What has caused you to quit the game or barely play any more? What would bring you back?

Anumaril

For me it's 2 things: overland/quest content difficulty being trivially easy and the lack satisfying gameplay of my Necromancer class.

I know they're working on an overland difficulty overhaul, which I look forward to. As for Necromancer, I'm not holding out much hope to be honest. The class fantasy was never very necromancer-y to begin with, so I hoped that either Scribing or Subclassing would allow me to "create" a proper necro fantasy to play with, but both those systems are too restrictive to allow me to do that.

But recently ZOS published a roadmap for class overhauls, and while Necromancer is almost dead last on the list, the description looks very similar to what I've been arguing the class should be all about. So I'm cautiously optimistic about what that overhaul will do for the class, but I don't have much hope left in all honesty. A lot can change between now and when they actually implement that overhaul, and promising systems like Scribing/Subclassing have released before which later fell flat on their face, so if we assume the same pattern it's not looking good.

Icy_Waffles

The subclasses were the final nail for me. They built the game on unique classes, then the change made all my characters and time spent building them worthless.

Take out subclassing and just own the fact it was implemented poorly.

Orbital78

I originally just didn't get fully drawn in like traditional mmo combat. Probably because it isn't straight forward and isn't really explained. I think I was playing Rift or GTAO more at that time. Eventually I did get into it and it became my main game. Sadly it is not holding up as a main game so much lately.

Inventory management unless you pay cash, constant changes to builds/nerfs making combat less enjoyable or straight up gutting whole play styles. They need a new combat team or leadership most likely. I'll be around but casually most likely not doing much end game.

Oh ya and over priced, untested buggy paid content. This year was the very worst for quality testing. It is almost criminal.

Dragonredux

For me it is a multitude of compounding problems. Can't list everything but off the top my head

Maybe only select few sets in this game are usable, everything else might as well not even exist due to homogenization and powercreep. There's no reason why they can't do more 2,3, or 4 piece sets (would have been the perfect opportunity with class sets).

Neglect of old systems and playstyles. Companions have received no meaningful updates since their inception. Werewolf players have been basically begging for any kind of updates, rework, or just simple cosmetics really.

Bugs and lag, two of my friends have quit over this.

Dipfed rewards and everything nice gets thrown into the crown store. I always believe ESO would have a better reward structure if the crown store wasn't so...scummy.

Subclassing and combat in general. Too many band-aid fixes on existing problems and sometimes creates new problems. Subclassing was kind of my "quit moment", unsurprisingly most people copied and used the same build so it got boring fast. All of my friends have quit the game at this point, and the stories have gotten more boring so I didn't buy the season pass and quit the game.

There's basically no reason for me to stick around, I only lurk this forum nowadays for the faint hope maybe something will change. However, this class refresh does not give me hope since the first class you're starting with is Dragonknight, my main and favorite class. It works pretty well as a pure class already but I know this is a post subclass world so this will probably destroy what I love about it.

fizzybeef

On PS EU the population is so low, because of the big list of mistakes ZOS did.

Subclassing is a big reason, the other one is vengeance and the fact there is no crossplay yet.

Im fully endgame, i only play this as a multiplayer game.
There are simply not many players left so i stopped aswell

OsUfi

To add to the pile, but in a pro-ZoS way, nothing.

I really enjoyed my time in ESO. Played it for several years straight. For three to four of those years it was the only game I played. Enjoyed it. Loved exploring the world. Enjoyed PvP BG, IC and Cyro. Never touched the meta. Didn't need to.

Loathed the mid-tier PvE community. The fake tanks/healers in vet and normal drove me away from the game more than almost anything else. In a very British sense, I hate queue jumpers.

However my eventual departure from the game was the sensation that I'd done everything I wanted to do. Finished all quests in all zones. Most of them two or three times. It took me a couple of thousand hours between my beloved necro main and warden second. I don't regret a minute of it.

Maybe in a few years time the itch will make me want to return proper. But except for adding more content like they already are so I have a backlog to do if I return, there's not much else I'd want ZoS to change.

Skyrim Ebony Warrior, ya know?

AScarlato

Subclassing got me to return to the game. I made my main as a necro and then they changed my magical blastbones into that annoying buff skill and I lost interest in the class. Now I got to put in skill lines from Templar and Arcanist, and, without a single Necro skill that I actually use, am having fun with my character again.

What is causing me to play very little is a variety of things.

First, I primarily roleplay and the game has had trouble keeping players' interest, so the number of people sticking around to play has decreased. Too many people have lost passion for ESO and that carries over into the RP communities I am in, with less storytelling or excitement to even log in.

