Hoping they at lead abandon the term "content pass"

Anilahation

Some significant content of games are stapled by actual names of the product.

Wrath of the Lich King
The Taken King
Orsinium
Season of chaos
Heavensward
Path of Fire.

I get the offical name is season of the worm cult but on storefront it is content pass 2025 and it just poorly resonates with potential consumer.

AcadianPaladin

I think all the content added on after the original game should be called what it is: Downloadable Content (DLC). The parsing from DLC to Chapter to Season Pass is both confusing and unwelcome.

tsaescishoeshiner

I think people felt overly-harsh about it being called a "season" or "pass" based on other games that use those names, when in reality, not much changed. Which was described from the start.

Personally, I wish they'd use a narrative word like Saga for new content bundles. Saga of the Worm Cult could be a year long or 6 months, while still conveying a sense of story and time.

Anilahation

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

I think all the content added on after the original game should be called what it is: Downloadable Content (DLC). The parsing from DLC to Chapter to Season Pass is both confusing and unwelcome.

DLC is a dated term cause for example you're literally downloading every game in 2025

Juju_beans

If I buy something I want the entire content.
I played another game that went to this type of setup and it came across as if they were "coding on the fly" as the game progressed.

So I dropped my ESO+ sub and have not purchased this new season content.

There's plenty to do in the game without it for me.

Monte_Cristo

Anilahation wrote: »

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

I think all the content added on after the original game should be called what it is: Downloadable Content (DLC). The parsing from DLC to Chapter to Season Pass is both confusing and unwelcome.

DLC is a dated term cause for example you're literally downloading every game in 2025

I still use the old term expansion pack.

Vaqual

Anilahation wrote: »

Some significant content of games are stapled by actual names of the product.

Wrath of the Lich King
The Taken King
Orsinium
Season of chaos
Heavensward
Path of Fire.

I get the offical name is season of the worm cult but on storefront it is content pass 2025 and it just poorly resonates with potential consumer.

I think this is a really underestimated point and that you are completely right. This terminology is off-putting pseudo gamer-lingo. The fact that several successful modern games have "passes" must have lead people to conclude passes make games successful - whereas I have not met a single person that likes what such a pass implies: temporary content or temporary access.
People are becoming numb to the barrage of FOMO-based attention grabs and I think passes are a failing system.
Even if the content stays the same, this is a poor way of marketing it.

DoofusMax

You get a definite agree from me on this point. However content naming confusion is not new for ESO. I've lost count of the posts where the player didn't understand the difference between Upgrade and Collection, thought "Deluxe" was additional content, thought the Collection was "all the DLC", that ESO Plus included everything, and similar issues. "Read the product description" does not apparently play well with a lot of consumers. It would be so much nicer if the descriptions were clear about not only what goes with the purchase, but what does not go with the purchase.

MashmalloMan

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

I think people felt overly-harsh about it being called a "season" or "pass" based on other games that use those names, when in reality, not much changed. Which was described from the start.

Personally, I wish they'd use a narrative word like Saga for new content bundles. Saga of the Worm Cult could be a year long or 6 months, while still conveying a sense of story and time.

If you go to the DLC page in the crown store, they've added titles to DLC/Chapter phases that weren't originally marketed to players in that way. It's perplexing, as if one hand isn't speaking to the other.

In my opinion, it makes that DLC page much easier to follow for a new player, the stories contained within them follow a connective narrative. I'm pretty sure one "saga" even includes 2 chapters (I'm not logging in to find out), showing they're perfectly comfortable detaching from the "year 2025" type of naming convention.

Maybe after 2025 they'll take the same approach and rename this year's content. This was a "transitional year", how fitting to use a super corporate title like 2025 content pass for what amounts to leftover content they released in an unfinished mess while they shift gears for 2026 and beyond. We all know by now that 2025's content pass was just a minor chapter they chopped up and delayed to avoid making any Q4 DLC/Zone.

Plus, they've said numerous times that their pipeline is often 12-18 months in advance so it makes sense that when everything happened with Microsoft, their second game, leadership, and layoffs, that we we're in for a rocky transition.

