One of the major factors that will determine whether or not I play this game will be the end game pve content. So far the devs had told us that there will not be your typical 'raid' endgame, however they are creating something which they have named 'Adventure Zones'.

I have been searching these forums for numerous weeks now and everyone's ideas of what an 'Adventure Zone' is seems to differ. So far I have been able to establish that these are zones which will have content for group sizes from 4 man to 24 man. There will also not be your typical 'boss' in the sense of a 50ft monster, instead there will be tasks or mini bosses which need to be complete simultaneously to proceed. Both of these facts are pretty common knowledge to anyone who has watched the interviews or read any write ups of ESO and therefore I haven't bothered providing links to evidence.

What is not clear to me is the following:

Will AZs be instances where I am only playing with my group of 4-24 to complete the content, or will there be 200 people from other groups in the AZ zerging down every 'challenge' in a matter of seconds.

Will the mobs scale depending on the group size, or will there be different sections inside the AZ with content for the different group sizes?

Is gear going to come from drops when completing the difficult tasks or 'bosses', or will there be tokens that we turn in for gear? In which case it would transform AZs into 'complete x times for next upgrade' instead of having the excitement when the piece you need so badly finally drops.

Another rumour I have seen is that the AZ itself will be an open zone, but there will be instanced off parts where the harder content is, is this true?

If you have the answer to any of these questions concerning the AZs, please also post the source to back up your statement. I know that there most likely won't be any clear answer, so also please justify your interpretation of the information in the source if relevant. Feel free to also state if we are yet to have an answer to any of these questions or if you have any other information on AZs.

Thank you for the help in deciphering exactly what AZs are!

Not enough yet, I am sure you will find much speculation and theory crafting here for me I am waiting to hear more from the dev's or get a chance to play them, until then the jury is still out for me, but I do like what little I have heard..

i had hoped i could enter the adventure zones solo. i once wanted a big mmo game but now i am back to just wanting a massive TES game

there might be speculations about instanced parts within the adventure zones, yet we know for sure that they are free to enter for anybody.

we also know that there are different areas within these zones that offer content for differently sized groups.
(the 'easies' content will be designed for around 4 players while 'harder' content will be made for up to 24 players)

it was said that encounters aren't planed to be fights against a single boss, but more of a (let's call it) 'quest streak' where you have to take certain actions within a limited time span. at these occasions you might have to split up your party.
(as I could imagine this could be things like: 1 member heading north, 1 heading east, 1 heading west each searching and collecting an artifact, while the rest of the group has to defeat mobs coming in from south. after that the items would have to be put together in order do ban the attackers. something like that - you get the idea)

it was said that PvP will only be allowed in Cyrodiil, so we can conclude that there won't be PvP within AZs.



if anyone wants to proof me wrong he/she's welcome to do so. just don't flame/troll without any evidence at all.

We know they said they wont be in at launch. that's about it

just remembered there was an interview (by buffed.de) with Paul Sage where he said as follows:

on the question if there will be raids:
"(...) which is our adventure zones are for say around... I'd say a group of 4 can go into the adventure zone. and there will be certain areas, within the adventure zone where you get large groups together, of 24 players. there'll be a lot of different activities for those different sized groups, but we have special things planed for really large groups of 24 players. so, there will be something of that nature, but we haven't gone into the details jet."

on the question if he can tell more about if these "raids" (aka adventure zones):
"sure, so to go deeper into it: it's going to be a large open zone. and so what I mentioned before about 4 players just being kind of the launching point for that zone. and then from there what we do is: we have areas where we have these big raids, and what we are looking for it is less about single Monsters and more about a full experience where people might have to go off in different directions. you might have to branch up 5 people from your group here, 5 people here and attack things kind of in parallel and with timing."

Yeah those basically included all we know of Adventure Zones.

Large (raid) group cap is 24 man.

Can go in with 4 man groups.

There are areas just for 24 man groups, which could possibly mean they are instanced just for you and your group.

No big single Boss, more group vs many waves and puzzle and timing type splitting the group elements.