Second, I used to enjoy Battlegrounds, but now they are just one-sided stomps so I don't even play them anymore.

Third, I now only play for storytelling and lore. I have done most of the game's content at this point, and the writing has gotten less and less mature and serious to the point I don't really enjoy it. I did DC base game questline this year which I greatly enjoyed, but then started running into the gammut of "quirky npcs" in Solstice and just stopped logging in. I just can't.

Fourth, The content I do also is so braindead that I don't really feel excitement playing it. It's very mindless and danger-free in the overworld. The quality of storytelling and writing doesn't make up for this, so I find myself rather wanting to spend my time playing single player RPGs instead now.

Fifth, I dislike their trending towards cutting animations and making concessions for older hardware. It feels now we are being held back in the past, and not moving towards the future.

I do still like my characters and housing, so I haven't detached entirely - but I am not feeling very inspired.

emilyhyoyeon

Syldras wrote: »

robwolf666 wrote: »

They would have to mess up the game in a serious way for me to quit in completely. I've said it before, I play ESO because it's Elder Scrolls, not because it's an MMO or whatever. As long as they stay true to Elder Scrolls I'll continue playing. (For me, ZoS leaning into PvE and more solo play would be gold.)

And that's exactly the problem for me: Writing is getting worse, there's an increasing number of lore mistakes and just complete plotholes recently, topics become more generic instead of actually building upon interesting already existing TES lore, and I have the feeling that the uniqueness of Tamriel is slowly diminishing in ESO between generic writing, exploding flashy mounts, and dialogues written in a style that doesn't feel appropriate for the fictional pseudo-medieval world this is supposed to be.

Am I still playing? Yes. And I don't have the intention to leave yet, I can still replay Morrowind, CWC, Summerset or Wrothgar (on any other of the earlier chapters), after all. But I do notice that I have lost interest a bit, especially concerning what ever might come next year. In the early years I was looking forward to the January reveal, I loved the speculations that arose once we got the first few hints, I couldn't wait for the first stream showing us a bit about the new chapter, I was curious about the new lore that might come, and also about new companions. And without any doubts, I pre-ordered in those earlier years. I didn't even need to know more, after Morrowind and CWC I knew it would be high-quality and I'd enjoy it.

Sadly, now I feel rather indifferent about next year. Sure, I want to see an announcement as early as possible, so I know what we'll get, but I'm sceptical. There's no excitement, no looking forward to it. I almost expect the announcement to be something I'm not too interested in, so I might buy it on sale, perhaps, in a year, or maybe wait until it just becomes part of ESO+ anyway. Without exaggeration, this year ruined it for me.

Not going to simply hit your response with an Agree, but respond myself with nothing other than I 100% relate here, and I wish I could repost this a million times

CoronHR

the writhing wall and the season pass are by far the worst things i've experienced in the 6 years i've been playing. the best thing about it was it made me appreciate previous releases a great deal

i don't plan on leaving, as i enjoy some content still, such as trials (solstice's trial is probably the high point)

since I'm not leaving, what would get me back is a hypothetical. so, if i were to leave, what would get me back is a new class. there are problems with that though, obvious ones. subclassing has ruined classes, and their intent to focus on class identity this year is getting side-eye from me ... long hard side-eye. i think it would be a very, very long time before they released a new class

MasterSpatula

The continual weakening of straight magica builds as compared to hybrid and stam builds. I'd call it indefensible, but the word frankly seems a bit weak to me.

But the thing that's really killing my enthusiasm right now is the community, particularly the self-appointed PVP community and the gatekeeping around PVP that's become rampant on this forum.

Joe_90

Interesting the number of people who say they have quit but are still on the forum. Perhaps a relationship they are unable to move on from.

Plusscher

Subclassing.

It killed the guilds I'm in, it killed and is slowly killing the friend group I play with, and so on and so forth. Half my friendlist is last online X months ago. Group finder barely hosting anything nowadays, zones are empty, pvp is same faces every session.

The game is actively dying and no, I do not mean servers. The plan is for ESO to have 30 year anniversary which might happen, but by then it won't be an MMORPG, it will be a solo game with online buggy elements in it.

