in real-life, too.

I'd file that one in the "New Lore" category rather than the "Errors" category.

That's the excuse we've used on the wiki's lore articles for when there's a conflict with founding dates, such as with Rorikstead. For some cases in ESO, this stretch of the imagination works fine, e.g. Hackdirt. But it's hard to believe that a region of Vvardenfell - a Temple reserve - would ever be given a western name like "Pelagiad", or that a settlement (Cropsford) could have existed in goblin territory unless a Second Era group of bumbling Bretons were also conned by the government into buying it. There are plenty of ancient settlements the ESO team are free to explore to their leisure without having to drag brand new settlements into the distant past.

[Snail's Pace]

But it's hard to believe that ... a settlement (Cropsford) could have existed in goblin territory unless a Second Era group of bumbling Bretons were also conned by the government into buying it.

I think that makes it even easier to believe that Cropsford could have existed before the time of TES4: Oblivion.

Edited for clarity

[legoless]

How so? That the settlement repeatedly gets destroyed and refounded or something?

To be fair, maybe the goblin clans weren't around back then. But Barthel Gernand made it pretty clear the name was his own invention: "We plan to call it Cropsford."

[Kerr]

I haven't played it but is Sutch there in ESO? It was nothing more than a ruin by the time of the Oblivion Crisis but should be there in ESO.

[AngryNord]

None of the southwestern cities and settlements are there (Anvil, Kvatch, Skingrad, Ft Sutch), I don't think Leyawiin is there either. Bravil is apparently there but not accessible.

[Snail's Pace]

How so? That the settlement repeatedly gets destroyed and refounded or something?

To be fair, maybe the goblin clans weren't around back then. But Barthel Gernand made it pretty clear the name was his own invention: "We plan to call it Cropsford."

Yes, exactly. In the real world, we rebuild on the same disaster-prone spots all the time. What is far-fetched about that occuring in TES?

I don't see anything in Barthel Gernand's dialogue indicating that he invented the name. For all we know, the name could have already been on the charter that he says he got from the county.

Honestly, the interesting thing about this for me isn't the explanation for why Cropsford exists in the ESO beta, but why several posters on this thread view a common real world occurrence as being too far-fetched to occur in TES.

[Snail's Pace]

@legoless, et al.

I changed my mind about the Cropsford issue and am more in agreement with you now. It shouldn't be in ESO with the name "Cropsford" unless there is some additional lore that explains or hints at why the place will have to be rebuilt in the future. Otherwise, it is probably in ESO by error, not by design.

While I am fine with that kind of ambiguity, not everybody is, and it makes the lore sloppier. You're correct. They need to get it right.

Thank you for your patience.

[AngryNord]

-Ebonheart, supposed to be the 'capital' of the Ebonheart Pact, is just a tiny village. Davon's Watch is at least twice as big, and that's supposed to be just a small city...

-Mournhold, supposed to be the capital of Morrowind, is a lot smaller than it was in Tribunal... And also much smaller than Davon's Watch. And where is the city of Almalexia? it is supposed to surround Mournhold much like Rome surrounds the Vatican...

[Flame of Agnon]

I know this may sound stupid, but I think messy retcons and mistakes aren't that bad. Anything horrible (like authors from a wrong time period) can be fixed, but something like cropsford being there when its not supposed to be can be a writer's dream come true. So much new lore and stories can come from this, just give it time.

(The cropsford thing also reminds me of Rorricksted and how Rorrick could possibly be alive. Awesome time travel theories abound!)

[kertaw48]

I agree that the new additions to lore far outweigh any contradictions that have arisen. I mean, for an example, ever since Redguard and the PGE1, we've been told there was an invasion of Thras, but the only answers answered were what and when (and even that was in question). All the little details were left to the reader to assume, which, while sounding intuitively good, is a cheap literary cop-out, especially since most people are not as creative as the author of the PGE.

Even as such, it's not really lore-healthy to relativize retcons and mistakes as not bad. I really hope that developers of ESO fix their mistakes (I hear that they've responded very well to people's complaints about bugs) . But I've yet so see (even from Bethesda) lore from any Elder Scrolls game being corrected in a patch, so I remain skeptical and as far as I'm concerned, the contradictions are here to stay and I resent the developers for them, especially since it would usually take a single in-game book to fix them.

But that still does not justify the bitterness of people like AngryNord who pick at the tiniest mistakes, especially ones that are present in all Elder Scroll games since Daggerfall. I mean, by that logic we could say that, in Oblivion, the capital of a continent-spanning empire had barely 300 people. A village at best.

As far as I'm concerned, ESO has been the greatest (and definitely largest) contribution to Elder Scrolls lore since Morrowind. I wish that was a compliment.

[legoless]

I give up. Lord Dregas Volar and his Daedric Crescent appear at a Dark Anchor. They do realise this is hundreds of years before the Battlespire even existed.

[kertaw48]

I give up. Lord Dregas Volar and his Daedric Crescent appear at a Dark Anchor. They do realise this is hundreds of years before the Battlespire even existed.

Daedric Crescents were destroyed at the Battlespire, not created. Nor is it stated anywhere that they were created for the sole purpose of taking the Battlespire. If anything, I'm surprised there's only one.