Personally, I think they will go back to fun names while still using the content pass model, but as they said, it won't be locked to the previous structure of; Q1 Dungeons, Q2 Major Zone, Q3 Dungeons, and Q4 Minor Zone. I'm excited to see what they cook up for the teased Dark Brotherhood revisit, and I hope it's condensed into 6 months (2 updates) with active abilities added to the existing line for example... just something other than 2 dungeons and a big zone with easy mobs and a 5 hour story. Please.

Ishtarknows

I was browsing through the menu and realised that Season of the Worm Cult part one includes gear sets from both sides of Solstice. Does that mean 2026 will be Season of the Worm Cult part two?

MashmalloMan

Ishtarknows wrote: »

I was browsing through the menu and realised that Season of the Worm Cult part one includes gear sets from both sides of Solstice. Does that mean 2026 will be Season of the Worm Cult part two?

No, it's just because they artificially chopped up our usual chapter zone in two, they probably never intially intended the West/East and part 1/2 nonsense so there is some confusing elements to the whole thing. We were able to access the part 2 sets on PTS for U46 like 6 months before it was ever accessible.

My money is on whatever the original Q4 content was, has been pushed back to 2026 with more developement time allocated to it, possibly as a mini content pass zone with hopefully an arena.

Danikat

I think the name "2025 content pass" is related to the fact that some of what you paid for was only temporarily available in 2025, unlike past chapters which remained in the game for players to complete as and when they wanted to.

I suspect whether they use it again will depend on how much of what you're paying for is permanent vs rented on a schedule ZOS chooses for you.

BardokRedSnow

I think they deliberately change the names with buzzword terms to purposefully confuse the customer, so that you don't know exactly what you're buying on purpose. You're less likely to buy things ironically if you know exactly what it is you're getting. Thats why games have multiple currencies and premium currencies on top of that.

That said, Zos is one of the least egregious examples of this nowadays, and I believe honestly Microsoft is the one mainly pushing the season pass <snip>. Not that Bethesda/Zenimax were above this sort of thing before, but lately Microsoft has been moving very aggressively to make up for all the money they've been spending on billion dollar gaming studios.

They should know then that people will assume changes like this is to blind the customer to their intended direction and doesn't build good faith, we've seen too many times the increased monetization of games once "season pass" or "battle pass" etc is introduced.

Not everything from other games being brought here is bad, but the season pass idea to hide that the year is only getting one zone for instance, definitely not wanted.

<snipped for Cursing/Profanity>

mdjessup4906

I swear have any of these companies just tried NOT being scummy and underhanded? For all they know, maybe, just maybe, being actually trustworthy would be more money with less effort.

SkaiFaith

Maybe this would need a dedicated thread but one issue 2025 premium content pass has shown is that, for the first time, buying the premium edition of the game included BOTH the June DLC and the November DLC.
Problem is: for all previous years said premium had not included the November DLCs.
So who buys the 2025 Premium content pass gets everything from this year but only half stories from those "year long" era.
It's sad, confusing, and it doesn't make sense.
It's good how it worked this year in this regard, but why can't it be applied to past content?

Anyway, agree with OP that naming it so lowers the epicness and appeal.

Syldras

I was aware that this thing was called whatever with the Worm Cult, and to be honest it gave me expectations that were not met. Like meaningful lore around that topic. I guess it would have been okay if they just called it Solstice, since that would have been true, at least.

Anilahation

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

They should know then that people will assume changes like this is to blind the customer to their intended direction and doesn't build good faith, we've seen too many times the increased monetization of games once "season pass" or "battle pass" etc is introduced.

>

I will admit I am not a huge battle pass enjoyer, but I do enjoy the way passes have been done on League of Legends and Marvel RIvals.

league doing the opposite of giving you the majority of the items in the pass, but paywalling the big "skin" choices and gacha currency.

Marvel Rivals letting you keep the battle pass forever, so you don't feel force to finish it, and then they implement smaller passes that you can work on as well that you can also BUY to keep up forever.

BretonMage

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

I think they deliberately change the names with buzzword terms to purposefully confuse the customer, so that you don't know exactly what you're buying on purpose.

Tbf, I just think they called it a "pass" to boost the FOMO potential of the DLC. I really hope someone somewhere gets the message that we don't appreciate FOMO tactics. (Not holding my breath, though).