The first chap I meet in the Summerset Isles is an elf with a Sean Penn face who gripes about how he's missing out on a wine tasting because some local Wood Elves "offed" the vintner, because of course. This, after all, is the closed beta for The Elder Scrolls Online's Summerset expansion ($40 on Amazon), which whisks us off to the ancestral homes of the High Elves, a magical land crammed with haughty wizards, Neuschwanstein-like villas, and flora that likely would have been at home in Eden. This dude just wants his wine, and I can appreciate that. ZeniMax Online's game may be crawling with elves and the occasional grumpy orc, but no other MMORPG feels quite so human. That's not to say that other MMOs like Final Fantasy XIV and Star Wars: The Old Republic don't spin a good yarn, but they're more concerned with high drama and the oh-so-important Fate of the World.

Words whispered by a stranger in the bowels of some dimly lit ship. It's been more than a decade since I first played The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and I'm starting to suspect that, for me at least, there will never be another game like it, never another introduction I remember so fondly. It seemed so much larger than six homes and a main road back then. Nowadays every game's an open-world monstrosity packed full of hundreds of activities, but in 2002? Each tiny town was a bustling metropolis.

Have you ever been caught up in an Elder Scrolls Online adventure only to look around, yearning for more scrolls of an elderly variety? Well, it looks like your prayers have just been answered as Bethesda just announced that Morrowind is coming to Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) on June 6th. Imaginatively titled ESO: Morrowind, this expansion takes players back to the island of Vvardenfell, the setting for the seminal Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Existing players can upgrade to the Morrowind edition for $39.99, while new players can get access to both the expansion and existing ESO content for $59.99. While the digital collector's edition will grant you access to a flurry of exclusive in-game content, the physical version includes a rather badass-looking 12-inch Dwarven Colossus statue, a 176-page book, a map of Morrowind and the obligatory exclusive metallic game case.