Videogames have always been cavalier with numbers. For decades, series like Final Fantasy and Unreal Tournament have brazenly ignored the fundamentals of sequel ordering, not to mention the whole ‘making art with mathematics’ thing videogames are wont to do. But now they’ve started playing fast and loose with the concept of anniversaries too, and I simply refuse to accept it.
Nightdive Studios started this trend by recently unveiling its 25th anniversary remaster of System Shock 2, which is actually coming out 26 years after launch. Now, Bethesda has announced it is selling shards of The Elder Scrolls Online’s servers to celebrate the game’s 10th anniversary, which was in April last year. You can’t have a birthday that lasts a whole year, Bethesda! Even a five-year-old wouldn’t try to swing that one.
Nonetheless, Bethesda has forged ahead with The Elder Scrolls Online 10-year anniversary server keepsake, which was announced earlier this week (via Kotaku). According to the keepsake’s page on the Bethesda website, this has been created for players who wish for “something truly meaningful to commemorate over a decade of adventure with friends” (one year over a decade, to be specific) letting them own an “actual physical piece of The Elder Scrolls Online history.”
That ‘piece’ is specifically a disused stick of RAM removed from one of The Elder Scrolls Online’s server racks. Of course, it won’t just be sent to you in a jiffy bag. It comes neatly framed alongside a shiny zinc alloy commemorative plate engraved with ESO’s ouroboros logo and the (temporally inaccurate) declaration “10 Years”. The whole package costs $110, which personally I would put toward some brand new sticks of RAM for my increasingly decrepit PC. But if you’re a die-hard Elder Scrolls Online fan, I can see the appeal.
If this does tickle your fancy, the keepsake is available for pre-order now, and will be delivered in July. Only 2,000 of these will be made, apparently, each coming with a certificate of authenticity and a sequentially numbered holographic sticker.
This isn’t the only way Bethesda is celebrating 10 11 years of The Elder Scrolls Online. After years of annual updates expanding into new areas of Tamriel, the MMO is shifting to a more “seasonal structure” to deliver a brand new story called Seasons of the Worm Cult. “This is a sequel to the base game storyline,” game director Rich Lambert told Harvey earlier this month. “Ten years in the making.”
