ESO’s Content Pass Model Is Failing Us—and Writhing Wall Proves It

Furyous

Has the shift in how content is sold fundamentally changed the quality we can expect?

ESO used to sell expansions that were complete before asking players to pay.
You knew what you were buying.
You could evaluate the content, the scope, the features, and decide if it was worth your money.
That model rewarded effort, polish, and transparency.

Now we have “content passes.”
We prepay for content that hasn’t been created yet.
There’s no roadmap, no feature list, no accountability.
Just a vague promise that something will arrive eventually.

And when it does?
We get events like Writhing Wall, marketed as a “once in a lifetime” experience:

• The biggest threat the game has ever faced
• A massive, mysterious wall
• A fanatical cult
• A realm-threatening incursion

It was framed as the pinnacle of narrative and gameplay, something that would define the year.

And how do we fight this ultimate evil?
We spend weeks knitting sweaters to finally unlock Phase Two, only to find it just added socks to the knitting list.
This is the real reason people play fantasy games full of dragons and demonic gods, to gather supplies for months.
What’s Phase Three going to be? Sort the sweaters and socks by color and size?
Gods, what I’m really hoping for is to finally realize my lifelong gaming goal of washing and folding the laundry.
I mean, world threats are only won by neat housekeeping practiced over months of daily repetition.

The gameplay loop:

• Housekeeping
• Underwhelming and minimal rewards
• Weeks of chores with no payoff

What really confuses me is that there’s clearly talent involved.
The graphics are solid.
The story setup is compelling.
But the delivery feels sloppy, lazy, and uninspired.
It’s like the event was planned under the old post-paid model, and then halfway through, the monetization changed.
Once the content was prepaid, the structure fell apart.

So here’s the question for the devs and the community:
If the content is already paid for, what incentive is left to make sure it’s good?
Where’s the pressure to deliver something compelling, complete, or even coherent?

The failure of this event, and likely future ones, is baked into the model.
When content is prepaid and undefined, quality becomes optional.

I’m posting it because I care about the game and the community.
We deserve better than vague promises and post-paid disappointment.

Danikat

My approach is to treat the content passes like expansions: I'll decide if I'm going to buy it based only on what's been announced so far (for a pre-order) or what's actually out. Anything I get after that is a bonus.

So far the 2025 one hasn't been worth the price (even when it was 30% off). I'll get it at some point, probably after it's added to the crown store and there's a crown sale.

I'm waiting to see what's announced for next year and will decide on that once I know what I'm getting and what it costs, and again any vague promises they make about stuff coming later on won't factor into it until it's actually happening.

Dock01

the story is lousy , Mannimarco being able to walk and use Molag Bals army after betraying him makes no sense , the previous companions dint show up even tho they sworn to always stop the king of worms if he ever returns, insane amount of recyled assets , and all this for 50-80$ ? id buy it if it was worth that price but its not

colossalvoids

And it's all in buy-to-play title, having a premium sub, paid expansi... a "content pass" and an in-game store which is... quite predatory, to say the least.

Stay sane.

kind_hero

Even devs from ZOS said that Orsinium was among their top favorite DLCs they have done. That is also because they had two years time to work on it.

In my opinion, Orsinium should be a gold standard. The challenge is to deliver such a polished DLC in less than a year and with, most likely, a smaller team than 10 years ago.

I don't like the content pass model. I paid for it, but it felt quite expensive for me, even though I am paying a sub for 10 years and buying each DLC every year.

What I always disliked in ESO DLCs is how they were split in two or more content packs. If I pay for something, I want to be able to have full access when it is released, since I didn't pay in installments. Even this year the DLC is labeled as "content pass", the structure is the same like in the previous years. It is quite frustrating to start the story in summer, get to a cliff-hanger, only to wait until late autumn for the conclusion. Also, having dungeons with key story elements which most of the time get skipped or rushed is a very bad idea. Many people questing don't like to do dungeons just to get a new layer of the main story.
Also, things that motivate me to play, like furnishings and housing, are intentionally delayed and spread across incremental updates. So, we get the base themed furnishings in the summer, a few others with the dungeon packs, and the structural or more interesting furnishing plans in the winter, to make people grind the dailies more, after they have done them countless time in the summer. I am sorry, this model is really annoying, and shows a desire to create engagement in an artificial way, rather than to have people play because of how cool the content is. Look at how many people still play Skyrim now, even after Oblivion remastered was launched. While there is no FOMO in Skyrim!

silentxthreat

Furyous wrote: »

Has the shift in how content is sold fundamentally changed the quality we can expect?

