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MMORPG stands for game as a service, which in the best case means years of content floods and for this page a bunch of OSTs for the various expansions of The Elder Scrolls Online. It all started in 2017 with The Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind, transporting us to the island of the same name, which we already know from The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind , home to the dark elves known as the Dunmer. As with the main game, series composer Jeremy Soule is not involved, but Brad Derrick is. Unfortunately, he rarely achieved the qualities of his colleague, but I don't want to be too harsh. After all, the games in the main series are considered milestones in video game history and therefore benefit from a lot of nostalgia.

In TESO: Morrowind , Derrick's kinship with Jeremy Soule's work doesn't stay behind the ash heap for long. As in the fantastic Nerevar Rising , we are greeted in A Land of War and Poetry (feat. Jeremy Soule) by a deliberate drumbeat. Instead of the expected melody that promises us a lovely landscape, however, the track takes a different path in line with its title. The violin, which, accompanied by the percussion, almost seizes the theme, is more reminiscent of Assassin’s Creed IV: Blackflag before returning to the old TESO-nature with powerful horns. It is only towards the end that we come full circle to Soule's work with a faster and more dominant reworking of the theme. Such quotes and references to the past will be heard from time to time in the other DLCs, especially in the expansions that take us to areas familiar from Oblivion and the like.

Games from the The Elder Scrolls-series

The Elder Scrolls: Arena (1994)

The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall (1996)

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (2002)

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006)

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011)

The Elder Scrolls Online (2014)

The rest of the score for TESO: Morrowind, however, is an original creation that places the theme of adventure and exploration of a fantasy world in the foreground - what a surprise! Derrick creates this feeling with long drawn-out strings, which fly thoughtfully and movingly over the scenery in waves and praise an acoustic paradise in Magnus Smiles on Suran, Vvardenfell Vista, Ascadian Idyll, Shadow of Baar Dau and Azura’s Coast. This beauty, however, is called into question by agitated (Omens Prophecy, Schemes of the Anticipations) or darkly threatening pieces (The House of Troubles (feat. Jeremy Soule), Ancestral Tomb). The initially warlike Currents of the Odai is probably also one of them, whose opening reminds me a little of Warcraft III.

Finally, Reverie of the Netchimen, which comes across as mystically magical and whose string melody somehow makes me think of mash-ups of 'old Disney classics like Mary Poppins meets Anno'. And right at the end, Grazelands Dawn (feat. Jeremy Soule), which comes across as an upbeat quote from Soule's The Road Most Travelled, but quickly loses its lightness and falls somewhere between melancholy, cheerfulness and a sense of new beginnings. All in all, a nice addition/interpretation of the Dunmer realm that (would have) worked even without the references to The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.