I myself am only doing some questing and achievements (to tie up loose ends so to speak), but those can only last for so long. Trials used to be fun I used to join them even when I needed nothing from them just because they were fun to do, now they are a beam-burn-fest, what are mechanics anyways? I cannot express how boring all combat has became because of subclassing. PvP experience is unkillable runny-shoes-on oneshot-pve-players machines that just waste time by running around in circles and hiding behind walls and crates, ballgroups, angry players and lagfest, Trial experience is beam beam beam and more beam, with literally no incentive to replay trials you have all the stickerbook for. 0 variety, 0 fun, 0 mechs, 0 everything. Meta is so beyond and above even slightly off meta it's a complete joke and yes even if I pull my weight and do well it is still incredibly disheartening to know that someone who plays meta press 3 button does way more than me with playing keyboard like a piano. No, I'm by no means a god player and I never will be, and no I'm not saying this from an "elitist point of view", but come on, when did it all become a give reward for laziness and no skill and basically punish those who put in the effort and practice and actually do stuff and care? Before subclassing, if you put in the effort and gave a hoot you could not only catch up to meta, you could be even better than meta, now, it's not possible anymore and it's quite frankly just off putting. Why should I care, why should I give effort when I know it's just a total waste of time anyways? Or alternatively why should I care when I know they don't care?

As a sidenote the thing that made me quit for a while was necro being utterly bugged (for like nearly half a year, btw) and them refusing to do anything about it, and even now the solution created more bugs that I know for a fact won't be fixed. Oh well.

I do think they dug themselves too deep with the disaster that have been 2025, decision after decision it just made things worse and worse, and as much as I hope and cope that 2026 will be the year where it all will be happy and cool and the game will revive, I don't see it happen. Again, oh well.

Radiate77

AScarlato wrote: »

Subclassing got me to return to the game.

Yup, there are quite a few of us.

Doesn’t show too well in the population though when the game is hemorrhaging players from the myriad of worse decisions found throughout 2025.

MasterSpatula wrote: »

The continual weakening of straight magica builds as compared to hybrid and stam builds. I'd call it indefensible, but the word frankly seems a bit weak to me.

But the thing that's really killing my enthusiasm right now is the community, particularly the self-appointed PVP community and the gatekeeping around PVP that's become rampant on this forum.

I wouldn’t say there’s PvP gatekeeping, there’s just a lot of frustration from the fact that Jess finally said the words that we all needed to hear, even if some of us couldn’t see it.

Gray Host can not be fixed, and standard Cyrodiil with the population of old will never return.

For the tiny fraction-of-a-fraction, of a minority, that played Gray Host past their T1 these past few years, I’d imagine this is heartbreaking news.

Instead of providing thoughtful feedback on how to make Vengeance what it needs to be, like improving the Perk System, or adding a progression system to earning said Perks, to improving the impact felt by them, people just want to pout and post negativity on every thread and the end result will be that nobody will be happy as the campaign will be too slow for vets, and not interesting enough build-wise for player retention.

Closed mouths aren’t fed, or in this case, closed minds.

I won’t go into the pain points of Hybridization, as I generally agree that while it was fun when it came out, with Scribing and Subclassing now, Hybridization of resources should be revisited as we can finally build into our archetypes and truly define our characters. Not all of the changes with Hybridization were bad though, and I am a huge fan of the jewelry glyph changes, and that Brutality & Sorcery along with Savagery & Prophecy are now bound together, despite the redundancy of having two names for the same thing.

xR3ACTORx

Okay here is my feedback for improving vengeance:

Don't.

Radiate77

xR3ACTORx wrote: »

Okay here is my feedback for improving vengeance:

Don't.

So Cyrodiil is finished. 🤝
See you in the new mid-scale release.

valenwood_vegan

There weren't already enough posts arguing about vengeance?

tomofhyrule

For me, it's that there's just been an obvious decline in the amount of care over the years, and I don't know how they'll be able to turn that boat around.

First and most important: Balance. Or let's just come out and say it: Subclassing. It was put through with exactly zero thought on how it would affect anything, because the team was so concerned about trying to chase the people who really wanted to play an elementalist overland. They previewed it for their special StreamTeam members, who even said "it's ok, but it does make it feel bad to play a pure class still" and the devs' response was essentially "why would anyone want to play a pure class anymore?" Subclassing leaked and all the high-end Discords called the OP setups within an hour, and ESO's team couldn't see anything other than "oh boy, if I put Animal Companions and Daedric Summoning and Grave Lord together, I can have all of the pets!" (except you couldn't because of the Necro pet/corpse bug that they never noticed somehow). And then it went on PTS and people showed off how the balance issues were off the charts, and ZOS's response was "well, we know it'll be bad, but that's not a huge issue, right?"

How was the team that off-base that they never thought that balance would be a factor? And since then we got the "how does Subclassing feel?" questionnaire on the forum, the Class survey, and we've been watching endgame wither before ZOS finally admitted "ok, maybe Subclassing was a bit OP."

They have a lot to do on this front, and honestly not much time to do it. They've hemorrhaged so many players already because of that.

