Tamriel, the virtual world for the popular MMO “The Elder Scrolls Online,” is expanding again. In an announcement to fans on Thursday, developer ZeniMax Online Studios unveiled High Isle, a cluster of Mediterranean-like islands that have never before been explored in an Elder Scrolls game.

The set of islands near the Summerset Isle is home to the Bretons, humans with a proclivity for magic and one of 10 playable races in the series. After the update releases in June, High Isle will be the setting for the studio’s four scheduled add-ons in what’ll be called “The Legacy of the Bretons.” This will be the sixth chapter building on “The Elder Scrolls Online,” an almost eight-year-old massively multiplayer online game that tens of thousands of people play every day.

Rich Lambert, creative director at ZeniMax Online, told The Post they’ve been working on High Isle for a little over a year now. (The expansions planned for 2023 and 2024 are already in the works, as well.) Lambert said they wanted this update to feel “a little bit more grounded.” For context, the antagonist in the most recent update is a Daedric god of destruction. Additionally, the studio considered the half-elven Bretons “have never really had their time in the Sun.”

“We haven’t really done a lot of that kind of traditional medieval, feudal society-type stuff in game,” Lambert said. “We’ve never really dug into their culture — who [the Bretons] are, what they’re about.”

In a game where people play as dark elves and anthropomorphic felines, the Bretons are pretty typical medieval-fantasy fair. They’re humans with some elven ancestry, making them a solid choice for players who want to become a traditional mage, for example. (Read: Gandalf, Dumbledore, Yennefer of Vengerberg, etc.)

However, Lambert said the studio wanted this upcoming chapter to be a “deep dive” into what “tradition” even means for the Bretons. The update’s story will focus on the interplaying politics of the noble families who rule High Isle. During the reveal, Lambert said the chapter will feel like “a classic Elder Scrolls game.”

Drawing from the glimpses shown Thursday, the castles of High Isle appear to be inspired by the High Middle Ages, with sloped tile roofs and stone walls pocked with murder holes. Outside the city limits, the island is covered in lush, almost tropical fauna and shorelines are met with white-faced cliffs jutting out of a crystal blue sea. The High Isle chapter ties together a chain of islands, but the developers didn’t expound on the specifics of each location.

Last year, ZeniMax Online released companions, characters whom you can recruit to fight alongside you on your quests. In High Isle, two new companions are coming to “The Elder Scrolls Online” — Ember, a street-smart Khajiit, and Isabel, a Breton knight who strives to be honorable. Lambert called companions “built-in adventuring buddies” and noted they’re quite popular because a large portion of the playerbase explores the game on their own.

There’s a collectible card game coming to “The Elder Scrolls Online,” as well. “Tales of Tribute” will be a resource-management game in the same vein as the popular board game “Catan” where two players compete to accomplish a goal. Lambert told The Post he’s been vying to get a tavern game into “The Elder Scrolls Online” since the MMO was first in development. At the start of the card game, both players will draw from a shared deck, which means you won’t find yourself at a disadvantage if someone else has collected every rare card there is to find in Tamriel.

“['The Elder Scrolls Online'] is one of those games where you can go anywhere or do anything. You can play with anybody, regardless of level,” Lambert said. “One thing we didn’t want this to be is: Whoever has the best cards always wins.”

A week ago, the CEO of Microsoft Gaming Phil Spencer along with other executives from the company held a meeting with the team at ZeniMax Online in “The Elder Scrolls Online.” Lambert said they’ve hosted meetings like that a few times now to walk the executives at Microsoft through the game. Lambert told The Post that Spencer joined the meeting as a dragonknight, a class of warriors who command brute force and fire to destroy their enemies.

Earlier this month, ZeniMax Online announced it had surpassed 20 million player accounts all-time for “The Elder Scrolls Online.” Lambert said the studio saw a jump in players during the pandemic (along with the rest of the gaming industry) as people found themselves with a lot more time to spend at home. “The Elder Scrolls Online” is less of a game and more of a virtual world, Lambert said — a virtual world that allows people to ignore all the problems in the real world, if only for a few hours at a time.

“I’ve had lots of people message me over the course of the last two years with covid [to say] ‘Thank you for giving me a respite.' That’s freaking cool,” Lambert said.