The Elder Scrolls Online on PS4 and Xbox One is still targeted for release this year, despite the recently announced delay.

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Creative director Paul Sage told IGN that the floated six months or so of extra dev time didn't change the "goal" of getting it out this side of 2015, though he stopped short of promising things wouldn't change."I will tell you we are working round the clock to try and make that happen," he said. "I can’t guarantee anything, that would be foolish to do, but we are certainly working with that goal in mind."When the MMO does eventually launch on consoles, of course, it'll have had the benefit of several months' worth of content additions to bolster gameplay. With that in mind, we asked Sage what's on the horizon for the game.As we've mentioned previously, both the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood are slated to debut in-game at some time in the future, along with a Justice System like the one seen in previous titles, allowing you to steal and kill NPCs, incurring repercussions as you do so. According to Sage, the current plan is to get this system in place first, as both of the guilds will obviously make use of such a system fairly heavily."With an update like that it’s a little further on the horizon," he explained. "The reason is we do want fully fleshed out skill systems and quest lines for that, so that’s further out. My prediction is we’ll probably get the Justice System in before we get the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood in, just because we want that system to be fully fleshed out and players used to the system before they have to use it. I don’t have a date lined up, but it’s a little further out. I wouldn’t expect it in the first four updates."When the two additional guilds do make it in, Sage has said it's currently unknown whether it'll be max-level content or if you'll be able to join them the same time you hit up the Mages and Fighters guilds, as debates about that continue to range internally.Another feature often asked about is Player Housing; fans of previous entries in the series widely agree that owning property in Tamriel is a fairly integral part of the franchise, while MMO players tend to be keen to have somewhere to hang their hats, regardless of which fictional world it's in. Sadly, Sage says that while Player Housing would be nice, it's not likely to come until ESO has an anniversary or two."I will tell you that when we get to player housing, and I think it’s one of those things that when you have a game that’s been running a long time it’s one of those things you want to get to, it has to be something that’s done differently and done well," he said. "That’s about all I can tell you. We have no firm plans for anything on housing at this time."Finally, Sage also addressed concerns that there aren't enough healing or tanking roles available in the game, which leads to longer queues in the looking for group tool. He explained the recently-revealed spellcrafting feature should help with that, while new weapon skills (but not new weapons) are also in the pipeline to alleviate the problem.In case you missed it yesterday, Sage confirmed that The Elder Scrolls Online's first major update would be arriving this week, and gave us an idea of how often the team want to deliver fresh content from here on out. Be sure to check back to IGN tomorrow for the final part of our chat with Sage, including why Craglorn wasn't included at launch and whether he wishes they'd done anything differently.

Luke Karmali is IGN's UK News Editor. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on Twitter