Bethesda announced Wednesday morning that The Elder Scrolls Online will launch for PC and Mac on April 4, 2014 and for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in June 2014, giving the first release dates for this next chapter in the venerable franchise.

This newly-released gameplay trailed, called War in Cyrodiil highlights The Elder Scrolls Online’s massive PvP system, allowing hundreds of players to fight together, and against one another, in a quest to claim the Ruby Throne.

Bethesda also released a short blog by Matt Firor, the game Director on the project:

Game development is coming along very well. We completed major systems development, and are focusing on making this the Elder Scrolls game you expect: polishing the hundreds and hundreds of hours of content, making combat even more fun and responsive, fixing quest issues, and much, much more. In fact, we plan on spending the next few months before launch reacting to the latest feedback from internal and external testers and gameplay data we have collected.

The Elder Scrolls Online gets a release date and a new gameplay trailer

As some of you know, we’ve been in beta testing for about a year now, leading up to our most recent test in late November where we had over 300,000 people in the game over a 48 hour period. We’ve had approximately 4 million people sign up for beta and that number continues to grow. We hope that just about every one of you who have signed up for beta will get an invitation to play sometime between now and the weeks before launch. These tests are very important, not only for gameplay feedback, but also to test our infrastructure. Beta tests can sometimes be a little rough when we are testing some systems for the first time with large numbers of players. So thank you to all who have participated for your understanding and support. It is very much appreciated.

Worldwide demand for The Elder Scrolls Online is extraordinarily high. This means we need to do a staggered rollout of the different versions of the game to spread out the initial service load and ensure an enjoyable, smooth gameplay experience. It is not only a game we are launching – it is a large online service as well, and our number one priority is to ensure a trouble-free, stable rollout for everyone.

About The Author

Giancarlo Saldana is Blast's Gaming Editor. Follow him on Twitter @giansaldana to read his daily musings about the world of video games.

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