And on that note: Listen to the players. How many times is something on PTS and someone says "oh, this is a major bug" or "oh, this is something that players won't like" or anything of that sort. And invariably it goes live. And then players react negatively to that. And then the game needs to scramble to fix it in the next few days. Really? You couldn't have addressed that in the six weeks that it was on PTS, but not you have time for that?

Why can't the devs look at the PTS forums? Why can't they interact with the PTS forums? Why does it always feel like PTS is just yelling at a brick wall? And now look at what happened with the last one: very few changes so much fewer players went to PTS, and as a result the Wall event was a catastrophe of epic proportions. It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

About that train wreck: Stop being so secretive. The entire selling point of this year was "the Wall!" And we knew nothing about anything else coming. Even now, all we get is "we can't wait to show you what we have in store!" Spoiler alert: the more you act all coy like that, the less people will care. And then when something is finally revealed, it's too far along to make changes to it (see things like the new UI, the new BGs, animation changes, Subclassing, AWA, etc). And then people who don't like it get frustrated, instead of finding out why people are frustrated and trying to make it so more people like it.

And finally: Care about the writing. It's been bad lately. Stop reusing NPCs and sanding them down to a single personality trait. Stop trying to make every character think with the wrong head. Stop trying to make the player character a goldfish with a room-temperature IQ. Stop doing things that directly contradict the lore, even the lore from the same year of content. Stop thinking that "funny" is the same thing as "good writing," especially when the definition of "funny" is "2010s sitcom." And let people stay dead.

I do remember it took me a full year to get up the courage to do the High Isle epilogue after finishing Galen because I just saw Za'ji and I groaned. That year of writing was beyond atrocious (or at least the High Isle line, Firesong wasn't too bad). And now in Solstice, we're specifically trying to make it so the player can finally flirt with one of two characters who get shoved in our faces every other Chapter, because there are no players that don't care about romance, right? (Not to mention that one of those characters can be killed off during the main quest and the other definitely is killed off in the MQ and then brought back to die again in Summerset).

Not all of the writing was bad, but the good ones are few and far between. And whenever one is well written, people go nuts over how good it is (look at the response to Zerith's story compared to the response to Tanlorin's). But every time people are asked "what zone story was best?" people are always gravitating towards either Wrothgar or Summerset. Nobody really talks about much post-2019 when they're talking about storytelling.

If I want a good story from a good RPG, I know I'm not getting that from ESO. I'm going to pick up Baldur's Gate 3.

Now, as to what they could do in the future?

In general, start listening to the players. Hang out on the PTS or in game and see what players need, and focus on that. Don't come out with things just because a dev likes it, come out with things that players are asking for. Stop pretending that you know more about what we want than we do. Give us updates, roadmaps, reasons to care again.

For me personally, I love the character building process. I like being able to make characters and write my own stories for them. I want each to look and feel unique, so this continual march towards homogenization is really frustrating. My big thing: I want new Classes in the worst way. I realize that that'll only make balance worse for a time, but if the team were better at balancing as they went (instead of this year's "we're dropping a nuke on balance and then not addressing a thing about it at all"), then it wouldn't be so bad.
But every Class for me is a new character with a new set of skills and a new way to interact with the world. I would drop everything to be able to play an Artificer. And even beyond that, more new Classes gives me a chance to make more characters and play with a whole new arsenal of skills to really build them they way I want.

Hurbster

Gone for a good long while, pop in here every month or so to see how things are going.

I guess it was after Elsweyr that I noticed that the standard of writing appeared to be dropping. Greymoor was bad, Blackwood was awful. Didn't make it through High Isle. Not been back since.

I'd love to play again, but it just doesn't seem worth it, especially as the purchase options are more confusing than ever, being able to bloody respec would have brought me back like a shot, I'd just like to add.

Hurbster

Joe_90 wrote: »

Interesting the number of people who say they have quit but are still on the forum. Perhaps a relationship they are unable to move on from.

It's almost as if a bunch of us had a great time playing this game for years and want to keep tabs on it.

albertberku

For me it was subclassing. As a regular Cyrodiil player for more than 8-9 years, i really tried very hard to keep up with the meta players with my pure magsorc that i played for years. I tweaked it with subclassing, added the gate from arcanist, added the Esometric Greaves, etc. And i theorycrafted hours, days and weeks long before eventually giving up and deciding that is not possible. At the end i just couldnt keep up with all these tryhards that immediately switch to the most meta build every patch and love looking at their K/D ratio. All these times i was able to keep up with them, but now the gap is so huge if you want to play a slightly off meta build, i cant keep up anymore. I love challenges in videogames, that is why i loved Cyrodiil but currently it feels like trying to have a Dark Souls NG+ completion with a naked level 1 character.