ESO used to sell expansions that were complete before asking players to pay.
You knew what you were buying.
You could evaluate the content, the scope, the features, and decide if it was worth your money.
That model rewarded effort, polish, and transparency.

Now we have “content passes.”
We prepay for content that hasn’t been created yet.
There’s no roadmap, no feature list, no accountability.
Just a vague promise that something will arrive eventually.

And when it does?
We get events like Writhing Wall, marketed as a “once in a lifetime” experience:

• The biggest threat the game has ever faced
• A massive, mysterious wall
• A fanatical cult
• A realm-threatening incursion

It was framed as the pinnacle of narrative and gameplay, something that would define the year.

And how do we fight this ultimate evil?
We spend weeks knitting sweaters to finally unlock Phase Two, only to find it just added socks to the knitting list.
This is the real reason people play fantasy games full of dragons and demonic gods, to gather supplies for months.
What’s Phase Three going to be? Sort the sweaters and socks by color and size?
Gods, what I’m really hoping for is to finally realize my lifelong gaming goal of washing and folding the laundry.
I mean, world threats are only won by neat housekeeping practiced over months of daily repetition.

The gameplay loop:

• Housekeeping
• Underwhelming and minimal rewards
• Weeks of chores with no payoff

What really confuses me is that there’s clearly talent involved.
The graphics are solid.
The story setup is compelling.
But the delivery feels sloppy, lazy, and uninspired.
It’s like the event was planned under the old post-paid model, and then halfway through, the monetization changed.
Once the content was prepaid, the structure fell apart.

So here’s the question for the devs and the community:
If the content is already paid for, what incentive is left to make sure it’s good?
Where’s the pressure to deliver something compelling, complete, or even coherent?

The failure of this event, and likely future ones, is baked into the model.
When content is prepaid and undefined, quality becomes optional.

I’m posting it because I care about the game and the community.
We deserve better than vague promises and post-paid disappointment.

I had a strong feeling this would happen so I decide to keep the wallet shut. as a pvp player I will spend money but it needs to be a 2 way street

Furyous

Just to clarify where I’m coming from:

I’m not against spending money on games. I have money earmarked for entertainment, and I want to support developers who deliver content that feels meaningful, polished, and worth the time investment.

But that’s the key—it has to feel worth it.
When content is vague, recycled, or built around chores instead of gameplay, it doesn’t feel like value.
It feels like obligation.

And I’m just not having fun with this “once in a lifetime” event.
The slog to do the same thing over and over for months isn’t fun.
There’s no difference between Phase One and Phase Two, it’s just more of the exact same thing.
I don’t want to pay for this.

I’m not asking for everything to be perfect. I’m asking for effort, clarity, and a sense that the people making the content actually want it to be good, because when that’s there, I’m happy to pay for it.

I want value for my money.
If I feel like I wasted it, I won’t spend it again next time.

silentxthreat

exactly. Ill pay for good game content but eso has been failing the pvp community for years. I know its because that group of players usally spends as little as possible but its mostly because the state of the game. If they would give us good content everyone will pay but this isnt it

twisttop138

Yes, you're right on a lot of things this years content is lackluster. Cheap, kinda. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense lore wise. A village of nords on this secret island. In winter coats no less. The return of dead characters, the spoiling of that in promo stuff. Reskinned, reused. A very noticeable lack of side quests. The trial, while excellent, is old bosses thrown in for reasons. Plus lord warden is stuck on a shield iny trunk. He talks to me when I pull it out. What's he doing in Coldharbor?

I could excuse all of that transition year. I keep seeing it. Year of transition from the chapter model to something worse. New stories in old zones. Not against that. For sure could be a cool thing to take the place of our kidnapped Q4 story dlc. Where did that go again? So we could get bug fixes right? How's that going PC players getting teabagged by Bashei?

Then we have the wall. The event to make it ALL worth it. I don't need to repeat the advertisement, people are posting it in threads. I guess in the end, it could be realm breaking. As in it's made a lot of people very angry and is a threat to the realm.

I get that they lost staff. That they had the other mmo shut down. Profits profit profit. Shareholders first Microsoft now calls the shots. I feel for them. I'm not angry with the dev team. I get people do what they're told. I work too. But they need to do something. They need to blow us away in the end of year letter. Let loose the secrets you keep hinting at.

DenverRalphy

To be fair. The content was actually created beforehnd. It's just not very much of it, and (IMO) not impressive work.

