Online:Campaigns

To access Cyrodiil and Alliance vs Alliance PvP, you must first select a campaign. These are self-contained instances, and the state of the war differs between them. While the physical landscape is the same, each campaign holds different people and has differing rules. Right now, there are 4 campaigns available for players to join, however, more campaigns are added during events such as Midyear Mayhem.

There are currently 4 rulesets for Cyrodiil, each of which has its own campaign. Currently, the Alliance Locked ruleset is the most commonly played ruleset. In this ruleset, when players join the campaign, they are locked to that character's faction, and can only play for the faction that they are locked to for the duration of the campaign. Another ruleset is Standard, which is similar to Alliance Locked, but without the faction lock, meaning players can swap factions without waiting for the campaign to end. The Standard No-CP ruleset is also very commonly played. This ruleset is similar to Standard, where players can join with characters from different factions, but in Standard No-CP all Champion Points are disabled. Finally, there is the Under 50 ruleset, which follows all the rules of Standard No-CP, but characters must be under level 50 to be able to join.

While players can join any campaign, players also have the option to set a campaign as their home campaign. In a player's home campaign, they will be placed on a leaderboard based on how many Alliance Points (AP)  they have earned over the duration of the campaign. This list can be filtered by alliance and class. If all six keeps around the Imperial City are claimed by one alliance, the player at the top of that alliance's leaderboard will be crowned Emperor of that campaign. The Emperor is deposed if that alliance loses control of all six keeps, or sets another campaign as their home.

Earning AP in a player's home campaign also makes them eligible for the End of Campaign rewards. After gaining 25000 AP, they are eligible for the Tier 1 rewards, 50000 AP for the Tier 2, and 100000 AP for the Tier 3 rewards. At the end of 30-day campaigns, every player will receive one   per character that has achieved at least Tier 1 rewards. View the Rewards table located under the Scoring section below for more details about the End of Campaign rewards.

Campaigns are timed (either 7 days or 30 days), and scoring is based on ownership of certain objectives, such as keeps, resources, or Elder Scrolls. A new campaign will start shortly after the previous ends. When this happens the scoring will be reset, but keeps will still be owned by the Alliance that controlled them at the end of the campaign. Currently, there are 4 campaigns, 1 per ruleset, and names are often derived from notable artifacts or historical figures. Grey Host is the current Alliance Locked campaign, Blackreach is the current Standard campaign, Ravenwatch is the current Standard No-CP campaign, and Icereach is the current Under 50 campaign. Campaigns have a limit on the number of players per faction that can be playing at a time. When a faction reaches its player limit, the faction population will display a lock and any players of that faction who wish to enter will be placed in a queue.

The Imperial City is separate from Cyrodiil campaigns and exists as a CP-enabled or no-CP instance for North American and European servers. In the Imperial City, players compete in a mixture of PvP and PvE, where all 3 factions seek control over all the 6 districts and fight back against the forces of Molag Bal. The Imperial City campaigns can be accessed from the same menu as the Cyrodiil campaigns.

Alliances will receive additional bonuses if they do well across campaigns. The bonuses are limited to the current PvP campaign area.

Scoring
Campaign scoring is based on your alliance's ownership of Keeps, Outposts, Resources and Elder Scrolls, and is the same for each campaign. Ownership of home objectives gives double points. The score is evaluated each hour. Campaign rulesets are standardized as of Elsweyr, all objectives (other than scrolls and keeps) grant 1 point each (double for home objectives); scrolls count 10 points each and keeps count 5 points each.



Rewards
The alliance with the highest score at the end of the campaign's duration is deemed the winner of that campaign, and all participants receive a reward based on the number of   they earned during that campaign, indicated by the "End of Campaign Reward Tier" bar shown on the Alliance War Overview. Participants from the losing alliances also receive a lesser reward based on their Reward Tier value. 
These rewards are sent to the participant through their mail, and the 30 day 1st place alliance   or   rewards are sent through a consumable  . The additional leaderboard rewards are sent in a separate mail from the general end-of-campaign rewards.





In addition, if you place high enough on the leaderboards, you will receive the following rewards.