What would make me return? At this point, i would return only if there will be huge changes in combat system, not only subclassing but also i want weaving to be removed and animation cancelling should cancel the damage but still cost ressources. So i want animation cancelling and healing/damaging/blocking at the same time also not be possible anymore. If you are blocking you are blocking, if you are light attacking you are light attacking and if you are healing you are healing, and if you cancel doing it and animation doesnt play your skill should not have any outcomes other than costing some of its ressources.

As i know ESO players by heart, i know these changes are not possible, because you know this is what makes ESO different, its "unique combat system", lmao.

Finedaible

Despite there being some improvements here and there over the years, I am pretty much of the same sentiment and not really feeling great about ESO anymore. I think for me it is the lack of innovation and unwillingness to improve game systems that is getting to me. Quite frankly, ESO/Zeni does not respect my time and is stuck in the past while feeling excessively monetized. Every single update being the same meaningless horizontal "progression" feels stale, yet somehow this season pass concept is even worse. The primary reason I came to ESO in the first place was for that classic story and lore immersion The Elder Scrolls was known for but I have not felt that since the Summerset chapter... 7 years go...

Meanwhile other studios/games are dropping massive updates that feel rewarding and fun to play. Warframe, for example, just released a big content update (entirely free, as usual) that has been such a breath of fresh air and FUN to play; Sure, it will never be perfect but it feels rewarding and my friends like to play it.

What would bring me back full time to ESO is if it actually got serious about becoming a better game and not just maintaining the servers and older consoles for the next shallow content drop. I wish they would get back to their roots with the excellent writing quality and story pacing from Orsinium, Thieves' Guild and Dark Brotherhood. Where did that heavy, immersive, and mature writing go? There was so much depth to the lore and dialogue of Clockwork City that it pains me to see what they come up with these days.

On the combat side, I kind of liked Scribing and Subclassing but we did not see any expansion to Scribing or Class Sets, and now they are talking about redesigning classes 11 years into the game over the next 3+ years when they have never finished anything else?! This has me fearing they will not be adding to any more combat systems or class sets until they work through the class reworks, but realistically that will most likely never be finished like everything else they say they will do. There's a point where unfulfilled promises just become thinly veiled lies.

peacenote

I haven't quit, but feel like I am running out of things to do on non raid/dungeon play sessions for two reasons:

1. AwA

No one who reads my posts will be surprised. In the end, after the initial disappointment of losing the significant dates of accomplishments for all of my characters, and the confusing implementation such that some things were per character and some things were per account, I found that since I didn't quit initially that the effect has been more of a slow drain than a single direct hit. Each month that passed found me giving up or caring less about which character I was on or going through content multiple times as a personal goal, because everything looks "done." There was no point in running pledges on multiple characters, because the chance of getting a "surprise" achievement was low. It no longer mattered whether I got achievements first on my main, especially after MORE achievements were created for things I had done years ago, such that the wrong characters immediately popped those new achievements with incorrect dates. "Earned by" - the small concession those of us who cared about per character tracking - became meaningless. The first time I got a new achievement on a mule and I thought "eh, whatever" was a bad sign. This did not mean I was embracing AwA - it meant, to me, achievements were becoming meaningless and no longer fun to chase, because the per character thing was part of the fun for me.

I used to think about the game and say "oh, today I'll work on my stam necro" or "today I'll work on my healer sorc" but there is so little unique things for them to do. So slowly, I stopped logging in on them. Stopped using them. To the point that even characters I liked to maintain to have options for raiding are not up to date. (Hybridization also did not help as playing a mag or stam version of a character became less meaningful.)

Then sub-classing dropped. And I barely can tell which character I'm on anymore, if it's one I maintain for raiding, because they all use few class abilities.

Yep, some people liked the freedom of "being able to do anything on any character and have it not matter" but for me, working my way through achievements per character was a huge driver for me to play and log in.

2. The Vengeance / Sub-classing+Scribing Juxtaposition Issue with PvP

I really like scribing and I don't completely hate sub-classing (though I have some implementation complaints). But I kind of have this thing going on now where I want to use them, both to have the strongest characters I can, because I'm competitive, and because they are the most major updates to combat that we have. Both systems breathed a little new life into the game for me, especially scribing for PvP. However, because there are so many scripts, and there are so many skill lines, keeping track of what the heck I have loaded and what I'm trying to do has become a bit of a challenge. Putting together a build is a time investment for me, even if it's tweaking one I found. There's a LOT to know. So I like it and I hate it at the same time.

Now, we're potentially facing a situation where one version of PvP will be "templated" with altered abilities that are sort of like the abilities we had, but different, and limited options. And it was obvious pretty early on to me that this is where we were heading.

