Zenimax gives information on Update 1 and what will come afterward.

As Zenimax Online's MMO, The Elder Scrolls Online, is reaching its first month anniversary, the team shared what they designed for the future of the game. 

First and foremost, they spent time to reduce gold farming and botting, the plague of every MMO, and fix the numerous bugs that are still around. The second bit of news is that the first major update has now been in testing for the past week on the PTS server and will launch soon.

What will be in Update 1, apart from more bug fixes especially edge cases where quests could become de-synced, is:

• Craglorn, the first Adventure Zone, specifically created for groups of Veteran Rank 1 and above characters
• Trials, which are 12-player “raid”-type instances for Veteran Rank characters, featuring completion time leaderboards
• Death Recap: you can now see who killed you and what ability they were using. This is invaluable information in dungeons, PvP and Craglorn.
• Underdog bonuses in Cyrodiil—you’ll get more Alliance Points while fighting for an alliance with a lower population in your campaign
• Animation tweaks and polish
• Combat ability balance changes and fixes
• Class ability tweaks and updates

Future Updates for 2014 and Beyond

• A system that allows grouped players to see each other even when they’re in different phases
• A justice system—steal from and kill NPCs; deal with the consequences if you're caught
• Migration of European Megaserver to the European datacenter.
• Field of View (FOV) adjustment
• Armor dyeing and tinting
• Two new Veteran Dungeons: Crypt of Hearts and City of Ash
• New region of Craglorn with a new Trial (the Serpent)
• Increased ability to pick up items in the world
• Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood storyline and quests
• Spellcrafting
• Horse Racing
• Dragonstar Arena—similar to Trials, but built for a group of four
• Improvements to fishing
• Crafting system improvements
• Improved Looking for Group system
• Better NPC facial animations
• Guild functionality updates: guild store interface updates, customizable guild insignias, tabards, guild ranks and Guild Kiosks—guild stores open to everyone that are available to the highest-bidding guild.
• Auto-leveling dungeons that level to your group leader
• Awards when you repeat dungeons
• Imperial City PvP dungeon

Compensation for Launch Bugs

Some of the launch issues affected early gameplay for a lot of players, especially black market botting and spam, de-synced quests, and the disappearing bank slot bug. In compensation, every ESO player who set up an active account prior to 8pm EDT on Thursday, May 1st will get an extension of five days added to their 30 days of included game time. If you’re eligible to receive the five additional days, a confirmation will be sent to your account’s registered email address.

More on Craglorn and Trials

The Craglorn area is an adventure zone, aka an open zone offering content for groups of players of veteran rank 1 and above. You'll find a new quest timeline, skyshards, dungeons but also specific raid-type kind of instances: Trials.

Trials are 12-person instances with four powerful bosses which are meant to be completed in about 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Two trials will be available when Update 1 launches: Aetherium Archive and Hel Ra Citadel. The specificity of those zones is that you have a limited number of resurrections available (twelve). But don't fret, if you run out of resurrections, you can always leave and restart the trial—there are no lockouts. The very best loot, a special set piece dropping on the final boss, can only be earned once a week. There is also a timer, and the most efficient players with the shortest completion time will enter leaderboards. The 100 best players for the week will get a bonus loot.

Guilhemette "Whilhelmina" Giacopazzi