Underdog Bonuses
At certain times, one of the alliances may qualify for an "underdog bonus" during a particular campaign. These are applied when an alliance has a consistently low population of players entering that campaign, or if an alliance has a significantly lower score than the others. Underdog bonuses are re-evaluated every 30 minutes, and grant a 100% increase to Alliance Point gain for the duration. The population and scoring bonus takes all the samples its collected over a period of time, and then on each evaluation period, measures the current score against the average of the prior samples, then applies bonuses as needed. An alliance that is currently benefiting from an underdog bonus will display one of the following icons on the scoreboard:
middle Population Underdog — Scoring bonus ×4, AP bonus 100%
middle Score Underdog — Scoring bonus ×3, AP bonus 100%

Bonuses
Every player who enters Cyrodiil is given the Battle Spirit bonus, regardless of their level. On a player below Level 50  , this also stacks with "battle leveling", which scales up their attributes, armor, and damage ratings in order to remain competitive. Other bonuses are earned based on the number of enemy keeps your alliance controls, and how many Elder Scrolls are stored within them. An additional bonus is given to the alliance which contains a campaign's emperor. While in Cyrodiil, the bonuses are taken from the campaign you are currently in. While in PvE zones, the bonuses do not apply. Your alliance must control all Home Keeps and Scrolls in order to benefit from the control of enemy keeps and scrolls.

Cyrodiil Bonus


Keep Bonuses
 

Scroll Bonuses
 

Emperorship Bonus


Performance Tests
In July of 2020, Zenimax announced that with the release of Update 27 they would be conducting several tests in Cyrodiil to pinpoint the source of lag spikes in Cyrodiil. They attributed these lag spikes to be from how the server handles AOEs, and announced that a series of tests would be conducted to isolate these variables. These tests only took place in Cyrodiil and players were awarded double   for participating in these tests. Below are the inital wave of tests conducted, the date they were conducted, and how they effected combat.

Wave 1
September 8-14: Shared global AoE cooldown, 3 second timer
For this test, all AoE abilities will have a shared global 3 second cooldown. This means when you cast an AoE, you will not be able to cast another AoE for 3 seconds. For example, if you cast Ritual of Retribution, you won’t be able to cast Puncturing Sweep for 3 seconds.
September 14-21: Individual AoE cooldown, 3 second timer
For this test, each AoE ability will have an individual cooldown. This means when you cast an AoE, you will not be able to cast that same AoE ability for 3 seconds. For example, if you cast Puncturing Sweep, you won’t be able to cast Puncturing Sweep again for 3 seconds.
September 21-28: No cooldown, global ramping AoE cost
For this test, each AoE cast will have a global ramping cost. Each stack of the debuff increases the cost of any AoE cast, similar to how streak or dodge roll works when casting an AoE, and you receive a debuff for 5 seconds.
September 28 – October 5: Individual AoE cooldown, 3 second timer and global ramping AoE cost
Each AoE ability will have an individual cooldown from Test 2, but also combines that with a global ramping cost from Test 3.
October 5-12: Group size is limited to 12 in Cyrodiil, and any ally-targeted abilities are only applied to group members
October 12-19: Group size is limited to 12 in Cyrodiil, and if a group contains 6 or more players, everyone’s AoE abilities will go on individual cooldowns and have escalating cost similar to the tests above

Wave 2
In October of 2020, Zenimax announced that there would be 2 more weeks of tests. This second wave of tests were combinations of previous tests, and were designed to determine how multiple rules would effect Cyrodiil, as the individual tests conducted in wave 1 did not show a signficant impact in preformance. They were to disable all tests and double AP by the release of Update 28 for PC on November 2, 2020. The conditions of the second wave of tests are listed below.

October 19 - 26:
Shared global AoE cooldown with a 3 second timer
Group size limited to 12 in Cyrodiil
Ally-targeted abilities only applied to group members
October 26 – November 2:
Shared global AoE cooldown with a 3 second timer
Group size limited to 12 in Cyrodiil
Ally-targeted abilities only applied to group members
Global ramping cost per successive AoE cast by 50%/100%/150%
Regen decrease per successive AoE cast by 33%/66%/99%

In November of 2020, Zenimax released their results of the tests, and announced that there was approximatly a 25% reduction in magnitude of server frame spikes and a slight reduction in the frequency of said spikes. While these numbers looked good on a spreadsheet, they announced that it was not significant enough of an improvement to the player experience, and no major changes were to be made. However, they also announced that some elements of these tests would be enabled for the forseable future, primarily the decreasing of group sizes to 12 players, and all ally-targeted abilities will only apply to those in your group.

Wave 3
In February of 2021, Zenimax announced that they would put into effect atleast 1 more test. This test would disable the effect of all "Proc Sets". This entailed that any set bonus outside of pure stat gain would be disabled. For example, the 5 piece bonus of Vicious Death, which creates an explosion of fire when an enemy player is killed, and the 5 piece bonus of Armor of the Seducer, which decreases the Magicka cost of abilities by 10%, would be considered "Proc Sets" and would be disabled.