This means not ONLY will I NOT have access to the abilities and combinations in Cyro that I've been learning about in scribing and sub-classing, which is annoying because I like them, but I also need to create and keep straight different builds that DO use these things in BG's, IC, and potentially a new mode.

This is too complicated and too limiting at the same time. How in the world ZOS is managing to make it so I can't quite keep track of what the heck my abilities do in a game that only allows 12 abilities to be slotted at a time is truly beyond me. But here we are.

Not sure if I'm making sense but for me, a build becomes effective when my fingers just know what to do and I instinctively "get" what will happen as I play. It's becoming too hard for that to ever happen because there's just too much additional context I must remember to have that instinct kick in. Templated PvP or normal? Is there Battle Spirit? Which class am I? Have I sub-classed? Is my cp active? What scripts do I have on?

So I've quit PvP altogether until this all gets settled. I don't want to go in, because I don't want to adjust my builds, because it takes me forever to do so, and they are likely to change or not even be AVAILABLE in my favorite form of PvP quite soon. It's... too much. And now I hear classes are getting an overhaul. I'm not the kind of person who hangs on if something is almost gone in a last hurrah. If I think it's leaving, further time invested is a waste, even in a game which arguably is not "productive" time regardless. Before this, I frequently switched between PvE and PvP, so having the game feel unified across those two modes was important to not feel too rusty on either side.

Basically, when I take out PvP and working on my alts, I have zero incentive to log in when my friends aren't on and play on my own, whereas previously I frequently tried to spend my free time in game to work through alt achievements, make builds for them, etc. If they added a character tracking log and ditched the idea of altered abilities in the main place I like to PvP, I'd like to play a lot more. (And to be clear, I would be fine with set removals, and other limitations in Cyro or Vengeance to help fix it... it's literally that keeping an altered ability set straight that's different in different PvP environments is a nightmare to me at this point.)

Muizer

Bit like chewing gum. Some people happily keep chewing after all the flavor is gone, some don't. I'm in the latter category.

ghost_bg_ESO

looking back at it - for me the final straw was this https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/670691/studio-director-s-letter-2025-beyond (next year will be great and Agile) and the radio silence until april.
what will bring me back... probably nothing as it stopped being elder scrolls game, also i'm reasonably happy in wuwa and recently wwm.

Vonnegut2506

I don't subscribe anymore, and I barely log in at all. Charging me more for less content, double charging me for dungeons, releasing buggy, horrible content marketed as once in a lifetime event, non-existent class balancing, laggy combat, janky animation changes, etc. This past year the game has moved quickly towards bottoming out, and I don't think I want to be along for the ride.

Poss

Played at launch and left early 2017 mainly because of the perfect trait grind. I was farming Moleg Kena over and over and decided enough is enough.

Didn’t play again for 6 years. Came back and didn’t leave again.

Will leave permanently though if GH is removed.

shadyjane62

I don't even play half of what I used to and would leave in nothing flat if there was another MMO. I was really looking forward to whatever the "Blackbird MMO" was going to be.


As to why I don't play, there's almost nothing left for me. It started with U35 and has gone down hill from there for me. All the fluff they have added doesn't interest me.


I have been stuck in combat for 8 years.

zenonuk

Pretty much what everyone else has said above. In terms of my priorities it comes down to a few key things....

1. Quality across the board has gone downhill. Their QC is nowhere near as strong as it needs to be, and I'm pretty sure they cannot have a QA process (I wouldn't be surprised if they think QC and QA are the same thing). More specifically... a) Story writing has gone downhill with plot holes and lore contradictions all over the place, repetitive tropes, and character dialog becoming way too simplistic. b) Combat is full of bugs, with skills not firing correctly, balance being way off, etc. When I come back to ESO after playing other games, the whole combat experience just feels clunky. c) Animations and sound effects are buggy, with even basic stuff like interacting with a merchant or banker sometimes not playing dialog, and the latest animation rework causing all sorts of problems/disjoints between what you're actually doing, what you see, and what you hear. d) Every release now seems to be followed with day-0 or week-0 bug fixes because they couldn't simply delay for a week or so. (And none of that's mentioning specific PvE and PvP issues, or the missing non-English translations for my non-US/UK friends which we really should expect on day 1 for a supposedly AAA game.)

2. They don't listen to their own strategy. We're supposed to be able to play the way we want... except you can't if you want to pull your weight in group content. If you're a pure-class, you're no longer pulling your weight if you're in a team of "beamers" in that vet trial. Technically, yes, we can play how we want... but it ends up being a fairly solo and isolating experience. I don't have the appetite to rebuild a bunch of characters just to use multi-classing to feel I'm pulling my weight in group content. Yes, historically there's always been meta builds... but at least in many cases there were several to choose from, and you could continue to have a group of different classes/builds for a fun experience... now it's all the same. And I really don't have appetite (having characters of every class, all at level 50) to have to level all those skill lines AGAIN, just so they can be multi-classed ready for the SAME multi-class build everyone else is running for a vet trial.