It's not like they just started working on the 2025 content only after announcing the change to a seasonal release model and selling the content pass.

I'm not defending the new release model, as I feel extremely let down as many others here do. Even so, any critiicisms do need to be acccurate.

Furyous

DenverRalphy wrote: »

To be fair. The content was actually created beforehand. It's just not very much of it, and (IMO) not impressive work.

It's not like they just started working on the 2025 content only after announcing the change to a seasonal release model and selling the content pass.

I'm not defending the new release model, as I feel extremely let down as many others here do. Even so, any criticisms do need to be accurate.

I tried to cover that in the original post:

Furyous wrote: »

What really confuses me is that there’s clearly talent involved.
The graphics are solid.
The story setup is compelling.
But the delivery feels sloppy, lazy, and uninspired.
It’s like the event was planned under the old post-paid model, and then halfway through, the monetization changed.
Once the content was prepaid, the structure fell apart.

I think they had much bigger plans for this, but it all fell apart for whatever reasons.
And to be honest, I don’t care what the reasons are.

If I buy a car and it doesn’t run, I don’t care why, it’s not my job to diagnose the factory.
I want the car I paid for, not something that looks nice but doesn’t work.

I’m paying to be entertained.
Knitting sweaters for months in an MMO isn’t entertaining to me.

twisttop138

DenverRalphy wrote: »

To be fair. The content was actually created beforehnd. It's just not very much of it, and (IMO) not impressive work.

It's not like they just started working on the 2025 content only after announcing the change to a seasonal release model and selling the content pass.

I'm not defending the new release model, as I feel extremely let down as many others here do. Even so, any critiicisms do need to be acccurate.

You're absolutely correct. They don't take the money and then create the content. Stuffs planned out the year before or even more I've heard. I don't know why but solstice feels half finished. Like they had planned it, built it, started doing it but stopped half way through and did like a weird pivot. It feels...empty. So unlike a chapter. So sparse on side quests. I get this weird feeling that it's completely unfinished when I travel through and see almost no quest markers. Compared to say blackwood. I was on a multi year break, back 7 months now and just getting into what I missed. I was just in blackwood yesterday and it seems everywhere there's a black quest starter. Papers on the ground, people etc. I don't know. Very disappointed, but we'll see what's coming

Furyous

twisttop138 wrote: »

You're absolutely correct. They don't take the money and then create the content. Stuffs planned out the year before or even more I've heard. I don't know why but solstice feels half finished. Like they had planned it, built it, started doing it but stopped half way through and did like a weird pivot. It feels...empty. So unlike a chapter. So sparse on side quests. I get this weird feeling that it's completely unfinished when I travel through and see almost no quest markers. Compared to say blackwood. I was on a multi year break, back 7 months now and just getting into what I missed. I was just in blackwood yesterday and it seems everywhere there's a black quest starter. Papers on the ground, people etc. I don't know. Very disappointed, but we'll see what's coming

I think that feeling is perfectly explained by the change in how they charge for content.

Before the shift to prepaid content passes, they had to build something worth buying.
The incentive was clear: make a great product and people will pay for it.
But halfway through this cycle, they pivoted to a model where the money comes first.
Once the content is prepaid, the pressure to deliver drops dramatically.

I'm sure the Microsoft acquisition and other internal factors played a role too.
But the bottom line is this: if you've already been paid, the urgency to finish strong fades.

If you don't believe me, try this. Prepay a contractor the full amount for a job in your home, then just wait for them to show up.
That's the dynamic we're seeing here.
And it shows.

tomofhyrule

I am a little suspicious of where the team intends to go from here.

I get that this was a rough year what with all of the surprise layoffs, but as has been said, that was not the cause of the content being subpar. All of this was planned before those hit.

I do suspect there was a massive budget cut last year, and that would explain the surprise cancellation of the NA event. Still, I can’t imagine that 2025 was good for next year’s prospects.

I know that “more agile development” totally meant “we’re going to do less each patch,” but still…

My one last piece of copium is that this desire to reduce the animation footprint is to take account of the fact that older hardware can’t handle so much and they want to make something like a new Class that needs new attack animations.

spartaxoxo

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I get that this was a rough year what with all of the surprise layoffs, but as has been said, that was not the cause of the content being subpar. All of this was planned before those hit.

The overland difficulty feature was supposed to come out this year. So, I do suspect that at least some of this is due to layoffs but we'll never know.

Regardless though, next year needs to course correct because this year has somehow managed to both over promise and not tell us anything and then undelivered all at once.