With this test, Zenimax would also be releasing the condition that players have to be in the same group to be effected be heals, however the maximum group size of 12 players would be here to stay for the foreseeable future.

As this third wave of tests came to a close, Zenimax announced that this condition of "Proc Sets" being disabled would be here to stay until their next update, Update 30, in which they would rework how "Proc Sets" functioned. The reason for this was explained that players reached out to Zenimax and said that the removal of "Proc Sets" sparked a re-intreset in Cyrodiil and players were having alot of fun without super tanky builds that dealt a ton of damage.

Proc Scaling
In Update 30, Zenimax announced that "Proc Sets" would now scale with specific stats and announced that "Proc Sets" would be once again allowed in Cyrodiil. These changes ensured that someone could not simply equip a "Proc Set" on a tanky charecter for "free damage" and would instead have to sacrifice their health to increase their "Proc Set" damage.

As of PTS version 7.0.0, the following scaling was applied to "Proc Sets"
Damage focused proc-based events will scale with the higher of your Weapon or Spell Damage.
You must have 5,478 Weapon or Spell Damage to reach the original value of many sets.
Healing focused proc-based events will scale with the higher of your Max Magicka or Stamina.
You must have 38,350 Max Magicka or Stamina to reach the original value of many sets.
Tanking focused proc-based events will either scale with your Max Health, and in some rare cases, will use the higher of your Physical or Spell Resistance.
You must have 38,350 Max Health or 27,890 Physical or Spell Resistance to reach the original value of many sets.

Server Recoding
In January 2022, Zenimax Online Studios ESO Game Director Matt Firor published a post to the official forums following up on the results of the tests and other efforts to address performance issues in Cyrodiil. In it, it was announced that the developers would be rewriting the foundational code used by the game servers with particular attention to server responsiveness in Player versus Player environments and other high-intensity gameplay scenarios. 

While a detailed timeline for this work was not provided, it was stated that planning for it had required much of the fourth quarter of 2021, and that the implementation and testing for this project would likely be ongoing through much of 2022. When completed, it was anticipated that the changes to the game server architecture would "dramatically increase server performance."

Campaign Names
The following is a list of the names for past and current campaigns, with their restrictions listed in brackets. Most names are often derived from notable artifacts or historical figures.
; Active Campaigns
: Cyrodiil:  ,  ,  ,  
: Imperial City: CP Imperial City, No-CP Imperial City
; Event Campaigns
: Cyrodiil:  ,  ,  ,  
: Imperial City:  ,  ,  ,  , White Gold
;Removed Campaigns
:  ,  ,  ,  ,  , Moon Cursed Blade,   Cuirass,  , Savior's Hide,  ,  ,  ,  ,   (beta only)
:   (PTS only)
:  , Bloodthorn,  , Dawnbreaker,  ,  ,  ,  , Wabbajack (90 day duration)
:   (14 day duration)
:   (Veteran only, 5 day duration)
:   (Non-Veteran alternate, 48 hour duration)
:  ,  ,  ,  ,   (Non-Veteran, console only)
: Moon-Cursed Blade (7 day Resources, console only)
:    (7 day Scrolls, console only)
: Axe of   (PC only, 7 day duration, gated access to Imperial City)
:  ,   (PC EU, 30 day duration)
:   (XB1 NA, 7 day Keeps)
:  ,   (30 day duration, no CP)
:   (console only, 30 day duration)
:  ,   (PC only, 30 day duration)
:  , D'Albei, Kastav,  ,  ,   (7 day duration)
:  , Thornblade  (console only, 7 day duration)
: Blackwater Blade,   (7 day duration, below 50)
:   (7 day duration, no CP)
:   (30 day duration, no CP)
:   (30 day duration)
:   (7 day duration, below 50)
:   (7 day duration)
:   (30 day duration)
:   (7 day duration, event)
;Unreleased Campaigns
The following are campaign names derived from the .LANG file that have yet to appear:
: (Artifacts)  ,  ,  , Eye of Nocturnal,  ,  ,  , Witsplinter,  ,  , Ring of Sunfire,  , Mace of Aevar,  ,  , Judgement of Veloth
: (Deities and People)  ,  ,  , Ami-El,  ,  ,  , Leovic,  ,  , Shor-El, Varen,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  

Notes
Prior to Update 7 (Imperial City), campaigns had a standardized scoring system: Keeps: 10 points (5 on Haderus); Outposts: 5 points (3 on Haderus); Resources: 1 point (0 on Haderus); Scrolls: 25 points (10 on Haderus).