3. The guilds I'm in are dying... a lot of people I regularly played with are leaving. This is the second mass-exodus I've experienced with the game, and I'm not sure I have the appetite to join a bunch of new guilds, and build a bunch of new regular dungeon/trial groups, etc. I guess I'm just feeling a little jaded in this regard, especially when those people who left are playing other games and I know they will be on the other side of a loading screen if I decided to play there also.... we're still hanging out in the same discords even if we're not in ESO.

Those three can be summarized simply as... I'm just not having fun in game anymore.

4. I'm really disliking the visual direction... way to much neon disco. Why do I need to see somebody's mount popping into existence in a sea of neon colour that obliterates my screen... why can I not turn off those other player effects? (And it's not just one pop of neon - if you're riding behind them up/down hills, every time they come into sight you see this neon effect.) A lot of the time, I can no longer see the boss and the various boss telegraphs in vet content, because the centre of the screen is now just bright white with all those neon effects. Why do all the new scribed skills have massive AEO effects that we don't need to see... because let's face it, we're either stacked, or you can't see them in the white-/neon-wash that's now surrounding the the main boss. (And that's not mentioning the historic issues with the flappy, the necro ulti, and for those old enough to remember good-old Jeff that started this journey for our poor tanks, none of which has been improved for those of us calling for greater accessibility/visual control.)

5. This year has both inflation and shrinkflation... I don't feel it's value for money. Not only was the price for the season pass 50% more expensive than the previous year (I've always preordered), but the size of content was significantly smaller (in terms of questing, and what I consider to be "unique playable hours"... i.e. not repeating the dailies incessantly... I felt I got 50% less playable content having paid 50% more cash). That's before we consider that dungeons packs were included (to make the season pass seem better value), but ultimately had the effect of reducing the value of ESO+. Add to this increase in price and decrease in size, the decrease in quality I mention above... well, quite frankly, if this was a car, it would have been taken back to the dealership before I'd arrived home.

And finally...

My worry is this: I'm not sure ZOS actually know how they're going to fix/improve the situation. Having watched the live-streams... They say on the one hand they've worked on the class refresh for around 6-months already and they're in a good place with DK. They also say that changing skills can take up to 3 months due to animation changes, etc. They also say, in answer to other questions raised in those same live-streams, that it's difficult to plan beyond 6 to 12 months, because things can change... and although they do try to plan, they cannot always commit to a delivery date because often things don't/can't happen. We also know, ourselves, that business pressures (in this case Microsoft) will have their own priorities that will drive ZOS behavior, priorities, and available staffing. And we've also seen, ourselves, how some of those ideas/strategies (thinking of hybridization, etc.) have only ever delivered in a half-/partial completed state.

Which leads me to...

6. I do not believe that the class refresh for ALL classes will actually happen. Specifically, in (a) a reasonable time-frame, and (b) across all classes. I don't trust ZOS to deliver... and I don't think ZOS believe they can either, as they've not exactly promised anything, nor provided the detail you'd expect in a legitimate timeline/roadmap. So far it's a lot of the same PR/marketing/spin we've seen before, with very little substance under the extremely high-level desires they have. After the over-hyped season pass format, together with the spin layered on this year's content (to the point I felt in some cases it bordered on out-right lying - at least in the political sense we've all come to expect these days)... I have no trust is what's being said. That trust needs to be rebuilt, and the only way to do that, is to deliver on what they say will happen.

And to a specific point that keeps getting raised on the ZOS side - that "data doesn't lie" - as somebody who works in IT and headed IT teams... the data may not lie, but human interpretation of that can still be way off base. (Equally, driving collection of specific data points, even if way off base, can also drive human behavior - for both good and for bad.) Statements like this do not fill be with confidence of the ZOS team's ability, other than to hammer home the PR/marketing/spin approach they seem to be indoctrinated on.


So all those things considered, my plan... given I've paid for the season pass... is to complete New Life to get the tickets for the final morphing collectable, and then take a complete break... keep an eye on the forums to see if/when the class revamp completes, and have an understanding of the general direction/feedback of the game. I've already cancelled my ESO+ (although it doesn't expire until Feb.), and I dropped out of vet/HM groups since multi-classing landed. Maybe I'll do what I know many others are doing... pick up next year's content at end of the year in the sales and see where we are (or maybe the year after if the game is still going). As somebody that's played since 2015, logged on most days, banked 19k+ hours play time, I'm already enjoying the break from ESO if I'm being honest.


