Main Page

Recognition of video games hasn't reached the point where Oscars are given out for voice acting, but if proof were needed of the talent Bethesda managed to gather for TES V: Skyrim, it came when Christopher Plummer (Arngeir) and Max von Sydow (Esbern) both received a nomination as Best Actor in a Supporting Role in the 2012 Academy Awards. Plummer, who also voiced several other minor characters in the game, received his nomination for the role of Hal in rom-com Beginners, while von Sydow received his for playing The Renter in Charge in the darker film, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.

TES V: Skyrim has broken an eight-year run in which the Number One game in the UK Christmas charts came from either Activision or EA. Even though overall sales are down from their peak, the game managed to outsell Just Dance 3 and Modern Warfare 3 to seal the top spot. The continuing popularity of the game is presumably the main reason that UESP has been getting 5-6 million page hits per day, making the site one of the top 2,000 destinations on the entire Internet over the past few weeks.

TES V: Skyrim had a big night at the Spike VGA awards. The game marked the first anniversary of its announcement by winning the Game of the Year and RPG of the Year awards, while Bethesda picked up Studio of the Year.

Update: X-Play has also awarded Skyrim with Game of the Year and Best RPG honors.

As many of you may have experienced, the site's performance the past week has been relatively poor with slow loading pages and even complete load failures. We've finally tracked down the issue to a 10,000 connection limit of the firewall, a limit we were not previously aware of or had the ability to check. The fix is already in the works so hopefully the pages will be quick to load in the coming weeks and months. Other than that issue, however, the site's servers have been handling the near x10 traffic increase very well.

Update: The connection limit on the firewall has been temporarily bypassed by setting up a temporary server outside of the cluster. Since then the site traffic has nearly doubled what it was this past week. Various other performance tweaks are ongoing to ensure good site performance as we approach a x20 fold traffic increase.

Skyrim is now available for download and retail purchase. That is all. Now play the game!

Skyrim is now available to pre-load on Steam. For those who haven't done it before, this doesn't mean you can play the game early, just that you can avoid the inevitable bandwidth problems by downloading an encrypted version of the game onto your computer that will be unlocked when the game is officially released.

The UESP has joined up with Elder Geek for their Skyrim Full Hearts Charity Marathon. Starting November 11th at 6pm EST will begin a 48 hour marathon session of Skyrim played by the Elder-Geek staff and friends with all proceeds being donated to Child's Play. Feel free to join us if you haven't got the game yet or need to take a break from playing yourself and donate to a good cause. See the event page for more information.

Update: The marathon was a great success and raised over 3500$ for Child's Play. Thanks to Elder-Geek and everyone who donated.

Bethesda has announced the release of the Skyrim soundtrack on a four-disc set, available from DirectSong. The compilation will begin shipping in mid-November. In addition, the composer, Jeremy Soule, will autograph any copies ordered by December 23rd.

To ease the wait until November 11th, why not check out our brand new interview with Elder Scrolls veteran artist Mark Jones? His graphic designs and atwork can be seen and enjoyed in classics such as Daggerfall, Battlespire and Morrowind and he provides a ton of interesting behind-the-scenes info on working with Bethesda back in the day. Read the entire interview here.