From Friday, February 28, 12PM EDT to Sunday, March 2nd, 11:59PM EDT Bethesda is opening their new The Elder Scrolls Online game up for a play-test beta. I happen to have an invite for this beta, so I'll be playing it. However, that's not all...

I have a second invitation code that I can give out to a friend. Since all my friends thanked me but had other plans, one of you out here can now be so lucky. But I am not just giving out the invitation code to anyone, I'd prefer it would be a fan of the franchise. So, I'll add a little competition.

But be prepared that you want to do this, as the downside is that it requires that you download and install the 50 megabyte installer and register yourself. Then after you redeem your code, the installer has to download a 29.4 gigabyte game image, including several patches of 4Gb a piece that it has to download separately. You'll need a speedy connection to be able to do so, and lines are congested. And not everyone has a 150Mbit connection as I do.

Anyway, if you feel this is nothing, and you want to play tonight... the first person to post in this thread and answer me these two simple questions, will get the invitation code and full instructions by private message.

1. In Skyrim, who lives across from you in Solitude?
2. In Oblivion, who is the wife of the Gray Fox?

Good luck.

P.S: Yes, the times say EDT, or Eastern Daylight Time. Not my fault, it's what I got in the email. So I suspect you either have to add an hour, or that they really meant EST. :-)

---

Well I know the answer to both questions and am currently replaying Oblivion for the umpteenth time, however 29.4 Gig!! even with my 75Mbit connection that will take a while!! How big does it expand to !!!

I really don't have enough room on my HDD for that.

Pity.

Let us know what you think.

How big does it expand to !!!

The 29.4GB number that I mentioned is the end result file. But, it has to be downloaded all, it's not being installed from a compressed archive.

Apropos, even on my 150Mbit connection it took more than 2 hours to download and install all. Mostly because the 4GB patches came in at only 2MB/sec. ;-)

---

Well, gotta say that the game looks spiffy. We found that the system with the AMD HD 4850 can't play the game when the user has Grass on, as that corrupts the game. Oh well, everything still looks very good without grass. I could even leave BOINC running Seti & Einstein on my AMD HD 7870, in the background of playing this.

I'll put some of the screenshots together that I made and post them here later on. However I am not going to pay 60 euros for just the game and then 15 euros a month to be able to play it online. As that is a per person price, if your other half wants to play it as well, that's 2x60 euros plus 2x15 euros a month. The first month may be 'free', but then 550 euros to buy a game and play it online? Nah.


Anyhow, answers to the question were:
1. In Skyrim, Who lives across from you in Solitude? You had the choice between Addvar, Evette San, the Bard's College and Vittoria Vici. Of course, you'll need to know your house in Solitude is Proudspire Manor.
2. In Oblivion, who is the wife of the Gray Fox? The Gray Fox before you is the Count of Anvil, Corvus Umbranox, so that makes his wife the Countess of Anvil, Millona Umbranox.

---

Didn't really have much time for it this weekend, but things seemed a lot slower than previous betas (this would be my fourth beta weekend) and a lot of the quest bugs still have not been fixed. Unless they really get to making some progress, I would say that April is an overly optimistic release date. I really hope they don't rush it, that could absolutely destroy the game it it's really buggy on release.

There have been a lot of people speculating that the game could go free to play early on; that would probably be okay for people like me who play MMOs more casually, so long as it doesn't turn into "pay to win".

I take it the NDA has been lifted, as the watermark with your email or account name is no longer present.

---

My Detailed BOINC Stats

New beta weekend upcoming. I just downloaded the ~18GB on updates.
I'll still have to set some of the images to PNG and upload them to an image site. But never enough hours in the week.

---

Had a good weekend, but for the multitude of bugged quests and the quite annoying 'kick-Jord-off-the-server-with-an-Unknown_Error' thing. I was kicked off a total of 15 times during the past 2.5 days.

Anyway, I had promised some images.
First, meet my character, Emily Bushelfire.



One of the most beautiful things I have seen in there, and really deafening in NOISE, are the dolmen.







I was watching how some other players killed this one in the last beta weekend.

Lastly for now, also from the last weekend.

---

So, I changed my mind. And bought two copies of the game just minutes ago. One for me, one for the Misses. A bit of pay-it-forward from the tax-return. Which means I'll be even less available from the 1st of April, and that's no joke. 3 days early access to the servers... yes!

Now downloading 23 gigabytes... again.

All 45+ GB is downloaded and installed. Of course, halfway through the download I found that I could've used the Beta installer and updated that. ;-)

---

Ah, remembrance of Skyrim:

---