* And yes I'm being pedantic that sub-classing is actually multi-classing in ESO's implementation...

scrappy1342

i dropped my sub last april when they made the announcement about the season pass. i never agreed with their pricing. $40 a year (because they put out a chapter each year) for content that you can get through in a weekend. compared to the same price in other mmo's that takes weeks or months to get through and they are always adding new things over the course of the year/s until the next expansion. when they said it was going to be even less content for even more money, that was it for me. and i'm not sure i will ever sub again. you can get multiple chapters of content done during a free eso+ week. what's the point of owning it?

so for me, they would have to really put in a lot more content. more content than they have ever done before because this business of doing an entire chapter in a weekend is just not going to cut it. more places to go/explore. more quests to do. BETTER quests. i didn't read through everything, but as others pointed out, the quests/stories are not what they used to be.

ceruulean

I still play but I don't sub anymore, so I'm taking up server bandwidth. The best updates so far are swimming mounts, and allowing BGs to start 7v8 without disbanding the entire lobby.

Personally it's the years and years of ZoS focusing on "telling better stories" that they neglect adding gameplay improvements and just keep piling on new shinies and systems. No account wide settings after 11 years. Not finishing hybridization. No class balance changes. Not improving the options to turn off skill effect bloat. Not addressing the terrible spawn bases in battlegrounds or the monthly MMR resets. What about that guild refresh that was mentioned for 2025 to give guild masters more features? I could care less about Solstice and another set of redundant public dungeons and skyshards and quest lines, of which this game now has hundreds and thousands. Some amount of excellent storytelling can overcome half-baked gameplay, but apparently the recent stories are just too campy and don't fit the vibe of TES anymore. I like good storytelling as much as the average English major, but if I really wanted storytelling I'd go read a book or play a visual novel game. I like to play ESO because it's an MMO.

They also added meh updates, like adding meter distances to compass points. Idk how that's a useful UI feature compared to a lot of major elephants in the room, for example, the option to toggle a minimap UI back to the game (it existed since the alpha test release but it's hidden) would probably be better, rather than relying on add-ons to do this. All these years the old devs thought adding a minimap was immersion-breaking, but now precise numbers showing your distance to the wayshrine is not?

New animation refresh from U48 hasn't been tested, nor are there fire teams all hands on deck to push out hotfixes on the broken animations for those few critical days of go-live. It was the same with subclassing, no devs teams on standby trying to make sure the implementation is solid. Just a lazy "swap skill lines and go enjoy getting easy trifectas" type of deal.

I'd only sub if devs were able to push necessary updates instead of marketing team overriding them and focusing on money. Stuff like PvP/PvE skill separation needs to be done in a huge overhaul. It's like every time a dev team pushes out an update, some higher up is like "Ok cool, don't spend the next dev cycle to make sure it's working well and to get feedback, move on to the next shiny feature."

I like the Vengeance skills (not the same as the entire campaign) but if they're going to exist for the sake of competitive integrity, they need to exist for all PvP or else people will get confused which skills are for which game mode. We can't have these half-baked battlespirit/PvE gear enabled/Vengeance rulesets going around. One set of builds for PvE, one set of builds for PvP. It's less about restricting the ability to theorycraft and more about putting in minimum guardrails. Freedom of subclassing and scribing skills only should apply in PvE land. People try to use their hybrid PvEvP builds because they don't like switching, but then they get 1 shot in Cyrodiil and BGs. I highly doubt that's a great experience. Sure you can just let players make bad choices, but I think most people prefer to be guided towards minimum viability. So the intent of Vengeance is correct, even if the implementation still needs refining.

I was playing with a friend new to the game, who accidentally queued for 4v4 BGs instead of random dungeons, and we were grouped so apparently we went against meta sweats. When the queue popped, we decide to play it through but it was mostly a disaster. This experience tells me that the UI is clunky because people accidentally queue for the wrong thing (PvP is in the same menu as PvE for some reason) and that labeling the queues as "group vs. solo" is unusual instead of separating the queues as "casual vs ranked" like every other game. My friend is familiar with Overwatch and other games so it's not really their fault that they have trouble navigating ESO's arcane and sometimes inane groupings.

It's just little things like this that make the game aggravating to play as a multiplayer game. Trying to group with others ends up being more punishing than fun.

So yeah, a lot of players like to say that new content will bring them back to spend money. But you're not attracting new buyers if the game itself drives like an outdated and unmaintained car. NEW customers will jump ship when they encounter so many unfriendly features, and vets can't recommend the game whole-heartedly anymore.